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| #1humanbingJul 20, 2006 23:45:12 | Hello. I'm thinking of running a mixed-style campaign for my PCs once they arrive in Darkon. The campaign will focus on three issues: regaining their own memories, helping a Darkonian noblewoman with her guild, and finally in destroying a Falkovnian spymaster general. These plots draw heavily from John le Carre's novels "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" and "Smiley's People". There will be elements of amnesia recovery, mixed with a plot of espionage and spy ring organizations. These are the themes and issues, separately. After I list them, I will write how I propose to run the campaign. 1. The PCs' own memories: After the PCs enter Ravenloft, they will suddenly and abruptly be thrown into an encounter protecting some merchants. They will have no idea what's going on and be very disconcerted, but they will find all their colleagues seem to treat them with great familiarity. Furthermore, they have troubling scars on their bodies. The fighter will have mancatcher jaw scars around his neck. The wizard will have scars on his head and skull from the application of wytchbane leeches (which prevent spellcasting). etc. The cleric will have a strange holy symbol brand on his forearm, etc. All of them will have numbers tattooed into their chests and back, as well as a hawk face branded into their foreheads. Finding out what happened to them and how on earth they got these scars will be the primary goal. 2. The noblewoman: A Darkonian noblewoman, Shayla Nin, is now their paymaster and she has them doing odd jobs in her organization, L'Agence d'Affaires. Guarding shipments, retrieving asylum seekers, etc. The PCs serve her because she clearly offers help for newcomers who were disoriented in arriving in Darkon. She also has agents trying to dig up details about their past in Falkovnia. Although she is knowledgeable and resourceful, with many decades' experience in Darkon, Lady Nin herself is a victim of memory loss from when she first arrived. She suspects she may have had a husband, and from her own bodily evidence she knows she definitely had a child (possibly a daughter). Later on this uncertainty will come back to color her decisions. Nin's organization meets with a bad end at the hands of the Kargat, on Azalin's orders. 3. The enemy spymaster: The spymaster general of Falkovnia's secret service is Yuri Mitrovic, a distant relative to Vlad Drakov himself. (According to Black Box family bloodlines, he is married to Ireena Imlach, who was the illegitimate daughter of Vlad Drakov and a dalliance with Nadia Ruzich.) Mitrovic is responsible for monitoring the attempts to infiltrate Darkon and other nations, gaining military intelligence and also for planting saboteurs ahead of invasions. Mitrovic also has a secret - his wife, Ireena Imlach, is almost undoubtedly Drakov's daughter, although the Konigsfuhrer does not acknowledge her. However, Imlach gave birth to a daughter who had learning disabilities and severe behavioral problems. Mitrovic was caught in a conundrum. Under Falkovnian law, caliban and other misshapen births were to be killed outright. For mental retardation, the children were either killed or imprisoned forever. However, this girl was the direct line descendant of Vlad Drakov, and to subject her to these punishments would be essentially to execute a Drakov scion. Mitrovic's secret is that he has placed his daughter in an insane asylum in neighboring Lamordia. He has appointed Otto von Florian, a Falkovnian merchant/diplomat, to check up on her often, but he is essentially waiting for her to regain sanity or to simply die naturally. To cover her identity, Mitrovic has researched the true history of Shayla Nin and has discovered she did indeed have a daughter, whom she left behind in Mordent and who subsequently died. Mitrovic has placed the girl under the false name of "Dagmar Leboyik", the actual name of Shayla Nin's dead offspring. (Shayla's own true name was "Annette Leboyik", which is now largely meaningless given her age and the amount of time passed.) Running the campaign: Amnesia presents some problems. You can either ask your PCs to willfully pretend their characters have no idea of what happened, or you can engineer a situation where the players themselves really have no idea what happened in the previous few months of their lives and want to know what happened. I plan on doing the latter. Chronologically, this is what happens and when. Please provide feedback or suggestions if something looks a little weak. Lost memory events - the players do not remember any of this, and neither do their characters Early 735: PCs arrive in Ravenloft through a cave complex in northern Falkovnia. They are rescued and helped by Gondegal, the rebel leader. With him, they figure out who the Falkovnia spymaster is, and they ultimately waylay and intercept a courier who is bearing Mitrovic's messages to Lamordia. Late 735: In a counter attack, Drakov's soldiers arrest the PCs and bring them to the Central Prison in Lekar. While imprisoned, they're tortured and branded and sent to work on the mines. Gondegal, perhaps feeling some regret for landing them in trouble, helps break them free by raiding their transport on a return journey from the mines. He arranges for them to flee into Darkon. Early 736: Nin's organization, L'Agence d'Affaires, finds the PCs and takes them in. Darkon memory events - the PCs memories begin here Mid 736: PCs suddenly regain their "memory consciousness" (i.e. campaign starts) in an inn while a merchant is being attacked in the next door bedroom. When the PCs help drive off the assassins, the merchant brings them along for his journey to Martira Bay. It surfaces that the PCs have actually been serving the Agence d'Affaires for many months now. When they talk to Shayla Nin, she admits