Freeport

Freeport - Central to the Human rebellion

A coastal city on the Great Southern Sea, Freeport was the richest Human trading port in the Heartlands before the Vampires crushed their civilisation. Central to the Human supply convoys that fed and clothed its cities and soldiers, Freeport sent out goods to either side of the sea and onwards to the Hinterlands. The city’s garrison trained and dispersed troops across Nosgoth and served as a base from where to plan the extinction of their Vampire enemies.

Income earned by the port allowed the troops in Freeport to build strong defensive walls, fortified Guild Houses and expansive market places. Aside from protecting the trading routes that fed the city, Freeport’s soldiers doubled as Vampire Hunters, trained to help drive back Vampire incursions, or hunt down individual Vampires who threatened Human interests.

A thorn in the side of Kain’s forces, it was inevitable that the city would one day feel his wrath. When Freeport fell, half its population was slaughtered by a Vampire army mad with bloodlust before Kain ordered that all survivors be rounded up and sent to Blood Farms, camps set up close to or even inside Vampire cities to provide them with living food and entertainment. With Freeport’s walls shattered, the Vampires hoped the city had been consigned to history.

Freeport Reborn

Freeport had been a proud city, one that had boasted the liberty of its people in its very name; more than a settlement, this place had been a symbol – for a free city meant free trade and free people. As Human forces took advantage of the Vampire’s civil war and moved back across the land, Freeport was an obvious place for Humanity to start again.

The city’s ruins were reclaimed to house first soldiers then merchants, and then all the trades needed to feed one of the biggest concentrations of free Humans in Nosgoth. Freeport’s accessibility, via the Southern Sea, helped it become a beacon for any Human wishing to escape the Vampires; a once potent symbol of Humanity, it now stands proud as an expression of their return from the brink.

Whilst the city offers safety, it is no paradise. Rushing to flee their Vampire masters, most of this desperate tide of Humanity started their journey to Freeport with nothing and arrived with less. This ever increasing outpouring of the terrified and the despairing needed shelter, and so the sprawling slums that compose most of Freeport today began to spread across all open areas within the city walls.

Escaping the nightmare of Vampire oppression, these refugees found that freedom gave them a life of poverty, disease and semi-starvation. Deaths were inevitable and it took the arrival of the Ironguard to prevent a symbol of hope turning into one of catastrophe.

Seeking to bring order, the Ironguard has provided labouring jobs to build and extend Freeport’s defences, food for those who help service the city and training for all those willing to join their ranks. Out of the chaos that confronted them, the Ironguard has forged a city of strength that supplies trained soldiers to the battlefronts of Nosgoth. They have given Humanity discipline, protection and hope.

The Battle for Freeport

The sheer numbers of people flocking to the security of Freeport’s walls, and the columns of troops sent out from there to fight all across Nosgoth, meant that it could not be long before the Vampires’ attention turned to the city. Now their armies are seeking to destroy it once more.

Arriving only in small numbers, the Vampires’ initial attacks were easily repulsed. Badly informed and overly certain of victory, these small bands stood no chance against the defences that had been raised against them. It took the arrival of a group of Sentinels to give the Vampires their first break in the battle.

Flying above Freeport, the Sentinels carried weapons captured from the Red Sisters and began to rain fire down upon the wooden slums of the city. Trapped between attacking Vampires and burning houses, the population panicked. Freeport’s Ironguard defenders were divided between stopping their city from burning, manning the walls, and controlling a terrified population. Something had to give.

It was at the Gate of the Lost that the Vampires broke through Freeport’s defences and poured into the city. Now, the battle for Freeport has dissolved into a thousand individual fights as Vampire hunts Human, and Human seeks to end those who have invaded the city.

Freeport must be destroyed or freed for the war to be won.