These sample quests appeared in Everway-L, and have been reprinted here with Jonathan's permission. Enjoy. Table of Contents
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ConQuest '95
© Copyright 1995 Jonathan Tweet, All Rights Reserved
While the players were arriving and then choosing vision cards, I dealt a two-tier spread and chose vision cards for the quest. The plot that presented itself was a conflict between physical strength and strength in numbers. (Could have been The Lion vs. Autumn as rivals in a two-tier reading. I don't recall the fate, but it was a pretty serious one.)
The heroes included a magical sprite (played by an incredibly annoying boy), a former sorcerer who'd been turned into a hulking beast (FPG 63), and several others. (The beast and the sprite played key roles in the conclusion, as it would turn out.)
For individual reasons, the heroes came to the faerie woods to see the faerie princess. They had the usual adventures of encountering and getting to know each other, compounded by a little mischief from unseen faeries. The heroes were in three groups when the elf guiding one of them decided it was time to show him the future.
Zap. Suddenly the trees were gone and the heroes were standing in a wasteland. The same land, just blasted and destroyed. (This conveniently let the heroes all see each other, so they came together to find out what had happened.) The brute and the sprite took immediate disliking to each other.
Though unable to learn anything of value from each other, the heroes were able to find two children (FPG 85) who talked about a horrible war that had started seven years earlier and that had destroyed the faerie realm, as well as perhaps the princess herself. The war was between to beings, Fang and Pate. Fang had lots of allies in the war, but Pate had really big ones, as demonstrated by the flying elephants that came flying in the heroes' general direction (FPG 70). With the elephants bearing down on the heroes, the elf re-appeared and took the group back to the present and led them to the faerie princess, telling them that the war was just starting and that maybe they could stop it.
There was a party at the faerie court, and the princess (FPG 29) seemed unconcerned about any war. She hadn't heard of any problems. The heroes caught on, however, when two of her subjects, an ape and a snake, got into a wrestling match that turned ugly (FPG 48). The two wizards pooled their talents to try to figure out what was going on, and I drew The Priestess (understanding mysteries). Revealed to all were the souls of the heroes and the faeries. The mortal hatred that the heroes brought with them to the faerie court was reflected in the faeries, turning what was supposed to be sport into a grudge match. The heroes themselves were responsible for bringing the seeds of destruction to faerie land.
"Now that we've taught them how to bear grudges, we have to teach them how to forgive as well," said one of the heroes.
The faerie princess pointed out that the two heroes with the most serious grudge against each other were the sprite and the brute. She told them to forgive each other and hug so that her court would learn how to give up their grudges. The boy playing the sprite said, "OK, we hug."
"Hug for real or it doesn't count," I said, cruelly. The kid playing the sprite had been enormously annoying, and the guy playing the brute had been one of the most exasperated players. This was playing with people's heads.
The kid reached out and put his hand on the back of the guy playing the Brute, and he sort of leaned his head in, grinning with embarrassment. I said that the faeries learned forgiveness, the opponents dropped their grudge, and the faerie woods were safe. The end. I was quite proud of how the conflict in real life had had its parallel in the game. (In fact, the life/game dichotomy could be seen itself as a parallel to the mortal/faerie dichotomy within the game.)
Part of me wishes I'd been a hard-ass. Those two players did not hug. They did not forgive each other. They did not drop their grudge. It would have been more honest (though not as happy) to say, "The two heroes hug, but the faerie queen sees in their hearts that they are faking it. The grudge match continues, the faerie woods are doomed. The end."
-Jonathan Tweet
ConQuest '96
© Copyright 1995 Jonathan Tweet, All Rights Reserved
The con folks asked me to make this session "dark," in line with the "horror" theme of the evening.
