.. vim: set syntax=rst nosmartindent spell spelllang=en_us: ################################### Lost relic in the mountains of Fneb ################################### Note! This is a one-off where everybody dies! The goal is to tell a cool story, and create villains to face later on, not so much to power up characters. Project Tasks 1. Draw dungeon map for each room in the dungeon. 2. Write specs for the evil cleric. 3. Write out details for how the magic tuning forks work. 4. Figure out how to role play the party tracking the ghouls back to the cavern. 5. Write out the exposition. Legend of the Fneb Mountain Fiend +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ A powerful fiend / elder god / cosmic horror was trapped and frozen millennia ago inside the caverns under the mountains of Fneb. Some day he will thaw out / wake up, and summon all evil doers to him, to help dig him out / build him a new body. Player contribution stuff for legend ==================================== * Details about the fiend. Starting place: could be just a fragment of an elder god, not even a conscious force, just a leaky battery of evil magic power. Or, could be something like a big giant mummy that is slowly regaining consciousness after being frozen. * Details about the cultists that are attracted to the fiend. * How will the fiend regain strength? The fiend's cultists could be building an altar that will open a portal to allow him to enter this world, which wasn't possible until recently, because of something like the position of the stars. Or the fiend could be in the caverns, but chained up and paralyzed and unconscious, but starting to wake up. Rangers story ============= This could be a one-off in itself and it is not strictly necessary. Rangers discover ghouls carrying corpses through mountains. The rangers have to send a message home but the ghouls want to stop them. Farmers story ============= This one is also not strictly necessary for the adventure. Players are orphans taken in by old lady on farm. She teaches them farming. Rumors are she is partially an elf. The church owns all the land and the tenants pay their rent in crops. If season is good, they live well. A bad season means a cold, hungry winter. The old lady teaches the orphans a ritual where she leaves ceramic jugs of distilled mead inside wooden boxes in the fields. She ties a colored ribbons to tall sticks and pokes the sticks in the ground next to the boxes. The next night or so, wood elves come out, take the liquor. Later, wood elf druids come and bless the fields at night. Farming mini game ----------------- Maybe I should move this into a separate file, but for now, big buckets first. Each player has N plots, each plot has a soil quality score. Each season, pick seeds to plant: * Black turnips, aka ogre toes: predictable yield, not very sensitive to weather, does OK in any soil. Sells for low prices. Poor people eat it but most people feed it to their pigs, because there's rumors that eating them makes you stupid. Does it? Maybe it boosts endurance or strength and the stupid thing is a myth. * Elf grain, aka platinum grass, aka silver grass: needs good weather and excellent soil. Sells at a premium. Used in fancy rich people food. * Brown barley: sells for moderate prices. Grows linearly based on soil conditions and weather. Characters roll for the amount they harvest, modified by field quality, farming skills, whatever druid blessing they got, tools bonus. The roll models the uncontrollable stuff like weather, pests, plant diseases. Selling the harvest ------------------- Next, players take their harvests to the marketplace in town, where all the buyers buy stuff by the bushel. Players are given get in line and wait their turn to weigh their stuff on giant scales up on platforms. Different scales exist for each commodity, and once your stuff is on the scale, buyers bid on it, so prices go up and down. The town has two soldiers: * Constable Moe, aka "the constable", aka "Scarback" really old veteran that has seen some terrible shit and came here to enjoy his last years in peace and quiet. War hero, slayer of monsters. Carries a war hammer, but never uses it. Is positively ancient. Uses his war hammer as a cane now. * Assistant constable Durney. Idiot. Looking for a chance to prove himself. Once the auction completes, the auctioneers collect the coins from the buyers, hand off the rents to the tax collector, then the rest goes to the farmer. The tax collector takes 1/6th of the sale of the goods. Fun stuff to spend money on * Better tools * Seed * Fertilizer, soil additives, blessed relics from the church * Gambling! * Piglets that can be raised and sold next year, but this requires food, a pen, etc After a few years, a new priest arrives --------------------------------------- He is sitting up on a raised platform. Says the previous cleric was too tolerant. Reiterates church's strict rules against interactions with the elves. Cranks up the rents too, to half. Brings in more soldiers. Rescue captured elves --------------------- The priest gets the new soldiers to set a trap for some elves. The elflings have their wrists and feet tied together with rope and are tied to a big post. There's a campfire nearby and some weird dogs are there. Assistant constable Durney is out there and helps the boys rescue the elves. Nobody may burn the dead ------------------------ After the elves escape, The new cleric has his soldiers flog the old