Savage Synnibarr Adventure: Secret of the Drake Temple

Overview

1 line summary: The characters are sent to a jungle island to find 2 missing alchemists.

Opponent's plan: One of the alchemists - Durana - plans to “liberate” the City of Terra by setting free the Plague, that reduces intelligence of victims and caused the Dark Ages.

Main location: Durana found the virus in an old temple to Drakes that she turned into a biological weapon factory.

Starting the adventure

The characters get a mission from the Adventurer’s Guild in Terra. The 2 young alchemists Durana and Rea went missing 2 months ago on the island TARBOON. It is possible that they went rogue. A reward of 20,000$ is up on finding out about their plans and reporting all details to Terra.

The characters are taken by Giants’ ship to the main town of New Vornheim on TARBOON. There the adventure starts.

Tarboon

The 80 miles diameter island is covered by jungle. New Vornheim is the main harbour. The 3 fishing villages of Ior, Caplan and Hole and far off, each on another side of the island. In the centre of the island you can find an old temple to drakes: Drakestone

Dangers:

• Cannibal Sasquatch tribes hiding all over the jungle.
• 3 Scarlett drakes settle on hills over the island and attack airborne vehicles.

New Vornheim

The town has a around 50,000 inhabitants (80% human). Except for the harbour it is surrounded by jungle. Most buildings are very simple white blocks with flat roofs. Streets are narrow, many even too narrow for the few cars.

The one standing out building is the steel-glass skyscraper of the City Hall. Next to the mayor Howser’s office, it also houses the local alchemist laboratory of Marveen and his 2 assistants.

The few adventurers in the city and more wannabees meet in a rowdy inn called Lazermead.

Travelers to the city will be interviewed by 2 local police officiers. There is a registration fee of 40$ per person and an import tax of 100$ per weapon, but theose can be easily concealed. Police officers are happy to take bribes to answer questions  or to support “customers. They are well connected. Trouble-makers will be jailed for a night. All cash and weapons are taken in as penalty fee. If a fight starts, 2d6 police officers show up. If overpowered they call in a Police Mech (of 5 in the city).

Infobits - those can be retrieved by Streetwise roles or interaction with local NPCs. Information in square brackets are only revealed by asking further questions or a Raise.

• Two female alchemists indeed showed up some weeks ago.
• Those alchemists went to Marveen and  the Lazermead.
• The alchemists recruited aroung 15 locals as guides tor a jungle expedition.
• There is an old Drake temple in the jungle [that the alchemists looked for].
• There is a Drake cult in the town, but it is for teenagers.
• A wereman, 2 amazons, and a Talking Raccoon have been recruited by the alchemists 2 weeks ago in the Lazermead Inn - for a jungle expedition.
• It’s not wise to fly over the jungle, there are [3] Scarlett Drakes attacking planes, etc.
• The alchemists went with an expedition to the jungle 10 days ago.
• There are trails through the jungle that cars can use.
• Sasquatch sometimes kill people in the jungle.
• The local alchemist Marveen moved here from Terra 5 years ago. He never leaves the town, because hates the jungle (and the general provinciality of the island).
• Marveen never uses his glider he brought from Terra.
• Marveen builds a device that should be able to fly through the werestorm [by switching power source every milisecond].

The jungle

It takes a Survival success to find the way to the temple. The optimal trip takes 2 days. A failure means a day is lost and there is 75% chance to get ambushed by 4 Sasquatch with boulder traps. Their aim is to kill and provide a feast for a shamanistic ritual.

It’s necessary to cross a river filled with piranha swarms to get to the temple.

Near this river, the Alchemists’ expedition has been attacked by Sasquatch. 3 guides and the Talking Raccoon have been abducted and eaten. Destroyed equipment marks the location.

The Drakes temple

It is visible from some distance because it is erected on a 100m high stone needle. The temple has the shape of an abstracted drake head with 2 platforms outside and an entrance through “eye gates”. A big gatling gun is mounted on each platform and there are 1d6 guards with guns present any time on each them.

Inside the temple, in the huge hall behind the eyes, there are weird alchemist machines and pool of a green liquid: whoever touches this goo will be infected by the Plague, and their Smarts are reduced to d4 until they get an antidote. The antidote is actually to inject the same goo. 1d6 guards with guns are in this room.

An arch leads to another section of the temple: this whole section must have been carved out after the drakes left and is human sized. It contains mostly the quarters of the alchemists and their mercenaries. In Durana's quarter (the biggest and most luxurious one) there is a high tech cryocoffin that contains Rea. She was subdued by Durana after she disagreed on the plan to spread the Plague.

Durana's plan

Durana and Rea found out that the drake temple on Tarboon was probably the last place where the Plague virus existed and went there for research.

On the way there Durana came up with her plan:

To give an ultimatum on Terra to stop the surveillance of the citizens there. She wants to transport the recreated virus in a dormant host body to Terra and then hand over the antidote only she owns only in case her requests are fulfilled.

The dormant host body - it turned out to be Rea, as she wanted to stop Durana - will by transported in a cryo coffin. Once opened, the virus will spread from human to human. It has an incubation period of 24 hours.

To be sure that the virus works, Durana wants to do a test on New Vornheim. As soon as she has proof that the virus spread there, she will blow up the temple, so that the facility to produce the anti dote does not any longer exist and she cannot be circumvented in rescue missions.

Herself and her mercenaries get the antidote regularly. She is the only person having access to it, if everything goes according to her plan.

She is contact with a criminal gang in New Vornheim, the Red Lizard gang, to use their underground facilities to handle the cyro coffin. Before the Red Lizard gang members will notice that they are infected themselves, they will already have passed the cryo coffin on to a crew of Tenjohussan (frogmen) on their whale "submarine", who will transport the cryo coffin to Terra. The Tenjohussan wait in a cave under the city. This cave contains direct access to the sea.

Durana stays in the penthouse of City Hall in the meantime. She will not directly go to Terra herself but has created 12 drones that relay her ultimatum messages so she won't be found too easily.

The Drake Temple City

What she does not know is that there is a 2nd place that can produce the antidote: the ancient Drake Temple City at the equator, where humanoid worshippers of the drakes gather frequently has the same pool of goo hidden in the main temple. There are always 3d20 drakes present in the city.

The 3 Scarlett drakes of Taboon are aware of the pools in both temples. But they have no reason to help humanoids. In the hoard of the drakes there is also an drake encyclopedia that contains that knowledge.