Of Lights and Little Men: A Cards & Quests Adventure

An adventure outline for the Swords of Kos setting.
 

The characters are spending a leisurely afternoon at the Four Winds Bar in the city of Kos when they witness an unusual sight. An elderly woman hobbles through the tavern doors to the bar's notice board, where she pins up a small placard and hobbles back out. Overcome with curiosity as to why an old woman would need the service of sellswords, the characters examine her note. It reads that she has seen “lights and little men” at night in the abandoned warehouse adjacent to her home in the Slum Quarter. Concerned, she reported it to the town guard, who haven't looked into the matter. She offers to pay 3 gold pieces and a hot meal to anyone willing to investigate. While most of the bar's patrons laugh off the old woman's note as senility, the players either have their curiosity piqued or take pity on her.

The old woman is not senile and the “little men” she has seen in the warehouse at night are goblin operatives from the Tetrarchy of Anatolia. They've slowly been tunneling through the floor of the abandoned warehouse down to the sewers, which open into the Bay of Kos, to create a concealed pipeline into the heart of the city. If the players manage to take any of the goblins captive, they will initially claim to be smugglers, but their finely crafted equipment and weapons will betray them as military agents. Further interrogation will reveal that these goblins are part of a group based in Pserimos, which is ripe for the characters to raid.