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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gradine" data-source="post: 6512884" data-attributes="member: 57112">Round 2, Match 1: MortalPlague vs. GradineThe Ingredients Infinite LoopIce FrogChapel of WingsAstronomer’s HusbandAthletic AirshipBanal CompetitionThe Diamond ToadA low to mid level “high” fantasy heist, set in the floating city of CaelumIntroductionThe Diamond Toad is a heist adventure and thus works quite well with a “gang of thieves” party of characters, though can be adapted to fit many parties by having an important NPC require the Anora Major in return for providing their assistance. In addition, while the floating city of Caelum includes some fantastical elements (including the floating continent and its airships) these elements are not at all out of place in a less magical (or completely non-magical) steampunk or clockwork setting.The SettingMany centuries ago, so the stories claim, Nephelai, the goddess of the sky, looked down upon humanity, bound to the ground like so many other beasts, and took pity upon them. Through her inspiration, engineers developed the Silver Wings, mechanical wings that gave their ships the ability of flight. Mankind took their new airships to the sky, and made it their first order of business to colonize the floating continent above that had always seemed so far from their reach. Thus Caelum, the floating city, was born.In the years since mankind has developed propellers and engines that allow their ships to fly with greater ease, but they still commemorate that first great invention with an annual festival, capped off with grand Race of the Silver Wings. Teams of athletes retrofit their ships with the ancient devices, requiring a steady team of rowers and peddlers to power their flight, and compete against one another in a relay contest of endurance, strength and perhaps most importantly: perception. While airships circle a set path through the city, each team’s spotters must be ever vigilant for the rally’s flags, hidden throughout Caelum’s labyrinth of soaring spires and connecting bridges. The first flags are often numerous and easy to spot, but as the competition continues the flags get fewer and harder to find, eliminating those teams that fail to find and claim each set of flags. This continues until the final flag, the victory flag, is discovered. The elders of the city complain how banal the competition has become, spending most of their time regaling youths about how the Race used to take days. These days the competition’s planners have run out of unique ideas for flag locations, and the teams have memorized past locations, so the Race now rarely lasts more than an hour. Still, the Race is the culmination of the city-wide holiday, and most of the city, from the poor groundlings to the royal family, still turns out to watch the Race while it lasts. Stores are closed, homes are empty, and most of the city’s police and navy work the competition.In other words, the Race of the Silver Wings is the perfect opportunity to pull off the crime of the century.The ClientJonas Stormcrow is a Navy chaplain and priest of Nephelai, goddess of the sky. He is famed through-out the city as a champion of the lower classes, and while this and his unorthodox relationship have earned him a few enemies in the aristocracy and church, he is generally regarded as well-liked, especially amongst his peers in the Navy. His husband, the recently named Royal Astronomer Quentin, has been rubbing many people the wrong way, including Jonas. The chaplain fears that the fame and wealth has gone to his husband’s head, culminating in the commission of sculptures commemorating the various constellations he discovered. The pride of his collection is the Anura Major, a pure diamond sculpture the Big Frog, Quentin’s most famous discovery and crucial to the Explorer Guild’s navigation. Jonas finds the sculptures not just unnecessarily gaudy but a major repudiation by his husband of his life’s work combating economic inequality. In an effort to teach his husband a lesson, Jonas has utilized his contacts to find a fence and team of unscrupulous characters (the PC’s) to pull off the heist. Jonas expects 50% of the cut, but can be haggled lower, which he plans to donate to charities that assist the poor. Jonas is soft-spoken but confident man in his early 30’s. He is friendly and generally comes across as a nice guy, though as a life-long member of the economic elite his attitudes towards the poor, while well-meaning, can come across as incredibly patronizing.The ScoreQuentin’s entire collection of sculptures, each one commemorating a constellation in the night sky, is impressive, including a ruby-studded brass fox and a small emerald & turquoise sea turtle, but the Anura Major, a pure diamond frog sculpture the size of a large fist, is worth more than the rest combined. It is well-guarded in Quentin’s Royal Observatory, and while Jonas knows of a few of Quentin’s common passwords, he has never been allowed entry. In particular, Jonas knows that his most valuable treasures are guarded by clockwork sentries, golems and several traps, mundane and possible magical. Gaining entry to the Royal Observatory is in itself a difficult task, as it requires first gaining entry to the Royal Academy. Normally the Academy is guarded by Naval patrols, but the Navy is currently pre-occupied with policing the Race. Regular guard duty is light but still present, and will require great stealth and cunning to get past.Most of the clockwork sentries and golems can be defeated by some good old-fashioned hitters, through intrepid sneaks might find the command words in Quentin’s journals. Traps include mundane alarms and “pound of flesh” deathtraps, though the trickiest trap to catch and disarm is a motion sensor in the display room, which when triggered causes the display pedestals to lower into the secure vault below. The vault itself is protected by the toughest combination lock money can buy. Only the most experienced safe-crackers with the most sophisticated tools (and about an hour of drilling) can crack it, though Quentin is absent-minded and still keeps the code (encrypted in a mathematical cipher) on a note in his locked work desk. The MarkQuentin Stormcrow is the Royal Astronomer, recently appointed to the position thanks to his discovery of Anura Major, the Big Frog whose eye, the Gleaming Light, has aided the Explorer Guild in navigating and mapping undiscovered corners of the world, bringing Caelum untold wealth and prestige. While used to living a modern lifestyle at the behest of his husband, Quentin has let the fame and wealth go to his head, and has become more insufferable than he was previously considered. Like many new to wealth, he has a taste for flaunting it and a fear bordering on paranoia that he will lose it.Quentin is in his mid-30’s, with a slight but unathletic frame. A professor of astronomy and ecclesiastical studies, he is extremely intelligent if occasionally a bit addle-headed. If engaged with