The two tier spread was Nature (life energy) vs. The Usurper--reversed, with The King (authority vs. tyranny) as the fate. I decided that The Usurper would be The Grave (death enriching life/death defeating life). Normally I re-shuffle the Fortune Deck when The Usurper comes up. For this quest, I re-shuffled when either The Usurper or Nature came up, so that the deck sort of told me which of the two rivals was ahead that time around. When Nature came up (upright) three times in a row without The Usurper surfacing, things went well for the heroes. I'll play with that idea some more, re-shuffling when a rival appears instead of when The Usurper appears.
I chose FPG cards 37, 39, 65, & 57 as quest cards.
The heroes came to a large city on a river, all with their own agendas. The action picked up on the night of the new moon, when the locals honored and blessed the beginning lunar month with rituals and prayers. (Note, here's a risk I run inventing these quests on the fly. I told the players that the month would begin when the moon rose just before dawn. Oops. The crescent moon that comes after the new moon rises just after dawn, not just before. I realized my mistake in mid-sentence, didn't correct myself, and just trusted that no one would say anything. No one did.)
The plot was that the forces of The Grave were massing to take over, starting that night. This evolved through the quest to be the forces of The Grave trying to replace the forces of life by creating undeath. So the night before the rise of the new month's moon was to be the time when The Grave would start its take-over.
First various things went wrong. A hero (FPG 23) walking the city walls was attacked by frenzied guardsmen. Another hero (V/37) accompaning a friend at a new-month ritual saw a demon arise and attack the friend (FPG 57). Other heroes heard that someone was hurling people off the top of a mill. The city was in chaos, with random acts of violence occuring everywhere.
The heroes converged on the mill, dealt with the undead creature there (FPG 37), and learned a few things about the night's events from the creature. The heroes then determined that the trouble was coming from the old graveyard near the center of the city. Here they were beset by monsters (FPG 39), but a string of very good fortune draws (one card per hero) let the heroes triumph. At the center of the graveyard (FPG 65) they found the leader of undead invasion and a forgotten shrine to Gaia, tended to by the ghost of the high priestess of Gaia, who had died in the midst of her new-month ritual. The heroes decided to get the new high priestess into the forgotten shrine (which took some doing) and have her complete the late high priestesses ritual there. This act restored the balance between Nature and The Grave (i.e., turned The Grave card upright).
-Jonathan Tweet
© Copyright 1995 Jonathan Tweet, All Rights Reserved
I chose FPG cards 35, 71, and 85 as quest cards. Players were Teeuwynn (who is working on a quest for EVERWAY's Questbook 1) and Doug Keith (an EVERWAY artist, the one who did the spherewalkers source card in the game set). Teeuwynn played a strange nomad priestess (V/56) looking for her corrupted soul mate (V/57). Doug played a minor wizard (V/72) who was in a wandering phase of his life. They met on the road, and the priestess accepted the wizard's guidance in pursuit of her soul mate.
The first encounter was with flying lizard things that came out of a circle of mushrooms (FPG 71). These things were flying off away from the heroes, but the heroes intervened to see check these things out. The priestess sensed that they were created by her soul mate. They inadvertently damaged the mushroom ring, which caused subsequent critters that came out of the ring to have stubby, useless wings.
The two followed the critters to a rocky shore, where they found a dead giant marine lizard. A similar lizard cam swimming toward them, and they grabbed onto it huge dorsal fin to let it bring them out to an island. Here they found a woman who refused to speak to them (FPG 35) but who pointed to an another small island. The heroes took the lizard shuttle to the second island and stayed there until the tide went down, at which point they were on top of a tower (FPG 85).
They entered, and they encountered the soul mate. The priestess had a chance to say one thing to him, but she flubbed it, and he dove into a shaft that led down to the sea. She followed while the wizard dealt with the numerous homunculi that the priestess's soul mate had created. The priestess failed to find her soul mate in the dark water below the tower, so she returned empty-handed.
I'm not sure about the tide trick that I pulled. I just don't know enough about tides to know what's possible able what isn't. No one called me on it, so I figure it's OK.
-Jonathan Tweet