After several days of travel, he finally reached the mountains. There, the road wound its way up and up, over the narrow range of jagged peaks, and finally down into Torryn Province, the northeasternmost part of the Midrythian Empire.

But before the pass lay one last obstacle on the Terrosian side of the mountains: the village of Veldath.

Fear and loathing in lost Veldath

When Mizraith approached this last speck of civilization before the mountain pass, he still had a couple of hours of daylight left, but not knowing the condition of the road ahead, he contemplated stopping for the night in Veldath if there was an inn there.

However, when he rode into town, he found the streets curiously deserted, shops closed, shutters on windows closed, and not a soul in sight.

Taking care, Mizraith wound his way through the village, and finally spotted some people. There was a small group of them, regular folk, but armed with pitchforks and farm implements. They appeared to be hostile, but they hesitated. One man stepped out from the group and walked toward him.

“What has happened here?” Mizraith asked the man who approached him. “Is everything all right?

The man had a crazed look in his eye and he pointed to the west. “Leave this place! LEAVE NOW while you still can!”

“What is wrong?”

“The water. That is what brings the blackness. Now GO.”

There was so much urgency in his voice that Mizraith decided to play it safe and leave. And none too soon… the mob of villagers began to move toward him, brandishing their improvised weapons.

Mizraith urged his horse to a gallop and bolted west and out of town, the villagers pursuing for a short time, but giving up once he reached the edge of the village.

He kept up his fast pace until he had put a few miles between himself and the strange, frightening village of Veldath. He still had some daylight left, and feeling unsettled after his recent encounter, he decided to press on.

The signs of those who had come before him

The battle mage picked his way through the rocky, narrow section of road that clung to the side of a mountain at the highest point of the pass, and from there the way down the other side was much easier travel.

When he was about halfway down, he saw something that caught his eye in the tall grass to one side of the road. Mizraith dismounted and approached, discovering the body of an armored human wearing a tattered red tabard. His chest was pierced by two arrows and had other punctures as well, apparently from a blade.

Looks like this is definitely the way Enris and Thuron came, he thought. The corpse had an empty scabbard and no coin of any kind on him, so he had obviously already been looted.

Mizraith remounted and continued on, picking up speed again as he wound down out of the mountains.

Torryn

Mizraith reached Castle Torryn well into the dark of night. There, he was greeted by Nendorin and Lord Sorsho.

He removed the glove from his right hand and held it up, showing the Duke his missing ring finger. “I saw a black cat this morning, my lord.”

Duke Sorsho grinned and gave the countersign. “Did you notice if it had nine lives?”

“You are Duke Verin Sorsho?”

The Duke nodded. “I am. And you are quite obviously a Field Agent. What brings you to my fair province?”

“I am Mizraith, battle mage and Field Agent to the Brotherhood of the Nine. I was sent here on an urgent mission to ensure that the two Field Agents that came before me–”

Nendorin interrupted. “Ah, let us not discuss such matters in the entry chamber, my lords. Come, Mizraith, let us move to the dining hall and we can serve you some food and drink.”

Duke Sorsho nodded in agreement and Mizraith studied the face of Nendorin. It looked like he was obviously trying to change the subject from his mission, so Mizraith went along. “Of course. By your leave, my lord.”

The Duke gestured toward the hallway that led to Castle Torryn’s dining hall and Mizraith made his way there with Nendorin and Duke Sorsho close behind.

Sorsho did not sit, however, and simply looked at Mizraith. “You are welcome in my home, brother, but I have much to do tomorrow and I must take my leave of you. I’ll have Nendorin fill me in on any Brotherhood business you may have, and I shall now retire for the evening.”

Mizraith bowed his head as the Duke walked upstairs. “As you wish, my lord.”

Then, once he was sure they were alone, Mizraith gave Nendorin a quizzical look. “He is not to know of my mission?”

Nendorin shook his head. “I assume you were sent because of Enris and Thuron’s amnesia.”

“Amnesia? Well, I did not know the cause of their behavior, but that may explain it. I was sent to keep them on task. Apparently this mission here is of utmost importance to the Brotherhood. Why is the Duke not to be informed?”

