Adventure Prompt
Setting
The World
The World of Innisfree is that of scattered, relatively small islands and seemingly endless oceans. Due to all the monsters, pirates, and terrifying storms, all long-term ship travel is incredibly dangerous. This severely limits both trade and travel between islands, leaving the islands (save the largest two, where most of the trade occurs) feeling extremely isolated. Because of this, there’s not a great many ships, and even fewer captains and crew brave enough to man them.
Agora Island
While it’s an island, you’d be mistaken to think of Agora as a tropical paradise. With it being the second-most northern island of Innisfree, the climate ranges from moderately cool at it’s southernmost point to arctic temperatures at it’s topmost peak. While the southern portion of the island is fairly nice due to the warmer climate, most of Agora is desolate and cold all year round.
Despite this, Agora is perhaps one of the most economically thriving islands due to its close proximity to Barbose (the largest island) and occasional trade with them. This prosperity is almost exclusively the port city Ramon’s, however. At this point, the neighboring river towns Ivarstead and Lorelei have withered away to barely town size, while the mining city Drakkar has been able to sustain itself on occasional stone and coal shipments to support Ramon’s growth.
Your Character
Due to the dangers of ship travel, you are most likely an Agora native, though if you want to be a recent immigrant you can contact me and we can workshop it together. While the primary races on Agora are humans, half-elves, and halflings at the southern half and dwarves and gnomes on the northern half, you can be whatever race you like. The rest is up to you, with one final requirement: For whatever reason, your character wants to complete the mission outlined below.
The Mission
One way or another, you are made aware of a fairly shady client who has written you regarding a particular task: Ramon’s Lord Halsey (the head of the merchants guild, he practically owns the city) has a family vault of historical treasures picked off from Barbose’s occasional shipments located somewhere on the island. You are to break into the vault for him, but the note made it clear you are not to steal anything from it. The mission’s purely for intel of some sort, it seems.
The reward and further mission details were said to be revealed in person at a rendezvous point, which you are heading to now. From what you understand, apparently some others have been contacted by him and will be there as well...
While your character wants to go on the mission, it can be for any reason you want. Maybe you’re a rogue and this is just another mission (although a bit of an odd one). Maybe you’ve never done anything shady before in your life but are desperate for money, and this is simply the best option you have while causing what you believe to be the least amount of harm (after all, you’re not really stealing anything, right?) Maybe you are going with the full intention of stealing everything from the vault anyway, the client won’t know any better, right? Or maybe you’re from one of the river cities and have a deep grudge against Ramon and Lord Halsey, and hope the mission’s success will cause them some sort of trouble down the road. Or perhaps you’re a knowledge seeker yourself and want to know what secrets the client is after.
Meta
This is probably the most important meta point for the campaign: This is a very god-lite game. There’s no organized religion to speak of, and gods as a concept is something that’s been long fading from the public mind. Clerics and Paladins are still available classes, but what grants them their power are powerful oaths or vows. These oaths can be practically whatever you want, but your character must adhere to them as they are what grant you your powers and switching such deep-rooted oaths will be incredibly difficult and painful.
Everyone will be starting at Level 1. The adventure is set up to be as quick or as long as everyone wants. If you guys aren’t feeling it, the entire thing can be done in one session and we can never speak of this again. If you are all having a good time though, there’s plenty of stuff to keep this going to at least Level 10.