Gypsy Smugglers Wanted

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Summary

Adventure:   Gypsy Smugglers Wanted — On Purple
GM: Michael Parkinson
Session: Summer 816
Night: Wednesday
Location: Smith's Forge, Mangere Bridge
Level: Top end of medium, after an artificially low start

Party: Party must be genuinely human since illusions/disguises will not always work; 6 or 7 strong, although one or two hobbits may substitute for human. You will be infiltrating a treacherous smuggling conspiracy in the new Human empire (the one with the aerium aerships) — thus subject to DA, Telepathy, and other forms of high-level professional scrutiny, etc.
At the start of the mission, you will be in disguise as unsuspiciously low-level smugglers -- high ranks in skills/spells/weapons, weird high stuff, also (to an extent) memories, knowledge or attitudes/emotions you don’t want falling into the wrong hands or showing up on telepathy ... all will be safely packed away in almost indestructible "lockets" to be delivered to you later, a bit like soul-jars but not so On/Off.
It only takes seconds to reintegrate yourselves when you open your locket (and it only happens when you do it); although, obviously, it may take the Dwarves a few hours to get the lockets and your normal equipment to you depending on the circumstances.

Don't Panic: you will be given cover equipment and skills, including your native languages, and even a few fallacious memories, etc. Furthermore you may retain some of your personal, highly suspect, bizarre "talents" -- that is an expected tradition among the Gypsy-folk, not just guild-members.

No necromancers (It's Purple, duh!); no demon-worshippers, etc. Being a [pacted?] follower of Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, or Uriel might even sell your cover: If you can't even hid that shameful fact, what other secrets could you possibly possess?


Characters & Players -- Expressions of interest only at this stage.

The Job

Employer: Alfred of HyBrasil & flunkeys thereof

THE MISSION:
Quote: Thanks for helping us save the world. The Temple of Hyperion is getting a little less fussy on cultural pollution, allowing Dwarven Syndicates to trade more openly with other cultures on Purple (but probably still not the two Human empires). We have won the main share of the Dragon-folk's Spice monopoly — unfortunately in our Due Diligence Checks, i.e. spying on our honest trade partners-to-be, we have discovered that they are haemorrhaging valuable stock to smugglers. The stream to the Drow is an acceptable loss, not worth staunching; but the quantity entering the Human requires, um, "correction" ... and we don't yet know enough information. You are being paid to get all relevant information

Pay

For the Attempt: Guarantee of a top-up, should your private acquisitions not already exceed 30,000 Seagate sp

And if you succeed:

  • 15 Arcane Points
  • Bonuses & gifts commensurate with good to better-than-expected information.

Scribe Notes

I hadn't been on a Guild mission in some time, what with helping out King Kierl in Pasifika and keeping him company, at least until Princess Ariel got back, as well as keeping an eye on the situation in the Southern areas - most of which had to be abandoned because of the Horrors that were still roaming about. As far as we could figure out, they were coming from the Deep, the chasm between the plateaus of Pasifika and Zeylandia. Anyway, I digress.

As a change from being in a watery environment as a mermaid, I decided to join an adventure that involved gypsies and smuggling on the plane of Purple. Maybe a chance to stretch my entertaining skills. As far as I could tell the job involved finding out who was smuggling spices and interfering with the trade the local dwarves had set up. Part of it involved going undercover with a band of gypsies and, to avoid suspicion, our true personalities would be sealed away in lockets as to avoid detection, a Chameleon Arch I think they called them. The dwarves would hang on to most of our stuff and deliver them to us when we needed them. I guess I'd better get this mermaid belt off.

My fellow adventurers turned out to be:

  • Mayhem - a rather obnoxious male hobbit who's a shadow-weaver and very sneaky. Very good with dagger, climbing and traps. And likely to be receiving a new orifice if he keeps up with the sexual innuendos - besides, he's not my type.
  • Rodrego - another not so obnoxious male hobbit who was dressed rather richly. This resulted in the suggestion that he should be our pimp. He told us he had a lot of business interests. He's an E&E with Rank 11 Greater Enchantments.\
  • Thorn - A Warrior Healer woman with a touch of Mind Magics.
  • Veor - Nordic blonde ice mage. Also a spirit shaman, Trollkin and Shapeshifter. Was male but turned female after something Sir Christopher was responsible for.
  • Brigetta - redhaired female sharmanistic bard from Caledonia
  • And me, Aqualina, dark skinned water mage from Pasifika, specialising in underwater magics and skills.

Our party employer was a dwarf with close cropped hair, a shaped and styled beard, and introduced himself as Alfred High Brazil of Purple. He told us, as part of our assignment, he's be teaching up Rom (the local gypsy language) and Lalange. We'd be meeting up with a bunch of gypsies in Dowland and making the attempt to find out what was going on would yield us 30,000sp including salvage. The job was to find out who was smuggling spices and we just had to merge in and not draw attention to ourselves - hence the lockets.

