The Brass Parliament

Game system: dnd5e

Guild politics, aether-smuggling, and one very angry automaton. The Clockwork Syndicate has begun retrofitting the harbor cranes with autonomous pilot gears — and the dockhands are furious.

PREMISE In the vertical city of Cogspire -- built tier by tier up the inside of a vast cylindrical shaft of brass and steam -- a junior artificer has been found slain and her revolutionary aether-compression patent stolen. The party is drawn into an investigation that climbs from the smoke-stained Foundry Tier to the rarified Apex Chamber of the Brass Parliament itself, where patents equal power and the wrong word in the wrong session can bury a truth for decades. BACKGROUND (GM ONLY) The artificer, Mira Volent, invented a process that could cut aether production costs by forty percent, directly threatening the monopoly held by Aether Consolidated Guild. The guild's chief regulator, Holden Grast, arranged her end and seized the patent documentation, intending to bury it. Mira had anticipated betrayal: she encoded her complete design into an automaton -- Unit Seven, a four-foot brass construct she treated as a prototype and companion -- and Unit Seven escaped the night of the incident. It is now hiding in the mid-city Steam Warrens, half-damaged, carrying the only surviving copy of the patent in its chest-core. The guild has labeled Unit Seven a rogue automaton and posted a bounty for its return -- intact, which is telling. HOOKS 1. The party is hired by Mira's younger brother, Pell Volent, who runs a small repair shop on the Foundry Tier. He does not know about the patent; he just wants to know who took his sister from him and why. 2. A Brass Parliament flyer offers a 200-gp bounty for the return of a rogue automaton, Unit Seven, last seen in the Steam Warrens. The party is in the business of bounties. 3. A character with a crafting or guild background is quietly contacted by a former mentor who says Mira Volent came to them days before her disappearance, frightened, saying someone was watching her workshop. 4. A delegation of Ratchet Compact dockhands approaches the party near the Harbor Tier gates, offering a modest retainer if the party can find out why guild regulators have been photographing their crane operators at shift change. ACT 1 -- THE FOUNDRY TIER Read aloud: The bottom of Cogspire smells of coal smoke and hot brass. Tiers rise above you like stacked rings, connected by chain-lifts and spiral ramps. Mira Volent's atelier is posted with a Parliament writ of closure, but the door has been recently forced -- someone else was inside before the notice went up. Situation: The party investigates Mira's workshop. Evidence inside points to a rushed, targeted search. One item was missed: a personal ledger hidden beneath a false floor. It records twelve meetings with a figure Mira called only H.G., and a notation three days before her disappearance reads: H.G. wants the aether-press design. I said no. He will not ask again. Player choices: Search the workshop thoroughly; speak with neighbors on the Foundry Tier; or follow a faint trail of small brass shavings -- Unit Seven's path of damage -- toward the Steam Warrens. Skill checks: DC 14 Intelligence (Investigation) to find the false floor and the ledger. DC 12 Charisma (Persuasion) to get a neighbor to admit she saw a guild regulator enter the workshop two days before the Parliament closure notice was posted. DC 13 Wisdom (Perception) to notice the brass shaving trail. ACT 2 -- THE STEAM WARRENS Read aloud: The mid-city tier is all pipes and shadows. Steam vents at irregular intervals and the catwalks shift when the city's main pressure changes. Somewhere in this maze of hot metal and hanging laundry, a small brass figure is hiding. You hear it before you see it -- a rhythmic ticking and a sound like a child humming, slightly out of tune. Situation: Unit Seven is in a dead-end pipe-room, attempting to self-repair with salvaged parts. It is defensive but not aggressive. It will only unlock its chest-core for someone it determines is unaffiliated with the guild. Two guild retrieval agents are tracking it and close in while the party is communicating with it. Player choices: Speak with Unit Seven and earn its trust through good roleplay and by mentioning Mira or Pell by name; repair its damaged limb with tools or arcane ability; or set up a defense before the retrieval agents arrive. Skill checks: DC 14 Charisma (Persuasion) to earn Unit Seven's trust (advantage if Mira's or Pell's name is spoken first). DC 13 Intelligence (Arcana) or Tinker's Tools check to repair Unit Seven's limb and gain its gratitude. DC 11 Wisdom (Perception) to hear the retrieval agents approaching in time to prepare. Encounter: Guild Retrieval Agents x2. CR 1 each. AC 14 studded leather, HP 22. Light crossbow +4 to hit, 1d8+2 piercing. They will attempt to grapple Unit Seven rather than destroy it; treat as a shove (Athletics vs Athletics). ACT 3 -- THE BRASS PARLIAMENT Read aloud: The Apex Chamber is all gilt railings and hanging gas-lamps. Delegates in brass-trimmed coats murmur behind schedule-boards. At the center table, a broad man in a regulator's sash presides over a patent hearing -- your patent hearing, apparently. His name is on a placard: Holden Grast, Chief Regulator. He does not look