Of a company of thieves, and of the village that pursued them
A stealth heist game. England, 1347.
¶ You run a company of six for hire: a knight, an archer, a clerk, an alewife, a pardoner and a sapper. They are modelled on the Folvilles, Leicestershire gentry who robbed, ransomed and murdered through the 1320s and 30s, and were mostly pardoned for it.
¶ Each job is one manor. The first is a real one: the thirteenth-century manor house at Donington-le-Heath. Get in, take what you came for, and get out before anyone sounds the alarm, because the alarm is the village. Every ploughman, every dog, and the hayward with his horn.
“Of the company that robbed the granary at Donington in the year before the great dying, I have three accounts. They agree on nothing but the horn.”
¶ Your name is written down. One letter when there is news. Nothing else.
