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ASPIS ANTIQUARIAN

"One clockwork box, six inches on a side, fitted with brass and copper plating over a wooden shell. Gently ticking."

The Aspis Consortium are amoral capitalists who aren't shy about literally selling slaves. You work for them, which means you really don't get to sit on a moral high horse often. That's fine, it's probably not your preferred mode of conveyance anyway. But you don't sell slaves, you're a glorified librarian. You record priceless artifacts that the Consortium comes into possession of and carefully pack them for transport to the Consortium's headquarters in Cheliax. Most recently, you're returning from an expedition to Southern Arcadia where the Consortium came into possession of an ancient book written in an unknown language.

BENEFIT

You can cast detect magic at will as a spell-like ability.

BENEFIT

You gain a +1 bonus on Spellcraft checks made to determine the properties of a magic item.

What You've Gotten Yourself Into

  • You've spent the last year at a Consortium expeditionary camp on the coast of Southern Arcadia. You didn't get to see much of the country while you were there, as the Consortium had you identifying and cataloging stolen artifacts the whole time.
     

  • Your overseer is Izah the Golden, a literal efreeti who is also a Gold-ranked member of the Consortium. Izah sees himself as a man of culture and sophistication, but he's mostly just obsessed and spiteful.
     

  • Izah's never directly mistreated you, but you've seen him directly mistreat a lot of other people. Some of whom died from that mistreatment. And by mistreatment I mean being burned alive. But he pays well.

  • The book that Izah ripped from the hands of some remote Arcadian settlement is an oversized and unwieldly thing written in an unrecognizable language. It's filled with occult pictograms, maps, and illustrations that defy explanation.
     

  • Izah's been paranoid about the whole expedition, and he's asked you not to report the findings of this book to the Consortium which, if you're caught, could wind up with your skeletal corpse swinging in a cage off the cliffs of Ostenso in Cheliax. 
     

  • Alternatively, if you don't do what Izah says, you might just wind up one of those smoking piles of bones that have to be swept into a shallow grave after one of his bad days.

Who You Are

  • You're probably not the most kind-hearted person in the world. Working for a soul-crushingly capitalistic organization like the Aspis Consortium tends to wring the goodness out of someone.
     

  • Unless you've been trying to subvert the organization from the inside for a while now. That... seems really ill-advised. How's that working out for you, anyway? I mean, you're not smoking bones yet, so I guess it's going alright. 
     

  • But odds are you're more likely just another cog in a cruel machine designed to make gold and secure power. It just so happens that the big, fiery boss looming over you has asked you to lie to the cut-throat leaders of the Consortium.

  • Worse, the ship you're on—Izah's ship the Infernus—is bound to make port in Almas tomorrow. You'll be expected to file your findings and leave a record of everything retrieved from the trip to Arcadia.
     

  • So you'll have a choice to make, once this all gets going, and how you choose to handle this situation will have some really, really far-reaching consequences. No pressure.

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