Taking out the trash

Adventure hooks

The PCs just need to be riding the Lightning Rail from Sharn to Flame Keep. Any excuse will do.

Taking out the trash

Boarding the lightning rail.

• No Orien bigwigs traveling, so if the PCs have significant ties to Orien (at least Favored in House) the PCs can use the Orien compartment.
• Train has coach and four cars (two passenger and two cargo). The coach is mostly taken up by the house Orien compartment and the Engineer's station.
• Each of the passenger cars is laid out like the train featured in Harry Potter. They are around 100' long and thirty feet wide and contain a number of 15' by 20' compartments with plush bench seating. Each compartment has a sliding (non-lockable) door with a window in it to separate the compartment from the walkway that runs down the side of the car (approximately 10' wide).
• Each car is secured by two locking mechanisms. Unlocking a mechanism takes two rounds. This is only completely safe to do when the train is not moving.

The Trip to Flame Keep

• PCs are free to walk about the train
• NPCs'
  • First Passenger Car
    • Gelli Tarm
      • Priest of the Silver Flame
      • He's a bit full of himself. He responds to questions arrogantly and curtly.
      • Expert 4/Cleric 1
      • Personality: Like a cross between Thurston Howell and Jeremy Irons' character in Casanova.
    • Amanda Kell
      • Secretly a Gatekeeper initiate. DC20 Knowledge(Religion) to identify the round amulet around her neck as a Gatekeeper symbol.
      • Describe her as a mountain girl, with simple clothes, unruly hair, huge eyebrows, and vaguely pointed ears. (Pretty obviously a Shifter)
      • She's skittish at best around strangers, and she is well aware that the Priest would probably not be pleased with her presence.
      • She's currently learning how to read, and most of her possessions consist of reading primers and interesting looking books on random subjects.
      • Barbarian 5
      • Personality: Play up her country bumpkinism to the hilt. She should seem naive, but mildly unstable when backed into a corner.
  • Second Passenger Car
    • Kinrom Kinrom
      • Merchant, though he isn't carrying anything but a myriad of purses and fake pockets all laced with permanent Nystul's Magic Aura.
      • He hints of weapons and other illegal substances for sale in a not very subtle manner, but he never comes out and says that he would sell that.
      • Rogue 1/Expert 4
      • Personality: A mixture of Watto from Episode 1 with Indy's arabic friend in the Indiana Jones movies.
    • Rella Masters
      • Dressed as an Aundairian noblewoman.
      • Haughty and aloof.
      • If pressed, she will say something about "Stephen would never have stood for this."
      • Secretly a weretiger.
  • Miscellaneous
    • Engineer Ter Dilar d'Orien
      • Gruff
      • Personality: Any western movie star.
    • Conductor Holladay Binfrey
      • Effeminate male.
      • Keeps track of the train's passengers.
      • Coward.

Murder on the Orien Express

• Holladay Binfrey has a problem.
  • He approaches the PCs (esp. Leap) and asks them to come with him
  • Claims it's self explanatory, they should follow him to see, but it's gravely important.
• Gelli Tarm has been murdered.
  • Motive: revenge.
  • Whodunit: Relle Masters
  • Scene: The compartment is a complete mess. The floor is covered in a pool of deep red blood, and a mound of entrails barely recognizable as human slumps in the seat nearest the window.
  • “You've got to find the killer. If we don't have this resolved by the time we get to Flame Keep, there will be a full inquisition! Orien would like to avoid that, if at all possible.”
  • DC 15 Survival check reveals that the wounds are primarily clawmarks.
  • DC 20 Survival check can discern that it was a large carnivorous animal.
  • DC 25 Survival check can discern that it was a tiger's claws.
  • (+5 DC to use Knowledge: Nature instead)
• The trains are connected like normal train cars (basic platform, DC 10 jump or balance check to get to the next car)
• Kinrom Kinrom, DC 12 Sense Motive to see that he's lying about something.
• Amanda Kell, get's really frightened, and denies pretty much everything.
• Rella Masters, Interested in the PCs questions, DC 18 Sense Motive to see she's hiding something. Attacks if provoked.

Trouble on the Lightning Rails

• Thump Listen check DC 15 (From the rear of the train)
• In 10 rounds, the back car is detached and sent spinning into the forest. DC 10 Listen
• Three Shambling Mounds and a ranger (ashbound) are destroying the train car by car.
• One shambling mound can disconnect a car in 20 rounds. Two in 15, and all three in 10. They're inelegant at it, and prefer to rip it off instead of hitting the release (more damage this way.)
• Train is traveling at 35mph, and doesn't seem to be slowing down any. (High wind, -4 to ranged attacks, ¼ movement towards the front of the train.
• Jumping between cars is a DC 10 check downtrain, and DC 15 uptrain. Going up or down the ladders on the side of the car is a full round action, unless a DC 20 climb check is made, then it's a move action.
• DC 15 Reflex save every other round to avoid a 2d6 arc of electricity.

Possible stories

• What drove the Ashbound into such a dramatic gesture?
• What was Rella Masters' story?
• Where was Amanda Kell going? And why did the Gatekeepers send her to learn how to read?
• Will Orien pick up the pieces of the train in time?