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In the role-playing sense of parties of particularly various skilled people going around and killing animals, killing bandits, sorting out various awkward local political/military problems and finding old places with a considerable unofficial status. Accounts of such adventurers without a heavy dose of fantasy/myth (confirmed to have existed similar to the detail but can be larger the life as person and in achievements) please? Such as a group with a warrior, ranger, cleric (religious man), magician(maker of burning materials) who only travels on land and wasn't sent for a specific mission alone but rather sought many different missions from people who weren't necessarily a lord or king- though not quite as limited to the four members mentioned and basically mercenaries That rules out a lot of commented adventures.

user2617804
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  • I'm not sure that the terms are well enough defined to permit a meaningful answer, but I suggest we leave this open for fun. – MCW May 09 '15 at 10:07
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    @MarkC.Wallace I agree with leaving it open. I think the intent of the question is quite clear, and it should be possible to answer it, given the right knowledge. – o0'. May 09 '15 at 10:37
  • PS: this question is much less silly than it might appear on first sight. – o0'. May 09 '15 at 10:37
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    For this to be a viable question you must explain how and why any or all of the following are not obvious answers: Christopher Columbus, Ponce de Leon, Pizarro, Cortez, Marco Polo, John Cabot, Henry Hudson, Lewis and Clarke, Edmund Hillary, Wyatt Earp et al, Calamity Jane, Wild Bill Hickok, etc. Even the James Younger gang could be considered an evil band of adventurers. – Pieter Geerkens May 09 '15 at 15:10
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    I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it fails to explain how every band of either adventurers or outlaws in history is not a trivial answer. – Pieter Geerkens May 09 '15 at 15:18
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    @PieterGeerkens you might be right, after all. – o0'. May 09 '15 at 16:18
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    Like Linvingstone's and Stanley's explorations? For most of the history, there has been regions were travel was dangerous and that did mean that people would chose to organize expeditions, but usually they did not go there for the sake of adventure. – SJuan76 May 09 '15 at 17:13
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    Military bands like almogavars, the Navarrese Company, the Spanish expeditions in South America (Cortes, Pizarro, Alvarado, Ponce de León) and even military orders and crusaders may match the description... voting to close as too broad, too. – SJuan76 May 09 '15 at 18:01
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    The first Saudi king? The Norman diaspora? The spread of Islam? The Crusades? William the conqueror? What you call a group of bandit, I call a party of adventurers – MCW May 09 '15 at 18:13
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    The original Tea Party? – MCW May 09 '15 at 22:31
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    @MarkC.Wallace: The original Tea Party (in Boston) was just a drunk Masonic Lodge. – Pieter Geerkens May 09 '15 at 22:40
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    The Hudson's Bay Company even styled itself as a company of adventurers in its original charter: "The company was incorporated by English royal charter in 1670 as The Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson's Bay" link:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson's_Bay_Company – Pieter Geerkens May 09 '15 at 22:43
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    @PieterGeerkens - I think that strongly supports my point - they started the evening with a party and ended it with an adventure! From their point of view they were writing a wrong. – MCW May 09 '15 at 22:44
  • @PieterGeerkens I think the people you suggest don't fit with what is being asked – those were either bandits or criminals, mercenaries or people who were sent into a specific mission by powerful people. I think what is being asked for is bands of wandering people who ran errands and, I guess, were motivated more by doing a good deed than by money. Anyway, I don't think such bands or people existed outside literature, such as the knights errant, who actually acted alone, or the characters from movies such as The Magnificent Seven or 7 Samurai. – JMVanPelt May 11 '15 at 00:31
  • My husband & I have been working on this one since it was asked. I can give any number of legends, starting with the Argonauts, but we can't think of any historical Adventurers (capital A) a la D&D (not Pizarro or whole armies). It's always a story on the Motley Crew template (Kilwych & Olwen, Robin Hood, too many fairy tales) but I think it's something you can't make a living at or that leaves you poor and unrecorded. Or legendary. Or dead. – Zither13 May 25 '15 at 16:47
  • @Zither13: *Pizarro's army!?. It comprised 110 foot soldiers (almost a company), 67 cavalry (1/3 of a squadron, 1/9 of a regiment), and his heavy artillery* of three arquebuses and two falconets. Nothing that a single Maxim gun couldn't dispatch in 30 or 40 seconds. Later on he was joined by reinforcements of another 500 Spaniards, an entire battalion. – Pieter Geerkens Apr 04 '17 at 01:03

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