Quinsberry Lodge

“To hear the Big Footers talk, there’s nothing to us but pie and pipeweed. Of course, there’s a lot to be said for

pie and pipeweed....”

—Elmina Elderberrybrushburg, Quartermaster of the Nuln Lodge

The Quinsberry Lodge is an organisation dedicated to ensuring equal rights for Halflings across the Empire. Sometimes, with violence.

Overview
It’s not easy being a Halfling outside of the Moot. People look down on you, in both senses. People make fun of you. Some even ignore you altogether. It’s hard for a Halfling citizen to lift himself up and make something of himself when most of the world doesn’t even recognise he exists. The Quinsberry Lodge can help with this. They ensure that Halflings, wherever possible, get fair and equal treatment and all the help they need to make their mark on the Empire. Sometimes, they help in ways that can’t be easily seen. Sometimes, they help without even being asked. Sometimes, they help in ways about which, perhaps, it is better not to ask.

Wherever there are Humans, there are Halflings. And wherever there are Humans and Halflings, there is prejudice. Outside of the Moot, Humans are always the majority of the population, and the laws and customs of the Empire naturally favour the majority. To most Humans, Halflings are seen as nothing more than a curious aberration, warranting no great concern. The Empire is for Humans, and the Halflings should make the best of it, the best that they can. And thems that don’t like that can shut up or ship out.

Halflings are very good at making the best of things. They never take things too seriously, and are fully aware that the Big Folk will always believe they are better than them. Much of the time, this is no great burden. In fact, it provides countless wonderful opportunities to prove the Big Folk wrong in their superiority. Halflings enjoy little more than undercutting Big Folk, especially blowhards or superior types. This is one reason they enjoy working as servants: Nobody is in a better position to mock the powerful than the man who helps him dress every morning. The Big Folk’s generals may rule the Empire, but it is the Halflings that decide if the generals get the trots on the battlefield or not.

That said, there are times when simply mocking the humans isn’t enough, when law and brutality conspire to destroy Halfling livelihoods and the whole Halfling way of life, with a severity so great that no amount of mocking can appease. Likewise, there are those who tire of having to prove their superiority over the Big Folk over and over again, of always having to be the butt of jokes, of always being ignored—Halflings who would just like to get on with the typical business of being Halflings without constantly having to fight through the barriers the Big Folk set against them.

There is as yet no such thing as The Rights of Man in the Empire, but there is a strong sense of mercantile entitlement. Halflings pay taxes and levies like everyone else. Their houses attract the same land and window taxes even if they are half the size and the windows are tiny. Their tiny ponies are charged the same per leg to enter the city gates as a massive Nordland draughthorse pulling a sixwheel carriage. Inns charge the same price for rooms and beds and meals, while Halfling servants are typically paid half wages because their employers believe they don’t need to eat as much. (In fact, Halfling appetites typically outstrip human ones, but five of them can sleep comfortably in a human bed.)

For all the taxes they pay, they get little return. The city Watch rarely respond to Halfling emergencies or try to solve the crimes in Halfling ghettos, preferring to “let the Little Folk sort it out amongst themselves.” Roads and sewers aren’t maintained in Halfling streets, and housing permissions are lost in bureaucracy for years. Halfling guilds are excluded from contracts for no good reason. Halfling celebrations are restricted or curtailed without explanation.

In the face of all this, many Halflings want to spit in the collective soup of the entire human society. Over the history of the Empire, many unofficial or impromptu groups have been created to try and do so, but by far the most longstanding, wealthiest, and most successful of them all is the Quinsberry Lodge.

Source

 * Warhammer Fantasy RPG 2nd ED -- Shades of Empire (pg. 99-100).