Nendorin smiled. “I was trying to help two young Field Agents save face on a critical mission, early in their careers. I did not tell Lord Sorsho of their malady, and instead have been keeping them on task myself, so far successfully.”

“So,” said Mizraith, nodding, “you have kept this from him for their benefit.”

“Yes. They have proved themselves competent, but they seem to have totally lost their memories, they have no recollection of even their very identities. I had to tell them their own names when they had arrived here. I know not the cause. But I do not think Lord Sorsho has to know at this point. He has many other things worrying him of late, and I do not think he needs a trifle such as this causing him to lose confidence in this operation.”

“Very well,” said Mizraith. “I shall use discretion. Where are Enris and Thuron now, and what phase of their mission are they in?”

Nendorin filled Mizraith in on the details, and advised that he meet up with them the next day to start working with them.

It seemed Mizraith was getting into the thieving business.

Mizraith placed a gold coin on the table and walked out the door. He had a long ride ahead of him, and the sun was in his eyes.

Also while at the guild, they were informed that while the heat had in fact died down quite a bit, they were still wanted men and that many members of the Haeleth City Guard were on Maeran Dun‘s payroll and were corrupt, and on the lookout for them.

They decided that since they had just spent a week’s time laying low, they should send a message to Nendorin (the steward of Castle Torryn and right-hand-man of Duke Sorsho) informing him that they were ready to start “phase 2″ of their mission, and that they needed their horses back (which they had left at the castle).

Andiron Leads The Way

They weren’t sure how to get a message to him without it being intercepted, and they weren’t sure how to get out of town without being caught, so they decided to look up Andiron and see if he had any suggestions or could help in any way.

They were told that “Andy” usually hung around at a Haeleth tavern called “The Singing Frog Sanctuary”, and were shown how to get there by one of the guild’s messengers. They went into the tavern, checked their weapons at the door, and Thuron ordered Andy and the three other men he was with a round of drinks. Enris and Thuron joined them, engaged in some small talk, and eventually, when the other three men left, they were able to ask Andy for some help (after confirming that he was, in fact, a Field Agent of the Brotherhood of the Nine).

Andy told them that he wasn’t aware of what their mission was, or why they were even sent for, since there were plenty of other Brotherhood Field Agents around that could have been utilized, but he was more than willing to help in any way he could, as he was a Field Agent himself. His primary mission was to report on the activities of the Jagged Blade thieves guild here in Haeleth, and ensure that they were staying in line.

Thuron wrote a quick note for Nendorin, and gave it to Andy, and they also asked him if he could show them how to get out of the city unseen.

Andy said that he’d deliver the note personally, and he’d show them out of the city while he was at it. They finished their drinks and followed Andy across town to the locked, walled garden of an old temple that wasn’t used anymore. It was “off limits” to trespassers, for even though it was no longer used for anything, the city leadership still considered it “holy ground”, and didn’t want anyone messing around in there.

Andy knew a way into the garden, and from there, behind the temple garden walls, they had a nice, hidden spot to engage in climbing over the city wall itself, which was adjacent to the temple. They made it over the city wall without much difficulty (even though it’s heavily patrolled by the City Guard) and split up… Andy went east at a fast pace, heading for Castle Torryn to deliver their message, and Enris and Thuron went north to wait at the crossroads (which they indicated they would in their note).

They waited until morning there, hidden in a copse of trees, and Andy came riding up (on a horse he “acquired” shortly after he left their company the previous night), with their horses in tow and with a message for them from Nendorin.

The message said simply:

Go ahead with the mission.

They asked Andy if he would accompany them, since they were about to embark on a crime spree (hijacking smuggled shipments of elven wine) and needed some manpower, and Andy said he’d help, plus he knew that in the nearby city of Mirka he could help them hire some mercenaries as well, if they needed them.

The Fight On The Road

They all headed north then, and stopped around noon for a break and some food.

Then the three members of the City Guard from Haeleth who were patrolling this stretch of road on horseback caught up with them.

They were asked their names, and their business, and decided to try his hand at making something up on the spot.

