Challenge: Take a classic fairy tale, add a twist, make it adventure-ready

Here's my challenge to you fine denizens of ENWorld:
1) Take a classic fairy tale.
2) Add a twist, but keep the core recognizable.
3) Make it useable for an adventuring party.

Go, go , gadget RPG geniuses!
-blarg

http://www.goodman-games.com/5037preview.html

I'll get a real one later. ;-)

The Sword in the Stone - The Stone is a Warforged Paladin who must seek out a man great enough to lead the kingdom.

Three Little Pigs: The Wolf is a Druid who has been assaulting the lands of the Pigfolk. Dare you ride out on your boarhounds and defeat the evil in his twisted grove?

The Battle of the Birds: The Prince's gambit succeeds and the butcher and baker's sons are taken. You are angry fathers and mothers forced to storm a castle and save your sons from a life of giant marriage.


Just a few off the top.

Slainte,

-Loonook.

Witch offers cash for kids.
Sacrifices them to the portal to hell in her oven.
The sacrifices keep the portal closed.
People hate her, so she needs to keep herself safe:
* The forest around her cottage is enchanted. Anyone who talks about violence will alert the trees. They will start to move, shifting the paths and trails so that angry villagers get lost and eventually give up and go home. Looking at the stars/moon/sun (2 in 6 chance it's cloudy, tough luck) will reveal that the PCs are being led around; otherwise, the PCs will wander about for 1d4+2 hours before noticing anything. DMs should note that PCs trained in wilderness survival will realize they are wandering around in circles.
* Gnomes live in the woods. They have no problem with the witch - they know what she's up to. They are shy and fearful, so are reluctant to speak with the PCs. They can be coaxed out of their homes (under the roots of trees) by shiny, sparkling gems (100 GP+), song, or dance (roll under Cha/Dex or DC 15).
* The witch has an intelligent cat familiar. It can move through shadow (line-of-sight). It roams around the forest, keeping an eye on things. It can talk. It has a fondness for milk.
* The witch is a 5th-level magic user who can:
- Bewitch you with a look, causing you to be overwhelmed with a sense of peace and good feelings. If you resist this spell, you're immune to future attempts. People under this effect wander about aimlessly; the witch guides them away from her cottage once subdued. She must look you directly in the eye to do this, but she doesn't need any fancy words or hand movements.
- She fights with a curved dagger that has a wicked edge. When cut by the dagger, you are overwhelmed with ravenous hunger, and must eat any available food at hand. If no food is at hand, you can act normally, though hunger pains wrack your body.
- She can cause an open flame to give off a heavy, dark smoke. The smoke pours out at an extremely quick rate, filling a 20' cube in a matter of seconds. None but the witch can breathe in the smoke, nor can any but her see more than a foot away within its inky darkness.
- She is a horribly ugly hag. She was once a normal woman but she made a deal with a devil to feed this portal lest the hordes of hell run loose upon the world. This pact gave her immortality (and her other powers), but her body is ageing normally. Any character with a short life span (so not elves or dwarves) who can't help but think of the inevitability of death when looking at her (save to resist) suffer a penalty to attack rolls (-2) because of this.

If the witch is killed, a powerful devil will come forth. He will offer the PCs the same deal that he offered the witch: powers and immortality for children. Otherwise hell will break loose. The devil has a weakness: he cannot stand the sight of bees. If bees are presented openly to the devil, he loses all power. A nearby sage/library contains this information, as well as a method for closing the portal.

The party is hired to escort a scarlet-loving princess to her grandmother's castle where she use a magic elixir to heal the dying old crone. Along the road, they are approached by traveling minstrels who offer to entertain the princess for a few coin. In truth, these werejackals are sizing up the party for attack, but upon learning about the elixir, decide to make a bid to steal it. After setting up several obstacles to slow down the party, they travel ahead and covertly seize the castle. By the time the party arrives, the werejackals hope to be facing a weary and worn party all-to-ready to hand over the princess without question...

- The party is hired to retrieve a long-lost hero frozen in magical sleep from a castle guarded by an ancient dragon. Once they defeat the dragon, they must discover how to awaken the hero from her sleep, only to discover that she is a tool for evil that they have unleashed on the world.

- The party is hired to find and kill the witch behind a curse which has turned the king into a frog, and then discover how to break the curse. What they do not know is that only a kiss from the witch -- the king's long rejected commoner love -- can free him, and if they kill her the curse will become permanent.

A young peasant maiden finds a poster announcing a grand ball held by the handsome and single local ruler, and she idly wishes aloud that she wants to go. An efreeti hears her wish, and grants it. He casts an illusion of splendid clothing on her, and even tells her when the spell will expire. He melts a nearby pile of sand into a pair of obsidian shoes for her to wear. Finally, he casts an enchantment on the young woman that will captivate the ruler's attention. She goes to the ball, the nobleman is appropriately besotted with her, and a major diplomatic incident ensues because he already has an arranged marriage in the works. The maiden is thrown out of the party, leaving behind a black glass slipper in the scuffle.

The adventuring party must track down the girl to interrogate her, then do the same with the efreeti (possibly involving a trip to the City of Brass), and finally find the nobleman's enemy who used a candle of invocation to cause the whole fiasco.

The party are hired by a beautiful Queen to rescue her beloved daughter, who has been kidnapped by a band of notorious ruffians. Her dwarven captors are keeping the princess docile with a Charm spell that makes her believe they're her allies. To break the spell, she must be persuaded to partake of a specially blessed fruit picked from the Queen's garden.

You are separated from your party and dying from cold, starvation, and your wounds. You find a cabin in the woods that seems abandoned only to discover beds and food left out. You eat and get some rest only to wake up when the bugbear inhabitants return suddenly...

The party happens upon a beautiful but wounded woman in the woods who is barely coherent and has no identifiable markings... every now and again she will mumble something about her shawl. The players return her to a nearby town where someone recognizes her from their childhood and apologies for being such a rotten child. He mentions that the kids were mercilessly cruel to the woman as a child and she ran away from home. Local legends circulate that she became some sort of hermit in the woods, and people often commented on the "lost child" as if she were a monster... which means she must have a lair.

The party enters the woods outside the city, eventually finds a hut guarded by dire beasts. When they finally enter, they find an old woman with her familiar, a wicked looking cat who hisses and growls at the young woman's presence. The crone claims that after safeguarding her a while, she felt the child was cursed and abandoned her to a farmhouse down the way.

On the farm, they find that the family is unusually large... it's a family of Ogres! Turns out the Ogres invaded the farm and are holding the farmer and his family hostage. Once rescued, the farmer says that once the ogres discovered the woman, they were angered by her beauty and threw her into the lake on the other side of the farm.

When the PC's arrive, they see the lake is crystal clear, unusually so, and they can see that a nearly transparent shawl can be seen at the bottom of the lake. Once a hero enters, however, he hears the screech of birds... swans. They dive and harry the player. The noise raises the ire of the dormant water elemental.

Once the shawl is won and returned to the woman, she undergoes a startling transformation into a beautiful swan... she rejoins her flock and they fly off together, reunited at last.