If anyone is interested, here is the "history" I will be using for the Great Train Disaster. I am going to use Arioch's idea of a Ghost Train. The PCs will find themselves in the Grand Dining Car at 10:51 PM on the night of the crash. They will have 62 minutes to solve the mystery, (I hate the thought of giving them exactly one hour) and I will be tracking time very carefully during this adventure. The point of the entire adventure will be for them to discover the truth of what happened. Since I haven't decided on it, I can't reveal that truth just yet.
The PCs will have access to some of this information based on a History roll. Davvin Del Tarrion will be allowed a bonus to this roll, since it is his own family history. Most of them will have a rudimentary knowledge of the diesaster, but little in the way of specifics. Since all the PCs are third level, and all the players (except one) are serious power-gamers, I doubt any of them took History skill, so they will have to spend their precious minutes learning what they need to know.
I'm not sure where the snakes will come from, but I'm confident I can work something out.
26 years ago, on the first commercial run of the new rail line from Yorndale to Relian, celebrating the completion of the last segment of this line, there was a terrible disaster. Just before midnight on April 23rd, the Colossus, the largest, most opulent passenger train ever built, ran off the tracks in a steep section of the line and crashed into a deep ravine. Only 12 people survived by jumping from the moving train several miles before the crash. Many others jumped, but were killed by the fall onto the rocky terrain. Of the 12 who survived, none were able to tell exactly what happened. All of the survivors were passengers. The crew of the train remained to the end, trying desperately to fix the problem.
22 nobles of the region were killed in the crash, including the elderly Count Chester. Ironically, Count Chester was one of the major investors in the line, and was so enthusiastic about the new trains that he was credited as the first to say, ?The gods themselves could not stop this train.?
The Del Tarrion family was nearly bankrupt by the disaster. Much of the house revenue was tied up in the speculative venture. It is said that the elderly Cleon Del Tarrion, Barron Yorndale, sacrificed his health to save his project. He worked until the day he died to try to uncover the truth of the accident. He lived to see his dream become reality, but died without knowing the truth of what happened on that night.
Since the time of the crash, there have been many theories of what happened. The theories range from conspiracies and assassination plots to accusations of sloppy manufacture and poor safety standards. There are only a few facts about what happened, based on statements from the 12 survivors and other records:
? The clock from the grand dining car was salvaged from the wreckage. The time on the stopped clock was 11:53 PM. It is widely accepted that this was the time of the actual crash.
? The Model 17 engine pulling the train was the most powerful engine yet created. In fact, no engine that powerful has been created since. It used a multi-chambered ?hot box? steam production system. (In game terms, a Heat Solid spell was used to heat metal plates to 500 of, with Cool Solid spells in place to contain the heat in the proper places. These plates were lowered into water tanks to create steam. Because the plates could not cool off for the duration of the spell, the hot plates could produce large amounts of steam.) This model train used 8 separate chambers and could use them one at time or all together depending on the load. The Engineer could adjust the speed by raising or lowering the plates in the different chambers using a series of levers to increase or decrease the amount of steam. The plates themselves were enchanted periodically by magicians working for the railroad, and the enchantments typically lasted for weeks before they needed to be refreshed. For this reason magicians were not typically carried on the trains, and the engineers did not normally have any skill with magic.
? The Engineer could bleed off excess steam by continuously sounding the train?s whistle. All of the survivors remarked that the train whistle began to blow continuously at about 11:30 PM, although the exact time varied by account.
? Barney Luddick (<< Where did that HTML code come from? I can't get rid of it. Anyway, Barney's last name is Riddick.) was in the dining car at 10:55 PM when he saw the conductor walking quickly through the car toward the front of the train. He did not think anything of it at the time, but remembered the conductor seemed unusually distressed. Barney admits he was not paying close attention at the time, because he was deep into a conversation and bottle of brandy with his companion Dr. Jason Billick. Dr. Billick jumped from the train with Barney, but was severely injured in the fall, and died before help could arrive. Sadly, Dr. Billick could have saved the lives of several other passengers had he not himself been critically injured.
