This stage of the adventure is all about making the journey feel real and introducing the thieves as a threat. The group plans the nitty-gritty details of their trip and has their first encounter with the thieves. Then they undertake their journey and have their second encounter with the thieves in the city of Fork. Fork is the biggest city near Island Town and all routes pass through it.
Illustration of a brown owlbear sitting in the back of a wagon. They have a feathered owl head and a furry bear body. A band of feathers encircles their waist. The owlbear has an intense, focused look on their face as they sit awkwardly on their tush with their hind legs splayed out. This adorable work of art was created by the amazing Meghan Dornbrock.
Journey Planning Scene
Groups that travel by the roads or rivers will need to plan the details of their journey and all groups will need to plan what to pack and make reservations. This daily life planning scene makes that preparation more concrete, adds to the picture of the Academy, and gives the thieves a chance to spy on them.
The Thieves: In this scene, Watcher is using his magical connection with his familiar and Sensing Magic to spy on the player characters’ trip planning. If there is one or more player character with a secret, this is also the scene where Hand slips the first blackmail letter into their pocket or belongings.
Intro: “The day before you leave, you meet over breakfast to finalize your travel plans.”
The Kitchen Description: “You get your food at The Kitchen, which is the twenty four hour eatery that supplies the Academy’s food. It functions like a cross between a dining hall and a restaurant. There is a large buffet that people can choose from, as well as a menu of additional options that people can order if they are willing to wait. The Kitchen’s food is free for students and staff, but everyone else has to pay. It is tasty, but not excessive.
The Kitchen has a large room filled with diverse seating options. Small tables in many different heights can be pushed together to allow students who are different sizes to eat together.
The Kitchen is located on the ground floor of the Center Building, directly across from the Islands, the tropical ocean ecosystem where the various student activity facilities are located. A sheltered walkway leads from the Kitchen, across a floating bridge to the closest island, where there are many covered and open sitting areas on the beach.”
Question #1: “In the main part of the Academy, today is a cold, drizzly early spring day. On the Islands it is raining much harder, but you know from experience that the temperature will be in the mid 70s. Where do you eat?”
Question #2: “What are each of you eating?”
Journey Planning Group Roll: “Planning your journey is going to be a group roll. What are each of you contributing to the planning process?”
Success Thresholds:
- Partial Success Threshold = 1 × the number of participating characters = the minimum number of successes needed for a partial success.
- Full Success Threshold = 2 × the number of participating characters.
- Outstanding Success Threshold = 3 × the number of participating characters.
Results: Narrate how well each of them does and how well the planning goes, but save some of the results for narrating their journey and their arrival in Fork.
- Failure: Something major goes wrong, causing a big delay. Alternatively, lack of planning ahead means that something they were planning on getting in Fork or Island Town isn’t available.
- Partial Success: Something minor goes wrong. Use what each character rolled to figure out what. Perhaps they forgot to pack something, someone overpacked, improper storage leads to something getting ruined, imperfect planning caused a minor delay, or lack of security measures resulted in something getting stolen.
- Full Success: The journey goes smoothly and everything goes to plan.
- Outstanding Success: The journey goes so well that they get a special bonus, like arriving a day early, having an additional encounter with the thieves that gives them useful information, or getting a bonus to one of the things they buy or rent in Fork.
Roll Perception or Insight: During this scene, the players can roll either Perception or Insight to notice the actions of the thieves.
- 0 Successes: A failure means the character is focused on planning and doesn’t notice anything.
- 1 Success: A partial success means that “for a moment you get the feeling that you are being watched, but it quickly passes.”
- 2 Successes: A full success means that they notice Watcher’s raven familiar watching them. If they are indoors, it is perched in a branch next to a window. If they are outside, it is in a nearby tree. It appears to be watching them specifically.
- 3 Successes: An outstanding success means that, in addition to noticing the raven, they also notice Hand bump into their table. “When you are starting to pack up, you notice an anthropomorphic, raccoon person walk by your table. As he is passing by he drops a pen, then stoops to pick it up. It’s an every day type of occurrence, but it somehow comes off as a bit staged or unnatural.”
The Blackmail Letter: If one of the characters is being blackmailed, this is when the blackmail letter is placed among their belongings. Text privately with the character’s player to figure out where the blackmail letter is placed, then give them the text of the letter.
Sample Blackmail Letter:
We know that you lied on your application. If the Academy finds out, you won’t get your degree. Do what we say, and we will keep your secret.
To start, check this place every morning for our next message.
