Black Haze is a border town built on mineral wealth that has since dried up along with everything else. The line between legitimate and criminal enterprise blurs completely here, and it blurred further when the lord who nominally ran things disappeared without explanation. You are Royde, dispatched by the king to find out what happened, restore some degree of order, and investigate the stranger reports coming out of Black Haze that suggest the disappearance is only part of a larger problem.