Hot Rain Falls on the Boiling City

A flooded heist with a reality-bending twist. Can you raid a moneylender's sinking treasure vaults before rival scoundrels get there first, mercenaries cut you all down, the floodwaters wash it all away... or the secret psionic insect wakes from its reality warping dreams?

A wild and waterlogged heist for 4 – 6 Knaves of 1st to 3rd level, inspired by:

• Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar
• All of Florida
• Sir Terry Pratchett's Ankh-Morporck
• Thief: The Dark Project by Looking Glass Studios
• Jeff VanderMeer's Ambergris
• The Tower of the Elephant by Robert E Howard
• Renaissance Venice
• Sailors on the Starless Sea by Goodman Games
• The childhood daydream of water while living in a record-setting drought

On the Surface

A simple heist: raid a money lender's fallen mansion before his mercenaries arrive, rival scoundrels get there first, or the floodwaters wash it all away. The adventure takes place across the flooded surface streets, the mansion’s floundering basement, and the sinkhole which has already swallowed most of the estate, with numerous ways to pass between these three, and a variety of environmental objects to experiment with and physical challenges to solve by unconventional thinking (can one cross a flooded street using a dead zebra, a noose, and a crate of oranges?)

But in the Basement

The money lender's fabulous wealth is fabricated, created by the dreamings of a psychic insect he stole long ago from the skull of an ancient king in the eldritch bog beyond the city wall (murdering the site's original discoverer to do so.) The creature is capable of dreaming into existence a duplicate of any object or entity it samples, including human beings (indeed, the mansion's entire staff and even several high-ranking city officials have been replaced by dream to duplicates fanatically loyal to the moneylender.)

However, if the insect is killed or even woken from the drugged slumber in which its master keeps it, all that it has dreamed into existence ceases to be.

In the Sinkhole

The abused creature's raging dreams of discontent have also begun to take shape in the physical world: Above, as the howling storm that floods the city streets. Below, as malformed chimeras twisted together from scraps of every dream the moneylender has ever forced the creature to create. These nightmares slowly gnaw their way up towards the basement to free the dreamer from its slavery.

Many Endings

Unreal quantities of wealth are available for knaves who can find a way to keep the creature alive and asleep (no mean feat in a structure crumbling into the abyss). Others may pity the beast and free it deliberately, taking only those original treasures from which the moneylender created his imaginary wealth. Some may not even uncover the mystery and find their haul vanishing out of their pockets (or the pockets of their creditors) as the beast wakes or dies.

The Future

Knaves can use the insect's powers themselves to replace fallen comrades, fool the approaching mercenaries with duplicated uniforms or the costumery of guests (or even a copy of the moneylender himself), or even start their own moneylending scheme (provided they can continue sourcing the rare ingredients required). Knaves may hunt down the moneylender's planted duplicates (should they still exist), bring the bodies of rich and powerful guest back to their families for reward, or return the sword of the Bog King to its rightful owner in the eldritch mire just beyond the city wall and so gain the favor of a powerful new patron (for it was the slumbering powers of the ancient tyrant that gave the insect its dreams).

Or, everyone could drown under a pile of dead circus animals. Such is the life of a knave.