The guard didn’t believe him for a minute, and, since he was suspicious of these guys to begin with, he decided to take them into custody, just to be safe.

The guard drew his sword and said “Two of you match the description of someone we are looking for, but I would like all three of you to drop your weapons and accompany us back to Haeleth so we can sort this out.”

A standoff ensued, the other guards drew their weapons, and a fight broke out (of course). Andy rushed forward and showed the others that he was ambidextrous, drawing both a shortsword and a longsword and attacking the leader with blinding speed. Enris and Thuron followed his lead.

Enris started shooting arrows at the guard on the right, while Thuron pulled out his trusty rope and lassoed the guard on the left. A quick tug and the lassoed guard was pulled off his horse and stunned, lying in the road. Both of Enris’ arrows hit home but did only mediocre damage, and one of Andy’s sword attacks struck, and the fight continued.

At that point, Thuron decided to utilize one his new sub-skills (which is a spinoff of his Grand Master level rope use skill), which he called Quickbind. It entails being able to hog-tie someone after you’ve successfully lassoed and yanked them down to the ground. The opponent gets an “open doors” check (based off of their strength score) to avoid it while this is going on, and the character still has to successfully roll the skill check for it, but the result, if successful, is that the opponent is tied up and is staying that way until he is untied by someone.

Thuron rolled so well on his check for Quickbind (he got a 01!!) that I ruled he pulled it off in only a couple of seconds and had time to turn around and orient on a new target in the remainder of the round so that he could attack with his daggers first thing next round.

Which he did. The combination of his daggers and Enris shooting arrows at the guard on the right brought that man down, and Andy finished up with the leader.

They dragged the bodies (including the still-alive guard Thuron had hog-tied) off into the trees, and that was when Enris discovered another skill he hadn’t known he’d had. They decided to interrogate the guard to find out how much they knew and how they were found so quickly, and decided in frustration that Enris was going to start beating the tied up guard.

Unbeknownst to him, Enris had the “art of beating” skill, with a rating of a whopping 89%… needless to say, he got all the info out of the poor guard that they’d wanted (and found out that the guards only ran across them by sheer luck… they in fact had no idea who they were), and Thuron ended the guard’s life with a swipe of his dagger.

They covered the bodies of the guards in the copse of trees so as to make them difficult to find, and rode north to the city of Mirka with the guards’ horses in tow. When they got to town, they found someone willing to buy their surplus horses (and got way more for them than they should have, thanks to Thuron’s “haggle” skill), and found a place to hole up for the night.

Plotting And Planning

Their plans involved spending a couple of days trying to hire some mercenaries to help them with the robberies. They’d been told that garden variety footsoldiers only cost between 3 and 6 gold pieces a month to payroll, and that Mirka typically was a good place to find plenty of men for hire. What they didn’t know, however, was that since they were looking to hire men specifically to help them commit crimes against the most powerful man in this province (the merchant Maeran Dun), they are going to run into a lot of difficulty when it came to hiring people willing to work to that end.

Hiring people to commit crimes that will likely get them killed or executed never comes cheaply….

They listened for a while, didn’t hear anything, and Enris decided to move silently down the open steps and into the fourth story of the warehouse.

He got halfway down and tripped.

Guards And Dogs

He made a really, really bad move silently attempt, and then proceeded to roll a natural 20 on his Dexterity check, so he went a-tumbling down the stairs, took a hit point of damage, and rolled quickly to his feet. He then shot back up the steps and had an arrow ready for the guard that he knew would be coming.

Sure enough, one of the two guards they knew were in the building came up the other stairwell from the 3rd floor, and was looking around.

Then it was Thuron’s turn to shine. He already had a lasso loop in his hand (he had mentioned tying a lasso earlier) and he snagged the guard and yanked him tight, causing the sentry to drop his broadsword. Then Enris began shooting arrows at the guy, and of all times to miss, he was missing every shot right then.

Thuron then did an expertly executed flip down the steps, a hand-plant halfway down, and attacked the guard from behind for a huge amount of damage. He rolled to his feet and threw another dagger at the guy and the guard fell dead.

