Description
The Black Feather Trade Company began as a ragtag band of merchants, scouts, and retired sellswords who stitched their fortunes together under a banner pierced by a single black plume. They called themselves a company because trade kept them alive. Each new recruit was given a feather to remind them that business and mercy travelled the same road. Led by Goddrick the Fast Faller — a man famous for surviving a catastrophic drop from a raided sky-barge and then leaping into danger with a grin — they learned early that speed and stubbornness could save more lives than coin. When a string of warlords and bandits preyed on isolated homesteads of Caster, the company answered not with mercenary contracts but with harvests, reinforcements, and the promise of refuge, and in time those scattered hamlets grew into a village they founded as a haven.
That village would become the city of Casterville. West of the Pax Mei, across a decaying bridge. A place where markets hum beneath watchtowers and where a trade ledger is kept beside the shelter register. The Black Feather Trade Company maintains the Exchange—a fortified bazaar and guildhall that funnels commerce and charity alike—sending caravans to open roads, mages to heal, and scouts to root out threats before they reach the gates. Orphanages, a free infirmary, and a militia trained to protect the weak were paid for with profits from fair trade rather than tribute, and the company's Raven sigils over doorways mean both welcome and warning: welcome to those who need help, warning to those who would take it away, for they will not stand idle while the helpless suffer.