By Kevin Hassall, based on an “idle speculation” by Tim O’Brien.
Background.
A Summer Covenant (somewhere within a few hundred miles of the players’ Covenant) has a marvellous idea. They build a stone tower and raise it into the air (with a level 35 Rego Terram ritual) – thinking that they can then use it as a mobile flying warship – a stone siege tower in the air.
The problem is that they had to cooperate and experiment to get the spell created, and too many eccentric minds are never going to work that well in concert. They overlooked one minor problem. The tower can only move as fast as a feather can fall – which is generally a lot slower than the speed of the prevailing wind. So, the tower just blew away in the next mild storm. The magi cannot make it move against the wind, and so the tower is out of their control.
They abandon their tower, leaving it to the elements.
Introducing the Players.
The first that the players hear about it is from a wandering pilgrim. This traveller, returning from a trip to Santiago (or Rome, or Walsingham, as appropriate) has heard that a pious Friar – one Brother Jerome – has seen a flying castle filled with demons, and that this pious Friar intends to seek out the demonic keep and confront the devils. The pilgrim hopes to find the Friar and help him in any way he can (he assumes that this will involve an amount of prayer, but otherwise isn’t sure) and has only sketchy directions to the point at which the castle was last seen.
Flying castle in the area? That should get the characters curious. Whether in the pilgrim’s company or alone, they will hopefully head off to find the tower.
Seeking the Tower.
As the characters head towards the pilgrim’s “last known sighting” of the castle, they start to hear more rumours. They meet one or two other pious folk who are hoping to join the Friar. The meet a band of desperate optimists (beggars) who have “heard” (i.e. chosen to believe) that the floating castle is the golden stronghold of a long-lost leader come to save his people (Charlemagne, King Arthur, etc.). An argument in an Inn erupts between two armchair speculators – one of whom maintains that it’s the tower of Merlin, and one of whom says it’s a faerie castle. They also find a small warband (several knights and a group of mounted men-at-arms, in the service of the local Count or Earl) who concede that they haven’t a clue whose castle it is but intend to track it down and find out if it’s a threat to their lord.
Amidst this confusion, the players will get at least one reliable eyewitness sighting (probably a whole village-load if they actually go to a place that it has passed over), and several good reports of where and when it was recently spotted. Whether because they have a decent map (which most folk in mythic Europe won’t have) or because anyone of them has weather sense – or for any other reason that the Storyguide can plausibly explain - they will be able to work out that the castle is simply being blown around by the wind. So, while the messianic hopefuls and the pious Friar are chasing their tails around the countryside, the players’ characters work out where the castle is most likely to be going next (based on the wind), and track it down....
The Tower.
The tower originally had a ground-level floor, a flat roof, and two floors in between. The ground-level floor, however, is now all-but vanished: when the tower was raised from the ground the foundations stayed behind, taking some of the lower walls and many of the ground-floor joists and boards with it. This “non-floor” is therefore just a rickety mess of beams and boards with a wooden staircase going up to the first floor.
On the first floor, a door leads out to a platform which encircles the tower, from which numerous rope-ladders drape down towards the ground. The tower stays a constant height 100 paces above the ground, and these ladders were supposed to provide access. However, they have been left down for over a week, and have snagged more than a few trees. The bottoms of these ladders have therefore been torn off, and most have small branches snagged at their lower ends. The longest is now thirty paces above the ground. A grappling hook or levitation spell will be required to get up to the ladders, and the seventy pace climb up to the platform should feel precarious.
On the roof is a large iron ballista, weighing several hundred pounds. This is the prize for the characters. It is a lesser enchanted device, in which a heavy dart appears every time the ballista is winched back to be loaded (Creo Herbam/Terram 10) – meaning that in the longest siege it could be fired constantly without ever running out of ammunition. The problem is that this requires a pretty impressive Rego spell – or a lot of rope and some burly men – to safely lower it down.
When the tower’s creators abandoned the tower, they took out anything that was fairly light – so apart from a couple of big tables and the ballista it’s bare. Oh, except for the wolves....
The Challenge.
