1001 Mysteries...

[The_Warlock]

24) The Black Sink

Amidst out of the way ruins, the group comes across a secluded, mostly intact chamber of a building. Set into the middle of the floor is an utterly black chunk of black crystal the height of a man, and twice as wide.

Almost completely non-reflective, one can barely make out the edges of it many faceted surface.

There will be some scattered, but old, detritus, as if the pace had been used as a campsite in times past.

Members will note that any abilities they possess that magically or mentally divine, reveal or augur utterly fail, drained away without effect, while in the room with the crystal.

Investigation will prove the room to be completely invisible to detection magicks and to scrying, making it a superb hideaway from powerful enemies.

The problem exists only if the group camps in the aura of the crystal. Seemingly at random, one member will have a fitfull sleep, filled with nightmares, and hearing voices asking questions. They will wake fatigued.

If the group continues to sleep in the crystal's presence on multiple evenings, others will suffer the nightmares of dozens of voices asking questions and dark forms gliding through liquid rock.

If the group sleeps there again after each member has had the disturbing nightmares, all their sleeps will be troubled, finally seeing horrible amorphous forms coming for them, seemingly "eating" the images and questions that fly by in the nightmare, and then noticing the characters, and rushing forward to devour them with lamprey like mouths on tentacles.

Wakened by the nightmare, they will find themselves wounded, covered in many circular bite marks and bleeding freely.

 

[The_Warlock]

25) No survivors

Wherever the group happens to be, preferably somewhere where wars have been fought in the past, there is a shout nearby, followed by a scream.

Around a street corner or past a small area of trees and brush they find the body of a man wearing archaic armor and bearing heraldry unfamiliar in the present day.

Several crude arrows or darts have impaled his back, and his blood still flows from his cooling corpse. A scroll case is tightly clutched in one hand.

If nothing has been taken from the man within half a minute, the group watches as the body rots, decays, turns to bones and leathery sinew, and then even the bones begin to weather and finally crumble, while the armor tarnishes, and cloth and leather disintegrate to dust around the remnants. If the now cracked and dry scroll case is examined, it contains nothing but dust.

If the scroll case is taken before the decay begins, it remains intact despite the man's dissolution.

Inside is a hastily scrawled message in ancient script. If decipered it describes that a camp of "the enemy" has been found ready to ambush at a unfamiliar named location.

 

[Andor]

26) What the hell just happened?

One night, in the middle of a completely uneventfull 2nd watch in the deep of the night the entire party (even the guards, even the elves) is suddenly and violently awakened by the sound of an iron chain snapping. Nothing has been disturbed, there are no chains present. Each party member bears bruises and cuts around their wrists and ankles as though they had been manacled and fettered. While no time has passed their hair has grown an unruly inch. If there is a paladin/champion of freedom in the party they bear new whip scars.

Give the party 1000 xp.

If there is an evil member of the party they find a note in their pack reminding them to live up to their half of the bargin. They remember no bargin.

If they are in town when this happens they are the only ones effected, exept that the village idiot is utterly (and incoherantly) grateful to them for something.

 

[The_Warlock]

That...that...that was beautiful *sniff*.


27) The Whispering Woods

Near a frontier town there is a small, but overgrown, remnant of an old growth forest that fills a small valley. The locals claim it is haunted. None hew its trees, and hunters only explore it's edges in lean seasons.

Should the group investigate, they will notice some minutes after entering a constant low rustling, as if a breeze through leaves. But the air beneath the boughs is stale and still.

Those who try to listen closely can make out what seem to be dozens of voices speaking in low tones over one another seemingly from no source.

If the group spends more than an hour under the canopy, one member will hear a louder whisper a clue or hint to a question or puzzle they have been seeking an answer to.

Then the sussurus will stop. Some minutes later, it will begin to grow, this time the words will be clear from the hundred voices, repeating over and over again, "GET OUT!", until the growing whispers become shouts, then a screaming whirlwind making the which makes the trees shake.

Even if they run, the group will be disorient by the deafening noise and flying leaves, as their ears begin to bleed, until finally they black out.

They will then wake with a start, all in a dimly lit room on cots, likely a temple or other healing house, with some healers in attendance who will notice their awakening.

If asked, the healers will say they were found on the main road into the village (the one the group originally arrived from, nowhere near the whispering woods), senseless and fevered, bleeding from their ears, eyes, and mouths.

If questioned further, it is the day the group originally arrived in the village, before their expedition to the forest.

 

[Set]

Neat stuff!

One I used on my group awhile back;

28)One of the PCs (roll randomly, or let them all have it, but from different perspectives) awakens from a vivid dream that sticks with them;

In the dream, you are in a classroom with a bunch of other students. Some are talking in accented voices about coming from a far-away land and how their own countrymen seem strange to them now, as if they have changed so much that they can never come back. You end up talking with one girl who is playing some word game with another girl that also involves the name of a country she can’t seem to figure out. The teacher is a tall woman with long black hair, who doesn’t seem to do any teaching so much as lean back and ignore you while various discussions take forth, rarely interjecting some comment or correction, although she seems a bit bored, and even dismissive at times.

