+++++++++++++++++ Reclaim the Relic +++++++++++++++++ A cleric asks the party to reclaim a holy relic that has been lost for centuries, but now has been discovered in a far-off shrine. .. contents:: :local: Intro ===== An acolyte seeks out the party and says his cleric wants to meet them because he hopes they can help him with a grave matter. If the players agree, the acolyte leads them through the city and into the back of a huge old temple. The acolyte points to a line on the floor and asks the party to stay behind this line because they are not seeking membership of this sect. The architecture in the temple is beautiful. Murals painted over the walls show scenes from this religion's mythology. This is obviously a very old temple, but still very powerful and powerful with its followers. Inside the temple, there are a lots of burning candles and the room smells like incense. A long line of people are standing and waiting and they see an old man holding himself up on a cane, at the front of the line. One by one, each person in the line whispers a few words, then the cleric does some blessing, and the people shuffle off. He heals them from various physical maladies. After a while, the cleric blesses the very last person and then the cleric hobbles over on his cane. He smiles at the party and thanks them for visiting him. He asks the party if they will help him with a matter that is very important, but requires discretion. Then he looks at everyone's faces and studies them. He says: We have a grave problem that requires a group of people like you. This is a problem of deep significance to us and we will happily reward you. And our faith will be forever indebted to you. We will treat you like our own. But this quest involves great danger! And we must insist that you not utter a word of this task to anyone, before or after or you help us with this matter. I am asking you to travel outside the kingdom, navigate through forgotten underground caves and then sneak inside the walls of an ancient stronghold. And then you must retrieve a valuable item and return it to its rightful owners. I must say again that this is a very dangerous task. You will travel through the lawless region outside our kingdom. You must find your way through a maze of dark and dangerous caves full of unknown horrors. If you are caught by the guards at the stronghold when you try to retrieve the relic, expect no help from us. You may be jailed or punished as common thieves. But if you succeed, I can promise you that you will be rewarded and our faith will forever be indebted to you. Think before you sign up for this. Then the cleric tells the party to return here and find him if they want to take the quest. The cleric then asks the party to pray with him and he blesses them. If the party returns, then they will find the cleric again blessing a bunch of sick people that line up daily outside the temple. After the cleric blesses everyone, he will gesture that the the party to follow him. He leads the party out of the temple and across a garden into a huge old library. The cleric leads the party through the library halls and then up a whole bunch of stairs and into a tiny office where he has many old books and scrolls and loose pages scattered everywhere. The cleric shows them an illustration of some kind of angelic creature giving a lantern to a bunch of clerics and paladins and monks. He shows several more illustrations where the paladins and clerics used the lantern to repel the undead, heal the sick, and found the city. Then he shows how there are no more mentions of the lantern and the church writings all describe the relic is as if it were just a mythical idea, and not a real object. Next the cleric shows the party a map of the region. He points out the city. He points out the edge of the city-state's borders, and then the the far-off mountain range, and he points to some ruins at the top of one of the tallest mountains. The ruins are really an ancient fortification built long ago when rival tribes fought over who would control the region. He explains that the ancient abandoned fortress built in the mountains that is now a shrine run by a different religion. This far-away shrine has slowly grown in popularity because pilgrims visit there and report and report witnessing a relic of awesome holy power. So the cleric visited the shrine himself, with the help of his acolyte, and the relic in that shrine really is the ancient holy lantern given to this church from the angels. The cleric says: My brothers have argued and prayed and meditated for months now about what to do, now that we found our holy relic. We all agree that the lantern is not safe in the shrine in the stone hills. If the lantern stays at the shrine in the stone hills, it is only a matter of time before it is lost again. Perhaps some bandits will raid the shrine to steal the offerings made by the pilgrims that visit the shrine. That would be unfortunate, but losing the relic is not the worst thing that could happen. The lantern is a powerful magic relic and if it fell into the wrong hands, someone or something