Mercenary 970601

1st: Little Job for the Lamberti Family, (Played June 1, 1997)
Mona Lamberti hires the group to take care of a little problem they family has with the Spini family. The mission involves a trip up to the lake to destroy a Spini expedition.
Adventure Background, Adventure Outline
Players: Joe White, Scott Chelette, Ray Turney, Ken McKinney
Summaries: Chelette

Adventure Background

The Spini family (enemies of the Lamberti) passed through Melbin on the way up to Lac Vond. They stopped for a day in Melbin to look around and their rumored destination is Lulac, thriving port city of 10,000.

Adventure Outline

Giuseppi Spini (Son of Gherardo) shares his father's interest in archeology and exploration. One of his father's long term quests was to find the location of their ancient ancestors, who fled into fairie long ago. Ancient family records on clay tablets and generations of reseach have given the Spini family great knowledge in the archeology of the Eastern Inland Sea. Even when they do not uncover valuable clues as to where the Semper tribe has gone to, they find many valuable things to sell.

In Melbin: Giuseppi paid a contact of his to give him access to the old Imperial archives of Melbin. These archives have many maps, charts, and guides to sites in the mountains north of the city of Riga (King Eik's capitol.) Giuseppi looks at several different sites in order to get addtional information on a lead he is currently checking out. If the party thinks to look at the archives the actual clerk who showed Giuseppi the information is the Spini contact, so he will misdirect the party toward the direction of an (explored) Gerrican mine.

In Lulac: The Spini expedition hires two guides in Lulac to show them the trails in the mountains. The cover story is that they are scouting out a mining opportunity in the mountains and want to see if trails are adequate. 20 Spini personnel remain on the boat and 15 (three Spini family members, including Giuseppi) leave Lulac on the expedition. Giuseppi is not an experienced leader and does not really think he is in danger. So they will take none of the easy precautions to prevent being easily tracked/followed.

The Spini are headed toward two sites. The first site is rumored as some tombs of unknown origin, either Yuli or Semper tribe that the Gerricans looted. Upon examination the first site is actually an ancient Amaran temple with clues in the Ancient Galeric writings in the wall about the original crafters of the temple space. The Yuli tribe arrived and took over the temple from the Semper tribe about 800-1000 years ago. Potentially some of the writing still remains in the cavern telling of the times when the Semper tribe was there. The second spot is a columned temple built by the Gerrican tribe on the slopes of a mountain with a clear view to the eastern horizon.

The first cave still has a fire guardian (a salamander which surrounds the target and will burn all those around the semi-possesed guardian. The fire guardian will attack any within 3 meters with a salamander attack. The cave also has a engraved stone disk of Amaran temple magic that has significant meaning to the splinter sect of the Amaran temple. The disk by itself is at best worth 200-300 gold, but to the right people in the Amaran cult, it could go higher. Potentially more valuable that the disk is a wooden box inside a waterproof leather pouch. The wooden box contains a sheaf of parchment which are the working and field notes for Giuseppi about several sites in these mountains.

970601.Chelette

The Characters: Cosmo (Joe), Marco Lamberti (Ken), Cosimo (Ray), Thor (Scott)

Mona Lamberti, Marco's Mother, has aquired information on the movements of a group of Spini family members. She hires the party to take them out, payment on success.

After negotiating the terms of the mission, the party gathers intelligence at the Melbin archives and learns that the Spinis were researching Gerrican tombs to the west of Port Lulac. We hire a few competent mercs in Melbin and head for Port Lulac. When we arrive, we find a Spini ship at the docks and learn that a party of about 15 men has recently set out toward the Gerrican lands. We hire a few local thugs to fill out our group to 20 armed men.

In order to follow the Spini's without being discovered, we send Marco ahead to scout. Since we arrived close behind the Spini expedition, he tracks them easily, with the party trailing one village behind. Eventually the Spinis come to the mountainous region of the Gerrican tombs. Surprisingly, they veer off and double back, appearing to be lost. Marco successfully trails them and the party stays at a discrete distance. Eventually the Spinis set up camp and start excavating a hillside cave. Marco keeps a close watch on them and after a few days of chopping rocks, one of the Spinis emerges with a sack of stuff from the cave.

The Spinis have apparently found what they were looking for and are ready to leave. Knowing that there is only one mountain trail back toward Lulac, we set a hasty ambush. Marco, Cosimo and about half the troops block the trail ahead while Cosmo, Thor and the others take them from behind. The Spinis are only mildly surprised and quickly set up a defensive circle. We advance to engage them, and after only a few rounds Cosmo bravely attacks the Spini leader from behind and severes his leg with one blow. The battle is over: we kill four Spinis and capture their local guide while only suffering one casualty. Marco doesn't want to take prisoners, because he doesn't want us to be known for killing them. We take one anyway and learn from him that the leader was Gusieppe Spini. Gusieppe was on an amateur archaeology expedition and had recovered a magic disc of the Sun God from the Temple in the cave. He also has documents relating to the site, but they are written in Ancient Galeric and we can't read them.

Cosmo has no problems with eliminating prisoners to keep the Spinis off our trail. He makes a comment and one of Thor's Barbarian followers gets the hint. Thor and Marco ascend a log ramp up a steep hill to get to the temple cave. There is nothing interesting inside until Thor gets to the altar. He is surrounded by a bright, swirling spirit but not attacked. He wanders around for a while, but nothing happens. Finally Cosimo approaches and is badly burned by the spirit. Cosmo runs out of the cave and one of Thor's Barbarian followers pulls down the log ramp behind him. In an unfortunate accident, the prisoner is crushed by the log and impaled on the Barbarian's sword as he leaps over to help. Thor eventually leaves the cave and crosses a stream. As he enters the water, a cloud of steam surrounds him and the swirling fire spirit is gone. We make it back to Melbin and get our reward from Mona Lamberti. After a payoff to the Melbin Assasins Guild and bonuses to the hired troops, we still make a huge profit and decide to spent the next three months training.