The North Star is an organisation that was created initially to bring relief to the Northern Plains after the
magical catastrophe that created the
Rift. After the first two caravans to brave the magical mist that came out of the Rift
were lost the King forbade his citizens from making any further attempts at relief and had his realm concentrate
on building The Wall. A group of bards and
rangers who knew the North well, however, came together because they were unwilling to abandon their countrymen on the
Northern Plains
and founded the North Star. It was said they took this name
because the lodestones which they used to aid their journeys pointed at the North Star (magical means of
navigation in the mist having become unreliable).
After the mist dissipated somewhat the King still kept a tight control on the border and it was said that the North Star
had secret ways of getting over The Wall aided no doubt by border guards sympathetic to what they were doing.
For many years
The Waste, as the Northern Plains became known, was the focus of the North Star's activities
but as the situation north of The Wall stabilised they began to take an interest in other affairs. Their motto had
always been 'for the common people' and now they added 'against tyranny'. Although they were initially overwhelmingly
folk from the Northern Dales by the very nature of their membership
they tended to travel widely and they came across many examples of oppression of the common folk in the provinces.
A secret and subtle organisation they became extremely adept at righting individual cases of injustice without
exposing their identities.
In the eyes of the common folk the North Star are heroes but several of the Lords of the realm have become
less than pleased by their activities. To the
King's Men they are 'spies of Lord Fairchild' and they would no doubt abuse
and harass any individual who they could prove was a member. Similarly they are suspected (probably quite
correctly) by the
Geogoths of using magic and as a result North Star members risk being detained for
questioning if they were identified.