The man speaking to you at the local office of the Baitang is named Wang Youlong, but everyone calls him Tall Wang. It's an apt nickname, the man towers over most people. Some even say the earthbender is a distant descendant of Avatar Kyoshi. He's gathered you here to tell you about your assignment as agents - career or temporary - of the Baitang People's Self-Defense Society, an organization dedicated to the protection of its dues-paying members from crime and happenstance. It's an essential social organization in the absence of an effective constabulary, a situation which has lately prevailed in the great northern port city of Beigang. The Royal Hao-Ting governor is efficient at extracting taxes and making sure shipments go downriver to the Earth Kingdom's capital in Ba Sing Se, but cares little for the municipal concerns of his city, even as its stability is challenged by the arrival of scores of refugees from the Fire Nation Crown Prince Iroh's eastward push to overthrow the capital.

Today's challenge, however, is not productively integrating another group of terrified and half-starved peasants from the vast central plains now riven by war, nor of keeping the city's infrastructure in repair, and maybe not even clashing with organized crime. No, it's to do with spirits, as Tall Wang tells it.

"There have been attacks by spirits at several locations near Guopiao Street - some of them in buildings we are paid to protect. The Yong-Er shrine, the Dragon Stove Company, Old Duy's bathhouse, two on the Gim Family enterprises. And the abbess at the Soaring-Dust shrine says she's seen some suspicious activity. We've got an unaffiliated business, Fu's Inn, that will enroll if we can put a stop to it, and the Huang Pan Company, which currently gets protection from the Hongtang, tells us they're considering switching to us because the Hongtang has been trying to deal with similar attacks on their members and have had no luck."

He pauses to take a drink of his buckwheat tea. "The attacks are some kind of black flying spirit that looks sort of like a bird with too many wings, as far as I can put together from the reports. It gets in and scares people witless, sometimes breaks things. It caused a minor industrial accident for night workers at the Dragon Stove Company, but no one has been killed yet. The attacks seem to be getting worse. The spirit beat up a priest at the Yong-Er Shrine across the street just last night when he tried to exorcise it. It goes without saying that it looks very bad if our Society can't protect a shrine that is literally in sight of this room," he says, pointing out the narrow windows of his office to the small but ornate building across the street. "But it will look very, very good if we can succeed where the Hongtang has failed. We'll have at least two new clients enrolled, maybe more once word gets around."

"Unfortunately, there's not a lot more to go on. I'd start by talking to Priest Feng across the street. I don't know much about spirits, but from what I do know, this spirit is probably upset about something that's changed recently, messed up the fengshui or damaged some natural beauty nearby - maybe the forest? There isn't much else of natural beauty around here, ha! Maybe the monks in the Soaring-Dust Shrine would know something about it, since their monastery is right on the edge of the woods. Anyway, however you decide to investigate, good luck. Hopefully you can figure this out before the spirit shows up in the office here!"