National Events for Part 3

Armenia: The Return of the Ancestors

With the victory of Arakel Baronian’s Armenian Association of Retired Persons in the most recent general election, the elderly among the Armenian populace have had cause for celebration. Finally the old ways would be maintained, the ancestors would be properly venerated, and people would start respecting their elders again. However, as a solar eclipse passed over Armenian territory during the last day of the second month of autumn, great thunderstorms brewed over every graveyard, mausoleum, and family tomb in Armenia. The most elderly of the Armenian elders, those who had in decades and centuries past succumbed to the ravages of disease, injury, and old age, seeped out from beneath the earth under which they were buried, assuming haunting incorporeal forms.

This sequence of events was greeted with mixed reactions by the Armenian people. Many were filled with joy, believing that the return of lost friends and family was a boon of Arakel Baronian’s victory and a potential source of power for the Armenian state. Others were horrified, seeing this as a vile perversion of the natural order or a threat to Armenian social stability, especially as some told stories of life in the past that contradicted official histories and cultural traditions. Many more were merely annoyed, as the ghosts of the fallen seemed to have an unhealthy obsession with trivial pranks, telling old embarrassing stories that were once long forgotten, and giving their descendants hard times about their life choices.

Choose one option each for Sections A and B.

Section A. What do we do about the purported knowledge of the past that these ghosts are spreading?

• Option 1. These ghosts have no truths! Their brains have literally rotted away into dust, and most of them were already pretty senile before that. The fake facts spread by these ghosts must be outlawed and purged, lest our great nation collapse!
• Option 2. Instead of spurning the wisdom of the ancients, maybe we should actually listen to it and revise our histories and mythologies to be more factually accurate? We might actually learn something useful here. It’s not like these ghosts could be misinformed or just messing with us, right?

Section B. What do we do about the ghosts themselves?

• Option 1. The dead are telling truths about the past that contradict our traditional narratives? And worse, they’re telling everyone embarrassing stories about when I was a baby and constantly opening windows in the middle of winter? Clearly their coming back is some sort of curse or something, and that appropriate sacrifices and prayers to them can send them back to a peaceful slumber whence they came.
• Option 2. Eh, I don’t see any problems here. If our ancestors want to fly around, visit their descendents, and maybe have some fun at the youngsters’ expense, who are we to deny them that?
• Option 3. Ghosts are cool and all, but them flying around everywhere, phasing through walls, and generally making nuisances of themselves is, well, a nuisance. Maybe if we bound the ghosts to sculpted clay bodies so that they behaved like civilized corporeal entities they’d be more manageable.
• Option 4. These ghosts are like the souls or life forces or whatever of a lot of people, right? So that means if I devour all of these ghosts through some dark ritual I’ll become immortal and all-powerful, right? [List all player characters and named NPCs that partake in the devouring of ghosts.]
• Option 5. These ghosts would make excellent spies, assassins, and spooky goons. All ghosts shall be declared property of the state and pressed into service against my enemies!
• Option 6. A quartet of disgraced scholars from a local academy come to your palace with numerous odd alchemical concoctions, arcane implements, and something that looks like some sort of bagpipes with various tubes, dials, gauges, and other mechanical doodads affixed to it. They state that they are the world’s experts on busting ghosts, and that if you just give them a call they'll get rid of your ghost problem for you.

Genoa: Yo Mummy

A mysterious curse has afflicted the Genoese capital of Caffa. At alleyways, museums, apartment buildings, and other such sites bodies have been found each morning reduced to dust and bones. After a short investigation, a few witnesses to the nighttime wastings were found, and they claimed that some sort of shambling human figure dressed entirely in white funerary bandages was responsible. This “mummy”, whatever it is, has caused fear to spread throughout Caffa, as everyone goes to bed each night terrified that it might be them or their loved ones who fail to survive to see the next sunrise. If something isn’t done soon, Caffa is likely to fall into panic, with riots, lynchings, mass burglaries, and perhaps even outright rebellion.

