The Ashes of Omu

Omu is a city of portals and flying carts, ruled by a council of merchants and mages who have installed a convenient figurehead at its head. Magic here is mundane, commercial, functional. Then the School of Arcane Arts explodes in the dead of night, and it quickly becomes clear that no fire throws debris thirty metres.

The hook

An envoy of the Church of Solaris gathers the party at the boarding house of an old retired friend. Sixteen dead, the headmaster in shock, the city calling it an accident. He does not believe it. He offers gold, passes, and a single instruction: find the truth before it turns political.

What the city hides

"Our ancestors sealed it at the cost of forty lives. Seven hundred and seventy years remained. Someone did not want to wait."

Two centuries ago, the founders of Omu closed a breach into a dimension of pure disintegration. The city's fallen nobility, hungry to reclaim the power taken from them, let themselves be convinced that reopening it would restore what was theirs. They are wrong: what comes through the Door answers to no master.

The five acts

• Act I: The ashes: investigate the ruins of the School, cross-check clues, first suspicions.
• Act II: The salons: infiltrate a corrupt noble soirée, a trapped negotiation, an ambush.
• Act III: The mine: descend into the galleries of Ferkhad, false miners, an imprisoned giant, a trap-room with a descending ceiling.
• Act IV: The Door: a race against the ritual, and the demon waiting behind it.
• Epilogue: The commendations: the price of victory, and what it costs the city.

Advice for the game master

Play on contrast: the more ordinary and busy the city seems, the harder the horror below strikes. Hand out clues early so the players lead the investigation themselves. Countess Isolde is no brute: she is a reasonable voice defending an indefensible position. Do not kill her too quickly: an antagonist who escapes is worth more than a corpse.