For your consideration:
I admit, as my brain started dumping these thoughts down onto paper (ok, Microsoft Word), they took quite a different form. In the end, I think this works. It needs to be polished a little bit, but I think I could work with this. Any and all comments welcome. For those curious, this town exists in the Wilderlands (although not in this form!) in the Wilderlands (Elphand Lands: hex 3817).
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The Village of Kailasa
By all appearances, Kailasa is a quiet farming village along the Wilderdale River. Here, along the river ports, sits the Black Bear Inn, a rugged establishment with a central hearth and solid tables. Carfender (human N ftr3) is the town’s de-facto leader. The river ports are old and rickety, and don’t seem to get much use. From the ports, the town is in full view – from the rolling hillside the crests down towards the river’s edge. A curious archway beckons visitors to the town along the port – welcoming visitors to Kailasa. The sign appears to be new – perhaps as part of a failed attempt at city renovation. Other stores of note here include a general store and a blacksmith, a few other stores selling provisions mostly useful to farmers, a market, and a slew of small houses. By most measures, the town probably has about 400 residents.
The truth is much more sinister. The reality is that Kailasa is an illusion – a shell of its former self. By all appearances – a peaceful town. It is small, yet humble. Kailasa is likely a place where everyone probably knows one another. Yet none of that is actually true. Almost 2 years ago, a tragedy befell the town – lizardfolks raiders stormed the town in the night, under the cover of a new moon. Their attack was swift, and deadly. During this attack, none survived who fought back. Those who hid, or attempted to flee were captured and taken back to the lizardfolk camp and made into slaves, or worse.
Jonas “Stringy” Shug, a mundane farmer by all appearances, happened to be away from the city, fortunately for him. As it turns out, Stringy (so named because of his tall, lanky appearance) happens to be one of the few farmers in the region who grows munge root – a putrid smelling root that despite its bitter taste, apparently has valuable alchemical uses – albeit what these are, no one has thus far told Stringy, since alchemists tend to be overly secretive. Despite this, Stringy has managed a meagre, albeit comfortable living in Kailasa. For Stringy, life was a simple one – he had a wife and a daughter, and a pet dog named Shoe. As munge root is cultivated but once a year, Stringy finds himself taking passage away from his family for a week up to the nearby Elven village of Gwaelod, where he sells the roots for a tidy profit – enough for him to live on for the duration of the following year.
For his part, once Stringy sold his goods and secured passage back to Kailasa, and arrived in the middle of the night. His passage, having left him alone on the dock, departed, and Stringy soon realized that something was no right in the town. Rushing to his own domicile, Stringy found his wife and daughter gone, and while others were missing as well, most of the town had been slaughtered. Stringy spend the duration of the night without sleep, attempting to piece together what had happened, and trying in vain to find his family.
For Stringy, the next few days were a haze. Having burned the remainder of the now decaying corpses of his town, Stringy began to seek answers. He knew he couldn’t attack the entire Lizardfolk camp. They had never attacked before, and such an attack was brazen even for them. But the clues were evident. Stringy had only one option – the green forest Hag, Granny Middenheap.
Granny Middenheap, or just “Granny” as the locals know her, is old and wise – or so they say. She’s lived in the swamp seemingly forever, and while the price for her services is high, desperate souls have sought out her aid from time to time. Stringy knew he had scarce few options, and Granny seemed like the only creature powerful enough to stop the lizardfolk.
It is true what they say – Granny Middenheap is old and wise, but she’s also cruel full of malice. Furthermore, little happens in her neck of the woods without her knowing about it. Granny knew full well what had happened in Kailasa. It wasn’t the normally reclusive lizardfolk of the forest at all – it was in fact slavers who stormed the town, killed the aggressors taking the women and children into slavery. These bandits were clever – and used primitive spears and wore boots that made their tracks look like those of lizardfolk.
Granny was eager to make a bargain with Stringy. He was so desperate after all. How could she resist? Of course, as powerful as she is, she alone isn’t able to raise an entire town from the dead, nor did she desire to do that. And she couldn’t exact revenge against the lizardfolk. For starters, they hadn’t done anything nefarious, and secondly she was allied with them. Where else was she going to get her supply of troll fungus which grows deep in the swamp where the lizardfolk reside? No, Granny had something even more cunning up her sleeve. Granny had owed a favour to several fey folk, and the solution she had in mind would kill several birds with one stone.