• Option 1. We must destroy this creature before it destroys our city! As this creature seems to be made of cloth and dust, clearly the most effective way to kill it is fire. We must lure it into one of our many fine pizzerias and toss it in the oven!
• Option 2. What kinda hairbrained plan is that? Are we trying to cook mummy pizza? What we need is to send a good old-fashioned team of crack troops after it, and stab and slash and smash it to death.
• Option 3. We need to send a good old-fashioned team of crack troops after it, all right, but to capture it for interrogation, not to kill it. Who knows what secrets this creature could know?
• Option 4. We should try to figure out what this mummy knows, yes, but attacking it is liable to just get it killed or get our troops killed. Instead we should send a senior official to parley with it. [Choose a player to parley with the mummy.]
• Option 5. Why do we need to deal with this mummy ourselves? Just create a trail of easily-eatable corpses from Caffa to some other place, and hope the mummy stays there to cause trouble for them! [Choose another faction or city-state to send the mummy to.]
• Option 6. All hail the mummy god! It is only eating our poor defenceless citizens because we have failed to provide it with the necessary human sacrifices ourselves. Surely, if we serve it, it will serve us, right? Right?
• Option 7. I think the best thing to do here is to do nothing. If some base beast wants to gobble up some random plebeians each night, is that really our problem?

Troy: The Witches’ Coven

As Troy is an important trade port for goods entering and leaving the Black Sea region, it naturally receives many routine cargo vessels in its harbour every day. However, recently one of the cargo vessels that docked at Troy was carrying cargo less than routine: it carried a literal boatload of attractive, if slightly eerie looking, women who claimed to be fleeing some sort of inquisition in some backwards, superstitious European country. As they had all of their papers in order and seemed nice enough, if a bit weird, your customs officials let them in. This would have unintended consequences that were soon made apparent.

These women were, as you have probably guessed, witches. They quickly made a nuisance of themselves flying around on broomsticks at night, cackling loudly, throwing potions and such around, and generally causing a ruckus and defacing city and private property. Moreover, as Trojan law made the practice of magic the exclusive purview of the Lineage, these women by their mere presence were violating the Lineage’s magical monopoly. If something isn’t done, and fast, law and order in Troy were sure to be things of the past, for good.

• Option 1. These witches must follow the law of Troy: either they shall join the Lineage and adhere to its policies and practices, or they shall be hunted down and destroyed.
• Option 2. These witches must follow the law of Troy: either they shall join the Lineage and adhere to its policies and practices, or they shall be banished from Troy and forbidden from ever returning.
• Option 3. These witches do seem to have their own magical practice that is distinct from that of the Lineage, and their witchcraft may offer capabilities that our Lineage’s own magic does not. Perhaps allowing them to form their own magical organization that maintains its own internal traditions, under close supervision and regulation by the Lineage, of course, would be more beneficial to us.
• Option 4. Maybe these interlopers should focus on cleaning up the messes they’ve made, rather than on practicing more magic. These “witches” have brooms, don’t they? Let’s get them to work sweeping and fixing up all the damage they’ve caused.
• Option 5. So, let me get this straight. You’re telling me that there’s a bunch of hot young women wearing short skirts flying around above us, and that’s somehow a bad thing? I really don’t get what’s so bad about that; in fact, if anything we should be encouraging more of these witches to settle in Troy. Accepting refugees fleeing from persecution is good and just, right?
• Option 6. A harsh-looking man dressed in dark leather clothing enters your town riding a horse that, quite frankly, has seen better days. The horse is pulling a wagon, and after reaching your court the man opens the wagon to reveal a bunch of crossbows, a shelf of serrated medical implements, barrels of torches and pitch, a human-sized scale calibrated against a duck, and several other curious and gruesome implements. He claims to be the world’s expert in hunting witches , and pledges that if you make him Witchfinder General of Troy he will see to it that every witch, every potential witch, everyone who looks like a witch, and everyone vaguely associated with witchcraft in any way, will be found and executed for their crimes.