At that point, Enris came down the steps, retrieved his arrows, and they started looking around the fourth level of the warehouse. They then heard growling of dogs, and a guard’s voice from below, asking “what the hell was all the noise up there?”.

Thuron, attempting to disguise his voice, yelled back “nothin’.” and the guard with the dogs went back downstairs! They resumed their poking around, went down to the 3rd floor, and then they had an idea. Thuron again yelled down to the other guard, and said “secure the dogs and come up here! Quick!”

The idiot sentry fell for this ruse and made his way upstairs.

The guard stupidly walked straight up the ramp that went up to the 3rd floor of the warehouse, and as soon as his head and shoulders were visible, Thuron nailed him with a textbook lasso throw. The rope slid up around his neck, and Thuron (who had already walked around a support beam with the other end of the rope) dragged the man out of the ramp bay and up onto the floor. By the time he was done dragging this guard up by his neck and went down to take him out, he found that the guard was already unconscious.

Thuron elected to kill him anyway.

The pair then made it down to the first floor in order to make their way straight to the main office area, where they needed to search to find the secret smuggling shipping schedules, only to discover that the two guard dogs were “secured” by the guard they just slew by locking them in the office.

Thuron opened the office door just enough for one of these large dogs to poke his thrashing, snarling head through, and managed to lock the dog’s head in the door. In the mean time, to stay back from danger, Enris started loosing arrows into this dog’s head, every one of them a called shot.

At one point Enris missed and did some rather grievous damage to Thuron’s thigh with a stray arrow.

They managed to kill the dog, kicked it back into the office and slammed the door before the second one could come out. Thuron then tied one end of his rope to the doorknob, leaving 25 feet of rope left in his hand, and the loop from his lasso. He then unlatched the door, took a couple of big steps back, and whistled. The second dog (the bigger of the two) came bounding out the door in a snarling frenzy of snapping teeth and jaws, only to find its head was already snared in a successful lasso throw by Thuron. He and Enris then picked off the dog at their leisure with thrown daggers and arrows with little risk to themselves.

The Office And The Vault

Then the two thieves ransacked the office, found a concealed door that led to an iron vault, picked the lock, and went inside to find 200 bottles of smuggled elven wine, two chests, and a couple of filing cabinets (which were both bolted to the floor).

Enris started checking out the filing cabinets, and Thuron started working on picking the lock on the first chest, setting off a poison needle trap.

Thuron was only nicked by the needle and took a puny amount of damage, and then failed to open the lock anyway! Enris opened the lock for him, and they discovered 40 pounds of gold coins and 40 pounds of platinum coins… quite a haul for a night’s work!

Thuron walked around this chest to check out the second one, where he noticed a big basket on the floor that was on its side, its lid on the floor in front of it. He reached down for the lid, and was attacked by a poisonous viper.

Again, Thuron by dumb luck managed to only receive a scratch from the bite, took a puny amount of damage, and reached for the lid again as the first snake slithered off towards the door. He was then attacked by a second snake (which missed him completely and slithered past him again), and he managed to get the lid on the basket before the third snake could get out.

They killed the two snakes and proceeded to finish searching the vault. Enris found the shipping schedule they came there for, and they discovered the second chest had some healing potions, a couple other potions, and a fairly valuable gem, as well as some +1 arrows. They made a copy of the shipping schedule, took the valuable stuff, and then remembered that they were supposed to make this look less like a targeted hit and more like a badly executed amateurish robbery (which it almost was anyway), so Enris re-locked the filing cabinet, and Thuron proceeded to break every bottle of smuggled wine in the vault. Two hundred bottles, at fifty gold pieces per bottle, smash, smash, smash, out walked Thuron smelling of 10,000 gold pieces worth of illegal wine!

They made their way to the loading dock, walked out the door (leaving the 10′ wide loading dock door wide open, in the warehouse district, at 3:00 am), headed back to the inn across the street, and kept watch and rested.

They left a message for the inn owner to see them as soon as he came in in the morning (the inn owner, “Umo”, was a member of the Brotherhood and one of their primary connections in this city), and he arranged for them to go into hiding with the local thieves guild until they finished some training and until the heat died down a bit.

