Inspiration: The Killing Machine, Jack Vance Clan Hagen has long dominated the quicksilver market thanks to their lands sitting on the richest cinnabar mines in these lands. However after some rather unpleasant alchemical accidents in Jahur some decades back (with the silverlings), the bottom dropped out of the quicksilver market.
Faced with the unpleasant prospect of bankruptcy and the even more unpleasant prospect of The Hoard calling in its loans, the dwarves of Clan Hagen decided to move into the ransom brokerage business.
These days, kidnappers of all kinds can bring their charges to the Hagen dwarves for safekeeping in the Hole. If the ransom is paid, Clan Hagen turns it over to the kidnapper (minus a modest brokerage fee of course). If it goes unpaid then Clan Hagen gets to enjoy the use of another pair of hands (and various other useful parts) down in the labs. Clan Hagen tends to not be picky about who pays the ransom and will happily release its charges into the hands of whoever pays their fee.
To keep all of this working smoothly the Hole, where their charges are kept is quite secure. The first line of defense is a quicksilver moat that the dwarves cross in iron rafts and deeper down there are access tunnels lined with frozen quicksilver. To walk through these tunnels without the right gear causes the walls and ceiling to drip and soften thanks to your body heat.
Currently there are a number of prisoners in the Hole but none has attracted as much attention as an elf lady who came the dwarves and declared that she had kidnapped herself and set the ransom at ten thousand ten thousand pieces of gold. The dwarves are, however, worried about where they will keep the giant child that is in their charge if its ransom goes unpaid and it grows much larger.
Hooks:
- -What kind of alchemy can be performed with quicksilver?
- -What experiments happen down in the Clan Hagen labs?
- -How do the Clan Hagen dwarves keep the quicksilver from melting and poisoning them?
- -Why did the elf lady declare that she had kidnapped herself?
- -What’s the story with the giant child?
- -Who else is Clan Hagen holding for ransom?
- -Who are the kidnappers who go to Clan Hagen to hold their victims? The Hole is pretty out of the way, how do they get there?