else could use it against us. Our worst threat is that the lantern falls into the hands of our enemies and they use it to destroy us. There are many that seek to bring back the era of slavery and suffering. We have driven these dark cults out of the kingdom, but their spies remain here, watching us. So we will not ask for the relic to be returned to us or take it by force. Word would spread too quickly and it our enemies might sieze the relic before we could protect it. This era of peace and harmony has transformed us into a faith of scholars and musicians. We have very few paladins that we could send to guard it in secret. Our strength is not what it once was. So we looked for you. The cleric then uses a key and opens a locked cabinet and then gets out a wooden box covered in runes and puts it in the middle of the table in front of everyone. He uses another key and opens the wooden box. Then he rolls black some velvet cloth inside the box, reaches in and lifts out a glass and metal lantern. He says: We want you to sneak into the shrine when it is empty. Find the true holy relic and replace it with this one. We have performed many rituals to make this replica seem like the real relic. The pilgrims that pray to it and make suitable offerings will be healed just the same as the true lantern. We believe that the shrine will never realize they have been deceived. Then he pauses and looks at the faces of everyone in the party. Then he says: The visitors to the shrine, and the disciples at the shrine are foolish idolaters and charlatans that worship false heathen gods, but they are not evil. They are children and deserve to be treated with mercy. Please do not harm the disciples at the shrine. Bind them if you must, but do not murder them. Also, we don't know who else may also be watching the shrine. If rumors spread about burglary and violence, then our deception may be discovered. The cleric gives the party: * Map from the city to the secret entrance to the caves * Map through the caves * Map of the stronghold * A fake copy of the relic to replace the real one. * If a good-aligned cleric is in the party, then he gets a fancy prayer robe. While a cleric wears it and prays, all nearby characters get a bonus at the beginning of each round. Maybe the cleric has to spend one turn getting into a trance, and the boost doesn't apply until the next turn. Also, if the cleric gets disturbed, the trance is broken. The bonus depends on the cleric's level and wisdom. Then the cleric says he must go to lead prayers and he asks his acolyte to see the party out. The acolyte says he will travel with the party far as the ranger outpost at the border of the kingdom and wait for them to return with the relic there. Travel overview =============== * Take the road from the city walls to the ranger outpost at the edge of the kingdom. * Take the road down from the ranger outpost into the stone valley below to the inn in the windmill village. * Hike or ride across grass lands from the inn to the dried-out riverbed. * Travel along or in the dried-out riverbed from the grasslands into the forest and to the foot of the mountains. * Climb up the boulders and down into the entrance of the caves. * Hike through the caves to the staircase that leads into the ruins of the necropolis. * Hike through the necropolis and find the tunnel where the stream trickles down. * Crawl through the tunnel that leads into the cold cellar in the stronghold. Heading out ----------- The party needs to get to the cave entrance. The acolyte recommends they all go to the ranger outpost. Then the party should take the main road to the windmill village. Then from there, hike to the nearby dry-riverbed and walk along that into the forest and then to the cave entrance. Camping at night ---------------- If the players spend the night outside in the outlands, they will be attacked by the ghouls that would otherwise attack the goats at the goat farm. The ghouls will circle the camp a few times and will try to surprise the party. The inn ------- There's nothing awesome about this inn. Farmers come here to talk and booze it up. There's a bar room and there's a few rooms upstairs for rent. The people in the bar are friendly. Farmer with the ghoul trapped in the barn ----------------------------------------- In the middle of the night, a farmer heard his mules and goats making terrified sounds. He went out to the barn and saw a ghoul devouring one of his goats. While the ghoul was eating, the farmer got the rest of his goats out (which was easy, because they were all pressed up against the door anyway). Then he shut the door and locked it shut. He closed the open windows that the ghouls must have crawled through and tied them shut. Then the farmer runs to the outlander inn to look for other brave souls that might help him kill the ghoul. Whether or not the party is there all depends on what they are up to when they hit the tavern. If they are awake, then they can choose to help. Otherwise, in the morning, they'll hear about the farmer that trapped a ghoul. A few other farmers nearby went to help him, but