This is the inaugural session for the new Earthdawn game. Of the normal crew, only Bruce (Belwin Linnet) and Nick (Ooth) decide that they want to play in the game. Dan, who happens to be in charge for the day, elects to take this as a reasonable vote of at least marginal confidence. Sadly, there are some casualties. Chris decides that he gets too much twitchyness from Earthdawn, and heads off to play Close Combat. Meanwhile, Tim is off doing "family" things, despite the fact that he has already created over a dozen characters, including one T'skrang who looks like a good candidate for finalist.
Ugly even for a troll, Ooth numbers among He-Who-Speaks-With-Stone's apprentices. His skin is greenish and covered with strange, angular tattoos. He still speaks of the time he had himself ritually shaven at the tender age of 14, often delving into aspects of the ritual that even impolite company prefers to not hear about. He has been following the path of the Shaman for only a limited amount of time, and has yet to achieve the sort of unlimited fame and power he lusts for.
A young human never seen without his faded red woolen cap, Belwin Linnet is a Swordmaster in a society with little use for professional fighters. He is the second son of Margulen Linnet, the kaer's carpet weaver. Margulen had hoped that his younger son would follow his older brother and take up the family trade, and has consistently been disappointed with Belwin's choice to become a shiftless layabout instead. Belwin supports himself through the good nature of his fellow kaer-dwellers, as he has volunteered to be one of those Lucky Souls who will Stand Firm Before the Horrors when they break through the kaer seals, becoming Horror feed to give the rest of the population time to work out a better defense. He has started to recognize the dead-end nature of this choice, and is somewhat sorrowful that he lacks better options within the kaer.
The characters are all residents in a moderate-sized kaer that has been sealed for the last 400 years. It was designed to house a population of in excess of 4000 Name-givers, but a swarm of diseases beginning about 200 years ago has reduced the current population to about half that. There are populations of elves, dwarfs, humans, windlings, t'skrang, trolls and orks among the kaer's residents. The kaer government is republican, based around the Council of Elders.
The core of the kaer is a huge circular cavern dedicated to living quarters and crafts. The center of the cavern is dominated by the Council Keep, a castle-like structure that doubles as a government building and a last refuge in the event of an invasion. The Council Keep is in turn surrounded by the Gardens, then a ring of plazas and shops. The outer areas of the central cavern are primarily living quarters. The cavern walls are painted to resemble a pleasant countryside of broad meadows and rolling hills. A magically-lighted "sun" fitted upon a track across the top of the cavern dome provides light and the illusion of day. As a final touch, two waterfalls tumble from ports in the cavern wall into a matched pair of rivers that flow into drains near the Council Keep. Except for the fact that the "rivers" are only about two inches deep, the illusion is quite convincing. Considering that most of the kaer population (with the exception of a few elderly elves) have never seen the outside, the meanings behind most of the murals have become a touch clouded.
Several spokes lead out from the central cavern. One leads to the entrance, long sealed with complicated magical wards. Another leads to the tiered farming areas, where the kaer residents grow fungus and plants for food. A third leads to the lizard run and the sheep and goat pens. A fourth leads to the water treatment area and reservoir. The last leads to the mines, long since abandoned thanks to the kaer's shrinking need for new ore. The old forge is located midway along the passage. No one much goes past the forge except for the trolls who actually live apart from the other name givers. They have a more primitive life style around a series of geometrical crystal formations that accreted from the depths of the mines over 300 years ago.
The orks, who represent about half of the kaer population, have split into two factions. The Fury is comprised of Ork Power activists who claim the rest of the population are ork hating bigots who suppress them at every turn. They are balanced by the Humble, who appear to be largely embarrassed by this behavior and work to be good neighbors in the hopes of keeping tensions to a minimum.
The activities of the Fury have spawned a number of anti-ork factions among the other races. Hard feelings among these groups have led to some quantity of civil unrest and occasional violent clashes, which has in turn prompted the Council to impose harsh restrictions on public gatherings and political demonstrations. In the process, the Council has lost a substantial amount of public goodwill.