So, after getting Greaters and Lessers, as well as making six packs of Waters of Healing and Strength we were discretely taken to Purple ....

Hi, I'm Hinemoana, or in the elvish, Aqualina. I'm a wandering gypsy who is a performer of exotic dances as well as specialising in contortions and escaping from restraints (a rare act in these parts), hence my stage name of the "Amazing Aqualina". My companions and myself, some fellow performers, others of more mundane skills recently arrived in Dowland and managed to meet up with a gypsy caravan that was heading across the land on a rather large, lizard drawn cart. I'm also usually our group's record keeper which is why I'm maintaining this diary. Dunno who wrote the stuff in the top though, I can't read it, but, if it's in this book, I guess it's important. Anyway, we met up with Nan, who directed us to Dancaire and his valiant and merry band. Dancaire was injured hence the merry band was led by a woman called Frasquita. On the way here, they were attacked by lizards when they went through the forest, which is why they're a bit short handed. Excluding the wounded there are nine men, fourteen women and two boys.

It had taken us two and a half days to travel from Nan's camp to Dowland and, once we had integrated ourselves with the gypsies. we set off across the plains, pulled by the two lizards, Dorothy and Prosper. Tyrannosaurs I was told. Certainly they were rather large and rather fearsome. I spent most of the trip inside, getting to know people, helping with the cooking, and practicing my act. I did notice that some of the plants, like the bluebells, seemed a bit out of place but, apparently that's normal around here. After a few days we approached the swamp, which, according to the stories I was collecting, had appeared rather recently.

About a day or so later. we reached the swamp, which we had been told that appeared recently. Here, we had to meet up with a sea captain who could turn up anywhere in the swamp he could get his rather stealthy boat to and would be doing so sometime in the next four days. Talk about looking for a needle in a haystack, especially if one doesn't even know if the needle has appeared yet or even if the needle wants to be found. There were quite a few spots that he could appear so the gypsies split up into four groups, of which we were one.

We decided to check out the centre of the swamp which was marked by a small hill. The story was that something had been lobbed into the area and the swamp had spread from there. Even now, cliffs on both sides were still rapidly crumbling away into the swamp. Forest trees were still surviving in there, but maybe not for too much longer, so the whole area was shrouded in a leafy canopy.

So, we decided to build a raft and float downstream. On the way, we encountered a rather large 'floating log' that was actually heading upstream towards us. Veor shot at it a couple of times, then, Rodrigo attempted to put it to sleep. I'm not sure he succeeded completely but it did seem rather lethargic in it's attacked as we hacked at it with our daggers and stuff. Mayhem and I even went in the water to attack it from below. We then had to evacuate the water in a hurry when the little flesh eating fish with the big sharp teeth and voracious appetites turned up. Piranha I think they're called. Anyway, once they had devoured the insides, we hauled what was left on board the raft. Thorn identified it as a Mosasaurus (she's smart like that) and, even though it was 30 ft long, she said it was 'small'. And here I was wondering if I could get a five foot long one and wrestle it underwater but I'd need some sort of display tank to do that in and I rather doubt it would be easy to get one. She then told us about the Chiroptera, commonly known as bats, some of which are nearly as large.

An hour and a half later, we were in roughly the right area. We landed the raft and walked in the direction of the hillock making sure to stand on firm footing. Some of the insects we saw were rather large, especially the dragonflies with the thirty inch wingspan. I was wondering how big the butterflies would get but I didn't see any.

Finally reached the grassy knoll which was strangly barren, forming a clearing in the canopy. On top was a small fort and one of the walls had been damaged by a high speed impact. Near the wall lay a brass shell. Had it been fired from the river by a cannon? And had it contained some sort of magical curse or spell within it? A spirit could be detected within the brass container so, while Veor turned into a gargoyle to see if he can see the Captain, Brigetta attempted to find out more. What she got was the Ballad of Drevan the Misfortunate, being the story of a dwarf who was separated from his clan and set upon by Unspeakable Evil. He managed to survive that and


People Met

Dwarves

Alfred of Hy-Brasil is of House Fain deLight, called Aethelbrecht, but known as Alfred (Elf-Rede), because he is so devious he could council the Elves. He is in charge of Miracle Holdings, a listed Association.

Honey of Hy-Brasil, who is a scholar and something at the Temple of Hyperion; has access to powerful magic (eg, planting ranks of skills & languages directly into your head.

