Summit Road

Entry into the Summit Road's ranks is a mixed blessing, and few take to this arduous pursuit lightly. But the Summit Road doesn't just trust those who would join it because they pass a cursory examination involving detect evil or mindprobe. Membership on the Road is only offered to hardy souls who have proven themselves capable and daring, steadfast and honorable. Such persons must be loyal to Adar and foes of the land's enemies. Such agents are often called Summit Road guides, or just guides.

All sorts of people work for the Summit Road. Their common bond is a desire to fight for freedom and willingness to face, confound, and even kill Riedran authorities. Members are prepared to die before allowing themselves to be captured. About half of the members of the Road are spellcasters or manifesters of some sort, since these talents aid in fooling and defending against the forces of the Inspired.

At its core, the Summit Road is a group of highly skilled infiltrators and sneaks. They form a network of individuals and small groups, Adarans and non-Adarans, willing to shelter those on the move. All hope to thwart the Inspired and to free as many awakened Riedrans as possible. Many in Sarlona sympathize with the Summit Road, or would if they knew about it.

Economics: Summit Road guides can get a discount from those who sympathize with the Summit Road. This benefit is dependent on NPC reactions and a guide's willingness to call attention to his affiliation. Spellcasters and manifesters who work with the Road are willing to create items that defend against mind-affecting spells, powers, and abilities or that protect a guide from divination or clairsentience for 75% of the market value. The organization also buys these items at 60% of market value. In general, such items worth 2,000 gp or less are readily available for purchase for 75% of market value.

Gear: The Summit Road often provides expendable mundane gear essential to a mission. The Road hardly ever has magic items available for this purpose—guides are expected to avail themselves of Road spellcasters to have any such item made.

Services: The large number of spellcasters and manifesters in the ranks of the Summit Road means easy access to services provided by such persons. Healing and spells or powers that remove mind-affecting spells, powers, and abilities are accessible within a day, as long as the spell or power requested is 5th level or lower. Guides must provide costly material components. Similarly, if they provide the materials and can show a great need, Summit Road guides can get a magic item made for cost. Those who abuse these services for personal gain quickly find that their fellow guides won't provide such aid.

Information: Knowledge is one of the Summit Road's strong suits, particularly when it comes to Adar's borders. It has maps of Riedran fortifications near Adar, diagrams of regular patrol routes, lists of sympathizers, and so on. Usually, when a group of guides goes on a mission for the Road, the leader (trailblazer) assigning the task supplies all relevant intelligence available for and pertinent to the job, including destination, contacts, and expected challenges. Known information gaps are always revealed. Of course, sometimes the job is to gather intelligence, in which case some or all of these facts can be "gaps."

Many of the Road's members and sympathizers are knowledgeable and capable information brokers. When needed, a PC guide can make a successful DC 15 Diplomacy check (modified circumstantially by status within the organization) to locate an NPC affiliate who is willing to attempt a desired Knowledge or Gather Information check at a +5 bonus. For every point more than 10 by which the check result beats the DC of the required Diplomacy check, the NPC has an additional +1 bonus with the desired skill.

Access: As Summit Road guides, characters have access to a wide variety of travel modes and routes, as well as known safe houses and hiding spots. Secret routes through underground passages and psionic portals are all available. NPCs sympathetic to the cause might also provide aid. Access to all such benefits is given on a need basis—important and sensitive information and locations are reserved for trusted guides.

You are the pathfinder on a way to safety and hope from a land that has lost all freedom. Sometimes you are a chirurgeon's knife, infiltrating diseased territory to lead someone in need from Riedra to Adar. Other times you are the watchman's eyes, observing to discern truth and useful knowledge about the enemy. And when need be, you are the merciful arm of death that removes those who cannot be saved.

Trust is vital to you and your team members, and to those who direct you. Misplaced faith is death or worse. Without one another, Summit Road guides can't survive— each provides essential skills. Your team is only as strong as its weakest member, and when failing can cost you your mind, nobody wants to be the chink in the group's armor.

You do much of your work incognito. Whether you're actually masked or disguised depends on the work and the timing, but letting someone see your face who doesn't need to do so is a mistake. Many persons you aid never learn your name or what you look like.

When you joined the Summit Road, you did it because you thought it was right or because you had nowhere else to go. Regardless of your initial motivations, the risks you take in infiltrating Riedran territory or the Syrk frontier aren't part of some romantic fantasy. Worst of all, people back home in Adar might respect what you do, but they're always wondering if the person who comes home is really you.

