"The Tale of Jumari" is a solo campaign set in Freeport, in the months following the mysterious death of Sea Lord Milton Drac. Jumari Boneface is an albino half-orc who grew up on the streets of Scurvytown. She is best known to her neighbors for her self-trained skill as a healer, and her menacing demeanor. The local gangs often come to her for tending injuries suffered in fights, and occasionally for help with shakedowns.
Following the death of the Sea Lord, the surviving Captain's Council tried to purge some of the corruption that had flourished under his reign. This resulted in the ousting of Boss Tillinghast, and more frequent crackdowns in Scurvytown as the "new" Sea Lord's Guard tried to regain some of their former prestige. Jumari wisely decided to find work less connected to criminal elements, and found a job at the Crematorium.
This work brought her into frequent contact with Golmon, the elven priest in charge of the island's small temple to Zo-Kalar, god of life and death. His attitude towards the half-orc was cool at first, but he soon grew to respect her as a patient worker who tried to treat the dead with respect.
She also met Golmon's acolyte, the human woman Bianka Altanish. Gossip among the workers said that she got her position through a large donation, did little in the way of priestly duties, and performed several autopsies every day on the corpses brought to the Crematorium. She soon learned for herself that Bianka was more interested in the dead than the living, rarely speaking to the workers more than her research demanded.
After working there for about a month, Jumari nearly joined the dead that she tended. As she and others were unloading the daily corpse boat, two humanoid monsters climbed out of the water and attacked them. One worker, Dorin, was bitten and paralyzed. Jumari drew her morningstar and attacked, as another worker, Fletch, fended off the other, and the rest of the workers fled to fetch Golmon. One recognized the creatures as "lacedons," and led the rout.
Jumari wounded her opponent, which then bit her savagely, nearly killing her. She and Fletch (who had been more lucky dodging his foe) attempted to withdraw, and the ghouls turned to the easier meal.
Golmon soon arrived on the scene, and produced a shining light that hurt Jumari's eyes, but drove off the lacedons. He maintained this ward until the workers could return, collect the bodies, and begin to haul the waiting wagon to the Crematorium. The elf then dropped his spell, and paused to heal Jumari's injury. He instructed her to return to her duties, but to see him later so he could check her for infection.
At the Crematorium proper, Bianka studied Dorin's masticated corpse intently, and seemed irritated that Golmon forbid her from an autopsy. Jumari watched her carefully, having come to distrust the woman, thinking her dissections somehow disrespectful towards the dead. After Golmon performed some simple rites over Dorin, his body was added to the furnace, and the priest took the half-orc to his workshop to examine her healed shoulder. He pronounced her free of ghoul fever--to Jumari's relief, after he explained what that was, and what "lacedons" were.
Golmon observed that Jumari had started to pick up the old sense of black humor common to her job, and asked her why she had chosen this career. She replied that she had simply needed one, and was used to blood and death due to her life in Scurvytown and experience as a healer. The priest asked if she wished to learn more about medicine. When she countered with a question about his curative powers, he explained that they were a gift from his god. Jumari claimed to see life differently now, after a month at the Crematorium--seeing death on a daily basis had made her keenly aware that everyone dies, and that this work was the last chance for these people to be paid some respect. Intrigued by her attitude, Golmon began to tell her more about his god, and found a willing student in Jumari.
During this time that Jumari started learning about religion, she became more and more curious about Bianka. She had seen her workshop, where she dissected cadavers, but the human woman never allowed others to linger when they brought in or took away bodies. She asked Golmon about her, and he explained that Bianka was trained in medicine, and was researching how the body works, so that she better understand what made it stop working. She had studied at the Freeport Institute, but had come here for better access to the materials she needed. Jumari disliked the fact that Bianka was spending so little time in her priestly duties, and offered to become Golmon's acolyte as well. He accepted, and she began studying the rituals and spells associated with the death god.
Soon after, Jumari's curiosity got the better of her again, and after helping to deliver a body to Bianka's lab, she bluntly asked the other woman what she did here. Impatiently, Bianka explained that by studying how things died, she could better understand life.
Jumari asked her, "Do you want to live forever?" The researcher was startled by her words, and asked her to leave, but the half-orc sensed that her question had struck close to the truth. Jumari took her leave, deciding to ponder this new revelation a while before discussing it with Golmon...
[This session of The Tale of Jumari was fairly short, designed to introduce a new creature that may become a recurring character.]
A couple days after Jumari's conversation with Bianka, the half-orc was helping Golmon about the temple when she asked again about the scholar's purpose here. Golmon repeated that Bianka was studying the mechanism of life and death, but when Jumari probed further, admitted that he had inferred her goal of achieving immortality. The half-orc acolyte was worried that her motives were far from altruistic, but the elven priest claimed to have no concerns about her at the moment.
A week or two after this, Fletch led a half-dozen off-duty Crematorium workers (including Jumari) to the Chumhouse for a night of heavy drinking. The half-orc's trained senses and menacing aura kept trouble at a safe distance, though she was a bit sloshed by the time she and her co-workers left the tavern.
As they headed back to their quarters, the gang heard a frightening, eerie howl coming from a nearby alley. About half the group (including Jumari) bolted in terror, while the others opted to follow their friends rather than stick around. Fletch caught up to Jumari as she neared the barracks, so they fetched their weapons and went in search of their scattered companions.
They eventually found all but one of their drinking buddies, so sent the worst frightened strays home while the others continued the search. After some time, they heard the same howl as before, but from further away. Against their better judgment, the four laborers went to investigate. They soon heard the sounds of snarling and fighting nearby. Turning a corner, they saw a ghoul fighting a small, dark, pale-eyed, monkey-like creature.
Jumari brandished her scythe, trying to startle the ghoul, but found that this had no effect. The undead scored a powerful blow on the monkey-thing, sending it flying. The half-orc attacked the ghouls with her scythe, but missed. The other workers concentrated on providing distractions to help Jumari's defense. She then tried her curative power on the ghoul, which disabled it, and it retreated. She followed that with a blast of light, which hurt the ghoul but also blinded the albino half-orc for a moment. When she recovered, she pulled out her crossbow and pursued. With help from the knife-fighter Fletch, Jumari managed to finish off the ghoul with her scythe, without her or the humans taking any wounds.
Jumari then went back to look for the creature that had been fighting the ghoul. She and her friends found a blood trail, and followed it to a pile of crates and barrels in an alley. The monkey-thing has climbed to the roof, and snarled threateningly when Jumari climbed after it. She attempted to talk to it, but it was apparently not intelligent. However, she eventually calmed it enough to allow her to heal the worst of its wounds. It sniffed at her curiously following this, then leaped away.
Tired from her search and magic use, Jumari decided to go home and rest, even though they had not yet found their missing co-worker. A couple times on the walk back to the barracks, she thought she saw pale eyes shining from a nearby rooftop...
[The Tale of Jumari, or at least Jumari herself, was revived in order to playtest my True20 conversion of "Dead Man's Quest." We did not complete the adventure, so I never composed a summary of its events.]