Hilltop is a village like any of hundreds that dot the Frozen North. It has its secrets and its mysteries; what town doesn't? What acre of Faerûn's soil does not conceal some ruined archmage's tower, some fey-witched glade, some subterranean necropolis full of peril and lucre for those foolish enough to take it?

Hilltop is, admittedly, denser with such things than most of the other villages. The ruins of damnéd Ascalhorn are more noteworthy than the average dungeon. Tymofarrar, the White Beast on the Mountain, is old and cunning, not some whelp demanding mutton-tribute. And to the south, in the High Forest, there are stranger things still...

But mostly, the ordinary villagers of Hilltop lead ordinary lives. They work, they drink, they rut and fight. They gather for festivals, in the spacious and clean town hall.

Drogan Droganson is not an ordinary villager. He is a mage and a god-caller, insightful and canny, and everyone knows the stories he tells the village children of his past are redacted at best. He makes himself fit in, as best he can, but no one is fool enough to think him one of them. His apprentices fit in better, barely. Masha is dragon-touched and she wasn't normal even before it came out, but she grew up in Hilltop and she's a good girl, half-mad though she may be. The elf is fine - he's a flighty little prick, well, aren't they all. The little girl is quiet and solemn and otherwise just like any other little girl, for all that she can talk to wolves and scratch them behind the ears.

The other girl, though. The one with the sword.

She might not fit in any better than her mentor.