Agatha once worked for the press as a freelance writer before taking a better paying job as Detective Manuel Warrington's assistant. With Manuel missing, she is doing her best to step up as the acting Security Chief. She organizes the casework and balances Manuel's famously harsh interrogation style with her own softer, more delicate approach to getting suspects to open up. She is the party's primary contact for bringing the killer to justice.

The Never Setting Sun

One day the sun rises and never sets.
Designed by Jay Farschman

Complexity Rating:  ⬤ ⬤ ⬤  (1-5) 

THE PITCH

Read this section to your players to introduce them to the Campaign. 

The Never Setting Sun is upon you. You awaken to a world saturated in perpetual light, where the surrounding lands are completely blasted. The cosmopolitan city of Kashal and its valley are preserved only by a magical furnace fueled by scarce artifacts, creating a desperate, protected sanctuary. You are now tasked with collecting the magical items necessary to sustain this shield and it’s a mission that pits you directly against the zealots of the Order of the Furnace and the ruthless oceanic futurists, the Sisters of Opportunity. Your survival, and the survival of Kashal, depends on locating the powerful Temporal Chalice hidden within the time-warped ghost town of Refuge.

TONE & FEEL
Desperate, High Stakes, Conspiracy, Survival, Time-Warped, Sacrificial, Post-Apocalyptic.

THEMES
Magic Scarcity and Sacrifice (the Furnace), Totalitarian Survival vs. Oceanic Domination (Order of the Furnace vs. Sisters of Opportunity), Temporal Distortion, Forging a New Destiny.

TOUCHSTONES
??? Moorcock’s multiverse. 

OVERVIEW

The Little Shoppe of Curiosities remains your base, but its role has changed from commerce to necessity; its inventory is the very fuel required to keep the protective furnace operating. The campaign focuses on artifact recovery missions driven by the fear of the furnace failing and the shield collapsing. Major threats include Warlock Noahahim (leader of the Order of the Furnace), , the gruesome experiments of Akiva, and the escalating presence of the Lords of the Dark Side, who inhabit the sunless half of the world and seek to unite the fractured realities through The Dark Ambassador. 

COMMUNITIES

The surviving communities are defined by their proximity to or involvement with the protective furnace, which protects the entire valley.  or are there others? Under the sea? in the darkness on the other side of the world?

Loreborne & Highborne

Characters from noble, educated, or wealthy families (such as Calliope the archaeologist/consultant or a Cosma, tied The Guild That Shall Not Be Named, known as the Never Setting Sun (NSS) Order).

• Question: Cosma, you’ve struggled with your parents in the past, now it turns out their order is named after an event that is all too real and people are accusing them of causing it. But really, they helped build the forge. Why didn’t they try to stop it?

• What luxury that came from outside the valley do you miss the most now that all trade is cut off.

Orderborne

Individuals who adhere to strict organizational rules and regulations, such as the Trades Guilds (like the Drip Monks), or Senators are happy to have the Praetor take charge and a little bit suspicious of, “Heroes.”

• What part did the heroes play in the Never Setting Sun? Why didn’t they stop it?

• Those running the furnace need fuel and your magic shop is full of items, what do you want as recompense? Gold, recognition, something else?

• Jaimus McNulty was a man of peculiarities and slight eccentricities. What rule of your Order are you most tempted to break now that run the shop?

Ridgeborne

The ridges that surround the valley positively radiate with magical energy as the furnace repels the heat of perpetual day. 

• You’ve seen things for real, including those who’ve tried to penetrate the barrier, how has this changed you?

Seaborne

It’s possible that some characters who were out at sea exist in the twilight lands where the sun is always rising or setting, but their families are at homes that may be blighted.

• Are former empire ships still loyal to the empire, or did isolation turn them to piracy?

Slyborne

The Syndicate never forgets or forgives even if the offense was committed by a play who is maintaining the furnace shield.

• Question?

Underborne

For individuals of humbler, working class backgrounds little has changed, you never could afford luxuries from outside the valley, and you are still expected to work just as hard.

