1. In one hour, the last person to have touched this card will die.
There is no test to avoid this affect. After the hour passes, the last person to have touched the card will suffer violent seizures and then die.
2. Please excuse me, I am trapped in this apparatus to my great disadvantage! Please be so kind as to rescue me?
The doll behind the glass case of the machine is sentient and wants to escape. There is a lock in the back of the case, but it is trapped with a particularly nasty poison gas [Test luck or lose 1d6 skill temporarily while experiencing terrible hallucinations for 4d6 hours.]
The doll is telepathic. It looks like a little wizard with black eyes, pale skin, and a stringy red beard. It can read minds perfectly, but it cannot move and can only communicate by means of a little card that it pushes out its mouth once per day. The doll is a bit of a romantic, and is prone to fall in love with any person that rescues him, although he will respect his rescuer’s wishes if the feeling is not reciprocated.
3. Plant this card
When planted in sufficient soil, this card will spout into a small tree in about three months. Caring for the tree requires about 10 silver pence in soil, fertilizer, potting, etc. All but one of the fruits are a strange red color with an exotic, floral taste worth 100 silver pence per bushel of fruit to a gourmand. The last fruit is a cloudy black-ish purple-ish gemstone, inside which sleeps the lost thumb-size prince of King Urso, whose magnificent miniature kingdom is located far outside Queensmouth, in the stump of a rotten log. Urso will pay handsomely for the return of his son...or so the thumb-sized prince claims if awoken.
4. Beware the tall man with the blue cravat
His breath is sweet and his eyes are kind. He whistles a strange tune to himself on park benches on warm summer days. His cravat is deep, deep cerulean blue. He talks little, but smiles often.
If you approach him, he may tell you about a certain mirror worth thousands of silver pence unguarded in an abandoned little cottage at the edge of Bastion. The mirror is floor length and made of unclouded silver. He says it belonged to his grandmother, but alas he cannot bear to look at it as the loss of her is still to fresh. It would be a shame, he says, if anyone were to steal it—but you wouldn’t do that, would you? He will never tell you his name.
If you follow him, keeping your distance so that he doesn’t see you, you will see him leave his little park bench at the end of the day to stroll through the streets of Queensmouth, sliding through the crowds and down alleys paved with cobblestones to the edge of town where he quietly enters a nice cottage just like the one he described. The inside of the cottage is filthy, covered in rat feces and smelling of rot. The man walks down the stairs to the basement, whistling his strange tune. If the man is lucky, one or more people may already be there, unmoving, their eyes glued to the mirror from which glows a pale blue light. The man opens his skull and absorbs those lost to the mirror with a sickening slurp.
5. You will win the next game of tiddlywinks you play.
Tiddlywinks is something of an obsession in Queensmouth, especially at the University. Any given evening will see at least one table of students huddled around a table playing the game.
6. Your fortune is not available at this time. Please inquire within for a full refund.
A small door opens in the machine, revealing a rickety metal staircase that descends to Room 1. All the stats in the dungeon described below are written for Troika!
Random Encounters
—1. Arrogant, fat, blond businessman unsatisfied with his fortune (which reads "You will be ripped off by a fortune-telling machine"). Will assume the party works here and will pushily demand a better fortune.
—2. Lucille, Zentovo's wife, floats in the air like a drowning person. Her red hair obscures her face. She is a ghost, but refuses to acknowledge it. She wants to find her husband, Zentovo (in room 5, long dead)
Skill 5 Stamina 10 Initiative 2 Armour 0 Damage as Modest Beast (her screams will pierce your ears)
—3. The dancing sisters, Zara and Tara. They are Zentovo's former lovers. Whenever Zara speaks, flowers drop from her mouth (crush a handful to restore d6 Stamina). Whenever Tara speaks, coins fall from her mouth (varying denominations and sources). They dance with their eyes close, because beams of energized light come out of their sockets whenever they open them (damage as Jolt).
Skill 8 Stamina 14 Initiative 2 Armour 0 Damage as Knife
*Special—three random spells
—4. Dismembered hand tries to steal stuff from the party.
—5. 2d3 peacocks, escaped from the pens in room 7.
Skill 3 Stamina 4 Initiative 1 Armour 0 Damage as small beast
—6. Swarm of flying fortune cards. They will attack anyone whom they perceive as resisting their fate.
Skill 6 Stamina 10 Initiative 4 Armour 3 (any attacks are likely to go right through them) Damage as small beast
Room Key
1. The Landing. The rickety metal staircase from above leads to this landing, with further stairs leading down to 4 and 2.
- Walls decorated in peacock wallpaper.
- Small table with crystal orb on it (+1 to second sight if held in one hand with the other hand pointing to the forehead).
2. Scribe Room. The scribes in this room are busy at work writing new cards, but, since they are out of ink, the scribes are currently just futilely scratching at the cards with oversize peacock quills.
