[Tavern] The Quincunx Mission

[Quincunx]

Quincunx Mission

Box Text & Geography


Between the wheelwright's shop and leatherworker's stall stretches a gray stone gateway, ten meters broad and topped with a carving of crossed spears set before a sun, set four steps above street level. On either side of the gateway, a queue of men shuffles its way past a gatekeeper; those on the north side pay coin to receive a wooden pendant with a burnt-on humanoid figure, a plate cut from a round loaf of bread, and a clay mug with a handle, while those on the south receive a dense iron plate and tubular iron cup. The center of the gateway has a picture-sign of a woman and a shield adorned with a sun, pointing to the north. Going north and turning east at the corner building (also stone, and marked with a starburst over the double doors), you enter another row of shops, and find an identical gateway adorned with a sunburst shield wedged between a butcher's stall and a weavery. Here, the women who pay queue on the west side, the charity cases queue on the east, and the sign with a man and a spear points back the way you traveled. . .

If the town is large enough, the Mission stretches over an entire city block, with Cornmarket Street running along the north side and Longspear Road at the west side, and alleys to the south and east. The land slopes downwards towards the southeast, so the exit of the Mission at that corner has seven stone steps leading down to the street. Built against the south and east sides of the mission are less desirable business neighbors--tanneries, stockyards, launderers, and the like--and all walls of the Mission are hidden as the town-dwellers have built housing over their workshops. In a village or smaller town, all of the commerce is confined to the north and west, while people have built houses to the south and east, and the Mission and its flying buttresses overshadows all the lesser buildings. If set in a village, the characters might approach from the southeast.


The village and its people seem to scratch around the feet of a gray stone tower, fully twenty meters broad; buttresses extend to either side and two more buildings jut out behind the tower-like one. Approximately fifteen meters above the steps, the gateway is capped with a stylized sun carving, yet the building continues for at least forty meters above that. People exit the building in a steady stream, none ever turning back against the pressure of the crowd, or perhaps hurrying away from the smell of nearby latrines. You look up from the base of the stairs and see the underside of a massive stone carving of a head and cupped hands, just inside the hall.

[Quincunx]

Physical Description & Layout

Public Areas

Between the north and west gates runs a corridor, ten meters broad, fifteen meters high, roofed with a barrel vault; this intersects with a corridor twenty meters broad and equally tall, vaulted with pointed arches and supported by double columns five meters away from the walls, which runs to the southeast gate fifty meters distant. This first, T-shaped floor has no windows, yet hundreds of prisms cemented to the walls refract daylight and dimly illuminate the halls. The queues move towards the intersection of the halls and towards the buffet counters on the northwest end of the main hall. Paying customers have first pick, and one charity case enters the line after two paying customers have passed. Where the halls meet stands a marvel of current engineering, a five-meter-tall fountain spilling out numberless thin streams of water from wood and reed pipes, which radiate in all directions from a central cylinder. Customers can fill their tankards from the waterfall, or toss coppers at painted pans suspened on wooden arms and hung within the waterfall. Once the pans accumulate enough coins, they tilt and spill their take into a collection urn, and the tilting arms deflect water onto various waterwheels. Some waterwheels turn the handle of a hand organ, tinkling out a tune; some drop sweets and wooden toys; a few dispense ale from casks nestled into the waterfall; the highest pan drops a bronze amulet with a peculiar geometric design etched into it.

People take their dishes to the southeastern hall to eat, still segregated by gender. Both walls have thick cloth partitions extending to each column, forming a series of semi-private stalls, and chairs of every imaginable type litter the floor. Benches run parallel to the base of an enormous statue situated in the center and running the length of the hall. She is a crouching humanoid figure, depicted on the pendants of the paying customers, with her head raised high and both hands extended and cupped before her. Her skin is mostly blocks of soapstone, but this has fallen away on her left hip to expose some coarser stone within. Every inch of the soapstone apart from her nearly featureless face has been carved, much of it symbolism by the original sculptors, but a great deal of graffiti interwoven with it at the more reachable heights and the old carvings worn down with decades of constact touch. The starburst design which adorns the southeast gate can be found, carved in the deepest relief, on her forehead (the only mark on the face), on her hands and feet, and between her breasts. At the southeast gate, more gatekeepers collect the dirty dishes and wooden pendants, and keep a one-man shop inside the cupped hands of the statue, selling miniatures of the giant figure in a variety of materials and prices.

