Gaming on Tékumel

Adventure Scenarios & Ideas

Scenario Ideas

by Barry Blatt

“Scenario ideas based round letters of credit/hundis/whatever the Tsolyáni call them.”

The Lost Seal

Someone has mislaid a seal from the Place of the Realm used to witness credit letters. Fakes for small sums have been turning up all over town, and many merchants and clan elders are not happy about being ripped off. The PCs are:

  • Clerks in the department or their relatives. If they don’t get it back their clan will be liable for the losses and they will be in for impalement or enslavement.
  • Said clerks bosses. The ink stained rabble are covering for each other, but if you don’t sort it someone from Avanthar will and that will not be pleasant.
  • The thieves. How wisely you use this great treasure will determine how long you stay one step ahead of the impalement mrikh.

The Rich Uncle

When Etlun made it rich selling unfinished cloths in Jakalla, everyone of his rural kinsfolk wanted a piece of the action. He found himself inundated with clan-nephews and nieces from one chlén villages he’d never heard of clutching scrawled credit notes and expecting him to finance their living it up in the big city and bribe their way into a decent post. Now Etlun has no ready cash, and he is sending his favourite scribe, his head porter and whole bunch of surplus apprentices equipped with clubs to see if he can turn some of this paper back into working capital or suitable trade goods. It will not be an easy job, expect much wailing and gnashing of teeth and tales of sick chlén and pestilent fields, but if it isn’t done the business will collapse to everyone’s disadvantage.

The Prejudiced Banker

The clanhouse has burnt down. There is an immediate need for large sums of cash to rent enough apartments to put everyone up, but the local branch of the Golden Lintel is being a bit recalcitrant as one of your great-great-uncles sold one of their great-great-uncles some dubious tsuhoridu that turned him and his dinner guests into tittering imbeciles for a week! Though shamtla was paid the clan vowed never to let any of their money pass through the hands of incompetents like you lot ever again. Time for some serious grovelling?

The Fakers

A band of bandits have mugged some poor soul out in the sticks and have recovered a credit letter for 10,000 kaitars. Normally they would not risk trying to present it, but for this kind of money it’s worth a go. They need someone to impersonate a young noble who can do the right kind of nods, winks and elaborate handshaking rituals to a Bursar from the temple of Hrü’ü. A bit of background work on just who the victim was and his family circumstances would increase the chances of success.

The Parchment Beetles

The library of the Ksarul temple is protected by more magical curses, traps and demonic guardians than you can shake a stick at, but their accounts department isn’t. Some vindictive followers of Thumis have got their hands on some Parchment Beetles, and if they can release them in said office hundreds of thousands of kaitars worth of credit notes will be munched into oblivion.

The Ignorami

The Kerdu of the Legion of Kaikama has been sent with his legion out to a rural district of Chaigari Protectorate. Their quartermasters are attempting to extract provisions from the local populace by their usual method of writing credit notes sealed with their regimental seal and that of the Palace of Glorious War. The peasants thus imposed on hand these notes to the tax man next time he does his rounds and the sum is deducted from their taxes. Simple, eh?

Well it works in Bey Su and the central provinces, but not when the peasants are illiterate feebs who don’t even speak Tsolyáni. They look at the bits of paper and their blue wax seals with incomprehension and disdain; the hungry troopers are all for impaling a few, but this is a frontier province and the Jannuyani-speaking tribes are a rebellious lot. Time for some basic literacy lessons?

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