up when you enter. Situation: The party must expose Grast in a forum where it will hold. Walking in with evidence is not enough -- Grast controls Parliamentary procedure and can defer, seal, or table any hearing. Options: present evidence through an allied delegate; catch Grast in a public lie using the ledger and the retrieval agents' conduct as proof; or unlock Unit Seven's broadcast function to transmit Mira's encoded design to all of Cogspire at once, making it immediately public and unpatentable -- but also giving the Volent family no financial claim over it. Player choices: Find an allied delegate willing to table an emergency motion; build the open-session case from gathered evidence; or trigger Unit Seven's broadcast core. Skill checks: DC 14 Charisma (Persuasion) to secure an allied delegate's cooperation. DC 16 Intelligence (Investigation) to construct the open-session case (advantage if both the ledger and the retrieval agents' conduct are in hand). DC 15 Intelligence (Arcana) to activate Unit Seven's broadcast function. Final encounter (if Grast flees): Holden Grast. CR 2. AC 13, HP 36. Compact aether-pistol +5 to hit, range 30/90 feet, 2d6 force damage, 6 shots before reload. Parliament Security Constables x2 under his command. CR 1/2 each. AC 14, HP 16. Shortsword +3 to hit, 1d6+1 piercing. THE TWIST Mira Volent was a registered co-patent holder with Aether Consolidated Guild from an earlier invention. That means the guild owns a fifty percent stake in any design she produced during her guild tenure -- including the aether-press. Even if the party exposes Grast and wins the hearing, guild lawyers can bind the patent in committee for years. Unit Seven's broadcast is the only route to making the design immediately free and beyond legal reach. The real choice at the heart of the story is not whether to defeat Grast -- it is whether justice for Mira means her family gets paid, or whether her invention changes the world on its own terms. KEY NPCS Pell Volent -- Mira's brother; grieving, impractical, and brave in the way that gets people hurt. Does not know about the patent -- only about his sister. Quirk: fidgets with a bent gear he has carried since childhood. Unit Seven -- Mira's automaton; brass, child-height, walks with a slight list from damage. Responds to some queries in Mira's recorded voice. Quirk: taps fingers in Mira's personal rhythm whenever it is processing a difficult decision. Holden Grast -- Chief Regulator; has convinced himself that protecting the guild protects the livelihoods of ten thousand Cogspire workers, and that his actions were a necessary stabilizing measure. Quirk: presses both palms flat on any surface he stands near, as if steadying himself. Sera Omdahl -- Ratchet Compact ward boss; a broad-shouldered woman who managed Harbor Tier crane crews for nineteen years before the Clockwork Syndicate began installing pilot gears. She is not ideological -- she wants her people to eat. She distrusts the party until they demonstrate they have something real on the guild. Quirk: counts on her fingers when she is calculating whether to trust someone. Delegate Ysel Farrun -- The reformist wing's most outspoken voice in the Brass Parliament. A former Foundry Tier artificer who won her seat nine years ago on a platform of transparent patent review; she has been quietly collecting evidence of guild regulatory overreach for two years, but lacks anything concrete enough to bring to the floor. She will hear the party's case in private before she commits to tabling a motion -- she has been burned before by accusations that turned out to be factional maneuvering, and she vets carefully. If the party arrives with the ledger, she acts within the hour. If they come with only their word, she requires one additional corroborating witness. Quirk: takes brief handwritten notes during every conversation, then folds the paper into a small gear shape by habit. FACTIONS Aether Consolidated Guild -- The dominant commercial power in Cogspire, holding monopoly patents on aether generation and distribution across the upper four tiers. Internally divided between a reformist wing (younger delegates who see Grast's actions as a liability) and a conservative bloc (older members who believe the guild's stability is the city's stability). Their enforcers are the Retrieval Agents -- ex-constables on guild retainer, authorized to recover guild property by any legal means. Attitude toward the party: hostile until Grast's bloc is broken; cautiously cooperative with the reformist wing thereafter. The Ratchet Compact -- A mutual-aid coalition of Harbor Tier and Foundry Tier laborers, organized around the principle that no Cogspire worker should be made redundant by a machine the guild owns. Not violent by doctrine, but individual members have sabotaged autonomous crane equipment before. The Compact has no love for the Brass Parliament and will not engage in legal procedures willingly; however, they can provide safe houses in the lower tiers, street-level intelligence, and -- if the party earns Sera Omdahl's trust -- a ready audience of angry witnesses at the Parliament doors when a hearing is called. Attitude toward the party: suspicious, transactional, and eventually loyal if the party treats Compact members as people rather than useful bodies. The Clockwork