Quincunx Mission Ivory Button: Price 5gp. One of the pricier offerings at the Mission shop, this 3cm sphere of ivory is deep-cut to produce a foreshortened replica of the statue, and is drilled through the middle for easy attachment. Like almost all of the Mission pieces, it's rumored to be magical: this piece, worn mostly by the rich, is supposed to make a thief think twice before pickpocketing a pouch which it closes.

The Northwest Hall

If you win the bronze pendant from the waterfall, one of the southeastern gatekeepers will give you a guided tour. The kitchen sits to the northwest of the waterfall, twenty meters broad but only five meters long, with one row of flat-topped clay stoves facing the buffet tables and one on the opposite wall to the northwest, punctuated by a double-wide door. The door leads down a hallway fifteen meters long with one door on either side, and opens out to the street at the northwest corner at cart-height, for receiving supplies. When you turn back towards the kitchens, you can see a pair of spiral staircases snuggled against the warm kitchen wall, and your guide takes you upstairs. The second floor has another compact hallway, just as long but merely ten meters high, with one door on either side, and the guide knocks at the doorway on the right (north) before admitting you. Inside are two nursemaids and one very old person, bent almost double and wrapped in blankets, looking towards the southeast although the candles are set on the northwest wall. Her hands tremble, and a voice much stronger than her body could make enters your mind. "Welcome. I am March. Please give your amulet to one of my companions. He'll take it back down to the fountain. . ."

If you did not win the pendant, and slip through the kitchen without being noticed, you could explore the hall thoroughly. From the first floor, the doorway to the left leads to a room that houses only dust, cobwebs, empty candleholders, and the circular design which adorns the southeast gate, five meters broad and inlaid upon the wall in silver; with such magnification, you can see that the mandala is a pattern of eyes, laid together and spiraling like the center of a sunflower, and chilling to look upon. The doorway to the right, on the first floor, opens up to a nursery. You might be able to catch a glimpse of a very tiny toddler before her nursemaids 'suggest' that you leave, and slam the door behind you. The left doorway on the second floor leads to an ordinary bedroom, furnished with dusty but intact cloths and furniture. Sitting atop a desk, directly under an unlit wall candle, is a portrait of an elven couple; she is sitting behind her harp with butterflies clustering on its frame, he kneeling beside her and embracing her with one arm, while conjuring a light with his other hand. If you enter the right doorway on the second floor, you don't remember seeing anything before the nursemaids hustle you outside. The stairs to the third floor lead directly into a garret with a double-wide barred door at the other end, where mice scurry away from your footsteps; a broken rope trails from one rafter, and the picture here, of a red-haired human woman wearing a white tabard, is adorned with a twist of black silk crepe.

Beyond this barred door, you can either walk down the stairs immediately before you or explore this floor. They continue the floor plan below, with columns five meters distant from each wall, and wide planks laid down to form the floors. Both areas are stuffed to their ceilings with chests, barrels, bags, and boxes, under layers of sawdust and plain dust; inside the containers is a small town's worth of iron ingots, dried beans, lumber, bandages, medicines, all the raw materials imaginable. At each terminus of the T, a spiral stone staircase runs from the second floor up to the roof via trapdoor. A stone walkway five meters broad lies along the edge of the roof, elevated above the gutters and shielded by a hip-high balustrade with a rounded upper edge; the long roof is a low barrel vault, in smooth gray stone, that rises up directly from the columns of the floors below, while the short halls have been roofed from wall to wall with similar materials and methods. If you look over the balustrade, you can see the rounded tops of flying buttresses, spaced every ten meters, disappearing into the construction below. This entire building has no windows.

[Quincunx]

NPCs of Note

MARCH: Venerable Half-Elf, Cleric 5 Sorceror 9, True Neutral.

