A Dangerous Artifact

The following presents one scenario offered to the students:
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Under the drooping wing of the Slipshot Parson was struck in the face for the first time in eighty years. It was an eight-year-old that did it, snake-fast, snapping his rope weapon, the lead weight lashing out just right, knocking out a tooth and spilling him into the sand. Flat on his back, arms cast wide. He watched the blue sky for a moment, tinged with red and brown, before his field of vision filled up with worried faces. He laughed. They were so quick. They were the very best the Institute had taken in decades. Their neurons weren’t actually faster than the old men of the Slipshot crew, but their minds were unburdened by hundreds of years of pain and a service that seemed, now, to Parsons . . questionable.

There was joy too. There is always joy. Unless you were poor Captain Kierns. Ah.

Now, though, the test. The children.

Parsons scooped up the rope master and urged him to try to escape. The boy twisted one way, pivoted, and Parsons reversed, grabbing his ankle and dropping him in the dirt. The boy countered by temporarily paralyzing Parsons below the left knee. Parsons dropped and continued the grappling lesson, over grabs and reversals Parsons said to the students gathered:

It’s high time we started getting some work out of you rugrats. Wei wants you out and getting some things for us. We disagree as to what but that's another matter. You know we’re not overly happy with the current Reikish, the pontiff of the Holes. We’re increasingly dubious about his crusade against the Exarchs of Ruu, and to be frank, we don’t want to see the Exarchs go down. Which we normally wouldn’t have to worry about. The Ruu are good fighters and they have some very canny wizards. Problem: there’s a new artifact the Holes dug up. Normally we aren’t too worried when we hear about flying saints and folks rising from the dead and suchlike, but our tame priest in the Tonen says he’s seen this thing glowing when touched and killing all those that look on it and other such things. If the Tonen figure it out it could give the Reikish an incentive to squash the Ruu and for real this time. There's also the real possibility of fantastically quick death for everyone in the Tiedown. If they try to push too many buttons, if this thing turns out to be a powerful instrument.

You guys know we’re trying to help these people out of the muck as best as we can, as carefully as we can. We play a double game with the Reikish and the Holes because they offer protection and because quite frankly their faith makes them a powerful tool for us. But we can’t have them using galactic technology like this, not in an enclosed ecosystem like Tiedown. If it is a weapon pod of some kind we could all be sucking vacuum faster than you can say, “huh, usually black is the ground”. And we don’t have the sway to just ask for it; the Holes have kept us up to our ears in manpower and materials for the better part of a century and I don’t blame them for asking themselves what they’re getting out of it besides a couple of maladjusted youths like yourselves.

Wei just wants to EMP the thing, but I say different, because we just don’t know what it is. And it might be a lot more than just a weapons or recon pod. What I want is for you kids to steal it. You know that new cathedral they built to Captain Kierns after he offed himself? We’ve reserved the lower block of that for research on the artifacts the Holes have dug up, and we want to get that new artifact into the block as soon as we can.

Where is the artifact? Well, it’s in the Reikish Chapel where Urthrani IV is currently contemplating it in devotion, at least until it wakes up and burns through his retinas. It’s due to be moved to Ensippon chambers in the Holdout at Belden Ridge above the city, which, oh lucky us, is snowed in right now. Once it’s in the Holdout I give Harold Exeter of the Tonen a week or two before he figures out something dangerous. He’s already got his firearms, the salvaged sonic he carries as a staff and god knows how many rounds of GANC projectiles he grabbed when we spilled them on that flight back in 97960 when Kierns got blitzed on Stump's tomato vodka and tried to take the ship up. Wow, I almost forgot how much that sucked.
Anyway, I didn't raise you kids to be impulsive. Take a night. If we have to we'll EMP Belden ridge. But there's no telling what's in that artifact. It's a big galaxy.