"Grand Opening" Location Notes
-------------------------------
Quick Quest #9, "Grand Opening," is a short adventure for "The Fantasy Trip" by Steve Jackson Games
This document is intended for game masters who have bought the adventure and want a bit more information about the locales, and especially those intend to use the setting for future adventures. There are minor spoilers below; if you are a player in a group intends to run through this adventure, stop reading!
The Abbey
---------
Spoiler:
At the edge of town is an Enokian seminary and retreat. Within its walls are a large garden, three austere residence halls, a commissary / chapel, and four small, comfortably furnished guest houses. The PCs will be put up in one of the latter.
The acolytes living here spend a third of their waking hours in religious training, a third copying devotional scrolls, and the remainder toiling in the gardens, growing flowers and herbs. It's a big money maker for the Enokian authorities!
If the PCs spend any time looking over their residence they will find a hidden door (2/IQ to spot, automatic with Detect Traps) concealing a ladder leading downwards. Below is a tunnel which lets out in another hidden closet in a hut just outside the walls. If questioned, their hosts claim the tunnel was built to allow priests and acolytes to escape should their oft-maligned faith come under prosecution. In practice, the tunnels were included to allow persons of a certain profession to make clandestine visits.
Guests will find the acolytes and priests friendly and accommodating. The young priests-in-training are naive and unnervingly enthusiastic. They will use any excuse to pull the characters into hearing gushy descriptions of Enok's fabulous feats (for example: Crumbling the walls of heretics' fortress with a mighty bellow; Assembling and herding an army of lions to devour a troupe of bandits; Summoning a swarm of meteors to light up the skies above a group of refugees fleeing persecution.) They will also provide adventurers with unsellable (typo-ridden or ink stained) devotional scrolls full of edifying quotes from Tullis and Magurt.
The Old Temple
---------------
Spoiler:
One of the first temples of Enok lies in the middle of town. It has a cemetery (reserved for priests, and high-paying faithful), a small meditation garden, and a domed worship space. Its maintenance has been neglected as the great temple neared completion and now looks rather shabby even as services continue to be held there. As the grand opening ceremony approached, the place was been all but stripped of statuary, tapestries, and other religious paraphernalia.
As the adventure starts, the grounds have become a tent city, crowded and bustling, with barely adequate sanitation and a commissary struggling to keep pilgrims fed with gruel, black bread, and pulses.
The Grand Temple
----------------
Spoiler:
The full official name of this giant domed edifice is "The Temple of Martyrs Tullis and Magurt." Construction had begun well before Tullis and Magurt -- two faithful nobodies, really -- were framed for the robbery and murder of a local merchant. The Enokian hierarchy made much of the pair's shabbily run trial and botched hangings, and wrangled posthumous pardons by the Duke himself. Tales and legends of Tullis' kindness as a youngster, and Magurt's bravery during his time as a soldier, were manufactured and spread through the kingdom. The date of their execution was made into a feast day, and the grand temple renamed in their honor. The men's pickled and cosmetically enhanced remains were recently unearthed, transferred to grand new caskets with glass lids, and lie in state waiting for their part in the grand procession leading up to their official re-interment.
At the time of the adventure, the temple grounds are muddy and raw, strewn with construction debris and the tents of craftsmen. With time, the top of the mesa will be carefully landscaped, and the road that switchbacks its way up the side of the hill repaved and lined with statues. A large area to the west and northwest will be walled off and a pleasure garden cultivated. This paradise-on-Cidri, open to the most well-heeled of the faithful and of course the high priests, will no doubt be the venue for much wining, dining, and debauchery.
Further Developments
---------------------
Spoiler:
* If the adventurers do a good job at the Grand Opening, and are not implicated (at least openly) with Mane and Sadday's betrayal and escape, they may be tapped for another job:
While the authorities have freely plundered the above-ground old ruins for granite and marble blocks, exploration of the maze of passages and chambers beneath has barely begun; the place has had a bad reputation going back a millennium. The party could be employed to delve and thoroughly map the place. There are, down deep, things far worse than ghouls.
The Enokian authorities are a greedy, conniving bunch. Most are nowhere near as warm and friendly as Sarrit Mane; picture your classic well-fed, ornately dressed, unctuous, pompous cleric. Meeting them means clammy handshakes, smarmy greetings tinged with condescension, over-the-top professions of faith, and hard bargaining over rates of pay presented as pious thrift. Behind the scenes, they are sanctimonious bullies, dividing their time between keeping up appearances for the faithful, pulling strings economic and political, and dealing with rivals in the hierarchy. Characters who work for them should be provided with clues that their employers are not on the up-and-up, and liable to turn on them if things go wrong. Notable discoveries -- of treasure, and places in the labyrinth which could be employed by the Faith for hidden, nefarious deeds -- could be a liability, if the high priests decide to ensure they remain their secret, at any cost.
Spoiler:
* If the party alienates the Enokian authorities -- by ruining the opening ceremony, or publicizing Mane's treachery -- they will have earned an enemy. The adventurers will be approached by local notables who are nervous about the cult's influence in town. Merchants look forward to annual influx of pilgrims, some deep-pocketed, but the temple will get a share of that wealth too. The lord-mayor, other faith leaders, magistrates, and local scholars fear the Enokians will use this bounty to effectively take over the town. Adventurers with the appropriate skills will be offered missions to steal documents, investigate the digs beneath the old ruins, and keep tabs of the high priests' activities.
Re: For GMs: "QQ #9, Grand Opening" Location Notes
Quote:
Originally Posted by hcobb
Where's the door to Building H?
Underground chambers C are separated by curtains or doors?
The door to the ground-floor warehouse is there! You'll see a small rectangular white spot in the third blackened hex point from the left.
The are actually two doors each between the main store room (future crypt) and the two side crypts where the martyrs will be interred. They are "brace" shaped.