April 25, 2013

Shop: Viable Connection Service

This business is a one-man operation run by Lian Weaver. In effect, he introduces a person who is looking for something to a person who has that something. His business is built on effectiveness and discretion. In the past, he has done such things as helping a necromancer find a lost tome (and barely avoided going to the dungeons for it), found a wizard adept at making traps for the city guard and helped a noble family sell its jewelry collection. He knows everyone and what they are capable of. He usually has several deals going on at the same time and it can take a few days for him to make the right connections. The charge for his services is usually 10% of the value of what is to be traded, though he only takes his fee once what the customer is looking for has been found.

Indeed, one of the first people the characters are likely to meet within this town is Lian Weaver. He makes an effort to meet everyone new and introduce his services. For adventurers he is able to connect the characters to someone willing to buy esoteric books, magic items and other objects that the characters may be looking to sell off. All too often some items are almost impossible to sell on the open market for anything approaching their value and Lian can help move them. Lian can also help adventurers find a person with knowledge that the party may be in need of, such as a specialized sage.

Lian Weaver
Lian is actually a fairly friendly person; certainly he is very outgoing. However, he also has an air of a snakeoil salesman. He makes his living by getting people to trust him and by knowing the details of everyone’s life. He appears to have no conscience with his “no questions asked” policy, but he puts the spin of “trust” and "discretion" on it. However, those who know of his four girlfriends are not so trusting.

Adventure Ideas
-Apparently Lian does have a conscience. He was recently contacted by M’mrac the Yellow, a noted magician, to find a book called the Tome of Closing. Lian did so, having discovered the book lies in the library of a local merchant. However, his research also turned up the pure evil of the book and how it can bring about "The End Times". Fearing for his life he still told M'mrac where the book was. Now he is looking for adventurers to prevent M'mrac from acquiring the Tome or, if failing that, to stop whatever M'mrac is planning with the book.
-At the request of Yun Supp'e, Lian introduced him to a mutual merchant, Sherrod Diamond. Yun has since disappeared before he paid Lian for his services and now Sherrod claims to have never met Yun. Lian suspects something untoward has happened and hires the characters to discover what it is going on, if only so he can get paid. Unknown to Lian, Sherrod is actually a diabolist using his mercantile business as a cover. Yun has been searching for him for a few years now, but Sherrod managed to gain the upper hand and dispose of Yun. Now Sherrod needs to clean up the trail to him and that includes Lian and the characters.
 

List of Evil Tomes
 
1)      The Book of Inverse
2)      Codex of Pain
3)      The Insidious Volume
4)      Manuscript of Souls
5)      Journal of a Lost
6)      The Black Edition
7)      The Scrolls of Madness
8)      The Diabolic Works
9)      Scripts of the Stone Blood
10)   Manual of the Damnable
11)   The Foul Works
12)   Treatise of the Tentacle

 

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