The Steadfast Foresters (aka the Resurgent Scavengers) originated from an ongoing dispute between a bloodsucking noble house and a network of small villages dotted around a coastal region of rugged mountains, wooded meadows and swampy estuaries. Once, the lord had dispatched companies into the country to fight off wolves and bandits, but this protective role had been exploited to take control of the land and bleed its resources. Soon, those who had lost their lands or livelihoods took to sabotage, piracy, thievery or trickery, or went into the woods to poach and scavenge (or just to preach insurgence and summon otherworldly aid), and were persecuted and treated as bandits. Eventually, the lord stopped sending aid against the wolf packs arising from the woods, and started hiring bandits to play the wolves and terrorize the populace into compliance, but this united the whole region in hostility to the house. Bands of insurgents sprung up, none of them clothed in anything more than leather or cloth, but all of them expert in the use of terrain that troubled the noble troops, and many of them making ingenious use of tools as weapons. Some of them stood firm in shieldwalls against endless onslaughts of claws; others lurked in the shadows, patiently waiting to pounce upon heavily armoured bandits, snare them in nets, and then pelter them with bows and missiles and impale them with pikes or pitchforks (or expertly slice through their mighty mail with a humble carving knife). These impromptu bands gradually merged into a permanent fighting force (or several large and sometimes closely co-ordinated ones) that protected the region against the encroachments of barons, bandits, banshees and anything else over-mighty. This force also became a haven for those who longed for adventure or loot, and several small splinter groups ventured further afield with more predatory intentions (but those are other stories).
