#introduce all the characters and the premis and the setting

[wall-eye]

Falling back into the leverage pit 👍

[guidedbynors]

Quest RPG Adventure: The Realer of Two Worlds

Premis/Setting

The Realer of Two Worlds Takes place in any mine within your own campaign. It can take place as part of a small town, city, or even Kingdom that is built near a mine as its main source of income and work. It can also be a great starting point for a campaign as long as all the Questers agree to be connected to the mine in some way and have stakes in its continued existence and the profits it provides.

Feel free to name the town and mine anything that fits into your campaign, but for this short module, we’ll call it Phos Mine, named for the Phos Crystals that grow within its depths.

Opening Scene

Start your Questers in the local tavern near the mine, called The Purple Swill. It’s the local watering hole for all the miners, where they all swap tales of cave-ins, things within the deeper shafts that go bump in the night, and other tall tales. For a mine, Phos Mine is a pretty safe job other than the fact that the Phos Crystals project a person’s fears, desires, or needs as phantasms for all to see if touched with bare skin.

As the Questers drink the Purple Swill brew that the tavern is named after, the door to the tavern creaks open and a little girl, no more than 10 years old stands in the doorway. She is dirty and disheveled and looks ill-cared for. She shuffles up to the bar and asks for something to eat, but has no Phos Crystal dust to pay for it. The bartender is a gruff and uncompromising half-ogre who has little empathy or sympathy (if any). He launches into a talk about how nothing in life is free and at some point everyone has to make their way in life as the little girl begins to sob. The half-ogre doesn’t understand humans well and will think the little girl is laughing, as he often forgets that tears are typically a sign of sadness. If someone reminds him of this he’ll launch into another talk about how ogres, and especially half-ogre sweat profusely when they are sad, and he’s never cried in his life because the ogre in him means he has no tear ducts. For all intents and purposes, his name is Chuk.

When the little girl begins to let out a long wailing, Chuk will offer anyone a night's worth of Swill if they get the little human out of the tavern and stop it from making that noise.

(Optional: If you want to toss in some added tension to the quest, introduce an NPC band of adventurers who want that night of free Swill for themselves. When Chuk offers it up, they will try to stake claim to the child and get her out of the tavern, though not to help her. If your Questers are trying to help her, they may run into some competition with this other adventuring party.)

Eemknot Seeintings

The little girl is Eemknot Seeintings, and her father is a well-known miner named Eeam Seeintings. One or more of your Questers might know him. Eeam is well-liked, but some months ago his wife, Eemknot’s mother passed away.

As Questers question Eemknot the little girl will tell them that 10 days ago her father went to work in the mine and never came home. She’s eaten all the food in the house and has only now left because she’s gone hungry for the last day or so.

If/when pressed for details about her father, Eemknot will tell Questers he has been very sad since Mom died. If asked if she’s seen him do anything strange or if has been acting differently, she won’t name anything specific until she gets some food. Once she has something to eat her mind can get off food and she’ll begin to remember bits of information about her father. First, Eemknot divulges that she has seen and overheard her father speaking to himself while at home. When asked further she’ll tell Questers about the purple dust he puts on his food. Phos dust is purple, and the Questers would know this. Lastly, Eemknot will remember that when her father left for work ten days ago, he took a large backpack with him,

Manager Gorbuck

The Phos Mine has many shafts and adjacent tunnels that end in dead ends. Workers are there 24 hours a day, so no matter what time Questers go to the mine there will be a manager in the small office at the entrance.

Manager Gorbuck is a hardy woman of callused hands, grubby cheeks, and a can-do attitude. She spent years down in the Phos Mine until she lost her left eye in a bizarre bowling accident at the local bowling alley. She now is a pencil pusher and time-card tracker at the mine. Despite this, she keeps an eye on pretty much everything going on around the mine, even if she doesn’t know what’s going on below the surface.

When Questers come to speak with her about Eeam, she’ll nod as though she already knows what they’re talking about. She’ll tell them the same thing Eemknot told them. That Eeam went into the mine ten days ago with a big backpack. Reports from other miners are that Eeam went down into the deepest tunnels where there aren’t any lights set up. Gorbuck will just tell the Questers that Eeam is down in one of the deep shafts by himself in the dark, and nobody has been able to get him to come out.

The Phos Mine

The Phos Mine is a busy place with rail cars and workers. If your Questers are miners, they’ll know how to get to the deep shafts, but they may want to stop along the way to ask workers if they’ve seen Eeam and to learn about why he’s in the deep shafts.

The Phos Mine looks like any other mine until Questers come to places that are actively being excavated. In the most active places, Phos Crystals as small as a thumbnail and as large as a head are being dug out of the ground. Every worker wears long sleeves and gloves to protect themselves from the phantasms that will spring from their minds if they touch a Phos Crystal with their bare skin.

If Questers touch a Phos Crystal to their bare skin, it is up to you how you want to handle the event. You can ask the player to describe what phantasm appears or, if you know the character's backstory well, you can use the event to drive some character-centered narrative.

Finding Eeam

Eeam is a chamber which the deepest shaft of the mine opens onto. There are no rail cars that take Questers down the low, and so they’ll have to walk, eventually. They’ll also need to take some form of light with them, whether by magical means or a torch.

Questers will hear Eeam sooner than they see him. His voice echoes in the large chamber he is in and floats up the deep shaft as Questers approach. It sounds as though he’s having a conversation, but as so often happens with echoes it’s difficult for Questers to know what he’s saying until they enter the chamber.

As their light floods the large cave-like chamber they will take in the following:

The chamber is wide and roughly curricular, perhaps 100 feet, give-or-take, in any direction from wall to wall. It has a tall ceiling as well. Near one side of the chamber is a small underground stream. Presumably, this is how Eeam has stayed alive without dying of thirst.

More startling, and perhaps what should be focused on, however, is the scene near the stream. Eeam is bustling around a kitchen that seems completely out of place in the chamber. At a small table is his daughter Eemknot and a woman that could only be his wife, and Eemknot’s mother, Daunt. Eeam is talking to his family, but when the family responds they their mouths move but no sound comes out. However, Eeam seems to understand them. What’s most startling is that wherever Eeam walks, a scene appears for all to see, and the scene behind him fades. It’s as though anywhere he goes a phantasm of his desire is manifested before him, creating a replica of the life he lived before his wife died.

The Solution

In my experience, the best Quest sessions are ones in which questions are posed to players without a clear idea of how they will achieve their goal. In this case, the goal will likely be to get Eeam to see the phantasms for what they are and return to his daughter. While he has chosen to live in a dream world, he will acknowledge Questers and try to make them feel at home as though they are visitors to his house.

There are a few options I can imagine Questers taking. First, they can try to discover the Phos dust Eeam uses on his food, and take it away from him. Second, they can just kidnap him and pull him out of the mine by force. Lastly, they can try to reason with him through clever roleplay and abilities. There are some skills that let Questers dissolve illusions. It’s up to you, the Guide, to decide if this will work on the phantasms. Since they are springing from Eeam himself, there could be a case made that magic won’t work on the phantasms themselves, but only on the person.

Note that if they try to force Eeam to leave his dream world made of self provoked phantasms, the trauma may drive him mad. Instead, it may take something more subtle in order for him to leave--perhaps even bringing the real Eemknot down into the chamber, in order to make Eeam see what he has done to his real daughter.

If Questers are unable to convince Eeam to return to the real world, they may have to find someone to take Eemknot in or adopt her themselves.