The Pitch

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There's a real heist going on somewhere, and you're the distraction. Keep the royal guard busy long enough for the real thieves to escape.

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The Handout

This has like 95% of the information.

A Tourist’s Guide to_ The Kingdom of Rodencia.pdf

The Goal

• The players must try to understand the thieves’ plans from the information given and come up with their own parallel plan to keep the guards distracted. They have some time to prepare by talking to locals, visiting shops, and learning about the area.
• Standard guards have a basic loadout, balanced for whatever level of characters you have, while Adamant guards should be challenging on their own.
• Players can choose to keep an eye on the thieves, let them work on their own, or swoop in at the last minute to take their bounty.
• If the players kill any guards or threaten violence, they will call for reinforcements from the barracks via the bell on the watchtower.
• The guard captain has an extremely valuable ring, but he won't come down from the watchtower without reason.

Secrets

• Adamant Arms & Artifice are producing the advanced weaponry in use by the Adamant guards. This includes lightning whips, steam hammers, strange magical nullifiers, and a sword made entirely of natural crystal.
• The barracks are a brick building with wide swinging wooden doors - Half dormitory for the standing army and half storage. It’s located at the edge of the city, 1 mile south of palace.
• The palace is built right along the cliff-edge for the best view, with huge windows along those walls for gorgeous sunsets. The walls around the palace are short (10' tall) but wide (6' across), and largely made of natural boulders with some smoothing via smaller stones and mortar. There are regular patrols along the wall and everywhere inside the palace grounds.
• The watchtower is the tallest structure, a smooth stone structure repurposed from one of the old wizard towers in the area. It’s 100 feet tall with a ladder inside, and the guards have built a wooden platform at the top with a bell and megaphone for shouting orders. There’s room for about 3 people, and the captain of the guard is stationed here.
• The Princess Tooth is an elder dragon's tooth inlaid with gems, masterfully cut and engraved. It’s enchanted to bring rain to the land, which is quite possibly the only reason the mountain is livable at all.
• The Emperor has actually arrived a few days early (as part of a ploy for intimidation) so the receiving tents are already full and well-guarded.
• The thieves are led by a master craftsman (Varitan Iarkrana, alias Mr. Montage) who didn’t want the king to give away the relic of their people. In order to keep the rain from abandoning them, he plans to steal it and hide it in his shop (he’s not very smart, all things considered).
• The King has actually used the offer of vassalage as a means of assassination, and plans to kill the Emperor to destabilize the empire. He will do so as soon as it is clear that there are intruders, so he can blame it on them.