I'm not that interested in the consequences of the Orb, but on how to run the adventure.
I'm planning the PC party (loosely aligned with Tolkeen through Mercenary assignments) to arrive at Solomon and I need assistance on how to run the scenario.
Do you allow PC to reach the Key of Solomon easily?
You play the Stone Piramid and Key as a mistery/heist scenario?
How do you involve PCs into the Orb plot?
I did it as a role-playing with Adventurer and Scholar O.C.C.s
It is a mystery / easter egg hunt with CS combat interruptions to mix in some action.
The CS had undercover agents in the town.
Tolkeen has undercover agents in the town.
IF you like you can add minions of Splugorth.
Role Play how they come upon the idea that the Key of Solomon exists and is in the town of Solomon.
The Town
Population: 3000 (before the war)
Pre-Rifts community once known as Swatara.
No apparent strategic value
Close to the Xiticix Hivelands
The town of Solomon is battered but mostly whole.
The CS could but won’t destroy the town out of fear the key will be destroyed, lost or there will be an explosion like a nuke.
One third of the town's citizens (1,000) fight against the invading Coalition
One third (1,000) remain behind as ground zero defenders
The women and their children have evacuated.
So you have a town without kids.
Adventure opportunities:
-CS squad attacks and players defend
-Tolkeen defenders come into town from battle with the CS and need the adventurers to skillfully perform medical aid.
However much I.S.P. and P.P.E. the players have, make more injuried how need medical aid.
This forces them to run away or use actual medical skill and get rewarded for it.
-Body Fixers and Cyber-Doc will shine like a diamond.
-Rogue Scholar & Rogue Scientist: explores the library. Ideally will have Speed Reading and Total Recall so it won’t take weeks.
-City Rat can hack the library computers. Write a program to find what they are searching to find.
-Can tail people and use surveillance systems to spy on the town’s people. Again this takes weeks.
-Can pick the locks on the homes and buildings that were locked up before they left. That would allow them to search the homes for clues about the key of Solomon.
Operator: Repairs the town's stuff. Side quest for construction. Undermine CS attacks on the level of communications and jamming devices. Spy on the CS to find out what clues they have.
-Vagabond can interview the town’s people. It will take two weeks to a month but their special ability to eyeball a fella and the I.D. undercover agent should find the CS undercover agent(s) (repeat if you want Tolkeen spies too, same with Federation of Magic and Splugorth).
-Also, lets the player know if they know more than they are telling about what and where the key of Solomon is.
-Wilderness Scout: Good for tracking people. Mapping the town. Mostly a side quest player. Did construction work also (carpentry).
Feel free to make several side quests to fix the town’s people's problems.
A big one is CS spies spying on the player characters and what they do about it.
The players can't really prove that the towns person is not just noisy just
like the players searching the town and questioning its people.
List of Clues:
The Orb of Solomon is real and is a "magic artifact"
-It is not a weapon or directly destructive in any way.
It is said to bring "wisdom, clarity of mind and peace of heart."
-There are two hurdles in using the Orb of Wisdom.
The Key unlocks the Orb.
-The Orb can only be used once every one thousand years!
It is a crystal ball roughly the size of a grapefruit but milky cream colored swirls around the inside (picture or video of it in the library).
-The Orb is indestructible
The Orb radiates with tremendous amounts of magic energy.
-The Key is a living being.
The Orb of Solomon imparts longevity (up to one thousand years).
-The key is the one who can unlock the orb and bestow it
upon another.
The Key lives without aging (this is a big clue as video in the library will show the face of the key).
If the Key is slain, the Orb of Solomon becomes dormant for one hundred years, after which time a new Key will be drawn to it.
The Key will sense when he has found someone in need of wisdom.
If there is more than one possible choice, it is The Key who ultimately makes the final choice.
The Key is a Grey Seer.
The Hidden Key:
Hidden within a secret chamber of the stone pyramid (known only to them and the stone master who built it) is the Key (the Grey Seer). She is guarded by a group of adventurers.
They only go out in turns to get food and information.
