Lot 47 - An Eternal Champion scenario

[Jason D]

(I ran this a while ago but it just occurred to post it here.) 
 

Thought you might enjoy this recap of a game I ran at The Kraken last week:

 

For some reason I was inspired to do something that evoked the Bourne spy thrillers crossed with the Eternal Champion, but I didn't want to flood the group with people who could call the entire plot in advance.It was called "Lot 47", using the Basic Roleplaying system.

 

The game description stated that the game was set in Munich, 1986, and that the player characters had been hired by an eccentric and reclusive patron to verify the contents of a particular lot in an off-the-record secret auction recovered from a hidden Nazi storehouse found during city excavations. The PCs were a German art historian, an Austrian  professor of regional history, a Jewish-American PI, a German security expert, and a British lawyer.

 

They were to verify the presence of two items that should have been in the lot - goods that had been claimed from the estate of a noble German family that had run afoul of the Nazis and had all their property seized. The property was originally owned by the Badehoff-Krasny family, but had fallen into the possession of the Von Mincts when the heir to another branch of the family disappeared mysteriously in the late '30s. 

 

They had a briefcase full of gold kruggerands, English pounds, and enough Deutschemarks to buy a fleet of limousines. They got to the auction, a secret event being held in the catacombs beneath a famed civic theatre. Due to the unfortunate association with Nazi plunder, the auction was illicit, being held in secret but with compliance by bribed public officials. A clandestine black-tie sort of affair. 

 

With their security agent upstairs, the rest of the team went into the vault and began to search through the goods in Lot 47, when their patron showed up... a man named Michael Skene... tall, thin, sunglasses, very pale, trembling with weakness, strange accent. As only one of the players had ever read the Elric novels and didn't clue in yet, the group thought Skene might be a vampire, which he joked a bit about when they pressed him. "If only my means of sustenance was as common as blood." 

 

They could not find either of the two objects - an ornate men's ring set with a large stone, and a large two-handed sword of black metal - and their patron became extremely upset, then slipped into near-catatonia. They tried to care for him, and discovered that his hair was bone-white and his skin was the same color.

 

Meanwhile, upstairs at the auction, a group of men forced their way in, led by a man in modern body armor but a curious medieval helmet that changed colors. These intruders demanded access to Lot 47 and seemed to know that Michael Skene was on hand.

 

As this went on with the security expert relaying this to the others, their near-unconscious patron held his hand out and a big, ugly, two-handed headsman's sword began to rattle from where it lay on a table. They put it into his hand and as they did so, it seemed to transform into a huge, black sword with runes patterned all down its blade. It began to murmur and the man's eyes opened... showing red pupils. He began to stir, and the sword began to wail.

 

Meanwhile, the intruders upstairs figured out that their target was in the catacombs, so the player characters tried to hustle their patron out of the place before they were captured. When two of the thugs approached, the black sword lashed out and cut one of them in half, chopping another's arm off. Now invigorated, the white-skinned man leapt at the armored thugs, particularly the one with the metal helmet.

 

Then Michael Skene suddenly collapsed - a bullet had found him! - and the player characters had to drag his nearly-conscious form out of the catacombs, pursued by thugs. He blurted out "Archicovent der Templars", which was enough of a clue for them to go on.

 

From here it was to a secretive (and real-life) monastery in Munich run by a group of reclusive Templars dedicated to the von Beks as the holders of the Grail, the appearance of a winged cat, an in-translation copy of the Chronicle of the Black Sword, Jhary-a-Conel showing up and delivering a lot of expository dialogue about the Cosmic Balance, and learning the true name and nature of their patron, none other than Elric, former Emperor of Melnibone and a manifestation of the Eternal Champion.

 

Michael Skene/Elric then received medical care but needed some illicit materials to make a "revivifying drug", sending them into Munich's black market, which was a lot of fun. He also directed them into making a potion which he dried and broke into small tablets, claiming it would help them resist being shot.

 

Meanwhile, many of them were having disturbing dreams and flashes of lives not their own, identities where they fought alongside this strange albino, a similar man with an eyepatch and a silvered helm and red cloak, a man with a jewel in his skull, and even taking part in some strange raid led by the long missing lead singer of the Deep Fixx, Jerry Cornelius.

 

As this happened and the rest of the adventure went on, the PCs realized they had cool new abilities and skills they didn't know they had (I just had them make Idea rolls... a success gave them 75% in an appropriate skill, a critical gave them 90%). This made the rest of the scenario highly survivable.

 

This eventually led to a raid on Castle Mirenburg and a confrontation with another recluse, a politician named Johannes Klosterheim, working in league with the helmeted man named "Gaynor". Meanwhile, a strange fog had rolled in across the country, allowing them some degree of secrecy for their clandestine assault.

 

Elric, barely recovered from his gunshot wound, stumbled into a magical circle and was trapped. Gaynor and Klosterheim came out and monologued maniacally, saying that they were going to sacrifice Elric, with Klosterheim showing off Elric's captured Ring of Kings. The PCs were forced to go all Die Hard, take their potion-pills of invulnerability, and take Gaynor and Klosterheim out, with the help of the black sword that Elric had slid outside the circle once he knew it was there.

 

They slew both enemies, one of them shooting Klosterheim and the other taking hold - but not control - of Stormbringer and basically being the sword's meat puppet as it attacked Gaynor and got a critical hit, shattering his breastplate and drinking his soul.

 

A little winged cat appeared at a window and yowled at them until they came outside. At the end, they ended up on the shore of the river running alongside Castle Mirenburg. A ship's bell rang, and a dark ship emerged from the mist. The captain offered them all passage, and all but one took it - the last of them being the lawyer/accountant, who decided that he would take his case full of gold kruggerands and try his luck.

 

(The "real" plot was Elric had been cast through time through some misadventure and had been separated from his ring and sword. Klosterheim knew about the true nature of the lot when it was discovered, and had cherry-picked the ring out of it and left the rest as bait for Elric, knowing he would come running for it. The sword - the family's heirloom Ravenbrand - was disguised through sorcery laid down by the 1930s-era Ulrich von Bek himself before disappearing, and thus Klosterheim and Gaynor didn't recognize it.)

 

Thoroughly indulgent but a lot of fun. 

 

Only one of the players had read the EC novels and knew who Elric and von Bek were, but I threw him off with the Badehoff-Krasnys and von Mincts, both names from the von Bek novels as their larger noble lineage. 

 

Edited June 22, 2023 by Jason D

[rsanford]

Wow Jason! It sounds like it was an EPIC game! You may be running this all out if your head, but if you do have an outline or notes (or anything really). I sure would appreciate a copy. One of my groups reads this forum and a lot of Moorcock but my other group would be utterly defenseless to these machinations! 🙂

[Jason D]

5 hours ago, rsanford said:

Wow Jason! It sounds like it was an EPIC game! You may be running this all out if your head, but if you do have an outline or notes (or anything really). I sure would appreciate a copy. One of my groups reads this forum and a lot of Moorcock but my other group would be utterly defenseless to these machinations! 🙂

Here are my notes: 

 

Lot 47 - Basic Roleplaying.docx

[rsanford]

Thanks @Jason D! I will make good use of this!

Edited June 22, 2023 by rsanford
typo