Help me with another RPG scenario, please?

Cafe Society
1

You guys were a huge help last week. Let’s see what you can come up with this time.

I won’t go into lengthy descriptions, but a few definitions are in order.

Harn

An island grouping similar to early medieval England.

Earthmasters

Harn’s first occupants, who lived there between 15,000 and 20,000 years ago. Very little is known about them, but it’s clear they used very powerful magic. They left behind some mysterious sites, buildings whose purpose is unknown.

Godstones

Stone objects in some Earthmaster sites. About as big as a phone booth. They act as teleportation devices, often set to another godstone, but can be set to anywhere, even other planes of existance. Kind of like Star Trek’s transporters, only way cooler. A given godstone is either on or off, and if on, set to some location. Only people with powerful psychic talents can change the settings.

Cherafir

Medieval walled city on the “Wizard’s Isle.” The magic chantry there is built on a small Earthmaster site. There is a godstone in the cellar.

Telumar

An Earthmaster site some 200 miles north of Cherafir. It is normally unoccupied, but for the last 10 years or so, a wizard has lived there, along with 2 assistants. Most people think he’s mad or evil, a reputation he finds useful for his solitude. His name is Lepredis.

Bujoc

Primitive barbarians living in the hills around Telumar. They are very insular and xenophobic. Every year the entire Bujoc nation gathers at Telumar, which they consider holy. They never go inside, with one exception: Elderly Bujoc about to die take “The Walk” – They walk all the way to the site, and go in. They never come out. This has gone on for a thousand years.

That much is canon. I may be leaving something out, so feel free to ask questions.

Here’s the deal: The Bujoc that go in leave behind no corpses. By now there should be thousands of skeletons piled up. There are none. Besides the front entrance, there is no egress but these – a godstone, and a mysterious pool. The godstone is currently “on” and set for Cherafir. Lepridis made it that way. No one knows how it was set during the past millenium. The pool is bottomless and filled with an opaque liquid that acts like water. Anyone who can swim can stay afloat in it.

What happens to the Bujoc? Clearly Lepridis doesn’t do away with them, they’ve been taking The Walk for far longer than he’s been alive. It seems unlikely that every old man that wandered in would say “Hey! Pool! I think I’ll learn to swim!” – and failed. Godstone? It seems equally unlikely that every single old man would have the idea of walking into it. And that’s assuming it was left “on” for a thousand years. Even then, the mages in Cherafir (or wherever) would see old men popping up in their cellar every now and then. They wouldn’t like that.

2

Something lives in the pool, something left behind by the long vanished Earthmasters. It’s been eating the Bujoc corpses for the last 1000 years. Since the wizard has moved in, though, he’s been disposing of the corpses himself, and not via the pool. Now the thing that lives in there is getting hungry, and is starting to actively search for more food, even if it hasn’t stopped moving on its own, yet. It still remembers some of the secrets of the Earthmasters, including how to use the Godstones, and has started hunting in distant Cherafir, returning to its pool when satiated.

3

Have the pool be enchanted to draw them in.

4

Old men have been going into the cave for thousands of years. No corpses are found.

…but the cave is getting smaller and there are these unusual accretions in the walls…

5

I say the land should “reclaim” them. I’d also like to fit in the pond, but outside of something saying that it acts like a kind of quicksand where the person in the pond loses their direction when the fog comes in? Their dislocation gets fatal when they fail to recognize up being up and down being down and they start to swim downwards, never to return again…

…Wow. That sucks. I’ve gotta do this Dungeon Mastering thing more frequently.

6

The Bujoc elders use the godstone (some of them swim in the pool first but eventually they touch the godstone out of curiousity or boredom and then it’s good-bye) and get transported to Cherafir. Lepredis reset it to Cherafir to annoy the wizards there (a professional rivalry that goes back years). Before that the elders showed up in the middle of a jungle where the natives viewed them as sacrifical gifts from the gods.

7

the black water is the death shedded by the old
the wizards are taping those deaths from the pool (evil plot)

Heaven?
the bodies are consumed in the shedding
only the breath remains trapped inside the catacomb forever
(death has been shed by not allowing the breath to disapate into the sky)
ancestors mix in the winds of the caverns
whispering for all who enter to join

8

The pool is in fact a hive-mind creature, and the religion of the Bujoc demands that those who have served their purpose to the tribe are sent to Telumar, where their bodies are absorbed into the biomass of the pool and their consciousnesses joins with the creature’s. The Bujoc do so willingly, and are very proud of the fact that they know that they will live on after “death” for eternity. The creature is relatively benign – it started off as a fairly simple slime creature, but as it absorbed the minds of the religion’s followers it came to believe in itself as a sort of god/heaven for the Bujoc and possesses slight telepathic power, broadcasting general feelings of goodwill and harmony when the elderly make their Walk and sacrifice themselves, but otherwise emanating a sort of territorial growl that makes others steer clear of the ancient site, even if they aren’t aware that they’re doing so. The pool actually extends into a deep underground cavern, full of the orange liquid, with a small well and an altar at the very bottom - the place where the Bujoc originally performed their ceremony, but the creature has grown in size during the thousands of years the nomads were worshipping it.