Finding the or the secret chamber in the stone pyramid can come about in a number of ways:
-Astral projection searching in between the walls of the pyramid.
-Surveillance on the pyramid will detect there are more people coming out than going in. The stone will block infrared optics. Sense presence will detect that there are people inside. Dog Boys and Psi-stalkers won’t be able to detect the ley line walker and such because of the P.P.E. power in the pyramid itself unless the NPCs are standing in front of them. Cybernetic hearing has a chance of hearing one of the NPC adventurers. A psi-ghost could walk through the walls and find them. The NPCs don’t show up on Sense Evil because they are not. Sense Magic won’t work past the walls of the pyramid. Those doing concealed surveillance of the pyramid could attempt to tail one of the adventurers back inside and find out where they are hiding.
They are:
Rand, a 3rd level Grey Seer,
Quiet Mitch, a 7th level Grey Seer,
Carboldi, a 6th level Ley Line Walker,
Sir Blake Klymore, an 8th level Cyber-Knight
Gunner, a 7th level Headhunter
IF discovered they will react according to the circumstances:
Each knows the plan. They may entrust the player characters with this information and the quest to find the Orb. They will only do this if the players prove themselves to be trustworthy in the eyes of townspeople or if things get desperate enough and the Coalition Army is about to take the town.
A medium-sized town:
A Town Hall
A town square
A small sheriff's office
A jailhouse
A couple of boarding houses
A few taverns
A two churches
A general store
A shopping district with several small shops: Barber shop, Bakery, a bank (local), a Dentist office, an diner, laundry, tailor shop, shoe store, a automotive garage, a town clock,
A horse stable
A small college-style campus area:
-A library of pre-Rifts history: Contains clues about the Orb of Solomon.
-A library of magic (empty; contains taken to Tolkeen for security)
-A stone pyramid (dimensional) that sits at the nexus point.
Note: The CS does not blow it up because they are afraid it will unleash a disaster: Bigger explosion, Ley Line storm, Rift, superpowers to the towns mages, free demons, that sort of thing.
Culture of the town:
A place of peace, learning, philosophy and the study of magic.
Geography:
Farmland: Orchards and vineyards that have been trampled by the arriving Tolkeen forces who came to protect the town.
NPCs:
-99.9% of the town’s people don’t know about the Orb of Solomon.
-That leaves about a dozen people who have clues.
-These people's clues often lead to one of the other 10.
-Only a few know a fact about the Orb of Solomon.
-The locals only trust and associate with each other.
The player characters will have to either spy on them, get it out of the 10 (psionics or magic) or befriend them.
The challenge is who are the 10 out of 1,000 who have clues?
-Many of the people who have stayed are store owners and those who work for them. Their main customers are the Tolkeen troops who pass through town.
-Also, old folks who are too tired to hit the road and start over. Some are retired mages and folk who remain to preserve what they can of their community.
-The people of the town have always tried to be neutral, refusing to take sides.
The one who knows it all is:
The True Atlantean Stone Master 10th level who built the pyramid. Know the real story about the orb of Solomon. So finding and getting their trust enough to share what they know is one of the ways to solve the mystery.
Last edited by darthauthor on Mon Dec 11, 2023 7:37 am, edited 1 time in total.
darthauthor wrote: ↑Sun Dec 10, 2023 11:33 pm
NPCs:
-99.9% of the town’s people don’t know about the Orb of Solomon.
-That leaves about a dozen people who have clues.
-These people's clues often lead to one of the other 10.
-Only a few know a fact about the Orb of Solomon.
-The locals only trust and associate with each other.
The player characters will have to either spy on them, get it out of the 10 (psionics or magic) or befriend them.
The challenge is who are the 10 out of 1,000 who have clues?
Wow, thank you very much for such detailed info and tips.
The quoted bullet points really help me how the catch the scenario mood!