The Swindling Of Laethen

Enris and Thuron were smuggled safely across town to the Jagged Blade Thieves’ Guild. The Jagged Blade is located under the northeastern portion of Haeleth, in a series of tunnels they blocked off from an old, unused part of the city sewer system. There, they had a meeting with the local guildmaster, a man named “Laethen”, whom they were told was not a Field Agent of the Brotherhood and greatly resented their control over the area.

He said to them, “Brothers or not, obligations or not, you’ll get your training and protection here, just as I am supposed to provide. However, you will not leave these halls until I get my cut of the job you pulled last night.”

Enris: What’s your cut?

Laethen: Fifty percent.

Thuron, who was the one carrying two 40 pound bags of coinage, cut loose the bag on the left and said “here you go. Half.”

Since Laethen had no way of knowing what their total haul was, he took it. It was a pretty good cut; the bag was filled with 400 gold pieces. Of course, what he didn’t know was that the other bag Thuron had been carrying was filled with 400 platinum pieces (worth 5 times as much), and also had a gem hidden on him that was worth around 4,000 gp.

Needless to say, they got the better end of that deal.

Indeed, on Duke Sorsho’s castle steward Nendorin’s advice, they had played along as if they did not have complete amnesia, so the Duke made no effort in explaining to them what exactly the nature of their organization might be.

Prior to embarking on their surveillance on Maeran Dun’s Haeleth warehouse, however, Nendorin tried filling them in so as to attempt to help keep them out of trouble.

A Shadowy Secret Society

To the east of the Midrythian Empire is another, older empire called Terros. On the eastern coast of Terros is a sprawling port city named Gurdock, and that, Nendorin explained, is where Enris and Thuron were from.

It is not known where the Brotherhood originated, but it was certainly somewhere in Terros, and they have a very strong presence in Gurdock, and thus have a chokehold on trade by sea in that portion of Terros.

The Brotherhood is made up of three ranks: the Uninitiated, the Field Agents, and the Officers. It is rumored that there is one rank above the Officers, made up of the original members who founded the Brotherhood of the Nine. These are unknown, but they are referred to only as the Masters.

The Uninitiated

The Uninitiated are those who are accepted members in good standing of any Brotherhood controlled thieves’ guild who have not undergone any kind of initiation ceremony into the Brotherhood of the Nine itself. They are vaguely aware of the Brotherhood’s existence, though most of the Uninitiated don’t pay much attention to talk of the Brotherhood. Many of them even say thing such as “Ah, the Brotherhood. Ghosts and children’s stories, lad. Don’t ye fear such black, shadowy men, boy. Fear the constables and the hangman’s noose! And fetch me another bottle of wine!”.

A few Uninitiated have some knowledge of the Brotherhood, but have either chosen not to pursue initiation into their ranks, or have not met the character requirements of the organization to have been elevated any further. Most of the Uninitiated, therefore, are mere thieves working for various guilds, and that’s all they are content to be.

The Field Agents

Field agents, normally the cream of the crop, are the soldiers of the Brotherhood, and are not mere thieves. While many of them are in fact thieves by trade, Brotherhood field agents are often magic users, fighters, assassins, clerics. The primary thing they have in common is total loyalty to the secret society.

Brotherhood Field Agents all are missing the ring finger of their right hand. Not much is known of the initiation ceremony, but it is assumed that it involves the removal of this finger as a sign of membership.

Field Agents are fiercely loyal to the Brotherhood, resourceful, tough, and all have at least one or more skills that are specialties. Every time the Brotherhood spreads to a new area, it is the Field Agents who are sent in first to gather information, infiltrate key areas, and strike at any threats, enemies, or rivals.

When the dust settles and the blood stops flowing, the Field Agents of the Brotherhood of the Nine are the ones left standing, holding the reins of power, and keeping their secret society discreet and quiet.

