More cameos: Sailors are sorcerors!

From: Hal Bowman <hal_bowman_at_hotmail.com>
Date: Sat, 18 Jul 1998 10:37:31 PDT


Here is another mini-cameo:

Sailors in trouble:

This one requires that the at least one of the PC's is a Dormal cultist with knowledge of open seas or that a favored (and thus to be protected) NPC is instead. It can be staged wherever Sorcerors are hated and feared and where they can be detected by a simple test at close range. It is especially handy if the PC's are from a culture whose sailors don't really understand that Open Seas is Sorcery.

(It was first run with a party from Genertela who had sailed in their own ship to Pamaltela and had trekked deep into the Dorraddi plains region. One NPC and one PC, both were Dormal sailores. The Dorraddi in my version were anti-Sorceror. The followers of the Hon Hoolbiktu hero tradition of Vangano worship (see Tales of the Reaching Moon - #11?) have magical mirrors which don't fog when a Sorceror breathes on them. The PC's included someone with a marginal command of Arbennan and were thus barely able to comprehend what was happening. The word for Sorceror, however, was not known and this made things all the more confusing. Borrowing from Nandi, I made "Arap-ponik" mean sorceror. Roughly this is Son of Witchcraft.)

PC's are trekking deep into a sparsely populated area far from home. They are by themselves when a group of locals shows up and does the traditional greeting. The PC's are foreign enough that one or more of the locals privately convinces the group's leader to conduct the standard test for Sorcerors. It is key that the nature of this test be kept secret. The best option is to bury the test in a ritualized extended greeting. Any PC sorcerors will fail, including Dormal cultists with Open Seas. Discovery of sorcerors will cause the group to become hostile. It is up to the GM to see how this plays out: locals run, locals fight, locals cower, locals grab PC's. The locals might be talked out of hostilities if the PC sorcerors can convince them that the test is falsely positive or that they are OK in some other way.

Thanks for reading. Please send all "this is stupid and here's why" messages to:

Hal Bowman hal_bowman_at_hotmail.com



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