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ShortQuests -- individual adventure modules! An all-new collection of digest-sized D&D adventures designed to plug in to your game.

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Golden Bee" data-source="post: 9886632" data-attributes="member: 7041055">Ashes to Dust / Eye Witness(based on The Search for Nurhachi by <a href="https://rpggeek.com/rpgdesigner/15248/adam-gratun" target="_blank">Adam Gratun</a>,<a href="https://rpggeek.com/rpgdesigner/13357/evan-jamieson" target="_blank"> Evan Jamieson</a>,<a href="https://rpggeek.com/rpgdesigner/3117/richard-meyer" target="_blank"> and Richard Meyer</a> and The Colour of His Eyes by Cody Goodfellow)“Martha Washington crosses, lighting cue 17, 18, 19, cue violins…”Location: Shanghai, city of gangsters and revolutionaries.Operatives: millionaire Rafe Lancaster, Detective Zelda Saeki, photographer/gunman Javid Kulfi, wuxia traditionalist Xiao Yun.Time: Early May, the rainy season.The job: retrieve the remains of Emperor Nurhachi, last seen 30 years prior, somewhere along the Whangpo River.A simple detective case, maybe… for other detectives. Xiao is tired of a China ruled by foreign powers. And a little bit of digging on the mission’s sponsor reveals that it’s funded by mobster Lao Che.Zelda (with Yun helping translate) hits up some dockside pubs. Artifacts mean smugglers, and who likes to gossip more than sailors on shore leave?Pirate Sen Shun's boat, the Rising Moon, smuggled the remains. And while the whole crew died, Sen’s widow is still alive, somewhere in the tenement jungle. Rafe, normally content to sit in a penthouse and solve a case by making calls, is kicked out by Devika for “personal business opportunities”. These opportunities become much clearer when he sees, trying to look inconspicuous in the lobby, Prince Arthur of Borgonia, Devi’s sometime crush.Borrowing one of the hotel’s cars, Rafe regroups with others in the slums. Javid notices a group of bruisers smoking under an awning, but the party seems content to ignore them.The investigators get to the widow’s house, where there’s a heated discussion going on. Xiao knocks, and tries to play nice, not her strong suit. Young male reporter Lin Ho accuses the world-warrior of being one of Lao’s leg breakers. Xiao angrily restates her commitment to a free China, and Ho is buying it when there’s a knock at the door. It’s the ruffians, and one of them slugs Yun in the chin! Rafe, not wanting the widow’s kitchen destroyed, pays the men off… And they leave! Conflict avoided. At least, for a little while.The widow explains that her husband was paid a huge amount of money to ignore the cursed cargo. Only one sailor survived, and he made it back to give her a map of his route. Zelda takes a surreptitious photograph.Javid heads up to the third-story roof of the building, to make sure the gangsters actually left. He’s met by a strange white woman in a Cheongsam, with a pronounced Staten Island accent. They both recognize each other: she’s American-turned-Tibetan martial artist Ibis Flies to Heaven. She recognizes him, and demands Steel Eagle show himself, so she can humiliate him and his inferior American fighting style.She agrees, reaching the ground in a single leap. Xiao, master martial artist, can’t refuse the battle, and is even winning when Ibis (real name Iris Sheinbaum) starts playing headgames. Since Lancaster is present, she has the chance to denigrate America, bolstering her skills. Xiao surrenders, acknowledging her power, and Ibis retrieves the treasure map from Rafe, presumably to sell it on the open market.After an awkward dinner with Devi and Arthur, Rafe charters the first available Western crew and heads upriver ahead of any competition. Xiao detours the group, visiting her mentor <a href="https://strangeaeons.substack.com/p/benevolent-employer-uncle-ho" target="_blank">Uncle Ho</a> and getting a strange paste that increases one’s ghost sensitivities.’The trip goes well until two kilometers from the target island. The sea becomes choppy, and the captain begs to turn around, so Rafe takes the helm! Lightning streaks across the sky, and from under the water emerges a 120-foot sea serpent![ATTACH=full]433287[/ATTACH]Everyone dons their lifejackets, except for Zelda. Javid argues that she won’t be able to get close enough to the harpoon gun with such an obstruction.Xiao relies on her willpower