nobody has seen what happened. The barn ~~~~~~~~ The barn has a large sliding door that is locked right now. There are wooden shutters that are now tied shut from the outside. There are really several ghouls in the barn. One is obviously eating a goat in the middle of the barn. Another is climbing around in the rafters, looking for a way out. After ~~~~~ The farmer offers the party a place to stay and a nice meal. The magic canary will tell the farmer that he wants to go with the party, and the farmer will agree, as long as they return the canary later. If the party does not help ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The ghouls are too powerful for the volunteers. They paralyze and then kill the local farmers, and those farmers will rise from the dead as ghouls as well, unless their corpses are sanctified by a cleric. The entrance to the caves ------------------------- The map shows an entrance to the caves in the bank of a dry river bed. The bank is mostly rocks and boulders and between two boulders, it is obvious there is a gap at the very top. The gap between the boulders is only big enough for one player to enter at a time. The party needs to climb to the top of the boulders and then climb down through a gap, and then down a long wall. Behind the boulders, there is a large cave. The floor is covered in mud, decaying plant life, and muck from the stream. There are rotting branchges and dried leaves everywhere. There are gigantic trapdoor spiders hiding in this cave, and they are hungry. As each player enters, each should do a perception check and an agility check. If they succeed the perception check, they notice the eyes of a giant trapdoor spider hiding. If they succeed the agility check, they climb down safely. If they fail both, the trap door spider surprise attacks. The pit has a few skeletal remains of previous victims along with misc trash. There is a coin bag in the pit with some amount of gold coins inside. The hike within the mountains ----------------------------- The party must hike through the caves. There are clearly signs of other giant spiders (spider webs, nests, old bones from victims, empty egg sacs). The caves seem to run just under the surface of the mountain, so the party gains altitude as they hike. The stairs down to the necropolis --------------------------------- Eventually, the caves lead into a really big room. It is clear this room started as a natural cavern and but has been carved out also. The floor is a real flat floor, not a bunch of slippery uneven rocks. There are sconces (no torches though) in the walls. One end of the room has a very wide stairway going downward into an arched tunnel. The arch around the tunnel is covered in big tiles carved with writing and pictures. A successful INT skill check will let the party roughly translate the pictures and ancient text. The staircase leads to the realm of some immortal mage (from centuries past). The map says the party needs to go down the staircase into the ruins below and look for an underground stream. Then they must follow that stream (but go in the opposite direction of the flow of the stream). The staircase goes down a long, long way, and slowly becomes wider the whole time. The staircase tunnel turns into a straight hall and then leads into a gigantic cavern below. There is a huge castle in the middle of the cavern inside a moat. There are giant pillars around the cavern holding up the ceiling. This tunnel stops but a very narrow bridge goes out over the cavern to one of the pillars and then stairs wrap around the pillar all the way down. There are other tunnels coming out of the walls leading to other bridges that all crisscross in the air. The idea here is that the party just goes on the very edge of the underground ruins but does not have to explore them. And the cavern should be so dark that unless the party looks around, they won't even be aware of this huge underground city. The stream ---------- The stream flows out of a hole in the side of the cavern. Inside the hole is a steeply climbing tunnel about three feet high. One by one, the party must crawl up through that tunnel until they are in the cold cellar of the stronghold. This cold cellar was built on top of where this spring comes out of the ground. The water is very cold and it is used to keep perishable foods in this room. There is an old rusty iron grate blocking the tunnel. Sneaking through the temple --------------------------- There are guards that patrol the shrine. The guards are good-aligned, but they will not tolerate thieves. **TODO:** figure out how the guards patrol, and define how the sneaking-around skill challenge will work. On the way back out ------------------- While the players were busy swiping the relic, ghouls and skeletons wandered up out of the caves below. **TODO:** offer a cool way to use the environment in this battle. Maybe the players can push rocks or burning pitch down on the ghouls. Maybe there are too many ghouls to fight, so the players need to just climb along a wall while a few players hold the ghoul army back. .. vim: set filetype=rst :