A gang of thieves nominally called The Masked have taken advantage of the current chaos to carry out crimes far more daring than their normal style. They have existed in the shadows for many years, only rarely engaging in any activity likely to draw attention. Noting the growing animosity in the kaer, they have developed the tactic of setting other factions against each other as a way of covering their own criminal behaviour.
On a less-organized basis, the local windling population has displayed a more pronounced tendency towards mischief. Though their pranks are generally written off as harmless, on at least two occasions they have touched a nerve: two headless windling corpses have been discovered in the past year, bringing to mind old troll habits of retribution from before the Scourge. The putative leader of the trolls, a shaman named He-Who-Speaks-With-Stone, refuses to comment upon the incidents.
The youngest faction in the kaer has deliberately gone out of it's way to avoid publicity. A group of dwarf scholars and librarians have been spotted lurking about, and it is rumored that they are genuinely looking for creative solutions to the kaer's current social problems. Their membership and actual goals are largely unknown, but it is taken for granted by the Councillors that they could not possibly have the best interests of the kaer at heart.
There are a total of about 70 Adepts in the kaer, some of them well-known but many of them obscure. The twelve Weaponsmith Adepts (of a variety of races) are the most organized of the Adepts: they have formed an impromptu guild, based at the Forge where they practice their Discipline. They number among them two Masters of the Discipline.
Beyond the two Weaponsmith Masters, there are seven other known Masters and at least one other suspected Master, comprising the Disciplines of the Swordmaster, the Warrior, the Elementalist, the Nethermancer, the Illusionist, and the Wizard. There are rumors of a windling Cavalryman Master, but no proof.
Several other Disciplines, particularly that of the Thief, are suspected to count Masters among their practictioners, though there has been no public acknowledgement of their status.
One of the most important local Adepts is the Shaman He-Who-Speaks-With-Stone, a leader in the troll community. Some years ago, he adopted five apprentices (including the character Ooth). One of his most advanced students, an Ork with close ties to the Fury, has recently been banned from the regions of the old mines where the magical crystals are found. This is a substantial penalty, as this region represents the only area of the kaer isolated enough to allow a Shaman to commune with Nature and increase his power.
The characters' respective masters instruct them to attend a special meeting late at night in the Gardens. As the characters enter the area, they hear some conversation in the darkness. As they approach, the conversation dies away, but the speakers do not depart. The characters are quickly able to see that the speakers are a small cluster of scholarly-looking dwarfs.
The leader of the dwarfs explains to the characters in grave tones that the kaer is facing a crisis. The water supply for the entire complex is purified by a series of six Orichalcum chips placed down in the sewer system. Very recently, someone stole these artifacts. With their absence, the kaer has less than a month's supply of clean water available. The dwarf leader asks the characters to help them, and the rest of the kaer, by retrieving these items.
Belwin expresses a certain amount of concern that such a desperate civic matter is being handed to a couple of callow youths. The dwarf agrees that Belwin is extremely callow, but defends his choice upon the basis that the entire mission must be kept extremely discreet. If it were to become widely known that the kaer's water supply was in jeopardy, the current social unrest would most likely break down into actual violence and chaos. Belwin and Ooth reluctantly agree that the dwarfs know what they're doing, even if they are the only ones in the Garden who do. Belwin also apologizes for calling the dwarfs syphilitic, lizard-like and for claiming that they had duck's feet.
Having agreed to try and bring back the charms, the characters request additional information. The dwarf leader (who continues to seem really, really scholarly) fingers two particular factions: Ork Power advocates of the Fury, and their detractors among the other races. However, he points out that whoever stole the chips would have to be a powerful swimmer, which narrows the field of suspects somewhat. At this point, he offers to show the characters the scene of the crime.
The dwarf scholars lead the characters down a stairway at the back of the kaer, opposite the corridor to the Kaer Seal. The stairway proves to lead down to the main reservoir. Leading into the reservoir is a series of six pipes, each large enough to crawl in. An indentation in the floor of each pipe shows where the Orichalcum charms were once affixed.