Before “lift-off” the tower’s creators decided to install a defensive garrison of dead wolves – wolves’ corpses animated by a Moon duration Rego Animal spell. There could be up to twenty of them – the Storyguide should fix the number so that they will challenge the characters, and use stats for normal wolves with a couple of modifications (no wound or fatigue penalties, +10 to Soak vs stabbing weapons). The wolves obviously weren’t able to climb down the ladders to escape, and so they remain here, with orders to “defend the tower against all comers”.
The characters thus have to:
1) Get up to the tower.
2) Clear out the wolves, or work around them (tricky – the stairs let them get to each floor, including the roof, and they could jump if the stairs were removed; they won’t leave the characters alone around the ballista.)
3) Get the ballista down. (Unless they can manage a really good spontaneous Rego Terram spell, this is actually easiest if they have good relationships with the mundanes. In theory they could do a deal with the Earl/Count’s men whereby the characters clear out the tower in return for any loot, then using the raw muscle-power of the men-at-arms they met earlier to lower the ballista. Alternatively, they might be able to draw on local peasant help. Characters with poor mundane relations may have to leave the ballista, but the Storyguide should be generous here – it’s disappointing if they don’t get anything out of the tower.)
If the Storyguide needs to hurry the players along, there are two options.
1) In any case, before the Moon duration spell expires and the wolves fall apart, the winds will have pushed the tower out to sea and away.
2) The pious friar and his followers – local parish priests and monks with relics, pious beggars with makeshift crosses – could come over the hill at any time, praying to God for salvation from the “demons’ tower”. When they arrive, the tower starts to shudder and lurch, and drops a couple of feet. The players must be swift, before the whole thing comes crashing to the earth.
Getting Away.
After getting the ballista, the characters will have to get it back to the Covenant. It’s very heavy, and only has little wheels to allow it to be manoeuvred around the roof. It can’t just be dragged along roads and tracks without it bogging down in the mud. A cart and two horses are required to drag it, laboriously, back to the Covenant.
This will undoubtedly arouse the interest of local mundane authorities. Why exactly are these scholars and their servants moving a weird-looking siege engine through the county? Unless the characters can conceal the cart’s progress (tricky!) someone will come asking. If the players can’t strike a deal, the mundane lords will impound the ballista – weirdo scholars have no business having a siege engine, it’s a threat to the local nobility. They may be persuaded to buy the object from the characters, rather than (effectively) stealing it, but if they find out about the magical nature of it that will just make them more determined to hang on to it.
This could be very easy (with good Perdo Imagonem to hide the progress of the cart and cargo, or with good mundane relations), or really tough (if the characters can’t hide or disguise the ballista, and if they are already distrusted by the mundane nobility).
Fall-Out.
For troupes who are interested in Hermetic politics and repercussions, there will be the following fall-out.
First, a Quaesitor will come looking.
The Quaesitor is not impressed that someone built a flying tower which made the mundane powers feel insecure and got people speculating about demons; if this had been publicly blamed on the Order, repercussions could have been severe. So, the Quaseitor wants to know what effect the tower did have – and the characters (who were there, spoke to the locals at the time, etc.) are well placed to inform and act as witnesses for her. They may choose to play down the panic amongst the locals, or exaggerate it – depending on whether they want to get the tower’s creators in trouble or not.
The Quaesitor will also be interested to know how the players dealt with the situation. They could be in trouble if they were particularly heavy handed with the locals, and will win her respect if they dealt with it all very quietly. The Quaesitor’s opinion will be important at the next Tribunal.
Second, there will be the next Tribunal meeting.
Here, the tower’s creators will ask for their Ballista back, possibly accusing the characters of stealing it. Depending on the views of the Tribunal, the characters could
(a) Be told to hand it over
(b) Be told to hand it over if the creators pay some sort of reward for retrieval, or
(c) Be permitted to keep it, on the basis of “finder keepers”.
Which of these the Tribunal goes for will depend upon the characters’ reputation, the opinion of the Quaesitor who investigated the matter, and how much trouble the originators are in anyway. Most likely the Tribunal will rule that it serves the tower’s creators right that they’ve lost their ballista, and that will be that – but the characters will have to argue their corner and their behaviour will certainly have an impact.