[The Outlanders return to Freegate and start all new shenanigans.]
[This session took place sometime in 2005, I have no indication of when. We were playing Champions 5th Edition with the Second Edition Fantasy Hero supplement.]
Player Characters
Crunch – male ogre from the Free City of Freegate, representing the Temple of Toth
Dangar Stonekleaver – male dwarf from the Northern Dwarven Kingdom
Peter Peterman – male human, representing Outlands University
Wendell Dorshield III – male gnome, Captain and Architect of the Yardbird
Malwyn – male High elf fighter and military expert
Darkfox – female human thief from Freegate, secret ID of socialite Karlyn Gryphshaw
[Session 1 is missing from my records. This is based on the written adventure and a very little from my memory.]
Session Begins
The adventure started with the Outlanders returning to Freegate via the airship Cloud Darkener. When they arrived at Freegate they discovered that Tim was no longer on the airship. In Freegate they asked around and learned that Tim had arrived in town a day before them, but left again, telling Steve the Half-orc (who worked at Tim’s pub) that he was “going for a walk.”
The Arch-Dean of Natural Philosophy at Outlands University contacted Wendell and arranged a meeting to introduce representatives of the University and the Temple of Toth [god of Knowledge], both of whom will be joining the Outlanders. The University representative is to supply wizard skills and represent the University. The representative of the Temple of Toth is there to observe and support the Outlanders.
The group met over lunch at the University Center Cafeteria (the Faculty Dining Room, specifically). The initial meeting was rocky, but it was tentatively agreed that Crunch and Peter would be working with the Outlanders. Whether or not they will be actually part of the Outlanders was still up for considerable debate.
The Outlanders had a map they found in the Temple of Watching Twilight [previous adventure] that showed the City of Freegate nearly 3000 years ago, before it completely occupied the mesa top. The old city graveyard was shown in the area now known as Outtown, with several tombs marked out. The Outlanders were curious why those tombs were marked and assumed there was treasure, treasure they wanted. However, they would clearly need to dig to get it and wanted to avoid opportunistic interference from those that currently lived where they needed to dig or owned the land and could claim ownership of any treasure dug up.
The Outlanders consulted with the Temple of Usher [Usher being the Guardian of Time and the Dead]. The records of the Old City Graveyard were incomplete, partly due to age and partly due to the contents of the cemetery having been moved 2500 years ago. The records showed that the majority of those interred were moved to the new ossuary next to Zenda Castle by the Temple of Usher itself, but a few of the crypts could not be moved. Reasons for this could not be found. The unmoved crypts had their above ground components disassembled and their entryways filled before the entire site was covered with a new layer of soil and blessed by the Temple of Fortuna [Goddess of Luck and Fortune, favored by merchants].
A partial map was found that showed the crypts that were left in place and provided names for three of them: Crenshaw Pinchpenny [an ancestor of Darkfox’s], Lady Danya of Kozelsk, and Timothy Brewer [the same full name as Tim, the Wizard]. The fourth crypt was listed as “Unknown”. The Temple of Usher freely gave permission to the Outlanders to dig as the land was no longer considered under their purview. [They will later change their mind, once they have more time to check their records more thoroughly.]
The Outlanders decided that the easiest way to avoid any interference was to purchase the land and structures currently on it. Consulting a map of Outtown and overlaying it onto the old map, they worked out a short list of properties that currently sit on top of the tombs they want to dig down to. In order to find out who owns the properties that they want to purchase, they had to do some research. Property ownership in Outtown was never clear-cut and most properties had extensive back taxes owed on them.
The Outlanders first went to the Freegate Tax Office (FTO) in the Golden Triangle district, assuming they would have records of any taxes owed for each parcel and the ownership thereof. While they had records of taxes owed, they did not have current ownership records – the records were kept at the Land Office. After being shuffled through several departments, none of which knew where the Land Office was, the Outlanders were eventually told they needed to consult with the Governmental Office of Bureaus (GOB), which keeps records on all Freegate governmental departments.
At the GOB they were sent to various desks and offices until a bureaucrat was forced to admit that, due to some “issues,” the GOB does not have the current location of the Land Office. The Outlanders were instead provided with a list of five possible locations to check, provided the Outlanders promise to never tell anyone who gave them the list. The Outlanders made this promise and were given the list.
