Adventures on Mount Tycho
The story begins...
Someday, I will pass on this lordly title, and the Wargang will welcome a new Protector. I have chosen my successor, which none will favour. Nor will will any oppose it, neither. Three wars I fought for the Protectorship, and if the Battle Lords don't accept my choice there will be a fourth fought without me. That is the nature of it. So they will accept a Protector they do not favour to prevent a war no one wants.Salvor will wield the Wargang after me. I only hope I can pass on what he needs to know to rule this island: about the nature of power and harnessing the will to use it. Above all I would have him know all that must be sacrificed in the name of the Queen. Someday I would tell him these things. About all that was done and all that was lost to preserve this family. When I think of Salvor's future I am glad we never had to campaign since his coming of age. When we ride in colours I see him and I think of poor Connick, who never lived to be so old as young Salvor. I wonder how things could have been different; if I could change things, could this guilt be erased?
Adventures on Mount Tycho told the first stories of Janov Seldon, Salvor Dorrick, and Denille Olivoix. It introduced the concept of the Precursor Safe Earth Areas and established the threat of the Phoenix Order. These adventures took place for a period of roughly three months during the Phoenix Order's early investigations of Mount Tycho and ended with the destruction of the Brightmoon Biodome.
Plot points/Scenes
Scene 1
Machinists hire Janov Seldon to stalk Tycho Moor.
Location: Brightmoon / North Yorkshire Moor
Scene 2Janov fights armed intruders, gains entry to the Brightmoon Biodome.
Location: Tycho Moor
Scene 3Lord Protector Simon Aimery responds to the summons of Duke Rendell of York, travels to Brightmoon with his squire, Salvor Dorrick. They investigate the moor.
Location: London / Brightmoon / Tycho Moor
Scene 4Marcel Lebeau and his companions Simon Lebeau and Denille Olivoix camp out on the Yorkshire Moors during their annual hunt. They see flying machines heading for Mount Tycho.
Location: North Yorkshire Moor
Scene 5The Player Characters converge at the summit of Tycho Moor and join Janov Seldon in battle against the armed intruders led by a woman wearing Phoenix Order apparel. Her name is Delora Delarmi.
Location: Mount Tycho / Brightmoon Biodome
Scene 6Marcel and Lord Simon Aimery are disintegrated during the fighting. Janov sets the Biodome to self destruct so it does not get captured by the Phoenix Order.
Location: Mount Tycho
Scene 7Salvor Dorrick inherits the title of Lincolnshire and the office of Lord Protector.
Location: London
Scene 2
Scene 3
Scene 4
Scene 5
Scene 6
Scene 7
Themes
Originally titled "Chess Pieces" in the original campaign draft notes, this adventure set up many of the main characters of the story and established the Phoenix Order as a technologically advanced force willing to employ ruthless methods to achieve their desired goals. Delora Delarmi, equal parts alluring and cruel, demonstrated the seductive power of the Phoenix Order's psionic mastery. Her disregard for the venerated Biodome, already confirmed as one of the legendary Safe Earth Areas (SEAs) spoken of in Precursor legend, signifies the cyclical iconoclasm that mars the transmission of historical fact in the Post-Cataclysmic Era.
The killing of both Lord Simon and Old Marcel constitutes a campaign theme of paternal absence, which mirrors the broader motif of a contemporary period overshadowed by the heroic personages and exploits of the previous age. The previous era dominated by the Four Heroes is literally known as the "Heroic Age." In relation to this, what space can there be for heroes now that the time for heroics has categorically passed? The upshot of this violent campaign kick-off is that with their "fathers" killed the Player Characters are free to forge their own destiny and assume control of their own world.
Structure
Exposition
Mount Tycho had always been a place of legend and rumour. In the spring months of 997 PCE, however, strange and violent events began to occur. The destruction of crops and the mutilation of game and livestock shocked the nearby peasants and freeholders of Brightmoon. Without a governing lord to take charge of the situation, the people turned to the Machinist Clan for assistance.
The Machinists hired a local forest yeoman named Janov Seldon to scout the hills of the North Yorkshire Moor. One night while patrolling the slopes of Tycho Moor, Janov encountered a band of chalky skinned humanoids wearing unusual metal armour comprised of plates, tubes, and blinking lights.
Conflict
Delora Delarmi brought her raiding party to Mount Tycho in search of prizes for the Golden Emperor, Golan Trevize. Drawn by Precursor legends and the folklore surrounding the legacy of the Four Heroes, she made it her mission to seize the technology and data contained within the mountain and offer as tribute for her master. Delora was also well aware of legends regarding the Seven SEAs myth and wondered if the Brightmoon Biodome could be one of these mythical locations. Her mission threatened to deprive humanity of the Precursor legacy that the Four Heroes had fought so hard to safeguard within the mountain.
Rising Action
Janov made contact with one of Delora's scouting parties and demanded to know their purpose in the hills of Brightmoon. The strange creatures reacted violently when confronted and spoke no discernible language. Janov, marvelling at their glowing weapons, felled them with bow and blade, but before he could investigate the fallen, their corpses and gear dissolved into fine white powder.
Nearby the site of this encounter, Janov noticed the Face Stone, an ancient local landmark depicting the image of a human face carved into a standing stone. The eyes of the carving glowed with an internal light and as Janov approached he saw a flat silver disc emerge from the stone mouth. An emotionless voice emanated from the unmoving face of stone: “Activation key accepted. Identification input required.” With this the glowing eyes began to blink with a steady pulsating rhythm. Janov peered into the eyeholes and felt a puff of air against his eyes. The voice returned: “Legacy: Juri Seldon identified. Access granted.”
