Adventures Elsewhere starting Map and introduction

The Region around Zen's Lair 

Like most of my maps for games this starts with much less detail than will latter be needed as I will add that as I need it and the game progresses. It Shows what the Protagonist Zen knows at the beginning and which she discovered in the pursuit and subsequent slaying of the Necromancer of Torval 

Back story

Zen came to the ruins in which she now lairs in pursuit of the human necromancer Alerigiwil who she was paid to hunt down by the merchants guild of Zerin far to the east because he had reneged on a deal to provide them with undead labour for their fire stone mines and had stolen upwards of ten thousand gold marks form them over and above the payment he had asked for and got for the labour he had not in the end provided.

It had been a long chase which had led Zen away from her accustomed range but the Guilds of Zerin where rich and none more so that the Merchants guild. That the man had seemingly easily defeated the assassins sent after him by the powerful and feared assassin’s guild of Zerin also rather piqued her interest as the assassins of Zerin where by way of being professional rivals. In the end however after a six month chase she had found his bolt hole and confronted him there and beaten him. The Merchants had paid and Zen had decided that the Necromancers lair would make an ideal base of operations and if one remained away from the areas where he conducted his foul necromantic researches a quite comfortable one for the late Alerigiwil liked his creature comforts and had lavished much coin and time making sure he was able to live a life of luxury at his secret base.

It was here as spring began to come to the north lands that the elf queen Uilastoquen came with her escort to hire Zen to hunt down and kill her traitor general Nyassor vilr Imgash-rak. Who had been last seen in one of the Human towns in the petty kingdom to the west of here but who had disappeared then, The Kingdom was in some turmoil and it seemed to the queens trackers that the willy general used this to evade them and cloud his path

Introduction
They who come to the outcaste they all know as Zen for one reason, because some one who was not going to be easy to kill needed killing. They came usually because they had sent their best after them and failed or they needed the death to be unattributable to them or the trail was so cold they felt they had lost it. However whatever variation on the tale it boiled down to one thing in the end Zen hunting down the mark and killing them. Zen was very good at this and they knew it, she was also their last resort and if she failed well it was acknowledged it could not be done at all. Except so far Zen had never failed.

So it was that the Elf queen Uilastoquen came to the ruins in the swamp where Zen laired currently and came with as little ceremony as one so mighty could manage with a score of guards through the fringes of the lands of men not always friendly to elves and always afraid to offer Zen a great prize for hunting down and slaying her former general Nyassor vilr Imgash-rak who had betrayed her to the hated gnomes of Thrune and abandoned the field when the battle hung on a knife edge leaving his underling s to deal with the situation as best they could . That day the gnomes had had a great victory and only not a final one because the leaders the general had trained had managed to thwart that though at considerable cost. It had cost her more to discover that there was far more to the betrayal than simply going over to the enemy and to have him tracked as he ran west ever west away form the lands in which elves are strong through the mannish kingdoms where elves are not that welcome  in the company of a half elf slave to the petty kingdom to the west of here where last autumn they lost him. (About the same time that the Necromancer was being confronted by Zen)  The queen’s trackers did so in the confusion of a revolt in the kingdom by the commoners against a weak unpopular and tyrannical ruler.

here our story starts.......