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Message: <blockquote data-quote="RangerWickett" data-source="post: 958261" data-attributes="member: 63">Did you ever talk with your friends and try to figure out what type of element each of you were?  You know, Earth is stoic and gruff on the outside, but very loyal.  Water is cool in any situation, relaxed and likeable.  Fire is emotionally vigorous, prone to intense moods and often arguments, but cherishing life's every flare of pain like it was the light of God himself.  And Air is light, generally unconcerned with normal concerns of everyday life, but liable to cry over hurt feelings, or to spend a whole day watching the clouds breeze by.I figured out that I'm a mix of fire and air, depending on the situation, so if I follow some fantasy logic, combining fire and air makes lightning.  Is it no wonder, then, that I love storms?My entire current campaign is based on storms and wind.  The PCs are escorting a young air mage on a pilgrimage to all manner of magical sites strong with elemental air power, where she is trying to slowly unlock her full powers and become attuned to the magic of the world's winds.  All of our best fights have been in thunderstorms (and one was in a hurricane; bet you don't get those in Boston very often), and the group is slowly catching on to the fact that the villain is also a powerful air mage, who seems to want to stop them for some reason.Ancient legend says that the Stormchaser Tomb, burial place of the cruel mage Pilus, who tormented the world millenia ago, flies among the clouds in a giant sailing ship, following the paths of great storms so that its appearance is always heralded by thunder and lightning.  The huge isthmus port city of Seaquen, a vital link to international trade, has incurred the ire of the powerful nation Nau-Hereth, whose leaders hire powerful mages to destroy the city with storm.  But the mages only agree to the mission because of the support the Nau-Herethim pledge, giving them greater access to spell and ritual components, plus numerous bodyguards.  With the help of the Nau-Herethim, and under the pretense of destroying a city of several million people, the mages plan to summon the Stormchaser Tomb and pillage its ancient magic.  They manage to create the hurricane with relative ease, but after over a week of letting the hurricane wait ominously, only ten miles out to sea, the Tomb has not shown up, and the mages' employers are starting to ask what is taking so long. In a wretched bayou nearby Seaquen, bizarre undead plants have been straying onto normally safe roadways, attacking travelers and disrupting the traffic of thousands of people who enter and leave Seaquen each day.  The bayou is too huge to explore on foot, and even with flight magic it's unknown if it would be possible to find the source of these strange creatures.  But numerous divinations by hired mages around the city all report generally the same thing - "He who was damned with fire and forsaken by storm shall lay a blight upon his home."Research into old folk myths reveal that many centuries ago there existed a small village in that same bayou.  A young necromancer, barely a theat to anyone, was burned at the stake for crimes the villagers had just imagined out of fear.  The day he was burned, a storm was approaching the village, and he hoped it might spare him by putting out the flames, but only after he was nearly dead from burns did the storm arrive, actually a crashing hurricane that destroyed the village and killed almost all living there.  The folk myths say that the necromancer still exerts his will in death, by raising the dead around his village whenever a hurricane approaches.  Indeed, there has been a correlation between hurricanes and small amounts of undead, but never to this magnitude.  But never before has a hurricane waited at sea for a week, threatening, but not approaching.   In Seaquen itself, there have been a rash of non-fatal attacks on rich merchants.  The merchants have all been stabbed with only mild wounds, but immediately after the attacks they lose the ability to speak.  Through writing, they have been able to share the information that their attackers were groups of three, and that they used a silver dagger.  One of the attacked merchants hires the PCs to get to the bottom of what's going on.  No ransom notes have been sent, so it seems that only proactive measures will help.  Everyone knows the stories of twenty years ago, when the famous half-Elf assassin Manlang Linnel terrorized the city by rendering all government officials mute.  He was finally captured, and managed to receive a life sentence instead of death because he agreed to give them all their voices back.  He too was known to use a silver dagger, but it was never found.  Unfortunately, this past week's rainfall has raised water levels so much that the dungeon Linnel was in flooded, drowning him and numerous other prisoners.  The place is still flooded, and city ordinances prevent communing with the dead and other forms of necromancy, so no one is officially sanctioned to interrogate Linnel's body.In truth, Nau-Herethim agents have hired a group of assassins who possess the Voicesealer Dagger.  Originally they planned to buy or steal the dagger, until they learned that a key piece of its magic -- the pommel gem that actually holds the stolen breaths -- is missing.  Since the Nau-Herethim have only a few people they can spare to look, they have the assassins attack merchants who are rich enough to hire their own help.  By keeping tabs on the merchants, the Nau-Herethim will know if anyone else manages to find the pommel gem.  The mages who are creating the hurricane claim they need the gem to fully release the storm's potential.  Of course, the PCs will manage to stumble onto the necessary clues that will lead them to breaking into the flooded prison and recovering the gem.  Linnel is still alive even deep underwater, because twenty years ago he swallowed his gemstone to keep it from his captors, and ever since then he has never had to breathe.</blockquote>

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