March rose from the gutter in a human city with a bit of (fatherly?) magic stirring in her blood and a single-minded goal: to continue to live beyond life. She dabbled in clerical pursuits but quickly decided that the answer lay elsewhere, and forsook worshipping all the known gods. She collected four other female adventurers into the Quincunx, and raided the temples and tombs of demi-gods, even after the group's fighter hung herself and two others had plainly fallen to evil; these latter two she used as best she could, while locking them away for the greater good. (Minta, by turns, hates March for imprisoning her and adores her for all the places they've been together.) The last sane member of the Quincunx fled in disgust, leaving March with a half-renovated building, all of the group's treasure, and a renewed sense of mortality. This place of compassion and protection is March's last chance to cheat oblivion, and March can now only wait for the verdict.

MINTA: Old Gnome, Wizard 15 (Necromancy), Chaotic Evil.

While Minta was a young gnome, still living underground, she was afraid of the dark and the creatures in the dark. Rosemary came to her, brought her to an adventuring party aboveground, and showed Minta the truths about the dark. Now Minta rules the dark, and it's totally fun! In her mind, she still does. As Minta's nursemaids prohibit her from casting evil magic, a curse blights the gnome instead, draining her maturity and giving her 'eternal youth'--the price of a pact of supposed immortality. She spends her days wheedling with her nursemaids to be released, trying to fling harmful spells at them when she doesn't get her way, and napping. When March thinks of the gnome, it is always with great regret for what the half-elf had to do to her, but Lydia never thinks kindly about the gnome who ripped the dead from their rightful slumber and then giggled about it.

LYDIA: Elf, Druid 16, Chaotic Good

Lydia is the female elf in the second-floor portrait, who spent years of horror and fascination trying to keep March from violating the laws of nature. In March's memories she is the sculptor of the Mission, walking on empty air and smoothing the stone into the proper form, and someone with no appreciation for a zombie in Minta's. She forsook her share of the fortune and left the Quincunx after the other two died, and settled a great distance away from the mission; she sent back the portrait after her wedding but hasn't communicated with March since.

ROSEMARY: ???, Wizard ???, Lawful Evil, deceased.

Sometimes her face and figure, concealed in blue robes (or were they gold?), flit through Minta's and March's memories, and Lydia will speak of her death as "the final sign that I was on the wrong path", although none of them ever recall details when pressed to do so. Some events are too horrible to remember.

SOSSITY: Human, Fighter 17, Lawful Good, deceased.

The Quincunx had split up to better inspect their new property, so it was some time before Lydia tracked Sossity to the garret; they tried to restore her but failed, and dedicated that portion of the building to her memory. As with Rosemary, while the living members of the Quincunx can think of Sossity in the most general terms, slaying enemies in dungeons and carrying stone blocks to the topmost levels of the Mission, deeper details seem to have vanished.

THE NURSEMAIDS: ???, Rogue ??? & Wizard ???

Of each pair, one is always a wizard and the other a rogue; both spend twelve hours on duty each day. March rents them from the approriate guilds for six months at a time and doesn't fuss too much over their quality. The Thieves' Guild, in particular, uses the assignment as punishment for members who publically embarrass the guild. The wizards aren't happy with their caretaker duties either, but welcome the access to an incautious wizard; many a wizard has coaxed Minta into scribbling into a spellbook in exchange for a few crystallized fruits.

[Quincunx]

Game Mechanics

BARDIC KNOWLEDGE

NB: Any Bardic Knowledge check will also get the Gather Information results for the appropriate DC.

DC 10: You've heard Nanu's song and know that she performs in the city in which the Mission is located.
DC 15: You've heard variations of "The Mason Paid in Bronze"; this inscription is so sparse, it must be source material.
DC 20: You know the Song of Stonearm originated in this area less than a hundred years ago.
DC 25: You've heard the song in the forest, the saddest words ever set to the drinking song, "The Magic Tankard".
DC 30: You remember Sossity's song, wasn't she one of the Quincunx, a long while ago?

GATHER INFORMATION:

DC 5: Quincunx Mission! Oh yeah. Free eats there if you can lift the plates. Nothing special or tasty though.
DC 10: An adventurers' group renovated the old building with their fortunes and used what was left to kickstart the mission.
DC 15: The last survivor of the Quincunx still lives in the building, but hardly anyone has seen her in recent years. You need a special pass to visit her.
DC 20: A lot of people were wary when the Quincunx took over the building, seventy years ago, but I forget why.
DC 25: Oh, I remember now! Five of them came in, but the rest of them died while the crews renovated the building. It was only after that when someone announced that the building would become a mission.