Ooth notices that the bottoms of the pipes are covered in silt and mud. He then betrays his keen perception by noticing a large, clawed footprint in the mud that could only be a lizard or a t'skrang. He examines it further, and identifies it positively as a t'skrang. The dwarfs spend some time giving Ooth really patronizing compliments: "We knew you'd do well! You're already ahead of us!" Swiftly tiring of their snide gratitude, Ooth casts a magical vision spell that allows him to determine that the footprint has a slight (and rapidly fading) magical signature, indicating that it's maker was probably an Adept. He also notes that the water in the reservoir has a slight magical taint to it as well. At this point, the dwarf leader suggests that the crime probably took place only seven or eight hours ago.
Given this information, Belwin immediately concludes that the Masked faction must be responsible. Ooth remains a bit more rational, and suggests that there are probably only about a half-dozen t'skrang Adepts in the kaer, which really narrows down the suspects list. Confident that their chosen champions are well on the way to apprehending the responsible parties, the dwarfs depart.
After all the dwarf scholars vanish (poof!), Ooth plunges his head into a mound of nearby algae and casts Plant Talk. He asks the algae spirits about the thieves, quickly learning that there were two of them, one blue t'skrang who started out white and one other. Ooth asks Belwin about blue t'skrang, as most of them are green. Belwin has actually heard about t'skrang with a throwback uncontrollable chameleon ability, though he cannot remember at all if any of the local t'skrang have that particular problem. Ooth finally gives up trying to get any more detail out of the algae, concluding that he's strained it's intellectual capabilities.
The characters head up to the t'skrang neighborhood to see if Ooth can pick up any tracks similar to the tracks he saw in the reservoir. He hopes to spot some magical footprints that glow. He loses the original thief's prints sometime before they enter the actual city, though he does find some indication of a scuffle between the t'skrang thief and his accomplice, suggesting that the t'skrang might not have been along voluntarily.
Once in the t'skrang district of the kaer, Belwin wracks his brain for possible leads. He manages to recall one particular t'skrang by the name of Tz'kri who has a substantial reputation as a sneaky bastard with all the honor of a one-eyed, syphilitic groot-lizard. Belwin also remembers that Tz'kri is occasionally called Squiggly by his detractors. Through the agency of an Elven Troubador who claims to know everybody, the characters swiftly determine that Tz'kri still lives with his parents. They decide to go an lean on him for information.
The characters wait at Tz'kri's parents' house until he emerges, apparently because he has to take out the garbage. They catch him in the open, then browbeat him into going to get a drink with them at the Limping T'skrang common-house. He explains that he needs to ask his Mom for permission, whereupon the characters break out in peals of laughter. They finally persuade him that he's 28 years old, and can do what he wants. Once at the Limping T'skrang, the characters do their best to pump him for information, all the while keeping a keen eye on his depressingly green skin color. They quickly conclude that he didn't do it. However, when Belwin happens to mention t'skrang with skin color problems, Tz'kri instantly pipes up that he knows a t'skrang with that problem, a low-life named Tik-Tik.
At mention of the name Tik-Tik, one elf heads out of the bar with great alacrity. The characters run him down. He turns out to be a friend of Tik-Tik, and defends the fellow on the basis that he takes a lot of flak for not being able to control his skin color and for being a little cowardly. The characters make the elf take them to Tik-Tik, finally running into him in the T'skrang Quarter. As soon as he gets within shouting distance, the elf yells, "Tik-Tik! Run!" and the characters see one small t'skrang turn ghost-white and run for it. Of course, the characters forget about the elf and give chase.
Tik-Tik heads into an alleyway. Ooth heads after him while Belwin tries to cut him off. Both Tik-Tik and Ooth are slowed by the piles of garbage and filth in the alleyway. Tik-Tik breaks out of the alleyway and dives for a loose sewer grating just as Belwin reaches the opposite mouth. After a brief sojourn through the sewers, Tik-Tik makes a break for the reservoir and almost falls off a retaining wall. Once it becomes clear that he isn't going to get away, he disintegrates so fast that Ooth and Belwin are almost hit by the shrapnel. It quickly becomes obvious that Tik-Tik took the orichalcum chips, but he swears up and down that an ork named Mank made him do it.
