Casting Shadows

This was a very interesting week for me as I was able to contribute in a small way to a free product from Triple Ace Games for Leagues of Adventure.  As a result, I have been thinking about the game quite a bit and so this week Casting Shadows offers a small story seed for Leagues of Adventure.

The Casting Shadows blog offers Saturday Seeds and campaign starters every Saturday (go figure…). Seeds from the blog also appear on Ancient Scroll.

The Seed

This seed is intended for a group of adventurers with an interest in unusual occurrences and people, mystical or religious knowledge, with fairly rapid access to international news and the freedom to travel. Rumor, innuendo, and vague hints in the writings of renowned individuals on the Continent and elsewhere suggest that an intensely charismatic individual is making rounds of rakes, impetuous adventurers, and frivolous-minded members of the upper classes, charging them to repent – before it is too late. So impressive is this wizened individual, that many of them have indeed repented.

Planting the Seed

Planting this seed is simply a matter of slowly building mentions of this mysterious visitor having a profound effect on far-flung members of the social elite all across Europe and around the Mediterranean. If they do not eventually seek out his trail and intentions for themselves, perhaps he will visit someone closer to home…

The Details

Casual conversation among intellectuals and socialites in the drawing rooms of the wealthy and privileged are quick to turn to derision on this subject, labelling it a hoax, the conversions and repentant behaviour a gag or fad, and the individual behind it all a charlatan. They are quick to point out the incongruity between the stories, particularly that of time…  Reports of the visitations take place over vast ranges of territory far too expansive to be travelled in the time elapsed between reports. The appearances and stories do not appear in any sort of geographic sense, they spring up randomly all over Europe as if time and place were no obstacle at all.

Descriptions of the individual paint him as emaciated, with intensely burning eyes, simple clothes, and an adamantine focus on his own agenda. No one has been able to dissuade him from speaking to the person he has chosen, nor been able to prevent him from completing his tale. Those who hear it, turn their lives around, beginning good works for the betterment of others, or quietly end their lives.

What is going on

In point of fact, a variety of things can and should be going on, and a large element of the adventure should be in trying to weed out the charlatans and fakes from the real story threads. It may be that there is no reality to any of these tales, and it is likely that it is a confidence trickster with a devious plan… or it may be that  someone with a message of great value for those who run the risk of damnation is offering hope where before there was none. Will your group uncover the truth? Will they believe it when they do? Will the notes of a certain poet offer any clues? Will they give up too soon…?

He holds him with his glittering eye–
The wedding-guest stood still,
And listens like a three-years’ child:
The mariner hath his will.

The wedding-guest sat on a stone:
He cannot choose but hear;
And thus spake on that ancient man,
The bright-eyed mariner.

                                                  -S.T.C

Enjoy~

Related articles

• Saturday Seed ~ 109 (Leagues of Adventure) from Casting Shadows (runeslinger.wordpress.com)
• Saturday Seed ~ 113 (Mutant City Blues) (runeslinger.wordpress.com)
• Saturday Seed ~ 115 (All for One) from Casting Shadows (runeslinger.wordpress.com)
• Saturday Seed ~ 116 (Dungeon Crawl Classics) from Casting Shadows (runeslinger.wordpress.com)