June gaming element challenge – Keys of Power: Optio Herois

Item type: Artifact

The golden key is another powerful, potentially dangerous key.  It is said that many a tragic figure was amongst the ill-fated bearers of this key, a key of heroes.  Scholars have not been able to document any confirmed bearer, rumored or otherwise, that lived to see grandchildren. Even as it is a key of heroes, it also seems to be some kind of key of Tragedy.  It seems that this key may possibly be able to grant the bearer the ability to do great, even impossible things, but it seems as with all things there is a price exacted—the scales, after all, must balance in the end.

June gaming element challenge – Keys of Power: The Gatekeeper’s Key

Item Type: Artifact

The keys of power are drawn and bound to particular carriers.

The Gatekeeper’s Key is a black moonstone key with silver veining that seems to have the power over life and death.  Tales also have it being known as the Assassin’s Key or Silentus’ Key.  A very few stories have it listed as Shadowen’s Key, but these do not seem to fit the tales of the man known as Shadowen.  Most refer to it as the Gatekeeper’s Key for various reasons, amongst them a particular tale that seems to indicate that the key’s true power is to open or close the gateway to the world beyond, to the heavens or the flames of the Hells.  It has been passed down the generations of a single family for at least the last five hundred years.

June gaming element challenge – The Black Ship

Item Type: Adventure Seed

Old spacers tell the tale of the Black Ship, said to be a ghost ship, lost to the space lanes when the first cryoships were starting to ply the dark places between the stars. The markings on its hull suggest it came out of the yards over Mars sometime in those early days, but no record of the ship exists in any system that anyone’s been able to find–at least so far. Those who have managed to board the derelict have found empty cryotubes but nothing seemingly out of place. All of the escape pods are there. All of the spacesuits are there.

And yet, none of the thousands of people who should be on the ship seem to be there. The cryotubes look like they had been used, or so the stories say. Some whisper that the first people who found the ship sent a few of their crew aboard, only for the ship to warp away–and then be found again a week later by that same ship with no sign of the few crewmembers they sent over aboard.

The old spacers say it’s an ill omen, a cursed ship, and its ghosts are better left undisturbed. No mystery is worth one’s life.

Or is it?