Humans in the Old Human Empire

Generic Dowlanders: For the most part, Dowlanders are non-patriarchal non-hierarchical individuals united only in suspicion of the Imperial/Federal government and the rightness of their quasi-anarchic republic. These Pre-Raphealite look-alikes celebrate their aesthetic harmony with the land; have famous skills in poetry, paint, & the plastic arts: Wiccan is the college of choice. They are also excellent herbalists/alchemists. Apart from the capital, their dwellings are scattered and low-key. Technically the Head of state is "DD" (the designated Duchess) but, unofficially, a few level-headed individuals wearing sensible shoes take it upon themselves to do what ought to be done.

NAN for Short (Not Actual Name) of Dowland. Officially the "Keeper of the Garden"; has an arrangement to infiltrate dwarvish agents (the party) in amongst the gypsy smugglers, with whom she also has an arrangement. The Gypsies transport Knightshade leaves & other pipe-weed to the Principality, with export certificates and everything.

Plants

Titanic Sunflowers: (Helianthus x Eliotropus) exceptionally tall, looming, mysterious, possible a hidden force for good against evil (maybe even Necromancy and related wickedness). Veor & Mayhem have each been given a silk purse of 13 seeds.

Knight-shade (Solanum) a pipeweed species, however the leaves are primarily turned in to cigars. This version is noticeable in the fact that local (copper-blooded) reptiles, find it repulsive; its berries can be converted in to a blade-venom that gives them chemical burns and is mildly poisonous to humans. WORRYWORT (Bryophyta): a small, green, flowerless wetland herb that engenders anxiety on those that eat or tread on it. Its airborne spores are the active ingredients, which can panic most animals, especially the local dinosaurs and sometimes humans. It is found naturally in The Marais, and the Gypsies sometimes add powdered spores to the smudge-pot smoke. Coincidentally, it grows near the [Promethean] garden.


Buffs

Buffs listed in the table don't need to be detailed, other buffs not on the table must be mentioned at the time they are cast.
Y means always on, N/- means never on, 'Sit.' means when the party has time for buffs before a fight.
Weapon Spells which weapon/s it is going on normally should be noted also.

Low level Smuggler buffs (if any)

Magic Rk Effects Dur Ro Ma Aq Br Th Ve
Witchsight (Ma) 6 See through darkness and Rk 6 or less invis etc 3½ hrs - Sit Sit - Sit Sit
Greater Heart Rune (Ve) 7 Heal 7 EN when EN damage taken 8 days - -
Waterbreathing (Aq) 7 Waterbreathing, see thru fog 8 hours - - - - -


Normal Buffs; Long Duration

Magic Rk Effects Dur Ro Ma Aq Br Th Ve
Witchsight (Ma) 6 See through darkness and Rk 6 or less invis etc 3½ hrs - Sit Sit - Sit Tal
Resist Cold (Ve) 20 +6 Gauge, 6 Pt Cold Resist. 21 hours. - - Tal
Greater Heart Rune (Ve) 7 Heal 7 EN when EN damage taken 8 days - -
Mind Shield (Th) 12 +34 vs Mental Attack, mind cannot be read 25 hrs - - -
Waterbreathing (Aq) 20 Breath water, see through fog 21 hours - - - - -
xxxx xx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx x hrs x min - - - - - -
xxxx xx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx x hrs x min - - - - - -


Normal Buffs; Short Duration

Magic Rk Effects Dur Ro Ma Aq Br Th Ve
Weapon of cold (Ve) 9 SC 10%, +3 DM 14 min - Sit - - Sit -
Force shield (Th) 12 +17 defence 2 hrs 10 min - - - - -
xxxx xx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx x hrs x min - - - - - -
xxxx xx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx x hrs x min - - - - - -
xxxx xx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx x hrs x min - - - - - -
xxxx xx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx x hrs x min - - - - - -

Map

Loot

Items

Gifts

Calendar

Summer: Meadow (1) 816wk
Moonday Duesday W'ansday Th'rsday Frysday Reapsday Sunday
Beltane Full Moon 1 Guild Meeting 2 3 4 5 6
7 8 9 10 11 12 13
14 15 16 17 18 19 20
21 22 23 24 25 26 27
28 Full Moon 29 30 1 2 3 4
Summer: Heat (2) 816wk
Moonday Duesday W'ansday Th'rsday Frysday Reapsday Sunday
5 6 7 8 9 10 11
12 13 14 Midsummer Eve (Faerie Day) 15 Solstice 16 17 18
19 20 21 22 23 24 25
26 Full Moon 27 28 29 30 1 2
Summer: Breeze (3) 816wk
Moonday Duesday W'ansday Th'rsday Frysday Reapsday Sunday
3 Day of Death 4 5 6 7 8 9
10 11 12 13 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21 22 23
24 Full Moon 25 26 27 28 29 30
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