Gifts Of The Past

an adventure starring Bartholomew, Sadie, and Armando.
==Setting==
A manifested dimension comprised of memories and echoes from the past.
==Short Episode Description==
What can a memory hold? The joy of an old friend? The fear of a nightmare? Perhaps something even more. Join Sadie, Bartholomew, and Armando as they find out! Gifts Of The Past is an actual play of the Mall Zombies TTRPG.
==Non Player Characters==
*The Master's Servant
*The Servant's Master
*Émile Safiosi
*Mateo Duca
*Anina Xalvador
*Arturo Contenza Bilazno De Medici
*Maria Contenza Bilazno De Medici
*Gianna Duca
*Gervasio Flamini
*Lieke Nicastro
*Gideon McCullough
*
==Plot Summary==
The story begins in the FBK guild hall. An old man in a dusty outfit walks in and is greeted by Armando. The old man introduces himself as the Servant, and informs him that he and two others described in the letter are to meet his Master. Armando is confused, and upon reading the letter realizes that it’s also addressed to Sadie and Bartholomew. Bartholomew reads the letter, which mentions that the Master needs help retrieving six artefacts:
* A Flower, that blossoms only in Summer.
* A Quill, dipped in the ink of duty.
* A Coin, tarnished with the tears of the innocent.
* A Bell, that rings with the sound of friendship.
* A Ring, that glistens in the sun of Spring.
* A Rapier covered in the dust of tradition.
In return, they will retrieve their lost possessions:
* Bartholomew’s lost pocket watch
* Sadie’s lost earring
* An item unknown to Armando
The party agrees to help, and the Servant instructs them to simply exit the guild hall to enter their destination. Upon doing so, they find themselves walking through a mysterious corridor with seemingly no end.
The party reaches two doors on either side marked “Niqamui Fencing Academy” and “Father’s Office”. Armando decides to enter the one marked “Niqamui Fencing Academy”, and when he does, the door quickly shuts behind him. He quickly realizes he’s in the fencing academy of his youth, and notices he is a child again! Hearing his deceased master Emile’s voice, he realizes he is reliving a memory. After a heartfelt reunion with Emile, Armando remembers he is looking for an artefact, and believes he can find the Rapier of Tradition in this memory. After finding it easily, Bartholomew and Sadie peek in to check on Armando, to which the other inhabitants of the memory become agitated at their presence. Armando notices his friends appearing as spirits, alerting them and hurrying out of the room together.
Sadie infers that “Father’s Office” must mean “her” father, so she enters that door. She meets her father in a recollection of her time working together with him. He begins talking about the complexities of the stock exchange, and she remembers how tedious the work is, remembering how important it was for her to experience the world before getting married. She then reminisces how comforting and familiar the surrounding is, then remembers that she’s looking for something. She looks around for the Quill of Duty, which is easily found among the clutter. She then appears back in the corridor.
Bartholomew continues down the corridor and runs into two more doors, one marked “Pindrake Training Grounds”. He enters, and realizes that he is a bit younger and reliving a precious memory of his. He is going to train his younger sister, Anina, how to fire a musket for the first time. However, instead of focusing on teaching his sister like in his memory, Bartholomew gets distracted looking for the Flower of Summer. A while passes before dark storm clouds appear, and his sister calls out to him worried. He sees his sister, face melting away and contorted, before tackling him to the ground, ripping and tearing away at him. Bartholomew is kicked back into the corridor, and the door vanishes. He is reunited with Sadie and Armando, but realizes he has lost any significant memories of what happened at his hometown’s training grounds. Seeing him distraught, Sadie offers him a healing crystal to calm down.
Armando enters the other door marked “Contenza Bilazno De Medici Residence ''. Once inside, he realizes he’s a spirit like how the others were when they entered his memory. He discovers a paper dated with the date of his parents’ assassination. After investigating the residence, he finds his parents laying on their bed with stab wounds in their chests next to an open window. It’s at that moment he realizes that this isn’t a memory, but a vision of the moment after his parents were killed. After shaking himself from the shock, he begins looking through his father’s clothes for anything of value, and finds the Coin of Innocence in his possession, returning him to the corridor to relay this strange recollection to the party.
The party ventures further down the corridor and reaches another two doors marked “Bartholomew’s Tenth Birthday” and “Duca Family Garden”. Sadie enters her namesake’s door into her family’s yard. She realizes it’s a memory of her early childhood when she was very small and her friends were young. She excitedly reunites with her friends Gervasio and Lieke to play croquet. She thinks about how she needs to look for artefacts, but is too swept away in her memories to think about it. Sadie spends a long time away from Bartholomew and Armando.
Bartholomew is nervous about losing the memory of his tenth birthday, to which Armando reassures him by asking for details so in the event he does lose them, he can relay it back to him. Bartholomew explains that it’s the day he was given his horse Allistar, and after hesitating for a moment, enters the memory. He appears as a child like Armando did in his first memory, and begins living out his memory exactly as he remembered. The old man who crafted his lost pocket watch, Gideon, leads Bartholomew to Allistar. After a while of reliving the memory, he becomes terrified at the idea of breaking away from it to look for an artefact, but miraculously sees the Flower of Summer in Gideon’s shirt pocket. After touching it, he returns back to Armando, relieved to have kept the memory.
Bartholomew and Armando grow impatient waiting for Sadie to return, so they decide to enter through to check up on her. They find her having fun and avoiding her task. Armando calls out to her to hurry up, which agitates everyone around. Upon seeing this, Bartholomew and Armando leave the memory, and young Sadie reluctantly stops playing in order to look for the Bell of Friendship. Unfortunately, everyone around her slowly begins to eye her suspiciously, and the sky suddenly grows dark. Sadie is terrified and begins to run back to the door as her twisted friends and house guests chase after her. She narrowly escapes them, reuniting with her companions in the corridor, but failed to find a second artifact.
The party finally reaches the end of the corridor, where they encounter a large, white room. It rapidly begins to transform into a vision of a field, and shadowy figures begin to appear around them similar to the ones in Bartholomew and Sadie’s nightmares. The party braces themselves for battle as Armando takes charge against the horde of shadow monsters that face them. After a victorious battle, the party is greeted by the Master. He thanks the party for their memories and retrieving the artefacts. He reunites Armando with a rapier that belonged to Emile, and clues in Sadie and Bartholomew to the locations of their lost possessions:
* The Earring of Gianna Duca:
** Where stories told and embers grow
** A diamond lies that cannot glow.
** Within the grasp, a creature fair,
** Fur and canvas, its secret lair.
* A Silver Pocket Watch by Gideon:
** Sweat and Red is the place.
** It hangs like delicate lace.
** A sword, a bounty, and a ship’s debris.
** A watch now dulled under the sea.
After their meeting with the Master, the party appears back in the FBK guild hall, where they continue their day as normal with new perspectives and goals.
Category:Episodes