The Officers

When a Field Agent gets sent into a hostile area with vague orders to accomplish a seemingly impossible mission, those orders come from an Officer of the Brotherhood of the Nine. Officers are in charge of Field Agents and are responsible for ensuring the spread of the Brotherhood’s power and influence via the tools they’re given. In modern parlance, Officers of the Brotherhood of the Nine are the organization’s “Made Men”, the mafia bosses that call the shots and direct all of the activity in any given area.

Most of the Officers of the Brotherhood are called from the ranks of Field Agents who have distinguished themselves in some way, though many Officers are groomed for their rank from birth by parents who pass the title on to their children if they show promise and are worthy of being in charge.

Therefore some Officers are missing the ring finger of their right hands — the badge of the Brotherhood Field Agent — and some are not.

Officers are normally initiated in a much more involved process than Field Agents. A major part of this process is a quest that any Officer initiate must undertake to prove his or her loyalty, a quest which often results in the initiate’s untimely death.

The result of this process is a rank of Officers who are all dedicated, dangerous and highly capable individuals. The weak-willed never survive to petition for this level of advancement in the organization, and the disloyal are ruthlessly culled well before they ever see the Officer initiation ceremony.

Those who are left are frighteningly good at their job.

The Masters

Little is known of the men who founded the Brotherhood of the Nine, but it is known that most of them are still alive, are still in control of the secret society, and therefore only founded the organization a few decades ago at most.

Their identities are completely unknown, as are their actual locations, but their power is complete. They have, through their organization, influence and control over barons, dukes, princes, and kings. They direct trade, enforce order (of a sort), manipulate commerce, promote or demote the powerful and wealthy in the merchant class, and even influence the clergy of numerous faiths.

Their goals are as yet utterly unknown as well, only that one by one, all thieves’ guilds they set their hearts on fall under their control eventually.

At some point they are sure to get the attention of someone who considers them a threat, but until now, any who have noticed them have done so only once it is too late for them to do anything about the Brotherhood’s spread.

The Spread West

The Brotherhood has spread over recent decades by infiltrating thieves’ guilds and then, in swift, violent fashion, taking control of them from within, stabilizing what’s left, and adding the guild’s members to the Brotherhood if they are worthy.

In this way, the Brotherhood of the Nine has control over nearly all the organized thieves in central Terros, and has had its eye on the Midrythian Empire for some time. Recently, they found a grand opportunity to quietly make their move into something beyond thievery. They saw Midrythia as a way for them to enter the world of politics as well.

Years ago, a young noble named Lord Verin Sorsho was dissatisfied with a rather dull life in a backwoods province in extreme northeasthern Midrythia. His mother, the wife of the Duke of Torryn, was Terrosian, and had numerous family members in the distant port city of Gurdock, so when Verin Sorsho was still a lad of 15, he received his father’s permission to dwell for a time with his uncles and cousins in Terros while going to school there.

While in Gurdock, Verin Sorsho did nothing of the kind. He immediately sought to quench his thirst for excitement and adventure and fell in with a group of thieves and scoundrels in Gurdock.

He found out later, once he had impressed them with his wile, his wit, and his courage that they were members of a thieves’ guild and they offered to train him if he’d join their crew. Sorsho did so, and for the next several years he plied his trade by stealing from tradesmen, ship captains, warehouses, merchant caravans, and other scoundrels.

Eventually, he was asked to become a Field Agent of the Brotherhood of the Nine. Sorsho knew of the Brotherhood — all of his closest friends in the thieves’ guild in Gurdock were closely associated with the organization — so he gladly accepted the invitation.

Sorsho then traveled widely. He served as the first mate on a merchant ship (while reporting on the owner’s activities involving the pirates of the south and the seagoing elves of the west with whom he had connections), he infiltrated other thieves’ guilds, he stole information, he spied on Brotherhood rivals, and he masqueraded as city officials, gate guards, fish mongers, artisans, and constable’s men.

Sorsho made a deep impression on his superiors, and in short order was asked to undertake his quest of loyalty to begin the process of becoming a member of the Officer’s rank of the Brotherhood. He did so with ease, and began his climb to even more power within the secret organization, commanding dozens of Field Agents on new missions, and gained notoriety as an Officer to watch.