At the end of class, you are looking a picture that someone has made with chalk in one of the desks, of a young boy with hair forward in a mop over his eyes and a white mask covering his lower face, along with another girl, a half-elf with amber colored eyes, who is wondering who drew that, since it’s been there forever. You leave class together, only instead of a hallway, you are in a damp tunnel, leading up to the sunlight. The girl you are with walks out into the sunlight, but you stay behind.

*************************************************

On the streets of the city, you bump into a woman in the market place, she’s got a severe expression and was clearly distracted. She’s dressed in a moderately expensive looking dress with a tight leather bodice, painted to match, and has a fair amount of makeup on. Her hair is shoulder-length and brown, dyed with red henna, and her eyes are amber. She has clear half-elven ancestry, and you know you recognize her from somewhere. She looks up ready to snap off an angry comment, from the looks of it, but stops herself and just stares at you before turning to leave as she also recognizes you.

It turns out that she lived through whatever dream you just had as a child, almost 40 years ago (which is why you can’t be the boy she saw, because he was human and would be much older)! Only it wasn’t a ‘classroom,’ although she admits that children might want to remember it that way. It was a slave-pen in a bluffside cavern near the city, where slavers would stow away their illegal cargo before sailing into port to meet with their underground contacts. This particular pen held only children, and the ‘teacher’ was a dour-faced black-haired woman who made sure that they were fed and that nobody got away. Almost all of the children were young girls, with one or two exceptions, and were mostly human, with a few halflings and a single half-elf. The two girls who spoke of their homeland were from the Scarlet Brotherhood, sold into slavery by their own parents, who had been holding out for blonde-haired, blue-eyed children, and sold off their ‘impure’ kids. (replace with campaign-specific stuff as needed)

The ‘chalk drawing’ of the masked boy was made by an earlier inhabitant of the pen, scratched into the rock with another rock, and some of the kids would fantasize that the masked boy was going to come and rescue them some day.

The half-elf woman remembers a gift for sorcery even then, and explains that she used a spell to animate the twine holding the bamboo ‘bars’ of their pen together, and then to restrain the woman standing guard over them, while the children made a run for it, the larger ones carrying the smaller ones in a dash for freedom. Other guards at the end of the tunnel made short work of that escape attempt, and only she escaped, to return to town and find that her mother had vanished in the months she’d been away, and turning to a life on the street.

She can be convinced to point the PC in the direction of the slave-pen, in the bluffs to the east/west/whatever of the city, but points out that it’s been forty years and she can't imagine why these dreams would happen now...

 

[The_Warlock]

29) Time & Time Again

While travelling between distant outposts of civilization, the group wakes up from their camp feeling haggard, but not truly fatigued.

Sometime later, they see several small plumes of smoke rising from the road. Just around a hill they come across a sacked and burning trade caravan. The guards and merchants slaughtered, only one is found alive, limbs crushed under a topple wagon, and impaled by several javelins.

Seeing the groups, he cries out weakly, "No, I can't lose her. Not again. Not again." The merchant then passes into death.

Some few small valuable still remain, but for the most part the caravan has been completely looted, and what wasn't of interest to the brigands was torched.

Should the group continue on without investigation, an hour or so later, they will see more plumes of smoke in the distance. When they arrive around another hill, they will find themselves looking upon the same scene of destruction. Once again, the merchant weakly makes his plea, and dies. Any objects the group took previously are back in the same positions they were originally found the first time.

More thorough investigation of the caravan will reveal that the most badly burned and shattered wagon appears to have had a body crucified to it when it burned.

At this point, while time seems to proceed, the group finds that no matter what direction they go, they either come across the caravan again after a couple hours, or if they go away from the road, they find themselves back on the road after a short time.

When night falls, the caravan disappears, even if the group stands among it. If the group wakes before dawn, and rides hard, they will shortly come across a vicious battle around a caravan camp between the defenders and a band of brutal and savage brigands.

While a tough fight, the group should turn the tables. When the last brigand is killed or driven away. The merchant the group has now seen dead multiple times, walks up to them with a broken arm and spattered in the blood of friend and enemies, "I prayed that help would arrive in time. And here you are. Thank you! What comforts my camp and caravan can offer are yours."

With that, a lithe and beautiful young woman steps from the largest wagon, armed with a crossbow, "My father and I BOTH thank you travelers. Who knows what these blackhearts would have done had you not arrived in time."

The group can travel with the caravan from then on until they reach a common destination, but none of the travelers show any magical or priestly powers to account for the group's experiences.

When they reach an outpost of civilization, however, they will find that they seem to have lost a week of time due to their travails with the recurring caravan raid.

 

[The_Warlock]

30) The ColdWell

In a long abandoned ruin or a track of wilderness which shows occasional bits of worn stone that could once have been walls of some town or city amidst the nature, the group notices a chill breeze, even if summer, coming from somewhere just out of sight.

