Dungeon #110

[Steverooo]

Change the winemaker (Vintner) to the town alchemist, and the bees to wasps. Now change the plot, as follows:

Unknown to many (Knowledge (Nature) DC:15 to know), wasps also produce a form of Royal Jelly, just as bees do. In this case, the Alchemist has managed to produce a very valuable line of anagathic (youth-restoring) drugs based upon this wasp royal jelly, which has made the Halfling town rich!

Because of this, the Halflings are able to offer at least twice the normal payment, but require the PCs to sign a contract that their payment will be reduced by X amount per wasp slain... These wasps are the giant variety, of course...

Unknown to all but the dead Sherriff, however, is the fact that overuse of the anagathic injections has caused the alchemist to become a Half-Giant-Wasp Halfling, which feeds on Halfling flesh after each injection. The alchemist, himself, is unaware, but murders will continue (once a week or so, falsely attributed to the giant wasps) until the PCs learn what has happened, and stop the alchemist.

Best to make him a Druid, and (assuming that Awaken works on Vermin) make sure that AT LEAST the Queen Wasp is Awakened.

The Halflings want the Wasps removed, alive and unharmed, as they produce the town's wealth. The Alchemist, unfortunately, cannot be saved. If the PCs take too long, other users of his new drug may also become Half-Giant-Wasps, too, after a certain period of use.

Anyway, the Halflings will provide free (Great!) food, some drink, free lodging, and any non-lethal equipment (nets, ropes, Tanglefoot Bags, etc.) that the PCs request for dealing with the wasps. They have also located a place for the nest to be moved to, once the wasps are subdued.

Now you have your mystery, and reasons enough to keep the wasps alive, whether or not they are intelligent enough to be bargained with...

 

[rrealm]

...

Half-dragon bees?

(tries to imagine the copulation process...brain explodes..passes out)

I'm with you on that. My brain "blue screened" while trying to figure out why dragons and bees would get it on.

 

[Conaill]

Giant beehive... so where's the giant beekeeper?

Perhaps the giant bees belong to a nearby band of hill giants. They tend to mind their own business and generally don't bother the halfling's village, but they don't really care that their hive inconveniences the village either.

If the party manages to relocate the beehive and inform the giants, nobody gets hurt. If they kill off the bees, they'll have to deal with an angry giant beekeeper, which should be just teh right difficulty level for them (CR 7), and they may just have started a war between the halflings and giants...

 

[rrealm]

Wow. So many great ideas. Do you think it might seem odd if I run 5 adventures in a row, each with a town that has a flying bug problem on a nearby bridge? Maybe if I put an adventure between each - to make it suttle of course.

 

[Slife]

Perhaps substitute something for the bridge in some of the cases? A cave/tunnel could work for wasps.

If you used all of the adventures, maybe you could tie it all into a druidic conspiricy.

 

[jester47]

Wow. When I saw that adventure in Dungeon I thought I would never run it. Now, I think I will.

Aaron.

 

[rrealm]

Wow. When I saw that adventure in Dungeon I thought I would never run it. Now, I think I will.

Aaron.

I thought I would never run it either. My party was far beyond the levels needed for that adventure.

I can't wait to finalize the details everyone. I'll post in a day or two and inform you all which changes I used and how the story came out.

 

[rrealm]

Since I was on a time constraint, I kept the bees as bees but instead of 20, there where 30 of them and had a group of four hill giants place the bees on the bridge for their (not the halflings) convenience. The party found Shim Longbranch which led them to town. Party talks with the mayor and he explains that the bees are in the way and he wants them moved. Party accepts - surprisingly without hearing the reward. Mayor pulls out a piece of paper, "Before you go, sign this." The party is hesitant to sign and I wouldn't have been surprised if they drew swords and fought the mayor in his office to prove the point that they weren’t going to sign. The paper says that the reward will be reduced if any of the bees are killed or badly injured. Party refuses to sign and begin yelling at the mayor, "If these bugs start attacking us, I'm chopping them up!" and "Ya! We have a right to defend ourselves." and "You and your paper can screw off. We'll fix your bug problem and we'll fix it our way!"

As the party leaves, the mayor starts mocking the "heroes" (I use that term loosely) as the mayor has heard of their tales when the princess of a nearby city was rescued. The party stops to argue back and finally the mayor demands that they sign the paper and fix the bug problem his way (so they are not injured - they sell the honey) or they need to leave town now and "we'll find competent heroes who can move bees without killing them."

Party signs finally and asks more questions. They hear the sheriff went to move the bees and after not returning for a few hours, the vintner (forgot his name) went to scout for the sheriff (and murdered him while he was at it). Vintner comes back, says the sheriff got stabbed by the bees and fell down into the chasm.

The two PCs start at the old hive and they get the directions to it from the townsfolk. Once there, they find burn patches of grass and ash. The hive looks ransacked and mangled. (There were also tracks from hill giants leading to and from but the ranger's poor wilderness skills missed them.) The ranger just got his animal companion (he couldn't decide and then he was in the underdark for a while) and he picked a dire hawk. He tells the hawk to "seek" and return to him. The hawk takes off and comes back squawking. Party goes to the mayor again, asks who would do this to the old hive. No meaningful information is gained and the PCs return to the old hive again, this time following where the bird found something. They take a trail between two mountains and finally get on top of a hill looking down into a small valley where some huts and four hill giants were. The party decends down the hill and the hill giants grab weapons but don't pose them in a threating manner, just firm.

