Journal of Misfortune

An adventure seed for Maelstrom

While drinking together in an alehouse, an interruption breaks the evening’s festivities. A man crashes through the door wearing only filthy breeches, his hair tangled and his face flooded with tear. He wails and sobs, demanding justice for his injustice… oh, and a drink, if anyone will spare the money. Whether purchased by a player character or not, the man gravitates to the group and tells them of his woes. He’s a local scrivener and yesterday evening, while he worked by candlelight, a rough mob broke through his front door, ransacked his home, and took many of his professional possessions and personal items. The leader told him to pay on his debts in future or else. The scrivener, Geoffrey, explains he owes no money or has any debts he’s aware of – and pleads with them to help him.

It would appear that a local moneylender of dubious providence sent his lackeys to the wrong address. Geoffrey doesn’t owe him anything, but lost a great deal. The moneylender has no interest in the little people and lends through intermediaries. The scriveners possessions languish in a storehouse somewhere and will be sold on for whatever they can get in the local market come the end of the week. Geoffrey offers to pay the group for their kindness if they can only help him get back what belongs to him – he wants no trouble. To complicate matters a little, one of the slim hand-written volumes taken by the lackeys contained Geoffrey’s notes on his own studies and research into magic and the Maelstrom. The scrivener won’t refer to the item directly, but much of his upset comes from the prospect that anyone reading the volume might use it as a means to turn him into the authorities as a devil worshipping warlock or, worse yet, use it as leverage to blackmail him and turn the rest of his life into one of abject misery.


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