Ilan Capone
D&D Adventures -
The facts - for DM's eyes only
It's many years that Ariton, the cleric of Ilmater had a
strange friend who called himself Fontexe fon Faerie Fright,
which - as it seems - was an adventuring mage.
Ariton, however, never accepted Fontexe's unjust opinions about society,
it's elements, what is good, what is wrong etc.
Despite these dissagreements, they were good friends, they and met
from time to time (never inside the temple, of course)
when Fontexe was in the city.
One evening, one of the wooden floor's plates in Ariton's bedroom
cracked so noisily, that he decided to go and check out
what's underneath it.
He lifted it up, and expected to see the upper-side of the ceiling
of Main Chamber (the bedrooms are located just above the Main Chamber).
He climbed down to the stone built floor (the upper-side of...) and to
his astonishment, he realized that the block he was standing on was not
fixed in place. A secret trapdoor.
Somehow, he managed to pull it up (an unwise deed, indeed) and there he
found a whole 3' high subfloor.
Crawling there in the darkness, he saw nothing, but after he went back to
his room and took his candle inside the sub-floor, he did not find there
rats and bugs as he expected, but real treasures.
Legendary treasures.
Of course, he decided to tell Aretii (administrator of the temple) and
Othrian (the Patriarch) right on the next day.
One of the things that caught his eyes was a helmet. He put it on,
and he felt quite funny with it, so he took it off, and took it,
together with some precious jewls & coins. Ariton now left back to his
room, closed the opened floor and hid his new treasures among his
personal holdings.
"About Aretii & Othrian" he thought, "let's do it some other time..."
On the next day, he met Fontexe, which sounded quite rational this time
(Fontexe was surprised with the new member of ideology, and Ariton wondered
what was so difficult to understand in the past).
Now Fontexe realized the new opportunity, and asked Othrian for a small
favour: he wanted the nice little jewel
(The Necklace)
of Heronau (Heronau III).
At the same morning, before mitting Fontexe, Ariton had found it impossible
to meditate - as you could guess, and decided not to
make trouble of that.
"I don't need help!" he said to himself.
On the following evening-visit of Heronau and Delmart
(Delmart II: great-great-grandson of Heronau III), Ariton
(who was their regular cleric), invited them into his room, and then,
trying to grab Heronau's Necklace, he attacked them, killed Heronau,
animated him as an undead zombie and put him guard over his legal
heir - Delmart.
The same night, our new criminal gave his dearest friend - FFFF - the gift
(+ Delmart - to much trouble to keep him inside the temple, and even more
problems expected if released).
Now, Fontexe is an evil sorcerer, but in addition - he is
a business man. He rules an economic network rival to
the Oldthanns' family businesses.
Unless Delmart - the legal heir - gets free of Fontexe's prison
(with
the necklace
), there could be an "interesting situation" when
there's no balancing economical power.
The Oldthanns were the last power that opposed the criminal groups
(all ruled - as noone knew - by Fontexe).
Adventure setup
If the group of player characters contains a cleric or some other
religion-related fellow then at "the night of Ariton's helm" he dreams
this kind of dream:
A neigbour with whom he had good relations falls off his new built
balcony with his hands tied.
(DM: the neigbour is a friendly church; the new balcony is the treasure;
hands tied - very much like Ilmater's symbol; falls off - becomes evil and
loses his faith).
Oldthann family is in search of Heronau III and Delmart II.
They call up discreete adventurers to find their 2 relatives
(head and heir) with the necklace.
Upon accepting the mission, a young adventurer (Ilto) will offer the
group to be led by him to a place where his companion was taken prisoner
and probably suffers tortures (both of them attempted to do the job, but
it's beyond their capability).
Ilto knows who the criminal is (can recognize his face), how dangerous he
is, and (maybe) where he is.