Thinking about my submission to the DW zine project.

Thinking about my submission to the DW zine project. I’m thinking it’ll be another plane-hopping adventure, just because I’m in that mode right now. Here’s what I’m currently thinking, though the final version will also have maps and dangers, I think:

Icy Fiscal Cliffs (working title)

The frozen star Ephedra has plummeted into the elemental plane of water, freezing it completely solid in the course of a fortnight. At some future time, unknowable except by diviners and soothsayers (and who can trust those scoundrels?), the ice will crack, the thaw will come, and the living seas will writhe once again. For now, however, the plane hangs suspended, an immense crystalline fortress of towering spires and icy caverns.

That would be enough, in an of itself, to temp fortune-seekers out onto the ice to hunt for wealth and lost artifacts previously thought to be sunk forever beneath the endless roaring waves. But then the renowned archaeologist Alexa Van Der Vaart (Associate Professor of Anthropoid Civilizations at the Academia Arcadia, raider of the tomb of Abaddon) spotted dark blotches that “are unquestionably the hulks of the Arcadian Treasure Fleet,” frozen a few leagues below the surface, their holds near to bursting with valuables (and people) fleeing the expansion of the city of Dis several hundred years ago.

The rush is on. Despite Alexa’s attempts to claim the site as a historical find of great significance to the Arcadian diaspora, multiple mining operations currently are competing to be the first to drill down to the ships and adventuring parties are searching through the icy caverns for an unimpaired route. Of course, with all this activity and ice-breaking in the area surrounding the dark blotches, the thaw may come sooner (at least to this portion of the ice) than anyone currently suspects. Even worse, Alexa has voiced her worries privately to you that the dark spots she assumed to the fleet appear to be moving in recent days. That can’t be right, can it?

Your Mission: Ensure that Alexa and her husband Patrice Garçon get to the treasure fleet before anyone else despoils the site. Alexa is, of course, a capable adventurer in her own right, but she has no illusions about the friendliness of the mining companies and spelunking parties who are also after the treasure and what might need to be done in order to “secure her rights” to the wrecks. She wouldn’t normally have hired you, but the members of her usual crew were either killed or maimed in the expedition to Abaddon’s tomb. Most other local miscreants of any skill are already out on the ice. Patrice knows at least one of you from a previous job you did for the Academia Arcadia, where he is a Visiting Lecturer in Trap Construction (roll or choose what this job was). Your cut is 1/3 of whatever the find is worth and the clock is ticking. Better get going then, eh?