Granny instructed her desperate friend Stringy to head back to town. That, once there, everything would be back to normal, and he could live his life as he pleased. This elated Stringy to no end, and he hurried back to town with utmost haste. Unbeknownst to him, a Boggle (VGtM, pg. 128) trailed behind. This particular Boggle had been annoying Granny for the last several months, and she instructed him to make Kailasa his new home. The Boggle happily agreed. In addition, Granny sent along 3 Will- O’Wisps to follow far behind. However, before they left her service, she cast permanent illusions on each of them to appear as townspeople who lived in the city before – 3 random, nondescript peasants – Ollie, June and Jesse. Granny knew that the amount of despair from Stringy would happily feed the Wisps, and it got their incessant ghostly murmuring out of her abode.
After Stringy left Granny’s abode, she got to work. Summoning all of her might (and calling in a few favours of planar entities) she replaced Kailasa with a feywild pocket dimension. The entrance is the gate on the dock. Entering Kailasa from any other angle, and you will see Kailasa for what it is – a ruined town, devoid of life. But entering through the gate takes you to the pocket dimension. Visitors can come and go – but only through the gate. Others have come (some have died), but they eventually find their way out. Stringy knows the way, and if he’s feeling generous can point it out to them, though in his loneliness and depraved state he’s just as likely to torment them as the Boggle or the Wisps are. The pocket dimension is tied to Stringy, and while he knows where the exit is, he is unable to cross it, seemingly trapped inside forever.
Inside the City
The city, by all appearances, seems normal. This is an illusion – an illusion that repeats itself every day, in fact. There are seemingly random events programmed into the illusion to give the town something of a normal appearance. These repeat themselves every day. In this nightmarish illusion, Stringy’s wife and daughter are alive (he avoids them at all costs as they make him madly depressed), and all of the townsfolk from the former city have illusionary representation. However, in Stringy’s absence, the illusions do minimal stuff – the blacksmith hammers on the same horseshoe all day long, the stable-boy sweeps the same spot constantly, etc. Only in his presence do they do interesting things. The only wildcards here are the 3 transformed Will-O’-Wisps, and the Boggle (which torments Stringy to no end). There is, however, one other unique feature about this pocket dimension: Stringy can’t die. Or rather, every day he is brought back to life. So, despite having successfully killing himself dozens of times, Stringy always emerges from his sleep the following day to relive out his own personal nightmare day after day.
For the party, the city is quiet. By entering in via the river dock, the party is unknowingly transported into the fey pocket dimension. Here, the party is directed to one of the few buildings with apparent activity – and the only inn in town, the Black Bear Inn. Inside, there is a modest amount of activity despite it being nearly midnight. Carfender is pouring another drink for Stringy, who is staggeringly drunk. The serving wench Bella gladly offers a room and a hearty meal to the party. The food is good, but is a complete illusion, and despite eating an entire meal, the party will wake up ravenously hungry (since they won’t have actually eaten any real food the night before). Despite everything here being an illusion – it actually does seem to affect Stringy. Perhaps it’s just in his head, though the effects do seem real enough for him.
At some point, in his drunken haze, Stringy approaches the party, since he instantly recognizes them as outsiders to his personal hell. “It’s all an illusion!” he shouts at them, “Every day is the same as before. Get out, get out while you still can!” he tells them, before passing out.
Roleplaying the Citizens
The people of the town are on loops: sweeping the same spot, cleaning the same shirt over and over, hammering the same horseshoe, and tilling the same stretch of field. If spoken to, the illusions provide polite, brief responses, and know very, very little about anything other than whatever it is they are apparently doing. Even if asked about the weather, they don’t much about it. From a role-playing perspective, the citizens have personality – but act as if as though they are the dumbest AI programs ever created. However, the citizens do follow certain scripts. Many of these are described below:
• In the morning, a farmer runs into the inn and proclaims that an ankheg is attacking his goats. Several farmers rush around to grab pitchforks and head out to assist the farmer. During this attack, several farmers are killed by the ankheg’s acid spray, but eventually they are able to down the creature with their pitchforks. Curiously, none of the farmers do anything about their fallen allies, and simply walk back to their points of origins and continue their activities.
• Just before lunch, the blacksmith’s foundry sends sparks over to the stables, causing some hay to catch on fire. Many villages spring forth with buckets and quickly form a bucket brigade leading to the river’s edge to the stables. The panicked horses flee the stables and have to be captured, and the fire has to be put out. Left to their own devices, most of the horses are captured (some flee and then disappear once far enough away) and the fire is eventually put out. Afterwards, the villagers simply head back to their homes.
• Just after lunch, Stringy’s daughter Lise, comes into the inn crying that her dog “Shoe” has ran away, and needs help finding it. Stringy generally tries to avoid this scenario. At first he was happy to oblige his daughter. But the dog can be found by the river’s edge, chasing ducks – every time. The party may or may not choose to help his daughter. Regardless, the dog comes back home on its own several hours later.