- Smells like quiet sweat and paper.
- Stacks of cards in the back. Scribes carefully arrange the cards in the order prescribed by Zentovo in a large, brown book.
-The scribes wear different colored robes in order of which "level" they have attained: brown for level one, gold for level two, and blue for level three.
-The scribes are nice enough, but give off kind of a cult-y vibe.
- Head Scribe, Ichabod, wears the pink robes and odd, circular headdress of a level four scribe. He needs new ink for the scribes and is willing to trade knowledge of the dungeon for a bottle of it--for example, he would be willing to tell the party about the zoetrope strip prepared for the party by Zentovo in room 10.
3. Parlor. An excellent room for putting up ones feet.
- Potted fern in the corner.
- More of that peacock wallpaper
- Nice chairs situated around a chess table, forgotten chessman waiting on the board midgame.
- Goldfish in a bowl. The goldfish, Morty, cannot speak any human language, but is quite good at chess (chess skill 9).
4. Cold Room. This is the place strongest with magic, the place where Zentovo hid his hate. There is no light in this room.
-Cold iron chains hang from the ceiling.
-Jared, Zentovo and Lucille's son, lives here. Ink pours from his mouth. He is filled with rage and speaks in incoherent patterns. He will make nonsensical demands of the party and become enraged when they can't fulfill them.
Skill 7 Stamina 16 Initiative 3 Armour 1 Damage as medium beast (melee) or ink spit (range)
Ink Spit:
1--2
2--4
3--6
4--7
5--7*
6--7*
7+--8*
* Blinds target, preventing them from seeing well enough do anything unless they pass a skill /luck test or spend an action to clear off the ink.
-Predictions written in Jared's blood are more likely to become true.
5. Zentovo's Room. The final resting place of Zentovo.
-Zentovo's dessicated corpse sunken into a leather chair. His silk clothes and elaborate feathered turban are still intact. Keys to the doors in room 7 and 10 are in Zentovo's pocket..
-Stacks of books, all handwritten by Zentovo. They contain hundreds of predictions, all accurate, most mundane. The book in Zentovo's lap reads, in its last entry, "[name of character] will stand in this room, standing over my corpse, and read this sentence."
-The party's refund is hidden in Zentovo's turban, a brass coin bearing Zentovo's winking face. Once per session, the owner of the coin can test luck to make one theoretically possible but very serendipitous thing happen.
-A small table with a zoetrope device on it. The strip currently in the device shows the moon going in and out of phase. (A strip meant for the party is in room 10)
-The ceiling above is an elaborate astrological mural.
6. The Rams. Level two scribes must ritualistically walk through this room blindfolded to ascend to level three. Most don't make it.
-Censor full of incense.
-Mangled bodies in gold robes in the center of the room.
-Two ram statues stand on either side of the room. The ram statues will smash into each other at full speed if anyone attempts to walk through the center of this room (test luck or suffer damage as Large Beast +1)
7. Peacock Pens. This room supplies the scribes with peacock quills.
- 2d8 peacocks in this room always. The peacocks bear the malice and ill-will inherent to all of their kind.
Skill 3 Stamina 4 Initiative 1 Armour 0 Damage as small beast
-10' tall Marble pillar in the middle of the room. Above this pillar is a trap door leading to room 10.
-The peacocks are taken care of by Jessica, a level 1 scribe, who is perched on the pillar. She has not left the pillar in 12 years. She is a kindly woman who genuinely cares for her peacocks. Every now and then, she scatters a hand full of seeds down to the peacocks who peck at them eagerly. She does all her cleaning etc. with the use of a long, claw-like apparatus.
8. Paper Garden. The paper for all the cards used by the scribes are actually the petals of the orchids grown in this room.
-Rows of orchids set up in indoor hothouses.
-The Orchids are tended by the orcess Henrietta. She is hideous in visage, with humped back, drooping eye, and rotted teeth. She is gentle and kind to her orchids, but painfully shy with people.
-There is a blue door in one of the back of one of the hothouses. There is no keyhole. Only blue things can pass through the door. The door leads to room 10.
9. Lucille's Room. This is the room of Zentovo's wife, Lucille. Her ghost still haunts this place (see wandering encounter table.
-Bed with purple satin sheets.
-Nightstand bearing dying purple rose. It is always dying, but as long as Lucille's ghost is not put to rest, it will never die.
-Room lit by the valuable brazier of prismatic flame (the flame can change color on whim).
10. Zentovo's Chambers. This is Zentovo's living chambers.
-Bed with checkered sheets.
-A nightstand with a zoetrope strip on it. Put this paper in the zoetrope device in room 5 and it will show an image of Zentovo. A voice plays in the viewers head telling the viewer that their refund is located in his turban.
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