and love of China to convince the crew not to turn the boat around. They obey her, barely, and put Zelda into position to hit the beast with an air-compressed harpoon attack! It clips the beast, but creates a tether… almost dragging the boat under! Rafe turns a fuel canister into a crude bomb, ties it to the tether, and cuts the assembly, hitting the beast with a makeshift torpedo! It disappears under the waves, giving the group the time to (barely) reach the island. Yun gives Lancaster the spiritually enhancing paste, correctly believing it will help him navigate the shoals.The island is a ship graveyard, with easily a dozen vessels. Zelda notices a half moon on one of them, and Xiao, calling on previous mission reports that she’s studied exhaustively, breaks into the vessel and retrieves the emperor’s ashes!There’s a problem though. The easiest solution is going back and getting paid by underworld crooks. The solution Xiao insists on involves infiltrating Japanese Manchuria. Rafe suggest they do both, creating a forgery to deliver to Shanghai.And he knows just the man to deliver it…[ATTACH=full]433291[/ATTACH]The group calls on their soft skills (favors, bribes, even charm) to smuggle the artifact back to its rightful resting place. It’s the exact opposite of the millionaire's last time in a Chinese tomb; the ghost of Nurhachi greets him, floating ahead and disabling hall after hall of brutal traps. Xiao, although she can’t see the emperor directly, is honored beyond belief to restore the resting pace of a man whose dynasty guided China for 300 years.Back at the nearest port, Rafe has an urgent telegram. There was a huge gunfight at Club Obi Wan, and one of Lao Che’s planes had crashed over India. What exactly was he up to?!—-Xiao stays in China, bolstered by her victory; the rest of the group makes their way to San Francisco.Brooks Belasco is staging another masterpiece, California Cont’d, featuring Broadway star Lillian Lamb, AKA Rafe Lancaster‘s girlfriend. The group is excited to go (except for Zelda, who sneaks off for an hour or two with her fiancé Yoji). Unfortunately, there’s been a miscommunication, and the group’s not going to a preview… They’re going to a tech rehearsal. Puppeteer and newest team member, Mrs. Mustard, invites herself along, and immediately causes problems when it turns out the show already has a puppeteer, her rival Tony Urbano Sr & Marietta.A bored Javid borrows a newspaper from the security guard, and finds out there’s been a death and an escape at a local lunatic asylum! Unable to leave, he calls the ZSS West and orders them to investigate.(Because of social niceties and the theater’s burly security guard, the group is forced to investigate the mystery via proxy.)Meanwhile, Mrs. Mustard expresses her misgivings to the show’s director. In the spirit of free competition, he declares a puppet-off.  Tony sings a song about America, Mrs. Mustard makes fun of him (and his puppet, who's a tribute to his grandmother) until he quits the show!The group keeps coming up with excuses to visit the lobby and answer the ringing telephone.  With their leadership, the ZSSW manages to learn a lot about the lunatic: he is a former astronomer who built his own telescope, stared into space, and went mad when strange solar energies inhabited his eyes. In a moment of lucidity, he turned his eyes on the nurse and orderly, maiming one and turning the other into a calcified gray corpse.Only Rafe and Zelda successfully sneak out of the theater.  They head to the Mechanics' Institute, where the deconstructed telescope is still in the basement. Rafe, after checking in with his buddy Philo Farnsworth, cancels the moving company the loon (Dr. Garrick) hired, and sets up some lead shielding. When Garrick returns, Zelda calms him down and almost convinces him to surrender,  when a strange sound sizzles through the wall…[ATTACH=full]433288[/ATTACH]The color out of space! Garrick flees to the basement. The millionaire and the detective follow. Lancaster,  calling upon deep wells of self-preservation, begs the doctor to surrender himself to the extrasolar entity. The doctor does. With its form absorbed,  the color shrinks to the width of a dime… then drills upwards through the Mechanics’ Institute, and back into the beyond. All that's left of the doctor is a particularly gray pile of ash.</blockquote>

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