•
The only outliers are the 3 Will-O’-Wisps, Jessie, June and Ollie. They are always close to Stringy, and never far from his side – unless one of the PCs is in a particular state of despair, in which they may choose to make their acquaintance. The Boggle remains hidden for its part – it chooses to live in the attic of the inn most of the time, and basically “haunts” Stringy. This creates a bit of a symbiotic three-way between itself, Stringy and the Wisps – since the wisps feed off Stringy’s despair, the Boggle is happy to oblige them by coming up with new and clever ways of tormenting him. New guests at the inn only add to the Boggle’s delight, and while they are there, they are certain to not get a good nights’ sleep. The Boggle loves blowing out candles, dropping dishes on the floor, and creating an oil slick at the top of the stairs while it enjoys watching those climbing the stairs hurdling down towards the floor. The rest of the town is not immune to the Boggle – he freely moves from building to building.
There is one other unusual inhabitant in town that is not an illusion – a Wood Woad (VGtM, pg. 198). This strange being actually tends to Stringy’s munge root farm and harvests the munge roots as Stringy did. However, the Wood Woad is not visible in the illusionary space – he exists under the veils of the illusion, tending to his crop day in and day out. Agents of the hag come under the cover of darkness twice a year to collect the Woad’s harvest. She still needs it, after all, and Stringy is too unreliable to create it for her.
The Illusion
Most of the city, the citizens, and the 3 Will-O’-Wisps are all illusions. The buildings are in-tact, and are real enough, though any damage created by the bandits is concealed by illusions, making them appear fully intact. The people are all illusions, as are the animals, and the Will-O’-Wisps. Careful observation, or any attempts at interacting with the people of the town afford the PC an opportunity to make an Investigation (Intelligence) (DC 20) check in order to see through the illusion. If successful, the PC sees the town exactly as it is – a ghost town badly damaged from raiders mostly devoid of life. Furthermore, the edges of town are wispy, hazy undefined boundaries between realms. Any attempt at leaving the town by any other means aside from the river dock is futile – the party simply wanders in mist seamlessly forever, only to find that they are never more than about 20’ outside the actual town. The same behaviour occurs even if the illusion is present for the party. For example, say the party wakes up, helps the farmers with the ankheg menace, and then promptly strike out on horseback along the river’s edge, they would find that after several hours the scenery remains unchanged – just repetitious forest’s edge along a nondescript river bank for hours and hour. A successful Wisdom (Perception) check at a DC 13 is the first clue to the PCs that something is amiss. Regardless of how many hours they might have travelled in this fashion, turning around, they will find themselves nearly immediately in the town again.
Any PC that saves against the illusion will see the Wisps for what they are as well – glowing balls of light. The Wisps linger around Stringy constantly. Devoid of illusions, PCs will see Stringy surrounded by three glowing balls of light (with vague outlines of their illusionary selves surrounding them). The Will-O’-Wisps do not attack unless provoked, and if so, they will respond in kind.
Furthermore, the party will be able to see the Wood Woad tending to the field of munge root if the illusions no longer holds sway for them. The Wood Woad protects his crop above all else, and will defend himself if attacked. Otherwise, it is steadfast in its agricultural duties.
Resolution
Stringy has long since seen through the illusion. It torments him, and yet is powerless to do anything about it. He lives his days more or less randomly. All of his attempts at leaving have proved futile. There isn’t much the party can do for Stringy, aside from ridding him of the Wisps and the Boggle (although the latter may prove difficult). Even killing the hag won’t remove the pocket dimension (since Granny enlisted outside help from planar beings in creating it, even she is powerless to stop the place). Only one thing will ultimately stop it – and that is returning some of Stringy’s lost family members back to the town. The pocket dimension works on planar laws, and when the real inhabitants co-exist with the illusory ones, the planar laws will be violated, and the entire pocket dimension will cease to exist.
There is little to be gained by killing the Wood Woad. In fact, if Stringy reasons it out, he may be in favour of keeping it (it’s certainly too difficult for him to kill, and all attempts for him to kill it have met with his demise). Leaving the Woad means that Stringy doesn’t even need to tend to his own crop. Twice a year the hag sends a Banderhobb (VGtM, pg. 122) to collect the harvest from the Woad. Stringy more or less knows when these collections occur (near the equinoxes), and the party could kill the Banderhobb (thus stopping the Hag from getting her munge root), which would allow Stringy to sell it for himself. Although the Hag will certainly not take kindly to this act, and will seek out revenge.
