Night at the Ancient Elven Museum

As I mentioned in a previous post I think it is fascinating to see peoples' real-world interests, jobs, hobbies reflected in the fantasy realms they create. Well, I went and crafted an entire adventure inspired by my own career path -in museums.

The Concept:
My PCs (Player Characters) have traveled to a research center and repository of knowledge (read: museum) built by a reclusive sect of ancient elves.


The Backstory:
10,000 years previous
A group of ancient elves who believed that a great apocalypse would soon befall the elven nations, headed for the hills and started squirreling away anything they thought was awesome or valuable, while simultaneously searching for a solution that could either prevent the apocalypse or simply allow them to not be there when it happened. They set up a structure built into a hillside (like Petra) for the purpose of storing their accumulated knowledge (like Alexandria or the caves at Qumran).

Sure enough, an apocalypse of sorts comes along in the form of an Orcish invasion (of course!) Well, the Elven lands were left a barren waste and the location of the museum was lost to legend. Fortunately, the elves who lived there managed to enact plan C before the snarling, teeth-gnashy wave hit, which was to flee for parts as yet unknown.

500 years previous
A Human king, wishing to prove his worth to an Elven princess (of course!), crusaded in search of the legendary museum, and found it... with a snarly horde of orcs right on his tail. The two armies fought and generally make a mess of the place. The orcs were driven back, and the few survivors of the king's army made their way home having stolen an important item from the museum and reportedly having left another important item behind.

100 years previous
A dragon shows up. Finds nobody is using the museum and decides to take up residence, gradually accumulating a bunch of luddite lizard-people as followers.

How it has Played Out (so far):
The PCs have rediscovered the ancient museum in their search for the item the human king left behind. In their explorations thus far, they have met the dragon, who promptly stole most of their stuff before magically locking them out of his room. They then decided to team up with a spectral librarian who has been tasked with looking after the museum for eternity and who is, therefore, irked at the dragon and his lizardy minions making a bigger mess of the place than it already is.

A hungry Lego T-rex about to get its nom on!

Well, the PCs have been sent to collect ingredients for making a set of magic paints that will allow them to bypass the dragon's locks by jumping through paintings Harry Potter-style. Last night, they recovered the first ingredient from the Hall of Animals -a bit of fur for the bristles of the paintbrush. Unfortunately, as they were attempting to turn off the magic barrier to a particular animal's stasis field/cage, the control panel malfunctioned and turned off ALL the cages releasing a T-rex and four deinonychus that hadn't eaten in 10,000 years -because how can you have a museum adventure without a dinosaur fight!?

Anyway, they managed to coax the dinos out of the museum without doing them harm and have now set about recovering the two other ingredients. One from the alchemical laboratories on the lower level and one from the orrery in the planar observatory.

The Point:
I am really enjoying my little foray into job-inspired D&D. Also, this is exactly what it is like to work in a museum.