KNOWLEDGE: ARCANA

NB: Any Knowledge: Arcana check will also get the Spellcraft results for the statue and the mandala.

DC 20: Statues in this pose had been ritually buried in the distant past, although you do not know why.
DC 30: Not only is the mandala in the northwest hall more detailed than the rest, it's also out of line from all the other repetitions of the symbol.
DC 40: The statue is a colossus!

KNOWLEDGE: ARCHITECTURE

DC 10: The entry halls of the Mission are older than the southeast hall, and the second and third floors are newer than either of those. There's no rot in the wood yet, nor too many chips in the stones of the southeast hall.
DC 20: The buttresses and columns have been compromised by all the beams of other structures anchored to them, torch rings drilled into them, and the fountain in the center draws from a natural well underneath the floor, which causes the floor to sink slightly.
DC 30: Now that you think about it, there's no way this building shouldn't have collapsed before the construction was done, buttresses or not. A barrel vault supporting two wooden-beamed floors above it? Soapstone blocks supporting a walkway of building stone?

KNOWLEDGE: HISTORY

DC 10: The town which the Quincunx Mission serves is less than 100 years old.
DC 15: The Quincunx paid whole families to move here while the workers renovated the Mission building, and most of them never left.
DC 20: There was a fortification here in ancient times, before the time of castles, which had been abandoned.
DC 25: A few hundred years ago, an army of undead swarmed over the old fortification, looted it, and killed the village supporting it.

KNOWLEDGE: RELIGION

NB: This was originally an alternate-history setting and the Mission building a disused cathedral of a forgotten religion. In that setting, Knowledge: Religion was far more significant.

DC 10: The starburst symbols are the special mark of (reincarnation or death god of your campaign setting).
DC 20: Local people regard the statue as a source of good fortune and anyone who can afford to own a replica of it does.
DC 30: The corpse on the third floor has been preserved for an afterlife or a resurrection.

LISTEN

DC 15: In the northwest wing, you think you hear a child wailing.
DC 20: . . .in Gnomish.
DC 25: On a windy day, the interior of the building creaks as it sways.

SEARCH

DC 20: There's only one bronze prize in the waterfall and, judging by the coins in the pan, it hasn't been won in a very long time.
DC 25: Upon the roof, strapped between the walkway and the curve of the roof, are boxes of silver-tipped projectiles concealed inside soapstone boxes.
DC 30: Someone stored a wrapped corpse in the third floor of the Mission! There's a peculiar amulet wrapped into its covering also.....

SPELLCRAFT

DC 10: Those mementos aren't magical at all.
DC 20: If you stand at the fountain, three magic fields tug at you: northwest, southeast, and up. Also: the bar on the third-floor double door has spells of reinforcement placed upon it.
DC 25: The statue has a low magic field; anyone who touches it gets an immediate +1 bonus to one roll, which must used within the next round. Also: The skin of the statue has been made with magical materials, e.g. Transmute Mud to Rock.
DC 30: There's more powerful magic in the statue, hidden beneath the low magic field. Also: the mandala has a focus for Plane Shift hidden within the design.

SPOT

DC 15: One inscription at the base of the statue stands out for its professional lettering and marks of age.
DC 20: There's plenty of torch rings on the columns and walls of the public areas, but no torches.
DC 25: Up in the storerooms of the second and third floor, something moves. Slowly.

[Quincunx]

Bardic Flavor Texts

I won the bronze token and went up the stairs
With a humble 'nough look and five chocolate eclairs
(for the old lady loves them) and knocked on the door,
going into the room I had not known before.

"Young madam", I said, and I bowed to the floor,
"I wish I had heard of your good works before.
I am glad of this place where so cheaply I sup,
But I never can lift that tall iron-forged cup!"

She crinkled her fingers and muttered a spell,
And we all heard the gong of a great iron bell
As she summoned one cup, and it hung in midair
And she said in my head, "Why, that hardly seems fair,

"If this wizened old lady can lift up a glass,
Requesting a light one is foolish and crass.
Remove this weak bardling, she goes back downstairs,
But first do relieve her of all those eclairs."

