Rodney Greiner

Affiliation: US government

Position: Congressman

Background

You're going to the Middle East, land of the Arabian Nights and all those RPG supplements filled with desert people -- how cool is that?

The world is a weird and wonderful place, as you discovered all the way back when you were a student at MIT. You loved sci-fi and fantasy and role-playing games. You joined the Pagan Students' Group. You loved magic. Best of all -- it worked!

You've always had a good mechanical aptitude, but you came across an odd camera when going through a pile of junk in the Edgerton stop-motion photography lab. When using the camera, certain things had glowy auras around them. It took you a while to figure it out, but you had found a camera of detect magic! Soon after, you began collecting magic items and studying magic rituals (with the help of the camera to tell you which ones actually worked). You still remember the day you enchanted your MIT class ring (affectionately known as a brass rat) into a ring of charisma. Who needs social skills when you have magic items?

With the help of your magical artifacts, you successfully founded iDroid, a company that manufactures robots for both commercial and military applications. It took off and the stock shot through the roof. So, you took the money and decided to go into politics. Who could beat someone with a ring of charisma? That worked too.

Now, you've decided to go to the Middle East -- a land of ancient magic -- as part of a publicity ploy. Nominally, you're here for photo ops now that the Iraqi government is interested in buying some of your military droids. You don't know anything about combat, of course, but you're a damn good engineer, even without the magic items.

Maybe someone else will want to buy some of the military droids, too. The Iraqi government has first dibs, but if they don't want to buy, you'll sell them to whoever. A unit of them costs about $3 million to manufacture. You hope to sell them for roughly $5 million. You have two units available for sale.

Anyway, speaking of magic items, you're sure such a richly magical land has a bunch of magic artifacts floating about. You want some for your collection. You're rich. You're powerful. So, you should be able to score some magic items here. It's totally the place to level up (er, metaphorically speaking).

Contacts

• Joseph Prince: A fundamentalist Christian known as Mr. Prince? How much more obvious can you get?
• Field Marshall, The Right Honorable Lord Lockwood KG: You're aware that he holds a number of large business interests worldwide.
• Tariq Ibn Faruq: Big Bad Evil Guy.
• Abd-al Aziz Mamoon: Evil Mage.
• Qamar Abd-al: The lovely daughter. Perhaps she needs rescuing?
• Veronica Miles: Dude. They sent you with a girl -- a hot girl to boot!
• Angel Cruz: Ugh. He totally needs to get a grip on reality. I mean, really. His conspiracy theories are driving you nuts.
• Nathan Kennedy: He's totally like 007's younger brother.
• David Kinder: Let's see. He has witty repartee and is looking for artifacts. Give him a whip, and he'd be Indiana Jones.
• Basit Ibn Karim: Important NPC. You should poke him to see if he gives quests.
• Imad Ibn Junayd: Auxiliary NPC.
• Wafi Nagi: NPC's rival. Maybe he has the quest instead?
• Sabriyya Nejem: Looks like a thug to you.
• Munir Faiz: Rich NPC. Or maybe he has the quest?
• Emel Faiz: Auxiliary NPC.
• Nawal: Okay, there has to be some quest involving her.

Abilities

Stats

• Combat: 2
• HP: 4
• Sanity: 4

Resources

• Money: $5 million

Camera of Detect Magic

Pictures taken with this camera show auras around magical artifacts and certain individuals.

• Side Effect: Possible sanity loss from pictures viewed.

Brass Rat

People naturally like you. Those wishing to attack you must suffer 1 point of sanity damage to overcome these feelings.

Goals

• Get photo ops for your cover.
• Act like a politician -- dabble in the local politics somehow.
• Collect magic items.
• Find out more about the rich magical history of this place.
• Sell your military droids to anyone that will buy them.
• Have fun.