The Journey by Road or River
The group travels from Stopoverton to Fork. Use the results of the group planning roll to narrate how their journey goes. In general, road travel takes two weeks and river travel takes one week.
The Journey by Teleportation
If a player character has Transportation Magic, or the group is willing to pay the costly fees of a professional teleporter, the group can teleport directly from the Core Station near the Academy (in the city of Stopoverton) to the Core Station in Fork. Roll to find out how well this teleportation goes. Anyone trained in Transportation Magic gets three dice for this roll. If the group hires a professional teleporter, that person has a mind of 5.
- 0 Successes: A failure means that they end up somewhere totally different.
- 1 Success: A partial success means that they will experience a magical side effect, like glowing or being insubstantial, for several hours.
- 2 Successes: A full success means that everything goes smoothly and there are no side effects.
- 3 Successes: An outstanding success means that the person who did the teleporting did such a great job teleporting that they don’t need to rest before teleporting again. In addition, their skill impresses the people waiting to be teleported and they have their pick of clients.
Details of the Teleportation System: The characters start their teleportation journey at the Stopoverton Core Station. All Core Stations connect to each other. In addition, each Core Station also connects to a set of Local Stations. These Local Stations only connect to a single Core station.
- Inside each Core Station there are three rooms: the Outgoing to Core Stations Room, the Outgoing to Local Stations Room, and the Receiving Room.
- The Outgoing to Core Stations Room: In this room there is a giant map of Crossroads on the floor. At each city with a Core Station there is a statue of that city sitting on a pedestal. A unique, distinctive pattern is carved into each statue’s pedestal. Anyone touching the statue or pedestal is considered prepared to teleport to the Receiving Room of that Core Station.
- The Outgoing to Local Stations Room: This room has a local regional map on its floor. Each place with a Local Station is marked with a statue of that place sitting on a pedestal. A unique, distinctive pattern is carved into each pedestal. Anyone touching a statue of a Local Station, or its pedestal, is considered prepared to teleport to the Receiving Room of that station.
- The Receiving Room: Each station’s receiving room has its unique, distinctive pattern carved into the floor.
- Characters that have their own Transportation Magic can use the Teleportation Stations for a moderate fee that goes to the maintenance of the station. For those without Transportation Magic, professional teleporters can be hired to teleport them to the Teleportation Station of their choice. This is a costly service.
Arrival in Fork
The Thieves Place Marked Coins: In this scene, Hand places a scratched coin in the purse of one of the player characters. The scratches are there to disguise a set of runes marked on the coin. While the coin isn’t enchanted, the runes make the coin react to magic. Watcher can use it to aid him in Sensing Magic spells to remotely track and scry on the player characters.
This coin is from a different region’s currency. The thieves hope that the character will assume they got it by mistake, as this is a fairly common experience (like a person living in the USA occasionally getting a Canadian coin). Because this coin isn’t a local currency, they won’t be able to spend it, meaning it will stay with them.
If one of the player characters is being blackmailed by the thieves, Hand places a second scratched coin in this person’s bag, along with a note warning that person to keep the coin on themselves at all times.
If They Teleported: As long as they don’t interfere, any magical side effects from teleportation will still be happening when this scene occurs.
Description: “Fork is a regional trade hub located down river of the junction between the West Boundary River and the East Boundary River that forms the Lower Boundary River. It is a small, bustling city whose muddy streets are crowded with people and carts.”
Roll Perception or Insight: As they walk down the streets of Fork, each player character gets to make either a Perception or Insight roll to notice Hand, as an anthropomorphic raccoon, bumping into them and placing the coin. If any of the characters noticed Hand in the Journey Planning Scene, they are prepared on this roll.
- Perception allows a character to spot suspicious hand movements.
- Insight allows a character to notice that something is off about Hand’s body language.
- 0 Successes: A failure means that they get distracted by something. What is it?
- 1 Success: A partial success means that the character saw something out of the corner of their eye, but it was gone before they could figure out what it was.
- 2 Successes: A full success means that the character notices a suspicious hand movement or body posture from this raccoon person, but they don’t know about him placing the coin.
- 3 Successes: An outstanding success means that they saw Hand place the coin.
- Interacting with Hand: If the group tries to talk to Hand, he will gruffly tell them, “Excuse me, I’m in a hurry.” To anything else, he will respond, “Mind your own business!” If they try to follow him, he will disappear into an alley.
Find the rest of the Owlbear Reintroduction Program Adventure here.