Lepredis has been studying the Bujoc and the pool for years, and now has a very good idea of what the creature is. He plans to use the Godstone to teleport the pool into Cherefir, dissolving the population and creating a horrific monster that will serve him. However, he can’t quite contact the creature psychically - he knows it’s intelligent, but he hasn’t broken through yet, though he knows enough to be able to resist the feelings of unease and fear that the creature emits during the off-Walk season.

If Lepredis does succeed in making contact with the hive-mind, he is more than capable of forcing it to bend to his will and serve him. Dropping the Godstone into the pool will teleport the creature into the center of Cherafir, and Lepredis plans to do so, flooding the chantry and absorbing the world’s mightiest mages into the consciousness of a creature that he commands. However, Lepredis has vastly underestimated the creature’s volume: if he does so, the creature will not only absorb the chantry staff, but most of the city’s population as well, before bursting through the city walls and washing down to the ocean, absorbing every creature it touches and growing in size accordingly. If it reaches the sea… who knows.

Edit: Messed up a key term.

9

As a young apprentice wizard in Cherafir, Lepredis secretly experimented with necromancy, demon summoning, and other forbidden arts. His skill was great, but his ambition was greater. One day he lost control of a lesser soldier demon, which gleefully rampaged through the city. The demon damaged several buildings and killed a number of people before the wizards were able to banish it back to its home plane. They immediately began searching for Lepredis to arrest him, but he knew that he would most likely be stripped of his magic for his crime, and he managed to escape the city.

Lepredis traveled the lands for many years, pretending by turns to be an illusionist with an acting troupe, an apothecary selling his wares, a fortune teller, and other such mundane professions. All the while he honed his dark skills, but more cautiously, never again losing control. Cherafir sent agents after him from time to time, but Lepredis enjoyed outwitting them and keeping a step ahead.

As his power grew more formidable, Lepredis began looking for a permanent site where he could practice more difficult magic, and that could be defended if need be. He heard tales of the Bujoc and their odd rituals centered on Telumar, and realized that there might be some artifact at the site, so he went to investigate. The godstone was far, far more than Lepredis dreamed of, and he immediately seized the keep. He has been investigating the pool, and has yet to determine its true nature. It seems to amplify magic cast on its surface, but it also can warp the intent of the wizard using it, making the pool unpredictable and dangerous. There also seems to be some link between the pool and the Bujoc people; when Lepredis first observed a Bujoc elder enter the keep, the pool began to glow softly, and the old woman smiled and jumped in straightaway. Lepredis scrambled down from his hiding place, but the pool had again turned dark when he reached it, and the woman was nowhere to be found.

Lepredis has learned to control the godstones to a greater degree than even the wizards of Cherafir. He is able to teleport between Cherafir and Telumar at will, which he does on occasion to steal books or artifacts. He believes he is powerful enough to defend his keep against Cherafir should the need arise, and hopes to gain enough power to return and conquer the city in time.

On preview: BraheSilver’s post, oddly enough, meshes fairly well with mine. You could combine them easily enough.

10

Come and ride the carousel cradle in the caverns
put pain aside and shirk the bell that once called out your hunger.
We will turn eternally brushing through each other
shedding skin to earthen wear held closely in the under.

11

Thanks for all the great responses! I’m just going to answer the first one for now, and provide a few more facts.

Interesting idea, but here are some problems:

The Earthmasters left Harn 15,000 years ago. The next residents didn’t arrive until 5,000 years ago. They were the elves. The water critter would have had to go without food for 10,000 years. Of course, if the pool itself is some sort of interdimensional gateway, it could have fed on something in a different world.

I reported something wrong about the pool – Everything sinks, even things that would normally float. But it’s a passive effect. One can tread water and stay afloat.

In actual fact, the pool is only 5 feet deep, as can be seen by an identical one in another chamber. (It has a crack, so the liquid drained out.) And there is a level below that of the pools. And yet, the pool that is still full is truly bottomless. Stuff sinks forever.

The godstone cannot be thrown into the pool. Even if it were not attached to the floor, the thing is made of solid stone (Pseudostone, actually). Lepridis does not have the strength to lift such a thing, and he certainly can’t carry it up a stairway too narrow to accomodate it. It’s permanent, affixed, and indestructable.

Lepridis sleeps in Telumar. His bedchamber directly abuts the pool. Whatever spell or monster makes the pool devour the unwary would surely affect him. “Yeah, but he’s a wizard!”, you might protest. True, but his spells deal only in light, gases, and sound. He doesn’t have the capability of casting Protection From Everything Weird.

On the “monster” using the godstone to feed in Cherafir – That’s home to some of the most powerful mages in all of Harn. They would have dealt with that nusience right quick. A monster attacking there would be like 10 inept terrorists attacking a military base with guns. Just silly! :slight_smile:

12

Do these Bujoc have any sort of magic? Primitive Shamanism or somesuch?

