I could use ideas for a high magic zoo

EvilQAGuy

First Post
Short version: The charaters are heading to a zoo in a high magic fantasy setting. Any ideas you have for exhibits in a zoo catering to wealthy patrons in a fantasy setting would be appreciated!

The characters are in a huge city that is under siege. Each night the city has been ravaged by enemies flying dragon-ish creatures. Three sessions back the party completed an adventure to activate wards to prevent the night terrors from returning. During the last session, however, I forgot about the wards and began to describe another attack before realizing and was about to apologize and come clean on my mistake when a player came up with the idea that there was a squadron of night terrors trapped within the wards.

The other players latched on to the idea, hard. Since there is a horrible winter storm perpetually battering the city no one knows where the rogue squadron are hiding. They come out of nowhere and disappear just as easily.

Another player decided that the logical way to find a dragon-like creature is to use a dragon-like creature to track it. By the end of the session they were heading for a zoo in the wealthy part of town, planning to dragon-nap the zoo's mascot. The zoo had been damaged during the assault on the city. Although the outer walls have held, the physical and magical containment systems for the individual exhbits have largely failed.

The players are really looking forward to exploring a fantasy zoo. I'm going to do a gravity defying water feature. It turns ninety degrees and goes up the side of a huge canyon wall and will provide some interesting terrain for an encounter with a tentacle monster. (And it will be really fun to map out. Rare earth magnets may be involved.)

It would seem that a zoo ran for the amusement of wealthy patrons in a high magic setting would have some amazing exhibits. Does anyone have any ideas? I'm toying with having the farm animals in the petting zoo be intelligent and seizing the chaos of the assault as a chance to launch a revolution. I've always wanted to interject an evil donkey into the game, but there just seems like there is so few opportunities to do so without it feeling forced ...

Thanks in advance!
 

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  1. Cryptozoology Area:
    • a flumph that is described as a medusa subtype that lives in acid
    • a giant stingray described as "lurker above"
    • a Twisc (The Wolf-in-Sheep's-Clothing is not mentioned, as if anagram was creatures name) made of mimic spellbound in one form with now dead rabbit attached to it.
  2. Aerial Menaces area containing:
    • Varguilles
    • Giant vampire frogs
    • Webbirds
    • a very friendly, old manticore
  3. The Beautiful Above area
    • Zoo's pride and pet - a Senmurv
    • A pair of hippogrifs
    • An open cage with a griffon inside. He'll gladly perform aerial tricks or even follow PC's in return for some good quality meat (zoo is running low on Zorbos. He will not attack players (he's a bit of a coward), but will happily feast upon unconscious halflings left alone with him.
    • 3 hollyphants enjoying fine selection of nuts. The area is apparently warded by powerful spells from within what looks like some variation of Leomunds Tiny Hut (it's in fact a custom spell that creates a bubble of other plane, that can be looked into but not much more. There are different celestial creatures within every now and then).



Also, after all that trouble to make a wooden cage reinforced by enchantments - some idiot asked to fix it's lock - put a temporaty, iron padlock in the rust monsters area.
 

How about a broken open cage labeled "invisible stalker"!

There need to be plenty of areas that are "back stage" regions of the zoo, with food storage, medical supplies, traps, etc... and plenty of access to the backs of the cages, rather than the display zones. Zoos have almost as much behind the scenes area as they do display areas.

Also, does the zoo make use of such creatures as gelatinous cubes as waste disposal units? Or maybe there's an otyugh who was both a monster on display, and a clean-up resource for the zoo. Now he's wandering around loose...

There should be some creatures or zoo caretakers in need of rescue. Maybe they've refused to abandon baby creatures that are helpless in the face of the predators now on the loose. Beautiful, harmless and helpless creatures should be fairly common in an exotic zoo.
 


Undead area - skeltons and zombies, oh my!
The Bullette - he mostly lays about but he is BIG and people like big
Dinos - really if you could have them would you not have a T-Rex
Terror Birds / Axe Beaks - beautiful and dangerous
 

There are a few monsters that are extremely rare. I'm thinking of the few that are "created" by wizards such as the owlbear and peryton.

Plus: a talking bear named Smokey.
 

I think that a wealthy zoo would have lots of guards to make the patron feel safe in case anything excaped, which may happen fairly often enough. The idle rich would like the extra excitement of a pack of ghould behind cages running around as opposed to being strapped to a table in harder restraints. Maybe convicted criminals are given to them as food, for a grand fee of course if you want to watch. With the other events in the city maybe most or all guards are not there or fighting in another part of the zoo. Some things can/have escaped and have begun to seek out other parts of the city.

This can lead to follow on adventures where the ringmaster needs/compels the party to retrieve the pack of ghouls in the sewers or 'you killed my dragon- now go get me another.' I like the ideas about places in the back of the zoo where patrons are not normally to go.
 




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