Syndicate -- A newer faction that supplies pre-built autonomous mechanisms to guild buyers, undercutting traditional artificer contracts. Operates from a private foundry in the upper Foundry Tier behind a sealed writ. The Syndicate is not directly involved in Mira's death but is the downstream beneficiary of suppressing her design, since a cheaper aether-press would reduce demand for the power-hungry autonomous rigs the Syndicate sells. If the party investigates the Syndicate, they find meticulous legal compliance and no obvious guilt -- the Syndicate simply benefited, and its leadership knows it. NOTABLE LOCATIONS The Harbor Tier -- The lowest accessible ring of Cogspire, open to the outside shaft at three cargo gates. Steam cranes line the outer wall, now partially retrofitted with autonomous pilot housings. The dockhands' Compact meeting hall is here: a riveted iron room above a gear-oil depot, with a bulletin board of posted grievances and a locked cabinet of Compact records. The Syndicate's crane retrofits create a visible seam between the old and new equipment -- a skilled observer (DC 12 Intelligence (Investigation)) can tell the autonomous housings were installed hastily, with fittings that will need replacement within a season. Pell's Repair Shop, Foundry Tier -- A narrow ground-floor slot between a pipe-fitter's and a used-component dealer. Smells of solder and old lubricant. Pell works here alone. One wall holds a portrait of Mira in a cheap brass frame. A back room serves as a bunkroom; Pell has clearly been sleeping badly. If the party uses this as a base, the shop provides a Tinker's Tools kit and a parts bin that functions as an improvised alchemist's supplies for repair purposes. The Patent Registry, Mid-Parliament Tier -- A long vaulted reading room where filed patents are stored in locked brass cylinders, catalogued by number rather than name. The registrar, a meticulous elderly gnome named Durlan Koss, enforces a strict no-transcription rule but permits reading on-site under his watch. Cross-referencing Mira's earlier co-patent with Aether Consolidated Guild (DC 14 Intelligence (Investigation) to locate the relevant cylinder without Durlan's help; he will retrieve it without a check if asked directly by name) reveals the co-authorship clause that forms the legal core of the Twist. The room smells of brass polish and has not been redecorated since the Parliament's founding; the oldest cylinder brackets are worn smooth by decades of careful hands. CLIMAX Grast stops pretending to follow procedure when he is cornered, and makes a direct threat: he has the Parliament votes to revoke the party's access permits and strike their names from the city registry, effectively exiling them from Cogspire. If Unit Seven is present and trusts the party, the automaton makes the choice itself -- it activates the broadcast. Mira's voice fills the Patent halls, reading her design aloud in precise, careful language. Grast's expression goes grey. He can be detained, or he can be allowed to resign quietly -- which Pell Volent will not forgive, but which the allied delegate will recommend as the more stable outcome. This final choice belongs to the players. RESOLUTION AND REWARDS If the design is broadcast, Pell receives 150 gp in contributions from sympathetic guild members and independent artificers who immediately begin building on Mira's work. The party earns 200 gp from the original bounty (Unit Seven returned to Pell, not the guild). From Grast's personal chamber: a Patent Seal Ring (advantage on Charisma checks when dealing with Cogspire guild officials; requires attunement) and a set of masterwork Tinker's Tools (+2 to Intelligence checks for crafting and disabling mechanisms). Unit Seven, if treated with care throughout, accompanies the party going forward as a non-combat helper: it can produce one use of Mending or Prestidigitation per day, and it taps Mira's rhythm whenever it is glad to see them. If the party also aided the Ratchet Compact, Sera Omdahl provides an open letter of introduction to Compact-affiliated operations in other cities -- a social resource rather than a material one. RUNNING IT Unit Seven is the emotional core of this adventure; give it personality early and let it grow on the players before the stakes are clear. The choice between the Volent family's financial security and the broader public good should feel real, not obvious. If your table has little interest in political maneuvering, cut the Parliament hearing and have Grast confront the party directly in the Steam Warrens instead -- same choices, smaller stage. Scale down: Grast has no Parliamentary backing; a single DC 14 Charisma (Persuasion) check to the Parliament speaker resolves the case. Scale up: add a second guild villain (a senior delegate who approved Grast's actions) and a ticking clock -- Grast has already filed papers to have Unit Seven dismantled within 48 hours. The Ratchet Compact subplot can run entirely in parallel and does not need to intersect the main investigation unless the GM wants it to; it works best as an optional thread that rewards players who talk to people on the lower tiers rather than rushing straight to the Parliament.

Tags: ["clockwork", "steampunk", "intrigue", "cogspire"]

A community tabletop RPG campaign shared on TableTop DLC.