The familiar sound of the tavern’s door opening startles the Hanged Man’s clientele, but they soon return to their (mostly drunken) stupor thinking it’s just another newly minted treasure seeker of weird past. Their suspicions are almost confirmed as two bent and weakling figures enter the tavern so they must be a pair of mages or, perhaps, avengers. No, none of them is carrying a humongous weapon, so…
Wait a moment. New job seekers don’t come in pairs. “I told you they’d be gone by now, Domenicos” says one of them. “Oh, but I’m sure one of these gentlemen… or gentle-half-beast… could help us”
RAAAAAAAARRR! A huge brawl explodes in the middle of the common room, among shouts and cries of “they’re mine, bastard!” and “Look at my employer and I’ll cut you!” and “Please, please, let’s be civilized!” Eventually the two newcomers sit at a table and, surrounded by those that could be interested, have a chance to explain themselves.
They are two humans of middle age and poor physical shape, since their obvious work as clerks doesn’t leave them too many opportunities for exercise. Their names are Thogorius and Domenicos and their tale goes as follows:
“We come from a city state called Theotocopolis. We have to admit it’s not a very powerful or influential kingdom, and many of you won’t have heard of it, but well, you can’t change the place where you’re born. Theotocopolis has been ruled by the same royal family for nearly 300 years, but alas, recently all or it died in a tragic accident at sea.”
“You may think, a ruling family that’s been in power for three centuries can’t fit in a ship, no matter how big it is, but the truth is that court life at Theotocopolis can be quite cutthroat. Sometimes literally. To make things worse, all the official records were destroyed, or should I say lost, when a fire destroyed the royal palace a century and a half ago. There are copies kept by the noble families, but they have no legal value and are incomplete. Without a clear heir to the throne, the situation at Theotocopolis is highly unstable, if civil was hasn’t broken yet.”
“However, there could be some hope, and an opportunity to you fellows. We’re amateur historians, and my colleague Thogorius stumbled into two interesting bits of data. At the time of the fire, the one that destroyed the palace, the court’s mage disappeared. We don’t know his name, only that he was quite old at the time and his obsession with history was notorious. Also we found an old captain’s log telling how an old wizard arrived more or less at the time the court’s mage disappeared at the island of Garnaman which we must confess, took us some time to locate. Is a remote island devoid of anything interesting, or should I say was, because that mage created a large crypt, far from any settlement, and locked himself in.”
“From that day, every ten years, a cloaked figure appears at the same village and leaves a list: historical records, artifacts of ages past, and other things of lore, and pays handsomely for the items of the last list (as I said, the guy in the cloak only appears once every ten years, so you have to wait that if you want to sell your junk)”
“Did I say anything funny?”
“Anyway, I’m finishing. We have plenty of reasons that the history obsessed mage in the crypt is the same history obsessed mage that disappeared from Theotocopolis the day the records were supposedly destroyed. We believe there’s a really good chance that those records, the records that can avoid a civil war, were stolen and are kept in the crypt. We only have to go there and get them”
“Of course, there’s the matter of the mage that locked himself in a mausoleum and looks like he’s extended his lifespan by unnatural means in the obsessive pursuit of obscure knowledge, so we gather he may be a werewolf. Or something. We do expect the whole thing to involve some risk, or we wouldn’t be here, but whoever lives (ahem) there seems to be quite civilized as he participates in fair trade and nobody has reported any attacks in Garnaman from any kind of monster. Anyway, we convinced an important local library to fund an expedition and offer a significant reward for other valuable historical documents you could bring here.”
“Any of you is interested? Or have any question?”
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A paladin in need is a new average length adventure for low level* characters. Those that survived the wall of text and are interested, have a look at this
thread
EDIT: Actually, since BenBrown intends to start his own low level adventure I may end scaling up mine to, say, the 4-6 range. We'll decide how we manage this in the upcoming days. In the meantime don't be shy and post in the recruiting thread if you're interested.
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