Order of the Astronomers
- The Character Sheets
- These are the characters whose adventures you are about to read. Each character is handled by a different player. Each player makes decisions for how that character reacts to other characters and to the monsters, traps, and situations that the character encounters. Each player decides how their character attempts to navigate the world they live in.
- Hightown Market
- Morning’s chill lingered beneath the shadow of the High Divide. A gibbous moon hung low above the western forest. A raven circled overhead. Gralen Noslen and Will Stratford stood atop a hill outside of Hightown.* Turning to the south, they watched a merchant caravan turn their horses off the Leather Road toward the makeshift summer town. South of the road, the forest was gowned in the red, yellow, and gold of autumn in west Highland.
- The Company of the Lost Stars
- They met outside the King’s Inn at the end of the day. The inn stood two stories. To its left was a stable, exuding the odor of horses and the stamping of hooves. Across the square, a one-story warehouse lay low and flat. They could still hear the arguments of traders a few hundred feet down the dusty street.
- The Deep Forest
- At the Leather Road a plank sign pointed west to Black Stag, east to Crosspoint. Below the arrows, themselves carved by some unknown hand decades if not centuries past, someone had scrawled in faded charcoal, “BEYOND LIE DRAGONS”.
- Order of the Astronomers: The Mist
- Neither the terrain nor their captive became any friendlier, but any dragons in the wood kept to themselves. On the following day a mist rolled northward around hills and through trees, clouding fern and stream. Before the sun reached its zenith they could barely see beyond the next hill, and by mid-afternoon the next tree. They grabbed blankets from the back of their horse and wrapped them around their shoulders and backs. They moved as ghosts…
- The Forgotten Road
- The thrashing of tentacles faded behind them as they continued east through the mist. They made camp when they expected night was falling beyond the gray world that enveloped them, when they were tired from walking, when it felt like a day however long it had been since fleeing the unknown creature.
- Astronomer’s Keep
- Sam pointed across the skeleton- and algae-choked moat.
- Zodiac Dungeon
- Gralen held the lantern out and led them down the stone stairway. They removed the bar from the doors and tried to push the doors open.
- The Great Escape
- “We should secure the foyer,” said Will. “Block the doors, at least. Honestly, this place is indefensible.”
- Home to Hightown
- They walked northwest toward the Leather Road and home.* The glow of the sun slowly brightened over the mountains to their right. Mid-morning they made camp on a hill and slept.† They awoke late-afternoon‡ and continued following the foothills until nightfall, and rested again.§ Toward evening of the next day, Charlotte said, “I hear something in the woods. I’m not sure how many, but more than one. They’re following us.”
- Post-Adventure Character Sheets
- These are the character sheets at the end of this adventure, at the moment the characters returned to Hightown. Money has been spent; equipment and skills acquired; and treasure found. Some treasure has been moved from the characters to their horse. Some equipment has been lost—the iron spikes that Charlotte used to bar the door in the foyer, for example.
- Order of the Astronomers: Experience
- As characters adventure, they gain experience, measured in experience points. Each of the characters here started the game with zero experience. They were first-level characters. As characters gain experience, they increase their level. Higher-level characters can do more things, and improve their odds of successful actions.
- Order of the Astronomers: Treasure
- The characters have a lot more money at the end of the adventure than they did at the beginning. Their 200 silver astrological coins and 100 gold astrological coins are worth about 1,600 shillings. How much they’re worth specifically will depend on how they negotiate to sell them or convert them once they return to civilization. They also have other treasure that they can potentially sell or benefit from:
- The Allure of Tabletop Role-Playing
- I played my first role-playing game on October 31, 1981. I was a high school senior in rural Michigan, in a tiny town of about nine hundred people. After escorting my younger brother and sister trick-or-treating, I met the people who would join me every Friday or Saturday evening for the rest of my senior year. I expected a fantasy-themed Candyland. What I got was an open-ended question.
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More Information
- The Order of the Astronomers (paperback)
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What happens when player characters discover a lost castle deep in the forest, travel to it, and investigate it? What do they do when they encounter monsters, traps, and fantastic treasures? (Jerry Stratton)
- The Order of the Astronomers• (paperback)
-
What happens when player characters discover a lost castle deep in the forest, travel to it, and investigate it? What do they do when they encounter monsters, traps, and fantastic treasures? (Jerry Stratton)
