Still working on my first caravan crawl. All the locations are written, and now I just need to polish the remaining three up a tad. I've also got the rules more or less done. Check out the start of the series or the town of Ingalls for a better sense of what it is all about!!
B: Tsentral: Quiet, Smoky.... + Leather, Ice. - Fine Cuisine.
2 The Vault: A vault has just been installed at the local bank. It could only be opened by its creator, Demis Ville, but his patron, Monsignor Falx stole the designs, beat the means of opening it out of him, and didn’t pay him a penny. Demis sits dejectedly in the town bar, while all the nobles move their wealth into the vault. Patron: Jobs…Len Bixby: Lem can’t show his face in town. Recruit Demis for a job; robbing the vault. Pays party 20% of whatever is in there. Demis: Kill Falx. Gives means of opening the vault in exchange. Falx: Guard the vault. Daily pay is half what a farmhand would make. Gray Wardens: Find and apprehend the Bixby Gang. Price of a cow for each of the three Bixby brothers, price of a chicken for each other member of the gang.
17 The Child: Brooks Stills is missing. He's 9 years old, and was last seen leaving the settlement nine hours ago with his 17 year old brother, Chaz, a notorious drug addict. Ken Stills, their father, is up in arms, seeking Chaz to torture the truth out of him. Chaz is hiding at his dealer’s house (her name is Kylie) outside the settlement, high out of his mind. He will claim he took Brooks for a walk deep in the woods, and a six legged, four winged, goat headed creature flew down. If Chaz sobers up, he will remember that Brooks had wandered off just before the beast appeared. The beast is real, and its lair is in a cave only accessible by swimming to the bottom of a local river, through a water-filled passage and up into the cave, which is not submerged. Brooks is taking a nap in the woods. Patron / Pay / Job. Ken Stills / price of a chicken / find Chaz so Ken can torture him to help him “remember” what happened to Brooks. Ken Stills / price of a cow / get Brooks back. Komomok, shaman / a magic charm granting +1 to all saves for each party member / kill the beast and let him take the components.
IN TOWN quiet, smokey, mountains
Quiet: there's a stillness you can only find at altitude. Tsentral sits 8000 ft up, and you can see it in the way all the newcomers seem a bit out of breath.
Smokey: even in the summer, the daytime highs rarely get above 65. Every dwelling has a dutch oven or mortared chimney, and constant tails of smoke rise up from the settlement. At the edge of town, the factory belches thick black smoke into the air.
Mountains: around, the mountains stretch even higher. Visible peaks get as high as 15,000 ft.
--- Rye Brothers Ice Guild Hall tattoos, meeting, contractors, tax booth
Tattoos: Every paying member of the ice guild has neck tattoos.
Meeting: Carlton (bearded, ancient, monotone) rereads the meeting notes from yesterday’s Rye Brothers Ice Guild Council meeting. A crowd is still discussing the development; the Rye Brothers Ice Guild will move their retirement savings out of a hiding place in the ice and into the vault in Monsignor Falx’s bank. Carlton also facilitates those wishing to buy ice; it costs half the price here it will anywhere else in the region besides Ar-Atian. He has also set a bounty of 100$ on whoever is harvesting ice and selling it outside the guild, as well as a covert, non-publicized bounty of 125$ on Solomon Thyre, who is selling this non-guild ice at the Market in Agica.
Contractors: Dual office of the sheriff of Tsentral and the Rye Brothers Detective Agency. Sheriff Adonis Dane (black, jacked, quick-draw) has been re-elected sixteen times, but is in trouble due to the Bixby gang still being at large. For the last four years, he has contracted out his deputies with the Rye Brothers Detective Agency. Currently, his four contractors are Unguld, Gaston, Ewald and Lando (tattooed, dip, friendly to townsfolk, unfriendly to everyone else). Posters nearby advertise a 25$ price on Len Bixby, 15$ for his brothers, Dickson and Obadiah, and 5$ for any member of the gang. All bounties are dead or alive.
Tax Booth: The tax booth reeks. Niel Chalno (sweaty, pudgy, unsavory) escorted by Cha and Mai (gun-toting, toothpick-swirling, no-shit-taking). Niel is the representative of the People’s Department of Revenue, and collects the republic’s 15% tax on all large transactions, which all ice transactions are. The guild is not a fan; Tristan (teenaged, tattooed, funny), a younger guild member, has been leaving fish in a hollowed out post of the table used by Niel. Cha and Mai are convinced Niel just doesn’t bathe.
