User Summary:
A fan-created mission for Orpheus, as part of The Ballad of the Sam Haight Ashtray contest.
From the Introduction:
The Lord of the Ashtray campaign is, as you can guess, a parody of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. It's not a strict parody, in that it neither includes everything from the books nor has everything in the same order. Instead, throughout the campaign you'll find numerous nods to Tolkien's work, ranging from the obvious (the Nazghouls) to the obscure (La Torre de Mágica). My concern was, first and foremost, to make quality missions, and only then to bend them to Tolkien as much as possible.
The six missions contained herein are meant to be played in the order given, but not back-to-back. They span the first four books of Orpheus, giving the Storyteller the chance to develop things as she will while letting the characters slowly come to a realization of the true danger of the Ashtray (at which point they will be almost totally unable to give it up. Don't you just love being evil? =). That said, feel free to alter the campaign as you wish. There are no e-demons in the .zip file to make sure you keep everything the way it is. (At least, none that you know of =).
Here is the list of files constituting the entire Lord of the Ashtray campaign, along with a brief description of their contents (for convenience, I've left off all the "LotA" prefixes):
Introduction - This file, including the epic Samarillion.
Mission 1 - Orpheus sends the crucible to buy the Ashtray off a local hue.
Mission 2 - The crucible must recover the Ashtray from Orpheus' ruins.
Mission 3 - Local spooks are disappearing around the Tower of Romia hotel, and the crucible decides to investigate.
Mission 4 - The Nazghouls steal the Ashtray to build their hive.
Mission 5 - A psychic reveals much of the Ashtray's true nature, for a price.
Mission 6 - Lazarus Redux sends the crucible to investigate a steel foundry, with instructions to destroy the Ashtray before it destroys them.
Sam Haight Ashtray - A description of the actual Ashtray artifact, patterned after the artifacts in Crusade of Ashes.
Spectres - A description of all Spectres unique to The Lord of the Ashtray, including breeds, sample Spectres, and Horror descriptions.
As you might have gathered from the descriptions, the missions happen at different points in the metaplot. Mission 1 occurs during the time of Orpheus. Missions 2 and 3 come during Crusade of Ashes, 4 and 5 during Shades of Gray, and 6 during Shadow Games. This means there are spoilers, so be careful what you read if you don't have the books yet. And like I said, you can alter the chronology as you want to fit your campaign. Simply by dropping Mission 2, for example, the entire campaign can happen during Orpheus' heyday.
So there you have it. Good luck with the campaign, and happy haunting!