Still, you are a hero. You can see it in the eyes of the Riedran defector you smuggle through Zi'til'natek and into central Adar. He has seen horrors, you know, and now he'll have a hard life, but he'll be free. Sure, the monks will watch him, but he'll marry a plump valley woman and raise his children to be whatever they want to be. And he won't have to serve beings he has come to know as evil and alien. You created that life for him, and, the Light willing, you'll survive long enough to do it for many others.

One day, the Inspired will kill you if you're lucky, or capture you if you're not. Between now and then is the time to make them pay and take from them what they never deserved to own. Maybe you'll live to see the Inspired fall. Until then, your homage to the Path of Light is walking the Summit Road.

Combat: You evade enemies until you must engage, using three "weapons" taught to every Summit Road guide: information, stealth, and speed. First off, know your enemy and your path as well as you can before you set out. "Prepare for the worst, but travel light" is a maxim for those on the Summit Road. Stealth means going only where you have to, and doing so unnoticed. Speak with whom you must, but reveal only that which must be told. Speed means getting whatever you came for and getting out. If you must engage an enemy, kill quickly, letting that be a form of mercy to those doing their duty for the Inspired. If you want to send a message with your violence, send it directly to the Chosen or the Inspired—the soldiers and common folk of Riedra are slaves, and they don't deserve further pain.

Advancement: The Summit Road recruited you because you showed the ability to do what needs to be done. You exemplify some combination of stealth, fighting prowess, and resistance to mind control. You also showed a willingness to do thankless work in nerve-rattling conditions.

New recruits face intense scrutiny and dangerous missions. Green guides are given information and shelter as needed and no more. As you show dependability and good performance, along with a willingness to undergo regular and rigorous testing to guard against mind seed and other sorts of infiltration, you can be inducted further into the Road's internal structure, and you become privy to more sensitive information.

Rank isn't formal on the Summit Road—respect must be earned and kept through merit. If leadership is for you, the current leaders, called trailblazers, must make sure you're not an infiltrator. Once you do get in, you can assign teams to special operations and oversee information-gathering. Staying in the field is always an option, but doing so means never being truly on the inside.

Missions: Working the Summit Road is hard but simple. You get missions from trailblazers and you perform them.

A Summit Road guide might be asked to do any number of tasks. Helping a dissident cross into Adar is usual, but guides might be assigned to take out a group of monsters that have moved into one of the organization's secret passages through or under Adar's mountains. Scouting enemy positions and removing obstacles for another team's mission, or even providing a distraction, can be part of a guide's duties.

Sometimes a Summit Road guide is taken prisoner. Other guides are dispatched to help the prisoner escape or, if they must, end the unfortunate's life.

Responsibilities: The Summit Road expects you to devote your time to the organization's needs, taking missions whenever they are available. You can engage in other activities as long as they don't endanger the Road, and finding and planning your own missions is looked upon favorably when such undertakings prove successful and meaningful. However, long absences raise suspicions, especially when they're not prearranged. Such a hiatus can lose a member some standing and might require her to undergo interrogation and a fresh mind probe

As Summit Road guides, the PCs are revolutionaries and soldiers—perhaps in an unwinnable war. The Road requires a stoic resolve and unswerving commitment. It also offers a great deal of freedom. Guides can plan and execute their own missions, gaining that much more glory when the undertaking works in favor of Adar. Further, the characters can rest assured that if they're captured, their allies in the Road won't sit idle. Members of the Summit Road are like a strange family where interdependence is as important as good steel and the right spell.

Organization: When Adar shut its borders after repelling the initial attacks of the Inspired, the early focus was on fortifying all points of entry. During that time the Shroud was built. The masters of the monastery-fortresses, especially Kasshta Keep, Malshashar, and Shalquar, quickly found they needed a way to get into and out of Adar. This need was the genesis of the Summit Road.

Malshashar has always had friendly contact with the dromites of Zi'til'natek. Zi'til'natek's inhabitants had no love for Riedra's new leaders. Preliminary crossings were through Zi'til'natek and underground ways constructed for the purpose. In this time, many would-be Riedrans still opposed the Inspired and sought escape. Adaran warriors also took the fight to the Inspired on a small scale.

