Tavern Collective Founding Collaboration

Vex, theMemory Merchant

A free co-branded encounter from Loot Lore and GrimPack. Drop Vex into any city, market, or smoky backroom when your table needs a broker of secrets, stolen memories, and expensive second chances.

Levels: 3–6Players: 3–5Run Time: 60–90 minFormat: Single encounter
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Why DMs Will Share This

Useful in one read: a GM can drop Vex into tonight's session without converting a full module.
Strong partner fit: GrimPack gets a sharp character-forward encounter, Loot Lore gets a polished DM-ready showcase.
Built for re-use: Vex can return later as patron, fixer, blackmailer, or campaign villain.

Includes

  • ◆A sharp hook that works in a city, roadside inn, market, or underworld hub
  • ◆Three scene structure with flexible outcomes instead of one scripted path
  • ◆Vex roleplay cues, motive, leverage, and lightweight stat guidance
  • ◆A memory-hunger complication that can turn negotiation into chaos
  • ◆Clean CTAs to Loot Lore and GrimPack as a Tavern Collective collaboration

DM-Ready Encounter

Hook, Structure, and Pressure in One Pass

Use this when the party needs information badly enough to make a terrible deal. Vex works best when the players can win, but only by deciding which cost they can live with.

Scene 1 — The Offer in the Lantern Market

The party is approached by a courier carrying a brass token stamped with a closed eye. It grants a private audience with Vex in a market stall that was not there a moment ago.

  • •Vex offers something the party actually wants: the location of a fugitive, a forgotten vault phrase, proof clearing an ally, or one erased personal memory returned intact.
  • •In exchange, Vex asks the party to recover a glass memory phial stolen earlier that night by a panicked buyer named Orla Fen.
  • •Vex insists the phial contains only 'contracted inventory,' but evasiveness makes it clear the truth is worse.

Scene 2 — The Chase Through Borrowed Lives

Orla has fled into a crowded district while suffering fragments of lives that were never hers. The party can track, calm, corner, or protect her before Vex's other collectors do.

  • •Use skill checks, social pressure, or a brief skirmish against 2–4 collectors, spies, or thugs reskinned to your system and party level.
  • •Orla reveals the phial does not hold a purchased memory. It contains the memory of a child's identity, sold away by a desperate parent and later stolen back in regret.
  • •If the party earns Orla's trust, she begs them not to return it to Vex and offers a different secret she stole from his ledgers instead.

Scene 3 — The Ledger of Second Chances

The final confrontation can happen back at Vex's stall, in a rain-slick alley, or in a candlelit archive where Vex stores names and forgotten years in labeled drawers.

  • •Vex negotiates first. He is not sentimental; he is efficient. He frames memory as currency and mercy as bad accounting.
  • •The party chooses whether to return the phial, destroy or hide it, trade for another outcome, or expose Vex by seizing names from his ledger.
  • •Every ending should cost something: a favor owed, a truth made public, a memory surrendered, or a powerful enemy made permanent.

NPC Details & Stat Guidance

Vex, the Memory Merchant

Silken voice, immaculate gloves, eyes that never stay the same color for long. Vex wants leverage, not slaughter. He would rather buy a soul in installments than spill blood in the street.

Roleplay Vex like this

He speaks as if every conversation is already halfway through. He remembers details no stranger should know, finishes sentences with unnerving accuracy, and treats secrets as simple market goods.

Stat guidance

Use a mastermind, spy, enchanter, or warlock-style NPC with strong Deception, Insight, and charm or illusion effects. Keep direct damage modest. Vex should feel dangerous because he controls information, allies, escape routes, and what people are willing to trade.

Orla Fen

A frightened thief driven by remorse, not greed. She stole the phial because she learned whose life it really belonged to. If protected, she can hand the party one page from Vex's ledger naming other clients and future hooks.

Memorable Complication

The phial opens everyone at once

  • ✦Whenever someone opens the phial, everyone within 20 feet briefly relives a vivid memory that is not their own. For one round or one scene beat, each affected character is distracted, emotionally compromised, or compelled to speak a detail aloud.
  • ✦One of the revealed memories belongs to a party member from a future you may or may not want to make true.
  • ✦Vex quietly offers to erase the fallout afterward, which only makes the choice worse.

Resolution Paths

Return the phial: Vex pays what he promised, but the party knows they preserved an atrocity for profit.
Break the deal: Orla escapes with the memory, and Vex becomes a recurring antagonist who never forgets a debt.
Renegotiate: Vex releases the phial only if a party member gives up a treasured memory, ideal, or personal truth as collateral.
Burn the ledger: the party harms Vex's operation, but loose memories spill into the district and create future story fallout.

Tavern Collective Collaboration CTA

Want more sharp hooks and stronger session starters?

Loot Lore turns abandoned campaign ideas into polished ready-to-run adventures. GrimPack brings high-flavor fantasy tools and encounter energy for busy GMs. This free Vex drop is a founding Tavern Collective collaboration built to earn trust at the table before asking for anything bigger.

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