constable. Then he dies.The priest has soldiers bury him. That night, ghouls dig up his corpse. Soldiers burn down the woods ---------------------------- At first, the new constables are no match for the druids. Then the priest raises taxes and hires an army of mercenaries do it and it is a violent war. Smuggle elflings again. ----------------------- Much later, spore cloud ----------------------- An explosion occurs, black must trickles down. Fields wither. Farmer lets pigs forage since crops are ruined. Most pigs grow sick and die. One sow pregnant. After foraging, soon after, sow delivers piglets. Most are dead and disfigured. A few survive. In the morning, the piglets disappeared, and the sow has been cannibalized. Players play farmers fighting off returning piglets from hell. Setting / Geography This region is where the Fneb mountains, the arid desert, and the fertile valley all meet up. There have always been legends of the dead returning to life in this region. The townspeople always burn their dead instead of burying them. A trade route winds through the mountain range to the port city of XYZ. The trade caravans are a great target for bandits and outlaws, and the mountains are very easy to hide in, so the merchant guilds hire rangers to patrol and keep the roads safe and clear and root out bandit strongholds. Player contributions for setting / geography * Any interesting things about the bandits? Like, weird hazing rituals to mark folks when they join, or weird codes of conduct, like "leave a sole survivor to spread terror" or any particulary daring or violent raids? * Any rivalries with other bandit gangs or assassin guilds? Recent events ------------- * Rangers don't return to restock, a ranger post is found destroyed * Poor farmers on the fringe show up in town telling stories of monstrous ghouls * Sages all detect the existence of a grave evil, and see into the future when something buried and deep below the mountains reaches the surface. Player contributions for recent events * Details about the destroyed ranger post * Details from the terrified refugee farmers The actual quest ---------------- A super-squad of do-gooders team up to carry a holy relic (tuning forks) into the cavern and use them to collapse the cavern. Character aspects up for grabs that somebody can claim during the game * Secret betrayal of the party; maybe because of corruption by the fiend, maybe a ransomed loved one, maybe just selfishness… make up a good story * Sole survivor lives to tell the tale * Noble sacrifice -- somebody needs to stay behind to make sure the relic works, or needs to pull down the chasm on top, or in some other way take one for the team. * Grudge! Anybody that comes up with a good back story on how this cleric did them wrong on the past gets bonuses. The tuning forks ---------------- These are what the players will use to collapse the cave. They heroes should smash some jars and some glowing lights will fly out and then cluster where the tuning forks should placed. Track ghouls to the caves Locals say how once a month at night, ghouls raid their village and dig up corpses from their graves and then drag them away. If they can't find any graves, they attack the farms. Ghouls aren't very smart, so it should be easy to follow them back after a raid. But the party can't allow any more innocent folk to be murdered as bait. Instead, they have potions they can pour on straw scarecrows that will transform the scarecrows into real corpses (hopefully). The party should leave the corpses out on tables in the graveyard and wait for the ghouls to arrive after it gets late. The ghouls are actually a bunch of different undead… A smart leader, a few soldiers, and a bunch of zombies dragging a wagon. Room 1: outer cave Is a natural cave, entrance hidden from the outside. Inside, walls covered in puffball mushrooms that will release toxic spores if disturbed, like maybe by being thrown into them. In back of cave, around curve, is iron door, locked. In curve, lots of bones and rot are under stalagmites. Powerful stench of recently rotted meat. And lots of flies. Do INT check and predict ropers might be hiding in stalagmites. There are several magic eyes in the room as well. Detect magic will reveal them. The ghouls toss a corpse to the ropers to distract them while they go by. Room 2: carved tunnel stairs down to cavern Door opens to steep stairs down tunnel, carved into rock. Walls etched with writing, which are really glyphs of madness and terror. Reading the glyphs triggers hallucinations of armies of zombie slaves. Failed saving throws lead to mean incoherent babbling and screaming and panic and a desperate desire to flee the tunnel for the surface. After a hundred steps, stairs turn and go 90 degrees in another angle. These stairs lead down further. Then they lead to another flat tunnel, carved out of mountain rock. Tunnel leads to a big door in a wall. The wall and the door are covered in runes and glyphs. This door is magically barred and rigged with magic traps. Room 3: huge cavern with ponds The tunnel was carved in order to get to this gigantic hollow cavern deep under the mountain. The ceiling is very, very high. The floor is wet, and walls have holes in them. Underground insects tunnel through the rock. Room 4: site of reanimation / awakening / portal magic The rock has been carved to expose a gem inside. A giant eye floats inside the gem. The cleric will try to rush to free / wake up the old one.