Taking out the trash
Adventure hooks
Taking out the trash
Boarding the lightning rail.
- No Orien bigwigs traveling, so the PCs can use the Orien compartment.
- Train has coach and four cars (two passenger and two cargo).
The Trip to Flame Keep
- PCs are free to walk about the train
- Notable NPCs
- Gelli Tarm (Priest of the Silver Flame, haughty, rich southern attitude)
- Amanda Kell (Gatekeeper, Shifter, bumpkin)
- Kinrom Kinrom (Merchant, arabic, hints of weapons for sale)
- Rella Masters (Aundairian, southern belle, Weretigress)
- Engineer Ter Dilar d'Orien (New Yorker, gruff, but with a heart of gold)
- Conductor Holladay Binfrey (Effeminate male, keeps track of the train's passengers)
Murder on the Orien Express
- Holladay Binfrey has a problem.
- He approaches the PCs (esp. Leap) and asks them to come with him
- Claims it's self explanatory, they should follow him to see, but it's gravely important.
- Gelli Tarm has been murdered.
- Motive: revenge.
- Whodunit: Relle Masters
- Scene: The compartment is a complete mess. The floor is covered in a pool of deep red blood, and a mound of entrails barely recognizable as human slumps in the seat nearest the window.
- “You've got to find the killer. If we don't have this resolved by the time we get to Flame Keep, there will be a full inquisition! Orien would like to avoid that, if at all possible.”
- DC 15 Survival check reveals that the wounds are primarily clawmarks.
- DC 20 Survival check can discern that it was a large carnivorous animal.
- DC 25 Survival check can discern that it was a tiger's claws.
- (+5 DC to use Knowledge: Nature instead)
- The trains are connected like normal train cars (basic platform, DC 10 jump or balance check to get to the next car)
- Kinrom Kinrom, DC 12 Sense Motive to see that he's lying about something.
- Amanda Kell, get's really frightened, and denies pretty much everything.
- Rella Masters, Interested in the PCs questions, DC 18 Sense Motive to see she's hiding something. Attacks if provoked.
Trouble on the Lightning Rails
- Thump Listen check DC 15 (From the rear of the train)
- In 10 rounds, the back car is detached and sent spinning into the forest. DC 10 Listen
- Three Shambling Mounds and a ranger (ashbound) are destroying the train car by car.
- One shambling mound can disconnect a car in 20 rounds. Two in 15, and all three in 10. They're inelegant at it, and prefer to rip it off instead of hitting the release (more damage this way.)
- Train is traveling at 35mph, and doesn't seem to be slowing down any. (High wind, -4 to ranged attacks, ¼ movement towards the front of the train.
- Jumping between cars is a DC 10 check downtrain, and DC 15 uptrain. Going up or down the ladders on the side of the car is a full round action, unless a DC 20 climb check is made, then it's a move action.
- DC 15 Reflex save every other round to avoid a 2d6 arc of electricity.
Possible stories
- What drove the Ashbound into such a dramatic gesture?
- What was Rella Masters' story?
- Where was Amanda Kell going? And why did the Gatekeepers send her to learn how to read?
- Will Orien pick up the pieces of the train in time?