The Hearthstone Adventuring Company (THACo) aka “The Company”
The history of The Hearthstone Adventuring Company, usually called just The Company, is shrouded in a bit of mystery. The original founding was more than 100 years ago by a consortium of adventurers and scoundrels fond of working together and regaling each other with tales of their exploits. The Company flourished for a time and published one book known as The Chronicles of the Hearthstone Adventuring Company. But as quickly as it formed, it suddenly dissolved with the untimely death of all its senior members.
But 10 years ago, a group known as the REI had in its possession a will that would pass on the original charter and charter house to an unknown group of adventurers. Once again the group grew and became more formalized, and a governing council was formed. With the organization’s continued expansion in both popularity and wealth, the council members were eventually masked for their own safety, and today The Company is now ruled by a shadowy group of masked individuals whose identities are unknown and unheralded.
Many of the greatest explorers of The Hearthstone record their adventures in the books known as the Chronicles. The amazing, often unbelievable tales bound in these volumes tell of lost gods, sunken continents, of creatures older than the world itself, and beings who fell from the stars in the eldest days, and the fantastic ruins left behind. These volumes also tell the stories of people—individuals who experienced some of the very best and worst Aegis has to offer.
The authors of these tales are members of The Hearthstone Adventuring Company, a loose-knit group of explorers, archaeologists, and adventurers who search the globe for lost knowledge and ancient treasures. While an honest desire to unlock history’s secrets motivates some, the promise of material fortune and fame propels others, who seek a sort of immortality in the publications of the Company. The rewards of academic study and glory-seeking, however, are not enough for other types who takes up the trade out of the simple thrill for perilous adventure.
Each chapter house is governed by a venture-captain who coordinates teams of Company agents in their assigned regions, tipping them off to ancient legends, passing along newly discovered maps, and supporting efforts in the field. Each venture-captain oversees the activities of several different field agents, who in turn conduct much of the exploration and adventure that fuels the Company as a whole. Venture-captains are fairly autonomous but still answer to the council. The ultimate goals of the Council are unknown, and not even the venture-captains understand the full picture of what the Company with the information it collects.
The Company’s chief resource is its organization of operatives spread throughout Athania and beyond. Venture-captains usually run charter houses where they conduct Company business. Typically a house or building owned by the Company, a Company charter house is completely under the administration of the local venture-captain. Agents may stay in a charter house as long as they are on legitimate Company business, and offer food, lodging, healing or extensive free services. Most charter houses contain small stores of potions, scrolls, and adventuring equipment for sale to agents. Company agents have access to much of the vast resources of the company. As information conduits, venture-captains also pass along letters or messages through Company channels upon agent request.
The Hearthstone Adventuring Company has 5 major charter houses throughout Athania. The original and greatest Company charter house is located in the Baron City of Thornhold—this structure is known as the Alpha site a small fortress complex located in the city’s Merchant District. The Beta site is located at the Darkhorse Tavern in the Elven City of Telassaria. The Gamma site at The Tower is located in the Wyldwood. The Delta site at The Weeping Statue in Harbour Dale. The newest charter house, the Epsilon site, has just opened in the city of Centrasia. During a typical day a Hearthstone charter house is dotted with Agents trading information, and at night the sounds of stories and songs resound along stone pathways lit gently by witchlights.
Yet the very nature of The Hearthstone Adventuring Company ensures that the organization attracts a host of oddball characters and impassioned adventurers determined to make their mark on the face of Aegis. Many of these have become legends in their own right. Currently, Cameron “Cam” Delango has just succeded stewardship of the Heartstone’s Alpha site to Ean Kellen, the first non-Hearthstone Steward and venture captain. His past seemingly involves working with the Dagda foundation. Ean now supervises all important duties within the structure and keeps a long list of relatively safe but time-consuming jobs on file to keep rookie agents busy. The other venture-captains — The illustrious Bard Tommy Codfanning, The Magus Oz, Gristlemill the Fey’ri, and the elusive Noh-Ala — serve as the masters of Beta, Gamma, Delta and Epsilon charter houses respectively. Currently there are rumors that a new site has be “uncovered” in a lost or remote land. Aside from the venture captains no one is talking.
The Company makes few demands on agents. Agents are expected to follow three primary duties: explore the mysteries of the world, report on findings uncovered in the pursuit of the first duty, and cooperate with other agents to ensure the success of the first and second duties. Unfortunately, because of the loose structure of the Company, conflicts are relatively common. Agents are charged with writing up detailed reports of their exploits to pass on to their venture-captains, who then forward the most compelling accounts to the Alpha site in Thornhold for consideration by the Council.
Every two years the masked leaders of the Company collect and publish the most worthy exploits in a new volume of the Chronicles of the Hearthstone, which are then distributed to charter houses throughout Athania. Yet for as long as the Company has chronicled their adventures, the general public has clamored for access to these tales, as those that are published present exciting and hair-raising tales. Among scholars or competing explorers copies of the Chronicles are particularly valuable for their routes to treasure, secrets of magic, and other hints about how to navigate the far corners of the world. Reproductions and counterfeit copies are growing more and more common.
The Hearthstone Adventuring Company is so loosely organized that it’s difficult to identify it as having a particular flavor or character. In most cases, venture-captains are members of their communities and participate in local customs and habits. Since venture-captains often maintain charter houses, they tend to be more responsible and, as a result, less unpredictable than the average Company agent in their actions—although exceptions always seem eager to show otherwise. Field agents are much more of a hodgepodge. The freedom for agents to be, do, and say anything they want is likely the organization’s most consistently distinct aspect. The liberty of agents occasionally clashes with the desires or goals of specific venture-captains, but rarely creates too deep of a rift for them to work together.
The same cannot be said of most Company agents, and deep and even violent rivalries are far from unheard of among their ranks. Although the freedom to approach their duties as they see fit is a distinct dvantage on most missions that agents might undertake, it unfortunately appeals to a large number of individuals eager to abuse their perceived status, and these bad apples have done little to promote the perception of The Company as legitimate scholars and explorers. In certain areas where information is seen as a commodity or weapon, such as Aman, The Baron Kingdoms, or Corinthia, Company agents are often greeted with suspicion. So little is known of the mysterious leaders of the Company that governments who particularly fear their citizens and rely on propaganda, misinformation, or similar exploitative tactics often see Hearthstone agents as threats to their control of secrecy, and an agent in such an area must take extra care to avoid attracting the wrong sort of attention.
