Within the free town of Oldcrest, an old priest has set up the most radical school ever – that to teach languages and writing at a rate that even a hawker trader of the town could afford. Nobility is upset, the churches of the True Faith grapple with the issue while freemen wonder at the purpose of learning to read and write.
- Adventurers who had always wanted to learn the skills of literacy may visit the school to master the rudimentary of ancient script, reading and writing. The old priest, however, would somehow know that they are adventurers and their fees would not be in term of silver or gold, but random acts of helpfulness to the town. Perhaps the Sorcerer needs to know an anarchic script to decode a secret or a Knight who aspires for a more political role would find this old priest helpful.
- The nobility and gentry are outraged at the notion. Commoners are not to be able read and write, they reason – that is a skill reserved for them for it keeps them in command. The lords of the nearby fief will demand Oldcrest to shut the school down, but the town being given a charter, refused to. The plan? Get the church to accuse the old priest of heresy and attempt to dispose of him that way. The adventurers can either choose to help the lords, or to help the priest.
- While the old priest is really teaching his students to write and read, he is also using them for another purpose – to have them unsuspecting scribe Thoughts of Herlos on the Nature of the Saviour, a text of much controversy among the Church of the True Faith. Many copies of it have been destroyed, the rest stored away. The priest happened to have a copy and intended to get good enough students to scribe enough copies to ensure that the tome will survive. Of course, that there are collectors who would willingly pay gold to get on a copy of one is entirely another matter all together.
This work, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Singapore License.
