Publisher's blurb:
Refugee tents are draped throughout this ruined desert temple, alongside crates of food and scattered possessions. A prayer altar is covered with fresh flowers and offerings of grain before a statue of a robed god.
Sunlight filters in through a partially-open ceiling, dancing on sparkling water in a clear pool and on nearby piles of sand. Tall palms grow out of intricate stone tiles, alongside wildflowers and waterlilies. Pavers are cracked, as are many of the support pillars holding up the old temple’s roof.
Fallen stone and rubble lay dispersed on the ground. Desks, tables and crates have knives, letters, writing equipment, as well as food and drink splayed out atop them. You can hear the cry of birds and the flutter of wings from where they roost, high above.
Adventure Seed
You have been paid by some mercenaries to assist them in ousting a group of western soldiers from an ancient temple emplacement on behalf of the King of the Eastern Kingdoms. Only, when you arrive, you don’t see the armed military outpost you were expecting. Instead, you find the ruins of a temple, filled with improvised tents and dirty men, women and children.
If you talk to them, you learn that they’re not rebels, and that this place is known as Alkali’s refuge. Alkali is a cleric who started healing those of either side of the war; both western and eastern soldiers, as well as peasants. They claim it’s a neutral zone, and that their only mission is peace.
WHAT’S HAPPENING? Before this war started the Western King and the Eastern King had arranged their children to marry. But upon meeting the Western King’s son, the Eastern King decided that he was too weak and overly-sentimental to marry his daughter and called the marriage off.
Slighted, the Western King declared war. But now the Eastern King is winning, and peasants in both kingdoms are suffering. The Western Prince, abhorred by the violence and grief the war was bringing, founded this refuge; using his gifts as a cleric to heal soldiers and peasants on either side of the conflict.
The Eastern Princess, unlike her father, fell in love with the Western Prince upon meeting him, and secretly fled to the refuge to join him. Unfortunately, because of this, the Eastern King now believes that the Western King’s forces have kidnapped his daughter.
If you don’t kill the inhabitants of the refuge, the Prince and Princess will go to their parents and beg to be married, for they truly love each other. The Kings, doting on their children, will agree that the war is now needless and taking a toll on their people. As such, they will allow the marriage to go through with their blessing, returning peace to their kingdoms.
Should you choose to kill everyone in the refuge and succeed, however, Alkali will miraculously survive through making a pact on his deathbed with an evil god. He may return later as a necromancer, with his fallen love risen as a banshee.