What Was That Message? (Random Table)

Pigeons are not just for eating. Since earliest times people have used trained pigeons to carry messages across long distances. Sometimes the silly birds get lost. A few get rediscovered in odd places, like inside old chimneys, lodged within the eaves of half-collapsed buildings, dangling in old webs...

What Was The Message?

1. A besieged general in the Franzik Grand Army is requesting much needed reinforcements. Immediately. Twenty-seven years ago and over six hundreds miles to the East.
2. This message is scrawled across a flaky piece of human skin in ectoplasmic ink. It is a coded correspondence from a Fantomist in Nagrothea to one of his colleagues in Wermspittle. You're not sure what it says, but you get a definite malevolent impression from the thing. Holding on to it probably causes nightmares. It also 'wakes up' once you unroll it, thus attracting the attentions of the Fantomist it was intended for...and they probably take a dim view of people interfering with their mail. You could try to deliver the thing for some sort of reward...
3. Rolled up very tightly in the little brass tube affixed to the skeleton of this pigeon are three rolls of very fragile film. This is highly combustible, unstable, volatile stuff from an experimental photographic process that was lost to the world when the inventor was killed in the fighting around their home village in Swarizak over a hundred and fifty years ago. The film, if handled properly, might contain clues to the location of his studio. It was in a cellar. That's all anyone really knows. If you could pinpoint the location...it would be worth a great deal to various competing artists, photographers, optikalists, and the like. Just be careful not to attract any Lens Flayers while carrying this film around. There's something about the solution used to develop this film that seems to really appeal to such creatures.
4. Out of date encrypted gossip from some spy operating within the now defunct Court System. Pretty much worthless. Unless you can make something of the repeated reference to someone referred to as 'H.M.L.'
5. A badly copied poem meant to go to an anonymous suitor's target thirty six years ago. She went on to marry another. The sender suicided in despair. You can read their suicide note on the back of the poem. What you are holding could probably ruin the Lady's marriage...if you knew whom to blackmail.
6. Whatever the message might have been, the ink has sloughed off of the note and curdled into an extremely toxic green lump. Save or suffer 4d4 damage. If you survive, this might be worth something to the wrong sort of people.
7. Rastiban Crawlsworth, a disgraced former faculty-member of the Academy in Wermspittle sent this note to some accomplice noted only by the letter Y inscribed with a piece of calcinated bronze chalk. The note seems to be the signal for them to meet at some tavern out along one of the more notorious side-streets running through the Burned Over District.
8. Three Nguema Pearls, a bit of dust. Whatever note was in here is kaput. But the pearls are nice.
9. Four small Ectographs from a mediumist-sympathizer showing a special detachment of Sewer Militia directing silver-collared Fantodics into battle in front of a building you might recognize (base 20% chance). No one knows where the silver collars are now. If this is some sort of a clue...that could be big stuff...
10. What you took to be a note wasn't. It's some sort of hyper-folded Portal. You're not sure where it leads.
11. Troop movements, all jotted down in mirror-script. They're 3d100 years old. Some collectors or historians might pay for such a thing.
12. "We'll arrive by midnight." That's what the note says. In cursive Erustian. The wax of the seal at the bottom is crumbling, but you can see the outline of a horned skull and three daggers. It's a rather distinctive crest. You'll remember it even longer if you fail your Save and suffer nightmares for the next three weeks.