Moving forward they find the remnant of a cobblestone paved square, in it's center a fountain pool filled with rippling water, and a statue which has been broken: it's face sheared off, and it's upraised right hand and whatever symbol it held removed at the wrist. Both pieces lie under the surface of the pool

More importantly, the entire clearing is covered in rime frost, and cold air from a polar climate dominates the area, sending a wash of chill air out in all directions. Steeping into the wide plaza has all the effects of stepping onto an arctic ice sheet on the unprepared.

Scattered around the plaza are many bodies of different races, and from the appearance of their clothing and armor, wildly different eras and cultures. All frozen to death, though most also show brutal wounds of many sorts. A selection of weapons is scattered randomly about, freezing to the touch and frozen to the cobbles.

Despite this cold, the water in the fountain remains liquid, but resists mundane or magical attempts to lower it's surface. Magical efforts are half as effective as they should be. In either case, this makes it difficult to reveal the broken statue pieces without touching the water.

A living creature who touches the water is drained of their body heat swiftly, though the hardy may resist it. Those who resist suffer as if they had stood unprotected in the plaza for 10 minutes, those who fail merely fall to the plaza floor unconscious and shivering.

When a person resists the water's cold, there is a cracking sound, and a windy moan, and one of the dead bodies rises moving toward any living creature in an attempt to beat them unconscious and push them into the pool.

When a person falls unconscious due to touching the pool water (or is shoved in whole body by a frost zombie), two of the frozen bodies rise to assault the living.

There are three to five times the number of frozen zombies as group members. Even if the group shatters the bodies into icy chunks before dealing with the fountain, frozen body parts will animate to engage them - while individually weaker, they will count as some form of swarm composed of frozen limbs, bones and heads.

If the group can successfully remove the face and hand of the statue from the water and somehow reattach it to the statue in some permanent fashion, any active frost zombies collapse, and all the bodies that were there melt away as if they were nothing but ice. In addition, the deadly cold retreats and instead becomes cool and comfortable regardless of the weather & season (cold or hot).

 

[The_Warlock]

31) Predation

Shortly after the adventurers enter a known/living dungeon (an extensive sewer system, for instance, or a series of caverns or delves near civilization that are routinely populated and fought over by magical or underdark beasts/races) they hear a pair of horrid screams and at least one audible snap from not too far away, followed by silence.

Should they investigate, they will find the scene of the battle. Two men, one in chain mail, the other in scale, lie in great bloody pools. Both were killed by paired thrusts through their chest and abdomen.

More disturbing is that both have somehow had their skulls removed, leaving limp bags of flesh that were once their face and scalp attached to their necks like obscene hoods.

A bloody, four-toed, splay footed set of footprints leads off down the corridor, growing fainter over about 200' until it is lost in an area of muck, mold or water, as befits the type of dungeon.

The bodies of the slain men would have some basic dungeoneering equipment, a small amount of coin, but their armor and backpacks have been ruined, and any fragile equipment was also shattered. One may have a journal describing parts of the dungeon, or perhaps a map to a hidden section of the dungeon.

 

[Andor]

32) It's got to mean something!

The next time a pc flips a coin, it lands on it's edge.

The coin is not magic, and the trick does not repeat itself. Extended trials show no statistical deviation from normal coin flipping trials. The coin is a completely normal, current circulation copper piece that did not come from a special horde.

 

[Jack7]

The Iceman Cometh


The party is moving through an area, any area. They hear a sound up ahead like conversation. When they investigate they find a body lying upon the ground. It is apparently the source of the conversation. If they approach close the body seems to float a few feet off the ground, then turn upright, allowing the feet to hit the ground. Then the figure will flee suddenly while speaking about something only the party members should know about.

As they chase the figure it will come to an intersection and then turn. When the face is seen the party-members will realize it is the face and figure of a dead former comrade or party member. He will point at his temple, then make a circle in the air and say in a his own recognizable, but hollow sounding voice, "I never meant this..." Then he will disappear.

Sometime later the party stumbles upon an apparently frozen dead man. He is completely encased in a thin sheet of blue ice that makes him appear as if he is covered in a veneered sheen of crystal. He is slowly melting. He sits bolt upright with opened eyes and across his lap lies a large battle axe. He is melting. (That is the crystalline ice sheet covering him is slowly melting.) As he melts he grows in size. If the party stays around until he is fully melted then he will stand over 12 feet tall. After sitting for three minutes completely thawed he will exhale a breath that is visible like ice crystals. It will stink and at the same time will begin a buzzing sound like angry flying insects.

At that point he will stand and attack the nearest party member. He will make three attacks and if he can kill the party member then he will return to his chair and shrink to normal size and refreeze. If he makes his three attacks and does not kill the party member then he will shatter.

In either case the surviving party members will thereafter hear a sound like metal being shredded. On the wall behind where the frozen man sat will appear in ice the phrase, "The Iceman Cometh..."

Then the ice will form into a large jet-black raven who will fly over and land upon the shoulder of the leader of the party. His claws will feel chilled and metallic. He will drop something out of his beak. It will be a frozen tongue covered in weird glyphs.

After that there will be several rounds in which no sound can be heard...


This is a good thread idea by the way Warlock. I like several of the entries and especially, "What the hell just happened?"