Suddenly Verin Sorsho’s old life came back to haunt him when he received word one evening that his father, the Duke of Torryn, had died, and he was requested to return to the land of his birth and take up his father’s title.

When the Masters heard of this, they directed Verin Sorsho to return and become the new Duke of Torryn, and, always loyal and capable, he did so, becoming Duke Sorsho like his father before him.

Thus began a new era in the spread of the Brotherhood of the Nine.

For the first time, a hereditary lord with legitimate title and with legitimate political power in prominent empire was also an upper echelon member of the Brotherhood.

A whole new world was opening up to them.

Chad’s character too, Trav discovered, had no memories, just a horse, some miscellaneous equipment and traveling gear, and was sharing the road with him. He discovered him after turning a corner and there was some other person up ahead of him who was apparently spying on someone himself.

Trav approached, and whispered “what are we looking at?”, startling the man in front of him.

They introduced each other, discovered that neither of them knew what their own names were, and noted immediately that they were both missing the same finger on their right hands.

They commenced spying on the same group of soldiers that had been hanging around before. They were resting by a small river ford.

The soldiers walked their horses across the ford, and continued down the trail, and the two amnesiac characters followed, only to lose them somehow as the mountain pass opened up.

Then they were fired on by a crossbowman (one of the five soldiers who had been left behind to ensure nobody was following them).

At that point, Chad’s character discovered that he was deadly accurate with a shortbow. Trav had already found out that he had some skill at acrobatics, and was also equally deadly with a thrown dagger.

They quickly dispatched the crossbowman before he could even get a second shot off, found his horse and took it with them. They left the mountains and went into open country, continuing down the same road. They still didn’t know where they were going, but that was the direction they had already been heading, and they were assuming those soldiers had gone that way as well, so that’s where they decided to go.

They wound up in a small castle whose steward — named Nendorin was apparently expecting them. They learned their names (Chad was Enris Del’Quaran and Trav was Thuron Zaral), and were given rooms so that they could rest up, as the “Lord of the Castle” would arrive the next day.

They rested, and were awakened in the morning by the sound of horns outside. They arose and had a brief conversation with the castle steward, who, upon discovering that they had lost their memories, advised them to keep that a secret and to “play along”, as the matter for which they had been sent here was of utmost importance.

The castle lord (a Midrythian Duke named Lord Verin Sorsho) informed them that the reason they were sent for was because “The Brotherhood of the Nine” was in danger of being discovered as having influence in this area, threatened by a powerful merchant prince who had always been trying to get Lord Sorsho under his control.

Lord Sorsho, a retired thieves’ guild master, had arisen to rulership over this entire remote Mydrithian province via his hereditary line. He, through the Brotherhood of the Nine, exercised a firm measure of control over all thieves’ guilds in this area, though this was not common knowledge. Most people saw him merely as a hereditary lord of a rather small, backwoods province of this empire.

The merchant prince in question, a wealthy, powerful, but very behind-the-scenes man named Maeran Dun, made his fortune by smuggling elven wine brought in overland from the west, on a long journey from Raedelthynys. While elven wine itself wasn’t illegal in Midrythia or Torryn province, one of the key elements of power the Emperor had was in controlling all trade into and out of his empire.

The more valuable the trade, the bigger the crime it was to do so without the empire’s knowledge.

Because this merchant prince was threatening to bring the whole thing down by his bringing attention to this small, remote province before the Brotherhood was ready to withstand that level of scrutiny, Lord Sorsho had sent word back to Brotherhood headquarters that he needed some field agents, preferably low-profile ones that wouldn’t be known or recognized. Hence the two characters now played by Chad and Trav.

Maeran Dun could not be eliminated outright, as he was far too important in this area and that would have dire consequences. Lord Sorsho informed them that instead, he planned on disrupting the merchant’s smuggling operations in the area and hitting him where it hurts, and hopefully spurring the powerful man into making a mistake.

To do that, they would need to break into his main offices, trash the place to make it look like a lowbrow burglary, and get his secret shipping schedules.

The two characters still didn’t know what happened to their memories, however. They played along, and were set up with a short list of contacts in the nearby large city of Haeleth (where the merchant had his offices) through whom they could get information and equipment and hirelings if they needed them.