Ooth recognizes Mank's name, and explains to Belwin that the fellow is a trouble-maker and a big wheel in the political wing of the Fury. He is given to garish clothes, and has one broken tusk. He's also a pretty tough cookie, enough that even weak Adepts choose not to fool with him. This intro really doesn't deter Belwin at all, especially considering that Ooth is cracking his knuckles even as he describes how "tough" Mank is supposed to be.
The characters force Tik-Tik to take them to Mank. Tik-Tik leads the characters to an open area in the Ork Quarter where Mank is haranguing a gang of orks. His speech is heavy in shouting and spitting, with a topic that alternates between how the orks designed and built the whole kaer out of the nobility of their hearts, and how the other races enslaved the orks and forced them to build the kaer. Both he and his audience seem to be unaware of the internal contradictions of these arguments. Au contraire, most of the orks in the audience really seem to be getting into it.
The characters wait at a nearby food vendor's shack enjoying deep-fried sparrows and kvass until the crowd breaks up. Mank heads towards the Forge, then beyond into the galleries of the old mines. The characters leave Tik-Tik behind and follow him. They stop when they hear him speaking to several others in a dark cavern, in orkish. Ooth sets up a barrage of Earth Blend spells to hide everyone until the conversation ends.
Mank wanders back sometime later, blissfully unaware of the characters' presence. Belwin sneaks up and whaps him on the back of the head, then Ooth Mystic Knifes him. A fight ensues, during which Mank reveals that he's an Adept too, by activating his Wood Skin talent. The characters respond to this obvious threat by beating him senseless.
A quick search of his person reveals that he is carrying really very little beyond a pair of sandals, a loincloth, and a short cloak. He is almost completely bald, and has a pot belly. The characters drag him off to a place where Ooth feels safe, then wake him up by splashing stagnant cave water on him. It doesn't take them long to get him to talk. He admits to the crime, and claims that the stones are in his apartment. The characters leave him tied up in the caves, then check out his story. As promised, they locate the Orichalcum talismans, plus a long handwritten screed in orkish.
The characters deliver both the Orichalcum talismans and the screed to their dwarf patrons. The dwarfs quickly translate the papers. They are unable to determine who actually wrote them, but do tell the characters that it is a message to Mank and the ork shaman (who appears to be Mank's boss), suggesting that all they need is a good cause to turn the people against the Council. Once the Council has been discredited, the Fury will be able to mobilize the people to shatter the Kaer Seal and emerge into the outside world.
The dwarfs then explain that ork society is normally lead by a temporal and a spiritual leader, typically a Warrior and a Shaman. When He-Who-Speaks-To-Stones trained an ork as a Shaman, that ork suddenly gained tremendous political power within the ork community. He and his currently-unknown temporal opposite number clearly intended to open the kaer to give him access to natural surroundings, which would increase his own magical power.
As one final detail, the characters search out Tik-Tik and have him go release Mank. Several days afterwards, they see Mank running around the kaer on the shaman's business. Oddly, they don't see Tik-Tik around in his normal haunts, implying either that he is hiding from Mank, or that Mank killed him in the caverns and hid the body. The characters don't spend a lot of time investigating either possibility.
The session ends with the dwarf scholars replacing the Orichalcum talismans in the water system and congratulating the characters upon a job well done. Each character gains a total of 820 Legend Points. Belwin spends 700 Legend Points buying Avoid Blow and Wound Balance to Rank 2 each, then Taunt from Rank 0 to Rank 2. Ooth spends 800 Legend Points buying Spell Fetish to Rank 2, Learn Spell Pattern to Rank 2, and Create Spell Fetish to Rank 2. At that point, both characters' masters agree to train them to Second Circle gratis.