Janov was startled to hear the name of his grandfather, a man he had never known and whom his mother rarely spoke about. He was even more startled to see the standing Face Stone begin to descend into the earth. When the top of the stone came level with the surface of the ground all movement stopped. Janov hesitated as the disembodied voice instructed him to stand on the stone, but the sound of more hostile raiders approaching convinced him to step forward.
The moment his feet touched the rock, it descended several feet at high velocity and came to rest inside a brightly lit circular chamber. Here Janov received a message from a holographic projection of Harold Mayfield. The message warned of coming dangers and tasked Janov with custodianship of the subterranean complex underneath Tycho Moor: the Brightmoon Biodome. The apparition also gifted Janov with a horse, Lord Harold’s own cavalry charger, known as Vanguard.
In the coming weeks, Janov assumed control of the facility and set himself to learning about its various computer systems and technical abilities. He explored the various environments of the Biodome and defended the Yorkshire Moors from additional raiding parties.
At this point the disturbances on the Moor attracted the notice of Duke Rendell of County York, the acting regnal lord of Brightmoon, and Lord Protector Simon Aimery was forced to come from London in order to investigate the escalating situation. Ghouls in unusual plate armour had been seen wandering the streets of local villages and peasants were starting to go missing. Public panic demanded action, but Aimery, skeptical of the outrageous report, came with only his squire Salvor as companion.
Additionally, Marcel Lebeau, a grizzled veteran of the Princes’ War and one time companion of the Four Heroes had brought his son Simon and young ward Denille Olivoix to the Yorkshire Moors for their annual hunt. The locals warned them about the strange doings on the moor, but Lebeau insisted that the trip, a family tradition, continue.
One evening after a day of tracking the moor, Lebeau and his young charges were astonished to see four slender flying machines darting through the air just above the treetops. The rush of air following in their slip stream tore leaves from trees and nearly extinguished the party’s campfire. Young Simon and Denille felt their hearts gripped by fear, but Marcel simply smiled, took up his longsword, and started walking in the wake of the machines.
As Marcel and his boys advanced in pursuit of the scout ships, Lord Simon and Salvor were preparing to climb Tycho Moor. When an explosion erupted on the eastern slope of the hill, both parties observed it and both rushed to investigate.
Crisis
The parties converged on the edge of a scorched clearing next to a steep cliff face. The rock wall of the cliff, however, was blasted open. Bright light shone out of the fissure and the silhouette shapes of armoured humanoid forms could be seen shambling through the rocky breach. Incredibly, mounds of melting snow sloughed out through the fissure. Lord Simon identified himself and assumed command by leading the party into the mountain and in pursuit of the strange armoured intruders.
Within the Biodome, the leader of the invading force came forward. A lithe woman dressed in a form-fitting armoured body-suit commanded her ghoulish raiding party to fan out in search of the "Master of the Mountain." She was fair to look on and her armour bore a black badge displaying the tri-flame insignia of the Phoenix Order. Identifying herself as Delora Delarmi, she commanded Janov to surrender the “SEA of Brightmoon.”
Climax
Deciding that the legacy of the Four Heroes was too important to let fall into the hands of such rude and remorseless jackals, Janov ignored Delora's threats and charged into battle. Witnessing this defiance, Lord Simon and the other new arrivals moved to support Janov's stand against the Phoenix raiding party. During the fighting, Marcel and Simon distracted Delora, a foe who proved skilled in telepathic psionics, while the rest of the now unified party faced the leader’s thralls.
During the fighting, Delora manifested a thought-form phantasm resembling none other than Lord Harold Mayfield. Daunted by the image of his old rival, Lord Simon struggled to approach the Phoenix telepath. Just as Lord Simon began to get the advantage, however, a single beam of energy from the hand of Delora struck him in the chest causing him to freeze motionless and fade away to nothingness. The telepath Archon laughed cruelly and prepared to dispatch the rest of the party, but Marcel intervened. Leaping forward with a spirit far younger than his limbs, the old soldier grappled with the psion and inadvertently activated the device that had disintegrated Lord Simon. Suddenly both the Phoenix agent and Marcel froze in place and faded away as well.
Falling Action
After a moment of stunned sorrow, Janov informed Denille, Simon, and Salvor of the Biodome’s imminent destruction. A self-destruct protocol had begun and very soon all would be lost. The group hastened for the exit but not before witnessing one final wonder within Tycho Moor. A ghostly image of Lord Fredrick Brasden, the leader of the Four Heroes, appeared near the exit of the mountain to address them all and display a nameless tower stretching into the sky. A door into the tower was shown along with a cryptic numeric sequence indicating a possible password that could bypass it. The apparition seemed to understand what was happening and instructed the “Master of the Mountain” to go to Timberley Castle in Capetia in search of a natural philosopher known as Manfred Klinnsmen.
Salvor snatched up whatever he could carry from the cavern and all four men dashed down the mountain, Janov riding a large, powerful white horse. Soon Mount Tycho quaked with a terrible eruption of such force that it blasted one whole side of the moor into a shower of dust and rubble.
Resolution
Heading north to Edinburgh, Denille and Simon parted company with Janov and Salvor, who headed south. Every man left in sorrow to mourn their fallen and plan their next move.
Upon his return to London, Salvor was informed that Simon Aimery, childless and bereft of kin, had bequeathed to him in will the Earldom of Lincoln as well as the military office of Lord Protector, an appointment that was quickly ratified by the Britannian Battle Lords.
Dates:
April-June 997 PCE
Player Characters:
Janov SeldonDenille Olivoix
Salvor Dorrick
Plot type
Adventure Arc
NPCs
Simon AimeryMarcel Lebeau
Serge of Moray
Antagonists
Clone GhoulsDelora Delarmi
Comments