If you have a player character, it will be more fun if you do not read this book. It contains information for the Adventure Guide. The Guide will use it to present a series of encounters to you as your characters experience the adventure.
This is the same adventure that the sample characters went through in The Order of the Astronomers. New players should read that story first. The goal is not necessarily surprise (although the characters will almost certainly run into things that the fictional players’ characters did not), but an exercise in “what if?” What would the players like their characters to do differently? How will the players use their own characters’ abilities?
This is also an exercise in role-playing. The players will know, ahead of time, things that their characters do not know. This is always the case: players always know things that their characters do not, and their characters know things the players do not. Role-playing is a balance between acting as players and ignoring character knowledge, and acting as characters, ignoring player knowledge. How will your players and your group handle this? Different individuals and groups will come to different balances. This otherwise simple adventure will require your group to face this issue head-on.
If the characters have some experience (for example, having gone through the introductory adventure in the Adventure Guide’s Handbook), they will probably reach the second level of experience by the time they finish the adventure. The adventure will last at least one night, and probably two. If this is the characters’ first adventure, you may wish to play up a “mini-adventure” on the trip to the ruins, or perhaps even within Hightown.
The characters must be willing to travel into unknown areas to search for knowledge or treasure. At least one of the characters should be a mage who is aware of the legend that the Astronomers knew powerful magics. If you feel your players need an added bonus, let one of them have found the key to the Gemini room safe; it was taken from Abbot Parthane’s corpse by a goblin, who lost it to a guardsman on a caravan raid. The guardsman, unaware of the significance of the astrological symbol (Gemini) on the key, sold it cheaply at a Crosspoint street fair, where the character in question found it. They’ve held it since hoping for more clues to the lost castle. If you do this, remove the key from its expected location in Stelopolis.
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