Summary

Synopsis

Under the thumb of the Watch Captain of Greenstone, the party is directed (extorted) to find the thieves of a valuable gem bound for the Museum of Antiquities. With connections in the Crab River shantytown, they set out to comply. Though their contacts have some information, their inquiries alert a new potential power in the shantytown, Kief Vendermark, who dispatches a few of his toughs and a trusted assassin to silence their troublesome questions. Following up on their leads, they find one of the thieves, O’Mosh, murdered at the hands of a strange priest. Clues here lead back to a small shrine to Dagon, the Prince of the Deep, where they discover a cult intent on raising one of Dagon’s True Servants. The head priest, however, flubs the ritual, and the creature that emerges is something man was not meant to know. In the aftermath, the group comes into the possession of the Purple Sapphire. From his jeweled prison, Abazad the djinni makes an offer that the group may not be able to refuse: A true wish for but a small and insignificant service. Finding the Museum of Antiquities in shambles and the curator kidnapped, the group rushes into a schism between two factions of the cult.

Background

Ages ago, the djinni Abazad bin Halad made an honest bookkeeping mistake on his master’s accounts, and, when he noticed that no one else noticed, he pocketed the difference. That was so easy, that Abazad began making mistakes more frequently in the hopes of saving enough skim to free himself from the tiresome task of keeping accounts for a fat, rude merchant. Unfortunately, in addition to being corpulent and uncouth, the merchant was also pennywise, and reported Abazad to the taskmaster that originally indentured the djinni to the merchant: Ali-Ashara Usbiyad. Ali-Ashara, an equally bored djinni and dealer of lesser djinni, was also known as a cruel master and quickly solved the merchant’s problem. He immediately imprisoned Abazad in a jeweled prison and sent the merchant a shapely Janni dancer along with a more honest bookkeeping djinni. With his effective ‘management’ style, Ali-Ashara soon moved on to become a hired assassin for the Pasha of Gana, the City of Riches. Along the way, Ali-Ashara sold the prison gem to pay off old debts and never had another thought for the poor Abazad.

Through the years, the gem prison changed hands often, and came to be known as the Purple Sapphire. Abazad found a way to listen to the outside world and eventually to communicate with the possessor of the gem. He promised riches, fame, and anything else his current owner desired if he or she would bring the gem back to Ali-Ashara and convince the djinni to free him. But, Ali-Ashara had weaved a subtle curse on the prison gem, one that ensured that Abazad would never escaped (it was very embarrassing to the taskmaster when he had to placate a mere human), and Ali-Ashara was a bit of a sadist. The curse brought poor luck on the possessor of the gem, and prevented the person from getting rid of the cursed item for a thousand and one nights. On the last night of the curse, the possessor had to give the gem willingly to a stranger without explanation. The only other way to rid themselves of the gem and the curse was death. Then, the first to touch the gem after the previous owner’s death picked up the curse.

Abazad soon learned of the curse, and tried to use it to spur his owners on to find the cure, but the general unlucky nature of the curse always defeated him. Abazad trafficked in knowledge picked up in his years of captivity, using this as currency to get closer to his goal of freedom. Recently, his knowledge has paid off, and Abazad made a deal with the High Priest of the Cult of Dagon. The High Priest needed a special message delivered to one of his lieutenants far to the south at a small chapterhouse near the city of Greenstone on the coast of Heregal. He could not trust this message to anyone and his deal with Abazad was that if the djinni delivered the message, the High Priest would have a courier deliver the djinni’s gem prison to someone who could remove the curse and imprisonment. The first part of the message was administrivia (Kill the current courier of the gem and give the gem to an expendable underling). The second part of the message informed the lieutenant that the Ritual of the Deep was near at hand, and that the True Servants of Dagon would rise to invade the rich city of Greenstone, enslave its populace and bring a new age of the Prince of the Deep to Tysaan.

Unfortunately, a pair of two-bit thieves destroyed the best laid plans of priest and djinni. O’Mosh the Drunk and Bittersnail, two shanty-town toughs, got a tip that a sloop bound for a fishing town on the Heregal coast bore a great treasure for the Museum of Antiquities in Greenstone. It was little work even for two idiots to set up an ambush, kill the wagon-driver and the courier and take possession of the gem. Unfortunately for Bittersnail, Ali-Ashara’s curse also took possession of him. Though the curse passed on to the thief, Abazad has unknowingly benefited from the transaction.

Archogados, a local leader and second circle priest of Dagon, received a vision similar to that of the High Priest, one that included the Purple Sapphire's role in the ritual. Knowing that the perfect time for the Ritual of the True Servant was at hand, he sought to ambush the delivery of the gem himself and use the ritual to defeat his rival, another Second Circle priest and regional leader of the cult. His own plans dashed, he began searching for the thieves on his own. Little did he know that Prybel, Investigator in the Merchant District, was the true intendee of the gem's delivery and a devotee of the regional leader of the cult. The Investigator was to take possession of the gem and deliver it into the wilds north of Greenstone, where the regional cult leader would receive the message and perform the ritual. Prybel is well aware of Archogados' mad visions of a powerplay in the cult and sets the heroes on the trail of the thieves in order to thwart Archogados plans and cover his own involvement.

The two thugs worked for an up-and-coming crime lord named Kief Vendermark, a man bent on leaving the shanty-towns along the Crab River and taking over the Greenstone thieves’ guild. When Vendermark learned that a djinni resided in the gem, and promised great riches for his release, the would-be master thief dispatched his many resources to find the right angle. He learned that the gem was bound for the Museum, but that the fledgling Cult of Dagon also sought the piece. While he loathes devoting resources to finding a way to break the djinni’s imprisonment, the temptation of a djinni’s favor is almost too much to bear. He’s made contact with the cult in order to fence the gem to them, though they’ve yet to reply to his overtures. He’s also sent a few people into Greenstone looking for a skilled magician with knowledge of djinni magic from the lands of the burning sands. This, so far, has also proved fruitless.

What Vendermark doesn't know is that the bearer of the gem, Bittersnail, has ideas of his own, and that the cult of Dagon has eyes everywhere.

The characters get a rude awakening…literally.

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