she has been using their skills, but promises she has researchers in the field trying to uncover their pasts. Late 736: Various adventures commence in the service of L'Agence d'Affaires. Most of the adventures are standard but a few are secretly initiated by the Kargat, who want to obtain items for Azalin. During this time, a Kargatane member secretly infiltrates the Agence and meets the PCs. Eventually the PCs gain the explicit trust of Nin, who gives them some access to her research, namely that Yuri Mitrovic, Falkovnia's spymaster, has been trying to infiltrate her own organization. They also succeed in turning a Falkovnian agent stationed in Lamordia, who is able to prove the link between Mitrovic and Otto von Florian, the merchant/diplomat there. The agent agrees on a codephrase ("Falcon feathers fall") that he will use when he is ready to seek asylum and betray Falkovnia (perhaps killing Otto von Florian and taking Dagmar Leboyik with him as a hostage). Later, the Falkovnian leadership eliminates this agent before he can use it or further jeopardize von Florian. Late 737: At the culmination, the PCs are sent to another domain on an extended mission. While they are gone, Azalin decides the Agence has outlived its usefulness, and orders the Kargat to raid the organization, timing their attacks with information from the Kargatane mole. Several mid-ranking Agence members escape. The high level members are all arrested or killed, including Shayla Nin. The Kargat cover their tracks as if the attack was carried out by the Bec de Corbin, a rival group. Early to mid 737: PCs track down various surviving members of the Agence d'Affaires. Through them, they can find out details of the final days of the Agence and piece together who attacked them. They go down a few false leads, hunting down Bec de Corbin members, but eventually manage to locate some mid-level survivors who can tell them what Shayla Nin was doing in the end, and tell them that BdC was not responsible for the breakup. They are able to get information about the attack and more importantly about Nin's progress in finding out about their pasts. They also know that Nin suspects the insane girl in Lamordia may be her own daughter, held captive by Mitrovic to ensure Nin does not move against him. The PCs now have the option to return to Falkovnia and contacting Gondegal. Luring them to Falkovnia Of course, if they knew what past they had escaped, they'd probably be less interested in heading straight back into it. But given that they've got scars and a grudge against some past torturer (even an anonymous one) this may be enough to draw them out. If that isn't enough, it may be sufficient to know that Nin discovered Mitrovic had succeeded in infiltrating her own organization and possibly the Kargatane or Kargat. Nin also knows they once discovered (and then forgot) a potential personal weakness for Mitrovic, in the form of an insane daughter. Also, the tantalizing knowledge that they came very close to cracking the Falkovnian spymaster - before he outwitted them - may be a decent appeal to their pride. Endgame - the PCs have various clues ahead of them, depending on whom they spoke to in the remnants of Agence and also the Bec de Corbin outfits. PCs return to Falkovnia. Depending on whom they speak to, they may have leads to a safehouse. If not, they risk being captured again by Falkovnian soldiers. Their next task is to make contact with the Lost King Gondegal. Gondegal is still a wanted man on the move, but he is able to help the PCs by sharing what memories of Falkovnia they lost. He will have convincing explanations for their old mysterious scars, and the brutality of Falkfuhrer Vlad Drakov II who tortured them in captivity, and Falkfuhrer Yuri Mitrovic who is coordinating Falkovnia's intelligence gathering. Working together, they are able to compare Nin's notes with Gondegal's own. The missing pieces of Nin's notes suddenly (and dramatically) are filled when her second-in-command turns up to deliver her handwritten records, on the express understanding that they be used to destroy Mitrovic. (Nin and her former second in commands are now either dead or Kargat members, serving Azalin directly. This conversion also makes Nin largely indifferent to the fate of Dagmar Leboyik, even if she is her own daughter.) The PCs will be able to capture a Falkovnian intelligence messenger, giving him a simple message to relay back to Mitrovic: "Falcon feathers fall", along with the exact location of a meeting point - and Gondegal's ring seal as proof that the rebel wishes to meet Mitrovic. The final confrontation If the PCs have done their homework, they have Mitrovic in a trap. Although the intelligence officer would definitely want to come with an army to kill Gondegal, he does not know how much information Gondegal or the PCs know about his own daughter. Instead, he sets an ambush, bringing along a small retinue of trusted men who won't talk (perhaps even gladiators with their tongues cut out) hoping to kill Gondegal and keep the secret of his daughter safe. The confrontation is a straight-up fight, with the PCs counting on the aid from Gondegal's men and the Kargat agents under Nin to even the odds. Mitrovic is eventually captured and brought before Gondegal, whose rebels want to torture and stake him. Nin wants him brought to the Kargat for assimilation. The PCs are the final arbiters to decide Mitrovic's fate. If they stand idly by while he is tortured, even as punishment for his own crimes, they will roll Powers Checks. Likewise, if they stand idly by and watch as the Kargat claims him, they will have the weight of that on their consciences. Ironically, they may be his saviors, when all is said and done. One possibility is they could help him defect to Lamordia, where he can be reunited with his daughter again.
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