The figher/barbarian begins demanding that the hill giants tell him what they know of the bees.
Hill giant leader (HGL): "Themz beeses are ours. We own beeses. You leave them alone. Not your beeses to mess with."
Frack McSmack [half drow/elf fighter/barbarian](F): "They are bothering a nearby village and you need to move them."
HGL: "I like them beeses where they is. Convient more for us. Easy to reach inside and get it."
F: "Get what?"
HGL: "Yellow honeyz. Taste good."
F: "Why did you move the hive?"
HGL: "New place easier to get to. Trail rough and difficult. Too many slippy rocks."
F: "You need to move the hive back. Or find another spot."
HGL: "I don't want to move it. Much better new spot is."
F: "Do you like your friends around you?"
HGL: "They good company I suppose."
F: "You can move the hive and everyone is happy or we can move the hive and your friends will be dead."
HGL (becoming enraged at his arrogance and threats): "I not happy if beeses moves. Pain to get to again. I don't want to move beeses. Leave my land before you get hurt and killeded like a smoshed bug."
F: "I challenge you to one on one combat. We fight to the death. If I win, the bees are moved and we kill your friends too."
HGL: "And if I win, I keep the beeses there and kill anyone else who bothers me or them."

Fight proceeds and both sides wound each other badly. Eventually Frack crits and gets the giant to 1 hp where he surrenders.

F: "Take care of the bees as soon as possible."

With that they leave the area constantly looking over their shoulder expecting to be bombarded with boulders.

That's were our game session ended for now.

The hill giants will take their sweet time moving the bees and the leader will heal up. Any suggestions for what should happen next?

 

[Conaill]

Let's see... hill giants... Int 6, often Chaotic Evil, outnumber the party 4-to-2...

suuuure, they'll stick to the bargain, right?

Sounds like it may be time for the giants to put the smack down on the PC's. Preferably somewhere there will be collateral damage to the village, so the villagers will be forced to back up the party (just to avoid getting a TPK).

Then again, you said you wanted to avoid a hack-and-slash adventure, the party hasn't really had to deal with the bees yet, and the vintner-sheriff motif hasn't really been touched upon. The latter one seems a little "tacked on" to me, so you may just want to remove it altogether (presumably the party has not found any conclusive evidence of the murder yet, so you can still change that part of the story.

How about this for a less hack-and-slash option: Let's say the hill giants manage to sic the bees on the village (where the heroes are presumably staying). Could be something as simple as one of the giants throwing a boulder at the hive, running through the village with the bees in persuit, then jumping in the river while the bees raise havoc in the village. Naturally, the mayor and townspeople are not going to be happy with how the PC's have riled up the giants against them...

One other approach to planning this adventure is to ask yourself what would be some satisfactory solutions to this dilemma. Killing the hill giants is one option, but probably one you want to de-emphasize because it's the obvious hack&slash thing to do. Relocating the bees to another location which is equally convenient for the giants would be a better solution. You can probably think of one or two more. So how could you get the party from their current predicament to the desired outcome? And how would these two non-spellcasting PCs relocate the bees to a specific location anyway?

 

[Mighty Halfling]

Hello there,
I'm the actual author of the module in question here. It was called "Buzz in the Bridge" and appeared in Dungeon No. 110, not No. 105. By coincidence, my other published adventure, "Racing the Snake," appeared in issue No. 105.
RE: Half-Dragon Template: I added the "Half-Dragon" idea as a "Scaling the Adventure" idea BECAUSE I thought it was actually a very strange idea. You see, I read the Dungeon letter column and people are always complaining about how over-used that template is. But the thing is, it's only over used on humanoids "to make them cool." But no one ever used it to make something even stranger than it was, hence my idea. So why would a dragon "do it with a giant bee?" Hmmm, good question. Perhaps to have a steady food supply or even to just befoul something natural. The two most likely dragons to do this in my opinion would be a green dragon (for food) or a copper dragon (as a joke). No matter, it does make my head spin to think of bees zipping around, blasting people with their acid breath or (in the case of a copper dragon) their Slow effect breath weapon.
Re: Beekeepers: I do have a section in the adventure where I suggest that a monstrous beekeeper has "planted" the hive there. I've read that hives are moved or split by removing the queen and her royal jelly and placing them somewhere else. Essentially, the queen's and the royal jelly's chemicals compel the bees to attend to it.
Anyway, I suggested the size changing Spriggans (Fiend Folio), an Ogre Mage, Ettin or Hill Giants as possible beekeepers. I was always particularly interested to see if anyone ever used Spriggans because I imagine their shape-changing qualities would stun some PCs.
Of all the possiblities, I thought Hill Giants would be the least capable of doing such a thing because of their mental capacity as someone mentioned.
If any of these beekeepers wanted to take vengance on the halfling village, all they would need to do would be to move the queen bee and her jelly there and the bugs would be swarming!
Re: The Conspiracy with the Vitner: This idea was suggested by Dungeon guru James Jacobs and I liked it because it allows Ranger and Druid characters to stand out for their knowledge of natural things. I took the idea of the "marked" bee from any number of bee documentaries I've seen.
[B}Characters:[/B] The vitner's name is Nicky Zelno. The dead sheriff's name is Sheriff Wickham. The mayor's name is Dunleary Appletop.