Since the ancient site is held in high regard by Bujoc superstition/religion, perhaps they believe that it leads to another realm, presumably some sort of Afterlife, reinforced by the fact that no one who enters ever returns. They would not know about the pool, or what was inside since none of them ever come out, so that cannot be an object of fixation for them. Elder Bujoc, believing so completely that walking in there is the Right Thing To Do™, probably wander around inside, confused as to the lack of, well, anything awesome. Since it would not be proper to leave the site once they enter, presumably they eventually get thirsty and drink from the pool. It is then that the liquid overcomes them, physically animating or just through chemical/magical effects, and they fall in and eventually drown. Since stuff sinks forever, there are no corpses to be found; they are built up in the neverendingness of the pool.

Or they sink to another plane. Perhaps the pool is itself a portal down, and one just hops in and sinks to the next floor, swimming out when you reach their destination (Think of those damned water column things in Ssraeszha Temple, EQ players).

The pool may well only respond to a Bujoc, if they have some sort of special blood or if one of their kind managed to communicate with whatever magic powers it. Lepredis, not being of Bujoc descent, can do nothing with it unless he can discern the way to manipulate its magic. And then he will have a bunch of old barbarians wandering in his home each year.

13

Ah Who is kivvik is Ah Who is Wise. Brilliant post, and this is some truely Harnic thinking.

The Bujoc are indeed pious in their totemistic beliefs. They believe in reincarnation, that they will be reborn variously as male, female, male animal, female animal, rinse and repeat. When they are young, the Sha (woman) of the tribe gives the child a painted wooden totem of an animal – a small disk wrapped in leather and worn from the neck. The Sha makes a non-identical copy and gives it to the mother.

Every winter, the totems of Ah Who Have Died are carried into Telumar, never to be seen again.

Some 500 years ago, Ah Who is Strong, a male, preached jihad againts all outsiders. They would not have stood a chance against Cherifir’s troops. Emmisaries were sent, and a decision by the Shas preached peace. A stranger showed up, and judged Ah Who is Strong unworthy. He challenged him to enter Telumar together, and both of them went in. Only the stranger came out. This impressed the Bujoc enough for them to follow the Sha, the way of peaceful life.

Fletharane

A sacred plant. Holy visions occur when it is used, causing the user to be attuned to the land and sources of food. The leaves are dried and burned, then inhaled. Causes a trance-like state, hallucinations, extreme hunger, and occasional memory loss.

14

Could the pool itself be both infinite yet alive, a living portal? Ah Who Are Old come to it and see a vision in the fluid of their totem animal, beckoning. As they sink in, sustained by the living waters, they are transformed - or transfigured, if you will.

Others just get the infinitely deep pond because they just aren’t recognised as “ready” - but what would happen if a really old non-Bujoc or terminally-ill person came to the pool? What might they see?

Have you ever read Bank’s Excession? Sorta like the eponymous thing.

15

Interesting. If we pull back from the “really magical kewl alive water which hides an ancient hungry critter” mindset, perhaps it simply has some properties that resonate deeply with the culture of Ha Who is Bujoc. It’s not unfeasable that reincarnation takes place within the Amber Waters of Sha, or something like that. There can certainly be some precident for it, as a long ago visitor to the site may have reported it, and rumor got entwined with belief.

I like it.

16

Can’t really help, just wanted to mention I played me some Harn last night.

That is all.

17

The Google ads for this thread are hilarious.

“What type of mom are you?”

“Anxiety sucks”

Oddly appropriate!

Cool! Are you a member of HarnForum? What’s your user name there? And who is your GM? Have you ever been to a con?

My GM is John S., who writes about 75% of the products these days. He usually playtests his new ideas with me. We’re playing through an updated Azadmere right now. Far better than the old one. The next HQ coming out will be big cats, written works, and high-level Fyvrian spells.

18

I’m not, but my GM used to be, I’m sure. He was really involved with it up until maybe two or three years ago, contributing material, when things kind of collapsed in the Harn community. Our group more or less quit playing then for various reasons (one of which was I kind of accidentally started a war), but we managed to get the band back together last night for a romp through Kanday, escorting what turned out to be cursed relics from Gimon. I noticed some of the websites we used are defunct or haven’t been updated since 03.

I’ll have to ask him about John S, though…and the updated material. Now that we’re starting again I’ll want to take a glance at that. His material is 2nd edition, but we have 3rd and Gold available for some things…

19

I have an idea. The wizards of Cherafir moved the gostones to the current locations. They used their magic to trick the Bujoc into thinking they were some kind of gods, and got them to bring them lots of food/wine/maidens, whatever they produce. One year is particularly harsh, and they have nothing to give the Cherafir. The Elder himself goes in to tell them; and they kill him for his impudence. Same thing happens next year. Eventually the bad times pass, but because of the constant lack of any long-term Elders, the Bujoc don’t know about giving the wizards gifts; only that the Elder goes in every year. The wizards don’t like old men popping up in their cellar, so they use the opportunity as a test for their apprentices; kill/trap/torture the Elders in the most amusing and impressive way possible. That way you can have your adventurers turn up in the middle of (What’s expected to be) old-man-hunting season… though it’s a bit cliche.

20

liquid death stirred into molten sand
spread smooth across a plate of gold
stained glass for window pattern magic
if broken under light
a shadow is released below
a death under a wizard’s control