I latched onto the handoff of the orb to the mercs heading to Free Quebec and turned it into a "follow the MacGuffin" campaign. The trail led them to Ishpeming where they found some of the merc crew who split off to try their hand in the Robodome. They were told the rest of the merc group chartered a boat to The Relic (Hamilton). From there they followed the trail to Singer, where they found the merc who was entrusted the orb drowning his sorrows. His crew didn't like guarding the magic artifact so they split off from him. Then a bunch of Mystic Knights stole the orb from him. PCs tracked/found them, but not before they sold it to some Splugorth slavers. That led the PCs to Splynn where it turned out the slavers sold /gave it to Splynncryth's high end magic vendor high lord, who in turn sold it to a Gargoyle Mage affiliated with the NGR Gargoyles. That led to NGR, the Battle of Wroclaw, and eventually to the alps. They infiltrated the gargoyles and managed to get the orb by introducing the goyles to Scard and Tolkeen (via rift). Then Scard took the orb and sent them to their (theoretical) death via rift to a lanotaur homeworld. Scard wanted the war to continue, and needed to get rid of anyone with knowledge of the orb.
So now Tolkeen and the European Gargoyles have an alliance. Scard has the orb, and the PCs are afraid to go back to Tolkeen, but want to kick Scard's ass for the backstabbing. It's been going on for about a year of both game and real time.
Since no one that had the orb really knew what it did or how to use it, just that it bestowed great wisdom, it was very desirable to all parties, especially Lord Zerstrun who wanted to learn how to win the war against the NGR.
Example of one of the CS spies:
I usually make one for each of the player characters.
I did a couple of city rat varients from the bionics book: Pack Rat & Roof Rat.
Also, did a Vagabond. Gave them cover jobs where they would see a lot of people: Barber,
Bartender, Cook, Laundry, Taxi Driver, etc
They meet, so if the players follow them they will find out who they are and turn the tables
on their spy operation and steal their information.
4th Level CS City Rat O.C.C.
Dedicated and Loyal CS spy
Height: Five feet, 10 inches (1.78 m).
Weight: 190 lbs.
4th Level City Rat O.C.C. Skills:
Literacy: American: 60%.
Language: American: 92% & Dragonese
Barter: 51%
Tailing: 80% (for following the heroes without being seen)
Pilot: Automobile: 76%
Pilot: Bicycle: 86%
Pilot: Motorcycle: 87%
Computer Operation: 60%, Math: Basic: 70%
Running
Streetwise: 52%,
W.P.: knife: +2 to strike, parry, and throw
Hand to Hand: Assassin (cost 2 O.C.C. Related skills) 4th level
+2 initiative
+2 to strike
6 attacks per melee round
W.P. Paired Weapons
Karate Punch (2D4 damage),
+3 to pull punch
+2 to roll with impact/punch/fall.
Karate Kick (2D6 damage),
+4 to S.D.C./Hit Point damage on all physical attacks
O.C.C. Related Skills:
Concealment: 52%
I.D. Undercover Agents: 77%; the use of this skill reflects how much attention & time they put on someone.
Palming: 50%
Pick Locks: 65%
Pick Pockets: 60%
Prowl: 65%
Safe-cracking: 47%
Surveillance: 60%
2nd level: Find Contraband: 49%
4th: Acrobatics
Secondary: (8)
Climbing: 70%
Camouflage: 35%
Electronics: Basic: 50% (uses with surveillance and stealing cars)
Electronic Countermeasures: 45%
Land Navigation: 48%
Lore: Demons & Monsters: 40%
Radio: Basic: 60%
W.P. Handgun: +2 to strike
3rd: W.P. Blunt +1 (uses Neural Mace)
Equipment:
Surveillance and Tracking devices:
Will secretly place tracking & listening bugs on the players using pickpocket skill.
Lockpick tools
Neural Mace
Steal knife
Silver plated knife
Handgun and bullets
Credits and trade items 10,000
Motorcycle riding clothes
Civilian clothes 3 sets
Stealth clothes 1 set (infrared shielding, +10% to prowl)
Silver cross around neck.
flashlight, 900 pound (405 kg) test strength nylon cord/rope, a grappling hook, RMK Robot Medical Kit ("Stitcher"), Pocket Digital Disc recorder,
Motorcycle
