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Cultural Artifacts

As a history buff, i am always watching the History Channel, Military Channel, etc. There are a lot of ideas that an enterprising referee can use ater the serial numbers are filed off. As an example, I have lifted the entire Mercedes-Benz backstory and used it IMTU as a company that designs small craft. here's another...

Source: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/rosetta-stone-found

Jul 19, 1799: Rosetta Stone found

On this day in 1799, during Napoleon Bonaparte's Egyptian campaign, a French soldier discovers a black basalt slab inscribed with ancient writing near the town of Rosetta, about 35 miles north of Alexandria. The irregularly shaped stone contained fragments of passages written in three different scripts: Greek, Egyptian hieroglyphics and Egyptian demotic. The ancient Greek on the Rosetta Stone told archaeologists that it was inscribed by priests honoring the king of Egypt, Ptolemy V, in the second century B.C. More startlingly, the Greek passage announced that the three scripts were all of identical meaning. The artifact thus held the key to solving the riddle of hieroglyphics, a written language that had been "dead" for nearly 2,000 years.

When Napoleon, an emperor known for his enlightened view of education, art and culture, invaded Egypt in 1798, he took along a group of scholars and told them to seize all important cultural artifacts for France. Pierre Bouchard, one of Napoleon's soldiers, was aware of this order when he found the basalt stone, which was almost four feet long and two-and-a-half feet wide, at a fort near Rosetta. When the British defeated Napoleon in 1801, they took possession of the Rosetta Stone.

Several scholars, including Englishman Thomas Young made progress with the initial hieroglyphics analysis of the Rosetta Stone. French Egyptologist Jean-Francois Champollion (1790-1832), who had taught himself ancient languages, ultimately cracked the code and deciphered the hieroglyphics using his knowledge of Greek as a guide. Hieroglyphics used pictures to represent objects, sounds and groups of sounds. Once the Rosetta Stone inscriptions were translated, the language and culture of ancient Egypt was suddenly open to scientists as never before.

The Rosetta Stone has been housed at the British Museum in London since 1802, except for a brief period during World War I. At that time, museum officials moved it to a separate underground location, along with other irreplaceable items from the museum's collection, to protect it from the threat of bombs.



This sounds like a great idea for a one-off adventure for folks that don't respond well to the average "empty a clip at anything that moves" response.

Has anyone thrown a curve at their players and given them a situation similar to this?
 
What's the 'adventure' seed? :confused:

Taking scholars and seizing all important cultural artifacts from another party?

Stealing irreplaceable, priceless artifacts from a museum being hidden during a planetary war?

Those ring 'gun happy' to me... are you asking about an 'adventure' involving the 'deciphering' of ancient languages/key to historical records?

I'm thinking most players would just sell it! [ala http://darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0596.html]
 
Has anyone thrown a curve at their players and given them a situation similar to this?

Which situation? The translation one? Or the acquiring it from different owners one? The second one could be done as a Raiders of the Lost Ark type of adventure. Would probably go great in the Fading Suns setting, too. There was also a Star Trek: NextGen episode that was a scavenger hunt/puzzle solving/deciphering adventure that pitted 4 of the main Alpha Quadrant races trying to acquire different pieces of a puzzle. Can't remember offhand what the episode was, but that could work for you, too.
 
engage your imagination...

Lots of things come to mind. Here's a few Just off the top of my head in the last few minutes...

How do we get things started?

* A mercenary unit just had their asses handed to them and the commander needs to raise funds to reform. One of his former buddies is now head of security for a university at the sector capital. Pulls strings and gets them a job escorting Professor Xzon on his latest expedition.
* Perhaps that same head of security doesn't want to go off planet, so he goes through a private agency...which hires the players.
* Some low life scum (probably the players) offended one too many people by actually surviving their latest adventure. They need a place to hide while things cool down. Who would look for them among laborers in the Professor's party over a dozen parsecs away?

Let's examine Professor Xzon for a moment...

* He's a 'Nutty Professor/Jerry Lewis' . So over the top stereotyped that no one takes him seriously, but those who can ignore his appearance and irritating mannerisms find out that he is on the verge of a genius level discovery.
* Perhaps an 'Absent-Minded Professor/Albert Einstein' is the patron. If you could measure his intelligence, it would be off the scale. Unfortunately, his mind has three separate tracks, and when some interesting conclusion from his subconscious comes to mind, he switches to that thought track. As a result, he has constant flashes of genius but can't seem to remember where his cardkey is.
* Then, there's always the 'Second Son' who didn't have the luck to inherit or the ambition to earn. He is smooth as silk, though, and he made a career out of skimming the best ideas from his graduate students as his own. With one more big score (government grant) he can retire.

From here, you can shuffle the deck and come up with lots of options. But, I'll save those for later...
 
The players under contract to haul a innocuous cargo discover that it is, in fact, a rather hot cargo being moved by a corporation who bought the "old relic" at auction that plans to exploit the technology that will ultimately be revealed once the tablet is decoded.

Turns out that the loser of the auction may well be sore losers, and the planetary government when made aware of its true worth (but perhaps not so interested in the exploitation aspects...or are they?) want the artifact back.

Or it can always be a Mcguffin won in a card game....
 
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