The Outlanders worked through the list of locations. Along the way they ended up at the Bureau of Recreation, Entertainers, Carnivals, and Sideshows (BuRECS), the Bureau of Equine Transference (BET), the Fringe Iconography and Religions – Investigations (FIRe-I) department, and the Bureau of Ordinance Management (BoOM) [who were big fans of the Outlanders and disappointed Tim was not there with them], until they finally arrived at The Land Office.
The Land Office people were surprised to see anyone, let alone the Outlanders. After some coaxing and a promise to not tell anyone where they were located, the Land Office provided a list of the current owners of the parcels of land in Outtown that the Outlanders were considering purchasing. The owners of the parcels of land, in the order of desirability, were:
- Baron Olaf of Eltdorf, an expat noble from the Bayern District currently living in Freegate
- Laurin the Red Wizard, an elven matriarch in Freegate
- Steinkel Bonemace, a local human
- Harald Bronzearrow, a local human, 200 years ago
The Outlanders tracked down the people on their list.
Baron Olaf of Eltdorf’s lands in the Bayern District were on the east side of the Greater Tabor River and were now claimed by the Duke of Lundania. As a baron, Olaf must have ownership of land in order to maintain that status. He won the plot in Outtown in a card game many years ago and held onto it as a joke, but now it was the only land he had title to and he would not sell it. He offered to give it to the Outlanders IF they liberated his barony from the Duke of Lundania. The Outlanders declined but left their contact information.
Laurin the Red Wizard had recently died of very old age and her will was in probate. She outlived several generations of her children (many of whom were adventurers), so determining who, exactly, owned the land now was taking some time. The Outlanders left their contact information.
Steinkel Bonemace was a crotchety old man who lived in a dilapidated building near the center of the large parcel land and didn’t want to sell. At all.
Harald Bronzearrow’s parcel of land went to an heir when he died, but that worthy was not named. It would take some serious research to track down the current heir to the land. Without the title the current occupants had the right to live there and could not be made to move. Wendell got some gnome archivists working on it.
At some point the Outlanders learned that if they just paid the back taxes on a parcel of land, they would become the official owners of the land. There was some legal work to be done and afterwards the Outlanders would have to work out a way to get the current occupants to move, but they would have legal ownership of anything they recovered from the tombs below. The Outlanders decided to follow this path, choosing to pay the back taxes on Steinkel Bonemace’s parcel.
The Outlanders also needed a cover story for once they started digging, if nothing else to keep other people from digging down to the cemetery layer and looting the tombs before the Outlanders could. Wendell learned that the Gnome Consortium was looking to build a large facility for airships in their new passenger service with the Fortuna-class merchant airships. He suggested that building the facilities on top of Outtown would be safer than building out on either canyon rim.
[Things happened and The Skytown Development Group was formed. This incorporated company would work on designing and building Skytown, the newest district of Freegate, to be built over parts of Outtown. It would require the purchase of more land through paying back taxes on properties and relocation the current residents, but the gnomes had plans and ideas for that.]
Session Ends.
NPCs Met
[Quite a few, actually. Unfortunately the detailed records of what happened and who the PCs talked to were lost in the Hard Drive Crash of 2014.]
Happening Off-Stage
These notes are also missing.
DM Discussion
[I was surprised at how much I had for the first session. Most of this was in my adventure notes. I had to sum up the creation of The Skytown Development Group as I don’t have anything explaining exactly how it came about. It was not part of my original adventure notes but something the players came up with and I ran with.]
[I do have session notes for Sessions 2 and 3, but nothing for Session 4, where the adventure and campaign ended. The campaign ended because my burnout reached critical and I was out of ideas on what to do next with the campaign. It would be 20 years before I returned to this campaign world and to do that I had to advance the in-game calendar forward 30 years and set the new campaign in a completely different area of the continent. That is the Sudden Sea campaign. The creation of the Sudden Sea itself ties back directly to events in this campaign, how exactly being a campaign secret I’m not willing to share just yet.]
[The In Search Of… campaign is also set in the same world, also 30 years later but a month behind the Sudden Sea campaign. As the In Search Of… campaign involves a lot of airship travel it is entirely possible it will catch up with the Sudden Sea campaign on the calendar. We’ll see how it goes.]
Tomb Raiders
Previous session: Campaign Status Update
Next Session: Session 2 [not yet edited]
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