It seems like every campaign, sooner or later, introduces a band of soldiers-for-hire. Sometimes they're the villain's brute-squad; sometimes they're muscle the heroes hire so they can lead a heroic charge (which always looks goofy if you do it with four people, especially since the wizard always refuses to join in); sometimes they're background color and sometimes they're central to the adventure.
1. Sisterhood of Nine Coins: (Alignment: N, Crest: blue-green field with nine silver circles. Focus: Commando work.) A veteran all-female cadre with a reputation for accepting dirty jobs in return for a substantial increase in pay. The co-leaders, Vertaine Cotter and Amlis Broane, accept only females into the corps; due to their open hiring policies the largely-human Sisterhood includes several half-elves, half-orcs, tieflings and the like.
2. Dragon's Horn Brigade: (Alignment: NE, Crest: Rust-colored field with a twisted white horn. Focus: Shock troops.) A disreputable group with a tendency to hire on with any villain who will pay. The Boss of the Brigade is Garku Clubhand, an ogrekin. The troop itself is a motley gang of rogue gnolls, unsavory tieflings, ogrekin and a few humans and hobgoblins. They generally insist on the right to capture prisoners in addition to their pay - people concerned about the reasons for this demand are probably better off not hiring the Brigade.
3. Company of the Broken Scourage: (Alignment: N, Crest: Red field with a yellow dragon's head, flaming, over three dotted black lines. Focus: Caravan duty.) This company was formed over seventy years ago with the intention of revenging themselves on the Hellknight Order of the Scourge (for sins the Order itself barely remembers) by hiring out to the Hellknights' enemies. Unfortunately, chaotic employers tend to have unreliable finances, and the Broken Scourge nowadays are a primarily-human mercenary group that protect travelers, mostly pilgrims and merchant caravans: they are exceptional only in welcoming lapsed Hellknights and escaped Cheliaxan slaves with open arms. The current chief, Baraclus Nerro, is a fussy little ex-scribe who is surprisingly effective with an axe: his insistence on spelling out precise terms and limits to the Company's responsibilities has profited the company's reputation but worked against its traditional purpose.
