From mike@skaro.lawlib.wm.edu Mon Dec 30 17:57:57 1996
Date: Mon, 30 Dec 1996 17:51:06 +0000 (   )
From: Mike Phillips <mike@skaro.lawlib.wm.edu>
To: mythus-l@brownvm.brown.edu
Subject: Happy Hogmanay!

[For all you in Kelltic-based games, be sure to have your HPs celebrate
 Hogmanay (the New Year) in appropriate fashion!]

My gift to the list, at the tag end of 1996, is this Adventure Summary:

First, some background:

I am running an Advanced Mythus game set in Hibernia, where the HPs are
all members of a FIANNA, or King's Company.  The current year is AAF 996
(of course), somewhere in late fall/early winter. 

As it happens, events have continued to transpire in Vargaard, despite the
collapse of that particular game as my players graduated and moved on, and
the evil tidings predicted by Taknari have been delayed by heroic action
(and to time them better with the year 1000!).  Grandmark is still intent
on recapturing Wildedge, and Wildedge is still intent on staying a free
nation.

Horatio Calvo di Padua, an agent of the Markthegn of Grandmark, has been
assigned the task of stopping arms shipments from Hibernia to Wildedge,
and he has created a merchant house based in Falcondonia to aid him.  He
traced the arms shipments back to Robert Ugaine, the youngest son of the
brother of Gywdion Ugaine, the current Aethel of Munster.  With some
misdirection, he has planted evidence accusing Robert of much worse...

Dramatis Personae:

    Derby O'Brennan: a rakish warrior, fascinated by danger
    MacGregor: a (PP) priest of Goibhnie, ex-patriate of Caledonia
    "Sarah": a mountebank

    The game opened with a simple assignment: the three HPs were assigned
the task of assembling evidence supporting or denying the troubling rumor
of unusual arms production in the county of Munster.  They were given a
safe house from which to operate. 
    Along the road to Limerick, the county seat, they were ambushed by a
small group of bandits, but quite handily defeated the scoundrels. 
(O'Brennan got to flex his muscles a little!) 
    Once they arrived in Limerick, they set themselves up in the safe
house and began planning ways of gathering information.

    That evening, O'Brennan made his way to the pubs frequented by
longshoreman and other dock workers (his Street-Wise Sub-Areas led him to
this), and overheard some folks complaining of their work and a drunk
sailor letting slip that he's involved in shipping weapons (Horatio, 
disguised by illusion and skill, dropping broad hints in his campaign 
to end the activity).
    O'Brennan snuck to the docks afterward (followed by Horatio,
incidentally), where he commandeered a dinghy and clambered into the
dockmaster's office from behind.  (Incidentally, he's not real good at it,
and fumbled a couple rolls, and made an awful lot of noise.  Fortunately,
Horatio wanted this information uncovered, and 'helped' him out a little.)
    The raid on the Dockmaster's files discovered that a ship, the
_Mala_Herispedorum_, was registered to the Calvo Merchant House in
Falcondonia, and was bound for Wildedge with "supplies".  Departure date
was not uncovered (the files were not organized in any reasonable manner),
and he slipped back out the way he came.

    Meanwhile, "Sarah" slipped out for a round at the local pub
(discreetly shadowed by MacGregor), where she was promptly picked up by a
rather handsome nobleman (Robert Ugaine, the nephew responsible for the
arms-running).  There was a confrontation between a smith and Robert, who,
after paying off the smith, then proceeded to an elegant dinner and dance
with "Sarah".
    When they left, MacGregor followed the smith back to a smithy, where
several apprentices were pulling a rather late night, turning out
arrowheads and a few swords.  The smith himself was working on a suit of
armor.  MacGregor, dodging the constabulary in his spying, took note of
the activity and snuck back to the safehouse.
    Meanwhile, "Sarah" enjoyed herself, and took the offered carriage back
to the pub (and the stranger's card).  However, she slipped out of it
fairly quickly, and followed the mysterious nobleman, observing him
visiting a warehouse in which a number of crates and a few sheafs of
arrows were stored.  She took note of this and slipped home.

    Once together, they formulated a plan of action based on the material:
"Sarah" would visit this Robert fellow, with O'Brennan accompanying as a
personal guard.  Meanwhile, MacGregor would sneak along, masked by his
Castings, and rifle through the household.  Some footwork was done to lay
in an elaborate masquerade.
    When the visit occurred, "Sarah" had a pleasant dinner and evening of
theatre, while O'Brennan chatted with the guardsmen (learning,
interestingly, that Robert was spending an inordinate amount of time away
from home, in the evenings, with no obvious mistress or other activity).
    MacGregor dodged the servants and eventually found Robert's room.
After setting of a tracer and rifling the desk, he found a secret
compartment with the real evidence (running arms to Wildedge) mixed with
evidence planted by Horatio (running arms as a cover for a non-existant
rebellion), implicating Robert in major treason.
    Once back at the hotel, they meandered all over Limerick, hoping to
throw off anyone tailing them as they returned to their safehouse.
MacGregor also thought to detect Heka, on himself, but the tracer had been
masked (pity, that), and on the papers.  As it was, "friends" of Robert
showed up the next morning as they left, to "make them an offer they
couldn't refuse".  The party was in dire straits, O'Brennan stripped of
his weapons, cross-bows pointed at them, when...
    That's right, Horatio put in his fourth and final appearance (after
all, he wanted the investigators to succeed!), his own men rescuing the
HPs from a dicey situation.

                            ------------

What made this adventure particularly interesting to *me* was that
Horatio was an HP from my Grandmark campaign, and I talked with the player
a couple times as we worked out his rather convoluted machinations.

I think I'm going to run something a little more straightforward next time
:-)

                            ------------

And if this isn't enough of a New Year's End present, allow me to point
you to my own web page, where I've begun adding notes for this game *and*
some minor appearance improvements.

--                                                  __+__
Mike Phillips, mike@lawlib.wm.edu                 | |#|#| | LINUX SAGA vol 2 |
Mythus:  http://skaro.lawlib.wm.edu/~mike/mythus/ | |L|L| |    Penguins of   |
Home page:      http://skaro.lawlib.wm.edu/~mike/ | |L|L| |      Destiny     |