They then went to Haeleth, hooked up with a couple of their contacts, and started surveillance on the merchant prince’s main warehouse (part of which contained his main offices).

They made note of the watch schedules, how much security there was, and paid for some other info on what kind of security was inside as well, and made their plans.

They waited until after midnight (after the first group of guards switched off to the second), then Enris sneaked around the block and waited in the shadows while Thuron used his rope use skill to send 60′ of rope and a grappling hook across the street (from the roof of their inn) to rig up a tightrope. He made it across the tightrope, and was poking around the roof, but then Enris impulsively decided to take out the outside sentry with a called-shot arrow, which missed, and all hell broke loose.

He missed on his second arrow as well, and was spotted by the sentry, who turned and charged him.

He hit him with one arrow, and Thuron dropped the guard with two fantastic shots with thrown daggers from the roof of the warehouse, forty feet above.

The exterior guards taken care of, Enris and Thuron were poised to break into the warehouse.

I got the idea from a number of discussions I had with several other GMs over at the Kenzer & Co. forums about various oddball creative “concept” campaigns.

The way I began this one was a bit unconventional, but it was a fun idea.

I pre-generated a character for Trav, complete with ability scores, equipment, skills, quirks/flaws… everything.

Then, when he got to my house for the first session, and was asking me “so, how did my pre-generated character turn out?”, I handed him a character sheet and said “see for yourself”.

The sheet I handed him was a blank character sheet.

He didn’t get it. He looked at it and said “This is completely blank.”

I ignored that and said, “You’re on the back of a riding horse, traveling down a rough, rocky road among some low-lying hills.”

He looked at me. Looked back at the character sheet. Back up at me. “Well, what’s my name?”

Me: Is that your character asking that?

Trav: Sure. I ask myself what my name is.

Me: You have no memory of that.

Trav: I don’t remember my own name? Well what am I doing on this horse? Where am I going?

Me: You don’t remember that either.

*pause*

Trav: Okay, I think I’m understanding where you’re going with this now. What kind of clothes am I wearing?

I proceeded to tell him what he was wearing, what kind of weapons he had on his belt, and I pointed out that he had a backpack on, and that there were saddlebags on the horse. He stopped the horse and dismounted, and started going through his own belongings. He found pretty mundane stuff, but it was obvious to him that he was packed up for a long trip.

He also noticed that he was missing a finger on his right hand.

While he was contemplating this, he heard some noise from the trail behind him, and he led his horse to a hiding spot behind a rocky outcropping.

He swiftly climbed up a sheer cliff wall, and then suddenly realized that he must have some sort of skill in that — normal people can’t just climb up walls without even thinking about it!

He worked his way over to a good point on the hill to observe the trail, and spotted five heavily armed solders on horseback, coming up the trail, traveling in the same direction that he was. He overheard them saying things to the effect of “How much longer before we can rest?”, “Not until we make a little more time. He had to have come this way. We must find him or it’ll be our heads.”

Basically, I already had all of the stuff for his character figured out, and I fed him bits and pieces of who he was and what he knew how to do by trial and error. I had him roll things like intelligence checks and dexterity checks for various things he was trying to do, and told him whether or not he succeeded or failed, and he kept track of the results.

For instance, he knew for a fact after that first session that his own intelligence was at least a 10, since he made a couple of successful intelligence checks on rolls of 10 or less, and he knew that his dexterity was at least 15 because of a similar situation.

He also learned that he was apparently very, very skilled at Rope Use, because he found that his own backpack was lashed closed with a complex knotted rope arrangement, which he successfully and easily untied with a skill check of 92 on a percentile roll.

He correctly made the assumption that his character was a thief, given the equipment that he was carrying and the skills and ability scores he’d discovered.

He didn’t know what has caused his amnesia, and he didn’t know where he was heading, or why those soldiers were looking for him.

And he didn’t remember Chad’s character either, who was introduced in the next session, and he was similarly afflicted.

He was missing a finger on his right hand as well, and also had soldiers looking for him.