--by Nanu "the Frivolous", halfling bardling ("It's just _bard_!")

*****

Thaie caim from South and Yst
IIIII wimen & IIIIIII treshure carts
to empty Castel Longspyr
I cut stoans for Lidya
I crushd gems for Roas
Thaie gaiv mye I bit of bronz
& I cursd them bye Gods
then March spoak to mye
Wair the bronz
visit the castel
Never go hungrye agen
The Gods bless them all

--inscribed on and beneath the giant statue

****

Soft soft stone like the newborn babe,
So white white as unicorn,
Dance dance with the rope on your back,
We pull pull the lady to the light.

Clean clean girl from the dirty ground,
A gift gift from a loving god,
Five five went inside and found her,
We pull pull the lady to the light.

No no more will she kneel in dirt,
Her place place now is in the sun,
Sing sing of your pride and your joy,
We pull pull the lady to the light.

--Song of Stonearm

*****

have we stolen the wreckage of the faithless scene--that scene,
have we drunk from the hollowed horn of the queen--dead queen,
have we fallen down, tumbled down, screaming down, always down---
gone through the way to the world. . .unseen?

--overheard in a forest, sung in Sylvan.

*****

What happened to lonely Sossity,
When she went for a walk in the wood?
By day she takes tea with the Unicorn Queen,
By night she cries ‘neath her hood.

"What happened to wicked Sossity,
When the beast drank her baby’s blood?
She was swept from the earth and was not again seen,
Remember, young girls, to be good.

--children's song in a human village near the Mission

[Quincunx]

Secrets & Plot Hooks

March goaded the Quincunx into many sublime and horrific acts on her quest for immortality: celestial and infernal pacts, challenges against demi-gods, turning the tides of wars. In the final adventure just over seventy years ago, she directed the evil pair to slaugher a benevolent underground cult and tricked the good pair into also drinking from their holy unicorn-horn chalice; when no one felt suddenly immortal, evil and good banded together just long enough to incapacitate March and drag her back to their most recent reward, derelict Castle Longspear, along with their loot. While March remained unconscious, her influence over the Quincunx diminished. Rosemary retired to her chamber to continue probing some of the magical mysteries they'd uncovered with Minta's assistance, while Sossity and Lydia worked themselves to exhaustion on renovating the castle, itself extended from an ancient barracks hall. This was not enough to soothe Sossity's conscience; she hung herself just after the construction had been completed, and Lydia could not coax her back to life. Contrite, the druid cloistered herself and began writing down everything necessary for running the Quincunx Mission, and the need for them all to atone before more misfortunes occurred. She was too late. Minta shot out of the wizards' room, looking younger than all the rest and shrinking fast, shrieking about some catastrophe. Rosemary's spell focus, the mandala, had snatched her cleanly out of existence, and now the gnome was dwindling away before Lydia's eyes. The druid shut Minta into a rock for suspended animation, scribbled what she knew about the catastrophe into the end of her text, pushed it under March's door, and fled for her life.

Weeks later, March regained consciousness and discovered her companions had disappeared and left only the book. She was livid at first, and had she not already been drained of magic by the enforced rest, would have burnt the book; as things were, she flung it into a corner and stomped downstairs to see what had made Lydia overreact. When she discovered that it was all truth, March's faith in herself was shaken. Her private plans of turning the castle into a shrine for herself, and winning immortality through the prayers of simple folk, changed into Lydia's plans for winning the love of the people by meeting their material needs. She stabilized the magical aberration centered on the mandala, researched how to keep the curse in check and released Minta from the stone, and the two of them sunk their life force into enchanting the castle. When Minta refused to lose any more life to sustaining the spells, March imprisoned her within the northwest wing and hoped that the gnome would keep the Mission intact far past her own lifespan. The half-elf sunk the remainder of the Quincunx's fortune into setting up a market-town around Castle Longspear, with selected businesses that could make the community self-sustaining in times of war, and building extra floors atop of the original structure to accommodate them all inside the castle. The Quincunx Mission fed the workers as they built their new home, and was never dismantled. March retired to the northwest hall, there to spend the rest of her life keeping the area safe in war or peace, and hope for forgiveness.