--- Bank grand opening!, wagons, vault
Grand opening! Massive banner advertises the opening of the Vault. Monsignor Falx (tuxedoed, mustachioed, handkerchief dobbing his forehead) greets all the many people who come to deposit their belongings within the Vault.
Wagons: normally, these wagons haul ice. Today, they hold the collected retirement savings of the Rye Brothers Ice Guild (previously kept hidden high in the mountains); 16 metal trunks full of gold bullion. They're escorted by 10 people loading them into the Vault, 10 more armed members of the ice guild who came along “ just to watch” and the three Chief counselors of the ice guild: Wyatt Crow (young, funny, crass), Jennings Butch (religious, uptight, shame-filled) and Waylon Samuels (old as dirt)
Vault: The bank building is made of steel from the Factory, with two main doors at the front, two large windows flanking them, and no other ways into the building. The interior is lit by electricity, and on the back wall behind the teller’s row is the vault itself.
--- The Gladstone hearth, heavy pours, water and ice, depressed
Hearth: marketed as the number one place to warm up in town, the Gladstone is built around a giant stone fireplace, easily 15 ft in diameter at its base. Around this massive hearth is built. The building itself is a 100 ft wide wooden Hut, with rafters bolted onto the chimney of the hearth. Early in the morning and late at night, it is crowded with drinkers, eaters, gamblers, and people who just want to warm up.
Heavy Pours: behind a bar on a raised dias is Zidon (bartender, perceptive, bearded, accented) who also owns the place. Having the best pours in town, as well as for ruthlessly breaking up fights with a double barrel shotgun kept under the bar. He also clearly sees what is happening in town; Mayor Peter Cavendish of Ingalls is angling to put the Ice Guild out of business and take it over for himself; he’s sent his sister to create the Factory to help profit from the construction of the bank, and Zidon also suspects the Bixby gang might be not only behind the illicit ice trade but also on Cavendish’s payroll. Zidon also suspects that the construction of the Vault might be a ploy to get the guild’s retirement savings out of their hidden locations in the mountains, and into a place where the Bixby’s can steal it. He’s right about every part of it.
Water and ice : the gambling tables here feature a game called ice and water. It's a simplified version of craps, with players taking turns rolling 2d6, and gambling on whether the outcome will be a 2, a 7 or an 11, or any other number. The former is called water, and pays out 100% of the original bet. The later is called ice, and pays out 20% of the original bet.
Depressed: one man stands out particularly to those looking around. It is the vault maker Denis. He is drunk out of his mind, and has been drunk for 2 days straight. He will tell his story of woe to anyone who will listen- that he designed the Vault created for the nearby Bank, that Monsignor Falx promised to pay him for it, and then after the Vault was completed, Falx had him beaten without paying him a penny. He is resigned to the fact that he's never going to make a penny off of it, but will jump at any opportunity to change that fact.
--- The Factory smoke, clanging, money
Smoke: stacks reach high into the sky, belching blackness above.
Clanging: inside, Bessemer process forges smelting steel, much of it used to create the bank and vault.
Money: This place is owned and operated by Deborah Cavendish (beautiful, crafty, black-haired), the sister of Ingalls Mayor Peter Cavendish. She is making ridiculous money owning this place, and it all goes back to Ingalls.
--- Doc Still’s House: Chair, Treatment, Begging
Chair: Set at the opposite side of the town square from the vault and near the Gladstone. Two story, with wide, broken windows on the front. On the ground in the street, a chair. It was thrown through the window recently.
Treatment: Genuinely an effective doctor, but also major anger management problems, Doc Ken Stills.
Begging: Outside his house, Doc Ken Stills begs anyone who will listen to help him find his sons. Chaz, to beat the shit out of him, and Brooks, to comfort him and keep him safe. The two went on a walk, but his older son, Chaz, returned without his 9 year old brother Brooks, and then ran off and now Brooks has been missing for 9 hours. Ken does not know where they went on the walk, or where Chaz goes to get high (it's Kylie’s house). Pays 10$ for the former, 100$ for the later.