Conditions on both sides of the mountains soon stabilized, more Riedrans becoming loyalists and Adarans becoming more defensive and insular. The Summit Road evolved. Failed missions and subverted guides proved the need for strong will among Road members. Supernatural defenses were essential parts of any team, so the remaining leaders began to favor mystical recruits. During this growth phase, the Road also put forth tendrils, establishing bases in dromite city-hives under Riedra and even in the Syrk port of Ardhmen.

Summit Road guides call their leaders trailblazers— those who find new ways. New, probationary, and regular members have always been called guides, and most Road agents are guides for years before being named trailblazers. Guides have differing levels of esteem in the organization, but no official rank differentiates them. Those with less experience usually defer to those with more. Advancement is based purely on merit and is totally optional—under the control of existing leaders. No guide is ever forced to become a trailblazer, which can be a sedentary job.

Masters of the temple-keeps in Adar are nominally in control of the Summit Road. It is they who often ask the trailblazers to undertake some task for the good of Adar. The trailblazers in turn assign guides to a task, or even oversee a mission directly. Most trailblazers remain in Adar however, so it is harder for the Road to be subverted.

The Road is highly decentralized, like Adar's entire defense infrastructure. Guides must speak or learn Riedran, and they learn special phrases and sign language that help them identify one another and communicate secretly. Few outside the Summit Road know its underground language, and unauthorized persons who show such knowledge are often met with hostility.

Cells of the Road operate independently. A group of guides is a highly specialized team composed of four to six members. Each member has skills that complement those of the others in the group. In this way, each Summit Road squad is a strong support system for its members.

Summit Road Headquarters: Like Adar, the Summit Road has no central operations center. Guides work from Dvaarnava, Kasshta Keep, Shalquar Monastery, Malshashar, and even Zi'til'natek—trailblazers collect intelligence and run missions from these places among many others. Some Summit Road agents are stationed permanently outside Ada r in wilder Syrk settlements—especially Ardhmen. Information is shared between groups by psionic, magical, and mundane means, and teams change operations centers as needs dictate. All teams are expected to take circuitous routes from their starting points to prevent those points from being located by Riedran patrols.

NPC Reactions: Adarans admire the courage and skills of Summit Road guides, and those who recognize a guide are often friendly. Only in the smallest Adaran thorp might a group of guides find no aid. However, most Summit Road guides keep their affiliation secret, and few people can tell a guide on the Summit Road from other hardened folk who travel the wilds of Adar.

Many of the Road's members are outsiders in Adaran society. Some are known criminals. Others are members of races that rarely work on Adar's surface but that also dislike the Inspired, such as dromites. Because of this unusual membership, a few inside Adar fear Summit Road guides. One slip, these people say, could open the door to the Inspired or worse. Such persons might be unfriendly.

Agents of Dvaarnava, Shalquar, Malshashar, and Kasshta Keep closely watch members of the Summit Road, but they are usually indifferent. Their job is to catch any unusual behavior among the guides, not to help or hinder.

Loyal Riedrans have no love for Summit Road guides, believing they are kidnappers and assassins in the service of fiendish magicians. Such Riedrans who discern a guide's true connections are invariably hostile. 

Summit Road guides are facilitators, spies, soldiers, and, well, guides. If somebody needs to get into Adar from the outside, it's likely that the Summit Road is going to be involved somehow. Guides are meant to be a "first contact" point between foreigners and the land of refuge, but they also serve as foils for Riedran patriots and a way for Adaran characters to move into the wider world.

From rescue missions, to strikes against Riedran fortifications, to expeditions to uncover potentially useful artifacts from Sarlona's bygone ages, the Summit Road can be a motivating force behind an entire campaign. Outsiders and foreigners can earn the respect of Adarans by serving the Road, so foreign characters could do worse than to have the Road as an ally or a patron. Players who like action and intrigue mixed with a good dose of paranoia should find the Summit Road to be a fine home for their PCs.

Adaptation: The Summit Road seems distinctly Adaran—it serves Adar's needs. However, it's also a covert organization that's designed to run a formidable border and to make strikes into hostile territory. In Sarlona, something like this group also fits for the Akiak dwarves and their operations against Riedra. Lhazaar pirates could have such a group to make surgical raids into the Mror Holds. With some modifications, the Road could just as easily be a monstrous faction of spies working across the borders of Darguun or Droaam.

Encounters: The Summit Road has the potential to be a group of allies or foes, or even a patron. Initial encounters with guides are always edgy as they get to know foreign characters or raw recruits. Everything is a test at that stage. If pushed, Summit Road guides don't take chances—they strike with deadly efficiency against those they see as risks to the Summit Road.