“ The city was cursed many years ago. Since then it has not stopped raining. The gutters are inhabited by eels and the doors are on the first floor, coated with pitch. On a bad day, you can see the water level rise above the ground floor windows. Carts have both wheels and bladders filled with air to keep them afloat. And yet everyone is surprisingly dry.”
“ In a certain nation, no-one except the Emperor is allowed to have a name. Therefore, the people give themselves pseudo-names called 'callings'. Examples of callings: A family is known as the Red Sparrow family. The father is called Swooping Red Sparrow. The wife is Bright Red Sparrow Blue Lizard because she was called Bright Blue Lizard before marriage. Their daughter, until she becomes an adult, is Daughter of Red Sparrow. Their sons are Eldest Son of Red Sparrow and Younger Son of Red Sparrow.”
“ With a huge number of sacrificial victims, another realm long ago secretly bound a Prince of the land spirits, Iorstonn by name, thus ensuring the fertility, and improving the magical defences, of their realm. But binding that Prince to one spot has disrupted the weather and magical patterns (ley lines?) over half the continent. Things have become bad enough that a coalition has been formed to rectify the situation, once divinations have established the cause.
Your party is one of the teams assembled to do the rectification: find the binding object and steal it ('so that we can destroy it here in our realm, of course'...*) or destroy it over there. Presumably the Prince will be grateful to his rescuers and angry at the binders, but with a greater spirit like Iorstonn one can never be sure: such beings are 'tricksy'.
* Of course, the rulers of our realm might want to control Iorstonn for their own ends...”
