The protagonists find themselves in the small but friendly town of Tilley. The summer is coming to a close, and this year's harvest was good enough to avoid a repeat of the Winter Famine of 1015. People are moving back into the city for the fall and winter, so life is picking up with festivities being prepared. Nothing much usually happens in Tilley. It's a quiet place, focused on providing food for the Kingdom of March.
A local guild of merchants are gathering coin to reinforce parts of the town's walls, always fearful of any incursion from the Suytäme tribes from up north. The duke Edmin Arkelow and his family travelled to the kingdom's capital in Adestry, but they came back without their daughter, which has the local gentry running wild on speculation.