? Ted Lane, a talented young Magician and son of an up-and-coming merchant clan, was a passenger who survived. He was in the dining car when he heard the train whistle begin to blow continuously (by his account, the time was 11:34 PM). He made his way forward. He later said he managed to go over the top of the cars to the engineer?s compartment (which is not normally accessible while the train is in motion). He said the top of the engine was almost too hot to walk on. He tried to shut down the engine by countering the spells heating the plates within the engine. After repeated tries, he was unsuccessful at breaking the powerful spells. The Engineer, by this time, was trying to use the brakes to slow the train which was cresting a rise and beginning to accelerate dangerously. As the brakes began to fail, the Engineer told Ted to get out and save himself. Ted used his remaining magic to fly from the train as it speeded down toward the MacIntyre Bridge. Ted later gave only one account of the crash as the train jumped the track on the curve just before the bridge and fell into the canyon. After, he said it was too painful a memory and refused to discuss it ever again. Ted was the only passenger to escape the train without injury.
? Many conspiracy theories involve Ted as the evil manipulator on the train. The fact that a branch of his family later married into the Del Tarrion family, coincidentally bringing the family the wealth it needed to keep the railroad going, figures prominently in several variations. Opponents of this theory point out that the Lanes were a large and prominent family in the Yorndale region, and it was not unlikely to have a member of that family on the train. It was also almost inevitable that a member of the Lane family would someday marry into the Del Tarrion family. But coincidence is the fuel of the conspiracy theory, and this one was too strong to be denied.
? Ellen Brown, the eldest daughter of a wealthy merchant family, remarked that she saw a ?Mysterious Stranger? in the Observation Lounge around half past eleven. Her descriptions of the Stranger changed in different variations of her story, and she is variously considered to be hysterical or mistaken by most of the population. She died of a fever 3 month after the crash, possibly brought on by her injuries. The conspiracy theorists generally accept her stories, and claim her subsequent death ?proves? their theory since she was ?silenced? by the guilty parties for being a witness to their devious plot(s). The fever story was, naturally, all a cover up.
? Andre Unden was only 8 years old on the night of the disaster. His parents were both killed. They all jumped together, and his parents shielded him from the fall. He was injured but recovered. He was raised by his father?s side of the family. He remembers the brakes squealing for a ?long time? but did not remember the actual time they started. He woke up when he first heard the brakes. Shortly after that, his parents left their compartment, then returned a few minutes later and took Andre with them for their ill-fated leap from the train.
? At about 11:35 PM, Finneus Workman saw huge flames coming from the galley car. Finneus was one of the lower-class passengers, and he was in the ?common? dining car to the rear of the galley car. His table was about 1/3 of the way back from the front of the car, and he remembered the flames almost completely obscuring his view out the window. It was later determined that the now-dangerous speed of the train had caused some kind of accident in the galley resulting in a large oil fire. The galley car was fully consumed in flames before the train left the tracks. As the flames began to spread to the rear of the train, driven by the wind of their passage, Finneus chose to risk a jump to the rocky ground rather than be burned alive. As he stood at the rear doors of the car, one of the pursers decided to attempt to disconnect his car from the forward section of the train. Before the other passengers could stop him, the purser opened the connecting door and the interior of the car was engulfed in flames. Finneus slammed the connecting door on the rear of the car shut in time to save himself. As the flames spread back to his passenger car people began to panic. Many were hiding in their cabins. Others were running around screaming. Several tried to go forward to help those in the dining car. Finneus was one of many who chose to jump from the burning section of the train. He broke his leg in three places when he hit the ground, and later lost his leg below the knee to infection.
? The other seven survivors of the train wreck all came from the ?common? ranks of passengers in the back of the train where the fire was the worst. They all tell of a small, mousy young woman who helped them escape the flames of the dying train. None can remember her name, but they all agree on one thing; they would not have survived without her. She took charge of the panicking group of passengers, her voice cutting through the noise as she shouted instructions to all. As the flames raced back into the passenger car at the last, she stood between the fire and the passengers, her arms up and her hands pressing forward as if she could hold back the fire. The inferno stopped its advance as if held back by an invisible wall. Jason Brant, the last survivor out of the train, remembered looking up from the ground to see several others jumping out, the last of them burning in the night as they fell. The unknown woman never made it out of the train. Her identity remains a mystery.
? On one occasion, Jason Brant remarked that he thought he saw people fighting on top of the train. When pressed for details he demurred, saying the only light was from the burning cars and he was probably seeing things. The conspiracy theorists loved this tidbit, and it figures in many of their versions of the disaster.