• Are you tired of hearing about the rich complaining?

• Are you more or less likely to worship the gods?

Wanderborne

Merchants from other lands are trapped here in the valley, still alive, but not able to return home.. 

• Do you want to go home anyway, even though it might mean death?

• What new vocation will you pursue now that wandering cannot turn a profit?

Wildborne

The wildlings of Grellen’s Grove are still existing without much change, but the Praetor sends emissaries to assure the “Grove Auxiliaries" are ready in case of invasion. 

• Who in your family will join the legion?

• What about those rumors of Grellan’s Grove being adjacent to “other” lands?

ANCESTRIES

All ancestries are available.  

Clanks 

Clanks are not harmed by the heat and they do not require crops or other sustenance. It is in this environment they come to believe they are the chosen people, rebel and leave for the blasted lands.

Elves, Fauns, Faeries, and Gnomes

All of these races may one day be asked to ‘volunteer’ as sources of fuel for the furnace. If there are no volunteers, well… we will see.

CLASSES

All classes are available.

PLAYER PRINCIPLES

Jaimus McNulty must have somehow known about the Never Setting Sun and that is why he brought you together. 

• Choose Your Fuel - The furnace must be fed and it’s not picky. Magical items can feed it nicely, but as they grow scarce the idea is floated that fae creatures (Faun, Fairies, Gnomes and Elves) can also serve as fuel. Tough decision are coming, not just wether to sacrifice magic items, but a few people to save the many under the protection of the furnace.

• Embrace Unpredictability - The Perpetual Day has warped reality; trust your intuition over logic when dealing with temporal anomalies, hidden dimensions. No one knows the truth about cause and effect, but you can learn it.

• Legacy Endures - Even if the Little Shoppe of Curiosities must be sacrificed to the furnace, the legacy of Jaimus McNulty and your found family must endure the final choice.

GM PRINCIPLES

Keep the following guidance in mind while you GM this campaign.  

• Protected vs Blasted - Visually and narratively emphasize the difference between the relative safety and culture of Kashal and the blasted, ruined surroundings. Show the price of this protection in scarcity and fear.

• Escalating Stakes - The correct answer at the beginning of the crisis is likely to get on the hamster wheel of finding new magical items for the furnace, but at the same time, the party needs to discover the root cause and formulate a solution. 

• Personal Problems - These may seem petty to the party, but the rest of the world might still hold grudges. The Syndicate never forgives. People are distrustful of the order of the Never Setting Sun and heck… Kaiser’s adopted mom is a straight up villain who may have genetically engineered him for her experimentation.

• Pragmatic Villains - Noahahim and his magical order are not evil, but ruthlessly pragmatic, believing the law they champion (sacrificing items) is required for survival.

• Offer Choices for the Cause - If the players are interested in a plane hopping adventure, then we will go that direction. If the players want something more classically Greek where there is a difficulty with the gods (Apollo, Persephone and Hades) then that’s where we will head. 

DISTINCTIONS

Use this information to prepare your campaign. 

The Eternal Day

The sun never sets. This constant, unfiltered light creates blasted, dangerous landscapes outside the shielded valley.

FEATURE WITHIN DISTINCTION

Text. 

• The Sacrifice Economy - All magical items are now considered fuel for the furnace shield. Characters must constantly grapple with whether to keep valuable, powerful artifacts or sacrifice them for the common good.

• Dimensional Instability - Pockets of reality are compromised. Some, like Dr. Dee says travel to other dimensions is not possible and a way to escape, others like the Thane of Grellan’s Grove warns that other ‘planes’ face similar tragedy

• The Triple Threat - The party faces three escalating conspiracies that know the NSS scenario: the Order of the Furnace (protection at a tyrannical price), and the Dark Ambassador (seeking political merger between the perpetual day and perpetual night).

