(TFT) an encounter in Cliportage

["Patrick Keleher" <patkeleher@hotmail.com>]

    A series of murders have occurred in Cliportage.  The victims are young 
women between the ages of eleven and fifteen.  Each was sexually brutalized. 
 Each was killed by a single knife slice across her throat.  As long as the 
killings were confined to the South side of the city there was little done 
about them, but now a corpse has been found in the North side's tunnels.  A 
high reward is offered to whoever apprehends the killer.
    Perhaps by serendipity, perhaps by industrious research, the 
adventurers learn that a similar series of killings occurred twenty years 
ago.  The murderer then was Gaute Theophileson, a scion of one of 
Cliportage's wealthier families.  He was captured and executed.  Ordinarily 
in Cliportage the corpse of a criminal executed for his crimes is not buried 
on hallowed ground but is instead fed to the hogs which serve as the city's 
organic waste disposal system, but Gaute's family was inflluential enough 
that, with a little baksheesh offered to the church, they could, and did, 
arrange for Gaute to be buried at the family plot in one of Cliportage's 
graveyards.  (The graveyard for the rich is near Top, South of the city, 
seperated from the rich community by the Cut, but with a beautiful view over 
the cliff.  Another burial ground, for the poor, is at the base of the cliff 
near Old Portage.)  One avenue of investigation leads the adventurers to the 
upper class graveyard.
    There they meet 'Corny' Caeleichair, the gravedigger and funeral 
grounds keeper.  Corny is a scruffy garrulous fellow who will gladly relate 
the grisely details of Gaute's murders.  "... He would cut the women's 
throats just as he was about to climax, bathing in their blood as he spent 
himself...", embellishing, elaborating, exaggerating, extemporaniously 
fabricating the ghost story on the spot, and ending with, "Some say, and I'd 
agree with them, that his ghost stalks the ghosts of his victims through the 
graveyard nightly.  AND some warn that, if anyone braved to slep overnight 
in this here graveyard, the ghost of Gaute Theophileson would come to them, 
and stalk, and murder them.  And, if a comely maid were among them, ravish 
her belike!"
    In describing Corny mention that he wears a tarnished medallion in the 
form of a circle surrounding three triangles intertwined about a dark eye.  
If a character with recognize value asks about the medallion, on a roll of 
4D vs IQ he will recognize that the pupil of the eye is a gem of some value; 
if he has assess value, on a successful roll of 5D vs IQ he will see the gem 
is a small black diamond easily worth $1000.
    Corny will lead the adventurers to Gaute's grave.  Carved on the 
memorial stone is a valknut within a circle.  If one of the characters 
notices the similarity of the design on the stone to Corny's medallion, 
things get weird now.  Otherwise, wait till (and if) the party decides to 
camp out in the graveyard for the night.

    Werththetnehss, also called The Word That Gnaws, or The Worm That 
Knows.
    ST:50  DX:13  IQ:20  MA:10
    Spells: Image, Confusion, Illusion, Persuasiveness, Control person, 4 
hex image, 4 hex illusion, Glamour, Telepathy, 7 hex image, Unnoticability, 
7 hex illusion, Geas, Possession, Word of command -- Dream.

______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com

=====
Post to the entire list by writing to tft@brainiac.com.
Unsubscribe by mailing to majordomo@brainiac.com with the message body
"unsubscribe tft"