--- The White Hair bear, chef, leather
Bear: A line stretches around the block to get the various specialties from this new restaurant. They serve pulled bear sandwiches slathered in melted white cheddar cheese (1.50), bear tomahawk steaks (7.75), and a very light and refreshing mix of foraged vegetables topped with bear meat in a huckleberry sauce (4.11).
Chef: Ardon de Boulos (young, tattooed, manic) started this restaurant with a hefty investment from the Monsignor Falx. Ardon has to make a profit, or else he loses the restaurant. His sous chef, Penny (younger, black, emotionally regulated), tries to keep him in check, but sometimes he gets in his own way. Right now, both of them know that they're short on bear meat. They'll pay double the price it typically fetches. Further, Ardon is fixated on the idea of magic and the paranormal. He has heard there is a ghost in Fort MacMillan in Agica. Would pay 25$ per log of timber from the fort’s walls, as he believes using that wood to smoke bear would result in better flavor.
Leather: Ardon buys most of the restaurant’s bears whole. This leaves him with a pile of bear pelts, which he is slowly turning into leather in a workshop out back. The workshop is manned by Tyron DeGaulx (friendly, bearded, blue eyed), who sells the pelts at half the cost of normal leather.
A is Ingalls, C is Atica.
SURROUNDING LOCATIONS
W Ice Fields work teams, night, cave, tents
Work Teams: Alpo lake has a diameter of at least a mile, and remains frozen nine months out of the year. Rye Brothers Ice Guild work teams with sleds venture out onto its surface to cut and haul ice back to town. Currently, a competition between Mick MacPherson (squat, dreads) and Ty Donahue (tall, bald) to see who can pull in the most ice this month.
Night: overnight, the Bixby gang creeps out of the hill, harvests a few sleds full of ice, and takes it back to their caves.
Cave: Each morning, in the narrow gap between the Bixby gang leaving and the work teams arriving, the same section of the ice is broken; everyone in the guild blames it on the ice bandits. Unbeknownst to them, during that time, a creature with six legs, four wings and a goat’s head punches through to leave its cave, the entrance to which lies at the bottom of the lake. Inside, you’ll find the bodies of several men and a few bears, along with 26 dollars in coins, two revolvers and a handful of bullets. Komomok, one of the bandits, saw this creature last night.
Tents: Over the three decades the ice guild has existed, countless small shelters have been built on or around the ice of the lake. One such shelter leads downward into a cave that stays a balmy 68 degrees year round. Inside, Brooks Stills (9 year old, precocious, scared) is taking a nap. If he is not rescued in the next day, he will attempt to wander home himself, and fall through the ice, dying.
X Bixby Camp Cave, Ice
Cave: Off the railroad, a small bunny trail leads to a cave. Inside, the Bixby Brothers gang camp. Always present, Len (redhead, quickdraw, clever), Dickson (brash, jacked, overweight) and Obadiah (wise, out of shape, bald) Bixby, listed from youngest to oldest, along with five or so members of their gang. Under Len’s pillow, letters from mayor Peter Cavendish of Ingalls, instructing him to steal ice and smuggle it to Solomon Thyre (located in Agica) and to rob the vault at the bank if possible. Len would love to have the help of the vault maker in getting it open, and would pay a group that would enlist that help for him 5$. He would do it himself, but can’t show his face in town.
Ice: In the back, sleds and ice cutting tools. The gang creeps down to the ice fields in the night, harvest ice, and then sell it at a significant discount compared to the guild. By the sleds, Komomok (native, shaman, weird) is mixing herbs. He saw the Beast from Under the Ice, and will pay the party with magic charms if they retrieve even a part of it for him to use in rituals.
Z Kylie’s House logs, smoke
Logs: It’s a log cabin.
Smoke: Both from the fire in a dutch oven, and from the “medicinal herbs” that Kylie (sassy, hypercritical) sells. Inside, Chaz Stills (traumatized, medicated, tremendous potential) hiding from his father, Ken, high out of his mind. Chaz will claim he took his younger brother Brooks for a walk up by the ice fields and a six legged, four winged, goat headed creature flew down. If Chaz sobers up, he will remember that Brooks had wandered off just before the beast appeared.
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