INCITING INCIDENT

The party awakens to the perpetual sun. They are contacted by Cosma's parents, who reveals the crisis and the stop-gap solution: the furnace, which must be lit and requires constant fuel. The magical items in the shoppe are designated as necessary sacrifices. Their first critical mission is to locate and retrieve more magical items outside of the protection of the furnace and to seek a means of restarting the sun. 

CAMPAIGN MECHANICS

The following mechanics are unique to this campaign.   

• The Furnace Clock - This clock can never get down to zero or everyone dies. This clock will start at with 12 or 15 (according to playtest) and as time in an adventure goes, so does the countdown. Over time the clock may shrink in size, forcing the party to pick the correct moments to ‘deviate’ from survival and seek a more permanent solution to the problem 

• Blasted Land Exposure - Because the surrounding areas are "completely blasted", travel outside the Kashal shield requires precautions in the form of protective clothing.  When a PC takes Severe damage from an adversary or environment in the blasted lands, they gain an Exposure Token.

• When they do, the PC must roll their Fear Die. If they roll equal to or below the number of Exposure tokens on their sheet, they immediately gain a scar and clear all tokens, describing how the Blasted Lands have changed them permanently.

At the end of each session, clear all Exposure tokens from the PCs’ sheets and the GM gains an equal amount of Fear.

SESSION ZERO QUESTIONS

Ask any of these questions to your players, or make your own.

• Questions 

A renowned magical scholar and brilliant inventor whose groundbreaking research into "Skill Runes" revolutionized modern arcane engineering. He was a passenger of high status aboard the The Molybdivum until he was found dead in his office deep within the Archives, killed by a cauterized hole straight through his forehead. He was known to have heated, public arguments with several prominent figures aboard the ship prior to his demise.

This is the adventuring party each with a partial ownership in the Little Shoppe of Curiosities.  Jaimus owes each of them a debt and respected each of them for the things they brought to him in life:

• Calliope (Jill) - Character Sheet - An archeologist-musicologist-appraiser who worked with Jaimus on the provenance of curiosities.

• Katrina (Barbara) - Character Sheet - A Katari gambler with an uncanny knack of winning money from Jaimus.

• Kustos-749 (Calvin) - Character Sheet - A Clank recently liberated from a cursed imprisonment.

• Willow (Dana) - Character Sheet - A druid... perhaps the hippy granddaughter of Jaimus McNulty.

Former Members

• Kaiser (Leland) - Character Sheet - A Katari kid next door who helped Jaimus by chopping firewood.

• Cosma (Griffin) - Character Sheet - A mystic Faun specializing in magics both deep and dark. She was called away to help with an urgent issue in Grellan's Grove.

These are the Suspects

Vicious isn't just a syndicate rival; he is Katrina's former partner, a man whose ambition consumed him and drove him to an act of ultimate betrayal. Vicious is a brilliant tactician and a master of the blade. His signature weapon is a sleek, black twin-bladed katana, a stark contrast to Katrina's nimble, rogueish fighting style.

Vicious is sharp and angular in his features, with a pale complexion and eyes that seem to hold no light at all. He often wears high-collared, form-fitting black leather and steel armor that gives him a predatory silhouette. There's a certain emptiness in his gaze, a cold calculation that shows he's crossed a line from which there's no return.

Once, Vicious and Katrina were equal; two halves of a whole, a legendary duo in the Syndicate.

However, Vicious was not content with their partnership. He craved the power to rule the syndicate himself, a desire that grew into a vicious, burning obsession. His ambition drove him to betray the Kat, leaving her for dead. His actions are not fueled by passion or anger, but by a chilling, logical need for control. He sees emotions as a weakness and has purged them from his life, replacing them with a cold, ruthless efficiency.

After his betrayal of Katrina, he systematically eliminated his rivals, using a combination of cunning strategy and overwhelming force. He now sits at the head of a powerful crime syndicate, and his reputation for ruthless violence and cold precision is widespread. His ghost haunts Katrina's journey, as he represents the life she could have had and the man she once loved, now twisted into her ultimate nemesis.