The Mission building has enchantments sunk into every stone; although everything that could possibly be done with mundane means was, casting dispel magic anywhere inside the building is a very bad idea. Lydia's transmuted facades shield all of the load-bearing stones from the opposite spell and fend off decay from the wood and supplies. Childish Minta keeps gender detectors in the spear and shield friezes to keep "icky boys" from entering the women's entrance, as well as some less savory spells in the floor stones that ensure no charity case tries to take up residence inside the building. Rosemary's mandala funnels power from the alternate plane of existence into all of the other symbols, which kept down the cost to the Quincunx's casters. March maintains all the forcefields and security wards and wipes the memories of people who trespass beyond the public areas without her approval. The wizard nursemaids almost always try to study the enchantments, but March wipes their minds clean of that information every night and disposes of written evidence; the rogue nursemaids have no magic devices to practice upon, per se, and are kept ignorant of the enchantments. The colossus requires the willing sacrifice of a defender, sitting in its cupped hands and looking at the sun, in order to awaken and defend the Mission--yet if the missing soapstone blocks are not replaced before the sacrifice, the defender dies for nothing. Sossity removed and hid the bricks under the roof walkway while Lydia carved the remaining surfaces to conceal the theft; Rosemary tried to awaken the colossus with power channeled from another plane and vanished in that failure; March learned of the need for sacrifice from Minta's thoughts and tried to wipe the knowledge from the gnome's mind.

Plot Hooks written in ascending order of party level & campaign length

New adventurers have to meet & eat, even after they've spent all their inheritance on equipment. Alternately, the party wants to hire some muscle to "win honor, acquire treasure, and trip traps"*. Jobless people congregate at the Mission, and years of lifting those plates and cups have made them strong, suited to carrying polearm- and shield-like objects. Lucky coincedence, that. . .

Lydia plays her harp in the wilderness and the party follows the song to its source, a house carved into an outcropping of rock on the forest floor; if stonecrafting races flatter her handiwork with the stone, she may even invite them inside for healing tea. She lives in peace with her new family but still, sometimes, worries for the fate of her former companions; she gives them an opal engraved with the symbol of the Quincunx and wishes it returned, along with news of the ones she left behind and proof of their support of the Mission, within a month.

Someone's evil patron has heard of prisoners held in the Mission, more specifically a spellcaster with a spell the patron lacks. If the party member wants his/her continued patronage, s/he will go into the Mission and get that spell, at a minimum, within the week. More thorough results, such as the spellbook, will bring better rewards. If the group manages to disrupt the good works of the Mission while doing so, they may even get the reanimated bodies of any casualties returned to them as undead slaves.

March knows the party, and knows that she is dying; she summons them to take up her burden, the tangle of spellcraft which keeps the Mission secure and solvent, which will be dispelled upon her death. As she outlines the secrets of the Mission, her nursemaids suddenly lunge for the door, but drop dead, along with the pair downstairs. Minta has broken free, as March has no time to spare for her any longer.

The Mission, the refuge of the heretic group which challenged the omniscence of the gods, outstrips the abilities of the NPC clerics and paladins; they will reward the party for eliminating what they cannot themselves kill, and give as much information as they have gleaned. This briefing lacks some key facts: three members of the Quincunx live, but the clerics have only divined the existence of two; the Mission will collapse under its own weight if all of the Quincunx are slain; Minta has sunk necromantic spells into the stones of the Mission that will cause every casualty to rise again as an undead.

War approaches! The rulers of the city will take temporary control of the Mission, and guess who gets to tell the Quincunx of their decision? However, March has many defensive plans of her own; none of them involve kowtowing to some civic leeches, and all of them involve bolting the doors of the Mission and making use of everyone taking refuge inside. If the war proves one-sided enough, the half-elf may even consider awakening the colossus, inside the fortress laced with magic.

One of the party stops to study the silver mandala and becomes fascinated by it. Over the course of a night, despite the rest of the party's best efforts to rouse the sleepwalker, s/he slowly fades out of existence! In this pocket dimension where no one may die, Rosemary has continued the research of the Quincunx, and will capture and question the new arrival.

*The phrase used to hire Frockmorton (http://www.themightypen.net/index.php?showtopic=7414&start=4).