in conversation he is overly pedantic and constantly demeaning, though never intentionally so.The DistractionThe Race of the Silver Wings is a fine distraction, but is often too short for an enterprising team of criminals to make the most of. Luckily, Jonas knows exactly where the victory flag is due to make its appearance; hanging out of one of the windows his Chapel of Nephelai. If the victory flag can be prevented from making its appearance, the Race will continue indefinitely, its remaining competitors left to circle through the city in an endless loop, keeping the bulk of the city (including the royal navy) occupied.Of course, getting to the flag’s location is almost as difficult a proposition as breaking into the Royal Academy. Jonas’s chapel is attached to Royal Naval Base. While Jonas will be able to disguise a few of the party members as new acolytes, it is still going to be risky (not aided at all by Jonas being a terrible liar). Once there, the party must incapacitate the race’s committee members or otherwise prevent them from displaying the victory flag when given the signal to. Instead, the party must devise their own signals, as they should display the victory flag as soon as the score is safely removed from the Royal Academy.The PlanJonas has approached the party a week before the Race, giving them a small window of time to stake out the major locations and organize any additions they feel like making to the plan. Allow the party the opportunity to acquire and disguises and tools and plant them in helpful locations if necessary.The ComplicationsThere are two major complications. First, the race’s organizers know exactly when and where the victory flag is supposed to appear. They will be initially concerned when the signal they give to display the flag goes unanswered. While nervous at first, they will begin to see it as a blessing in disguise as they notice the crowds growing more and more excited when it becomes apparent that the remaining competitors are having difficulty finding the victory flag. The organizers will still send someone to check on their victory flag team, which will need to be dealt with by the party at the Naval Chapel, though if the heist goes down quick enough they may be able to avoid them.A more major complication comes in the form of Mammatus Pearl, the diminutive sky pirate captain who has caught wind of Jonas’s plan (he’s no criminal mastermind himself and wasn’t as discreet enough in finding the party as he should have been). Captain Pearl plans to undertake the heist without Jonas’s help, keeping the entire cut of the score to herself. She will dispatch teams herself to the Chapel and Observatory, who will no doubt get in the party’s way and might call more attention to themselves and the heist than the party would like. They can be fought, tricked, or even potentially bribed with a percentage of the cut into helping out, though they are generally lazy and somewhat incompetent, and their “help” doesn’t amount to much. Possible complications for the party:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">A pirate trying to destroy a clockwork sentry accidentally breaks its control beacon, causing it to ignore commands and go berserk, attacking everyone.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">A pirate accidentally triggers the motion detector in the Observatory’s display room, forcing the party to find their way into the secure vault to reach the Anura Major.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The pirates beat the party to the victory flag and have taken the place of Race crew. If the party incapacitates them without discovering their true nature, this will leave them with a nasty surprise when the real crew wakes up and busts out of the nearby closet!</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">A Race team with inside knowledge that the victory flag should have shown up at the chapel starts to get suspicious by the endless loop and begins looking carefully in the windows, calling the organizers if they spot anything or anyone suspicious.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The pirates and party strike up an uneasy truce at the chapel, only for the organizer’s investigators to appear, giving both sides an opportunity to turn on the other.</li> </ul>The AftermathPeople talk for weeks about how exciting it was to finally see a Race last a decent length of time. The organizers begin planning to delay the revealing of the flags in future Races later rounds, though being generally incompetent, their plan is sure to go poorly. Jonas is easily avoided if the party needs the Anura Major for some other purpose. Otherwise Jonas’s fence is fairly easy for anyone connected to the city’s underworld to find. If Jonas is not given his cut he grows angry and sets the city’s police force after them, naming them culprits who kidnapped him and forced him into helping. If given to Jonas it takes him several weeks to collect his payment for the score, though he keeps his word and pays the party their share. Depending on how the pirates are handled, Captain Pearl can become a fierce enemy or helpful ally.  The SequelQuentin tries his best to keep the theft under wraps, but secretly dispatches bounty hunters to track down the culprits. They are easily able to track the plan to Jonas. Even if the party gives the stolen goods to Jonas to fence, he has little loyalty to the party and is instead more concerned with placating with his husband. Unless they decided to allow Jonas to donate the entire portion of the score, he’ll give the party up easily. If caught Quentin has no plans to murder the party for their deeds; instead, he’s impressed by their abilities and wants to hire them to track the down his stolen sculptures and steal them back for him, and perhaps acquire even more items for him in the future. If they refuse he has more than enough evidence to turn them over to Caelum’s police. Unless the party wants to become fugitives they must comply until they can find a way out from under Quentin’s employ.The Ingredients Infinite Loop- The distraction: the Race of the Silver Wings, after the party hides the victory flag, becomes this. Without the victory flag, the remaining teams circle the city endlessly, trying in vain to find it.Ice Frog- The score: The Anura Major, the diamond sculpture of a frog commemorating the discovery of the constellation Anura Major.Chapel of Wings- Jonas’s Naval Chapel, dedicated to Nephelai, Goddess of Wings, and the location of the victory flag.Astronomer’s Husband- The client: Jonas, husband of the mark: Quentin Stormcrow, Chief Royal Astronomer.Athletic Airship- Airships powered by the Silver Wings; the muscle-powered contraptions that allowed the first of humanity's ships to take to the sky. These ancient machines are used to participate in the Race of the Silver Wings.Banal Competition- What the Race of the Silver Wings has become, leading to short and ultimately unfulfilling competitions.</blockquote>

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