I Need Help Developing a Quest. Suffering from Serious Writer's Block.

[WizarDru]

"So, you come to me seeking not just a favor, but a favor that asks much of me and my family. Certainly, you are not lacking in hubris, though whether this is borne of love or ignorance, I could not say. If I do as you ask, which is no small thing...you will take from me something precious and irreplaceable. When I lay bleeding to death at the bottom of a gorge at the Battle of Black Dam, do you know what kept me from despair? DO YOU?!? It was the image of my sweet sister's face, beckoning me home. When we lost the South Fork and all look lost, do you know why I did not falter? Because the only thing between my loved ones and the cruelty of their blades was my men and I. "

"And here YOU are. You seek my father's permission and my aid to get it. No, don't sully me with suggestions of 'payment'. While the cost of such a ritual is not insignificant, it is meaningless to me. My father will soon be lost to me....and you propose to take my sister from me, as well. I know full well she thinks well of you; she is innocent and caring and rarely sees the evil in this world or the duplicity of men with dark intentions. You are the not first suitor to seek her dowry. Will you be the last? We shall see."

"My sister is a shining flower. You must prove to me....TO ME....that you are a man worthy of her. I shall make you an offer. Fulfill some tasks for me. Show me that you are a man worthy of my trust, worthy of her love and worthy of honor....show me these three things and you shall have what you wish."

"First, I told you my sister is a radiant flower. She deserves one of the same. On the mountain just north of here, there is a field of Feywild Freesia. They must be picked under the light of the full moon, which luckily for you is this very night. If you claim them at the right time, they will glow with the light of the moon for a week. But you must ascend the mountain and return by the morning. The mountain, as I'm sure you know, is not entirely safe. And the flowers have their guardians. You may need to fight them, you may need to bargain with them. I do not care how you obtain the flowers. Just bring them to me, in pristine condition."

"Second, My sister must be secure. Men such as you make enemies. Terrible enemies who do not hesitate to strike at their loved ones. I KNOW OF THIS. I will send messengers to my sister. STOP THEM. What? No, of course they won't harm her. Are you MAD? They represent enemies, but I would never do anything to upset her unduly. But the message they bear will be this: "IF YOU ARE READING THIS MESSAGE, THEN THE LOUT HR DOES NOT DESERVE YOU AND I WILL NEVER APPROVE OF YOUR BOND." If she sees this message, and I will know it, then you have failed and the message will become truth. The nature of the messengers? That would be telling. Suffice it to say you cannot expect that everything will be fixed at the point of a sword."

"Finally, One last challenge for you. In the South Tower of the fortress where you reside even now, there is an ancient evil, waiting for some fool to release it. You have passed it several times in the previous week, unawares. A dark secret and a darker power are tied to this thing. It has not suited my plans to be bothered with it, until now. But there is another reason I have not bothered with it, before now. The defeat of this thing will, in turn, reveal unto you a scandalous secret...one that could bring someone to ruin. And how you handle that secret will tell me many things about you. How you deal with it is up to you...but it is also how I will judge your worth. What choice will you make? Will you make the choice that a man deserving of my sister's love would make? WE WILL SEE."

"Oh...one last thing. I am not unreasonable in this. Your companions may aid you in these tasks. Indeed, you will be unable to succeed at them alone. For a man is best judged by the company he keeps. You may yet be a good man, but if you travel in the company of scoundrels and villains, your character may matter little. If your friends are as good as you and will follow you in these tasks then perhaps....PERHAPS you are a suitor of quality."

"Now go. I grow weary. And I have matters to attend to more grave than yours. If you need to reach me to report on your quests, seek to the graveyard outside the fortress. At the tomb of Lt. Andurial, call my name and wait. One of my servants will come to you and I will know it. Now, Leave, before I change my mind."

"GOOD DAY, SIR."

 

[Masaryk the Mad]

Brilliant writing, WizarDru! You captured the tone pretty well. I will likely borrow heavily from ideas, as they are mostly in line with what I had in mind. The flower challenge is fine, as it stands, minus the full moon part, since it has already passed this month. Instead, it will be a flower that only blooms once the first snow has fallen.

The messenger part will be difficult, since the fortress is in an underground cavern, and only a dozen or so people know of its existence, but it is far from impossible. If one of my key players is able to attend the game, I will have no trouble convincing him to have his multiple-personality-past-life character to be one of the messengers. At least one of the other messengers will be an obvious intruder to the long-abandoned underground city. I am not otherwise sure how many messengers would be appropriate. Suggestions?

The third part will also be easy, once I decide the nature of the secret. There a few possibilities I could choose: 1) the impending death of the girl's father, or 2) the nature of the prophecy that the necromancer is currently trying to fulfill. Knowing the nature of the prophecy will actually put the characters in real danger, so it might be a bit extreme to reveal this.

 

[WizarDru]

The messenger part will be difficult, since the fortress is in an underground cavern, and only a dozen or so people know of its existence, but it is far from impossible. If one of my key players is able to attend the game, I will have no trouble convincing him to have his multiple-personality-past-life character to be one of the messengers. At least one of the other messengers will be an obvious intruder to the long-abandoned underground city. I am not otherwise sure how many messengers would be appropriate. Suggestions?

Glad to be of help!

My thinking is that there are several ways you can do it. Given that the brother has knowledge of life after death, perhaps he has contracted with the undead...more specifically, GHOSTS. Not violent or angry or dangerous ghosts, but ghosts nonetheless. They must be reasoned with, tricked, negotiated with or bluffed into the players goal. Perhaps the message can be switched. Perhaps the necromancer hasn't told them the truth in order to get their help ("this message is for your 'queen' The orcs are coming and you must deliver it or the castle is lost!").

Perhaps the messengers are magic butterflies or pixies; they are harmless. Killing them would be a terrible act. Perhaps they are friends or guards who have been enchanted. There are plenty of ways to present the players with challenges to use things like rituals, powers and skills (not to mention good old fashioned role-playing) to defeat these messengers.

The third part will also be easy, once I decide the nature of the secret. There a few possibilities I could choose: 1) the impending death of the girl's father, or 2) the nature of the prophecy that the necromancer is currently trying to fulfill. Knowing the nature of the prophecy will actually put the characters in real danger, so it might be a bit extreme to reveal this.

This one can depend on what you want to do to the characters. It could be a secret that places the party in danger OR it could be a secret that harms someone the players like or puts an innocent at risk. You can make this a test of courage or morals, depending on the secret.

For example, perhaps the terrible evil is a shield that rests on display on a wall in the south tower. The shield is actually possessed by a demon or perhaps and if not cleansed, may manage to escape or possess someone. But in doing this, the shield is examined by the lord of the castle, who sees it bears a dedication to his wife as a lover...from a knight AFTER she was wed. This revelation would ruin her reputation and possibly cause her marriage to be annulled or her to be executed. How does the party handle it? Perhaps it's a statue that is, in fact, a gargoyle or some other monster, trapped by someone in the castle who was afraid to admit how it happened.

If the necromancer is working on this prophecy, perhaps this could even be a way he's dragging the party into being beholden to him while pretending that they themselves are indebting themselves to his service. "I did warn you...and you chose to act, regardless." It's often very rewarding to give players choices...even if those choices are, in fact, false ones. The idea that they decide to act, rather than being forced, makes a big difference.

 

[Masaryk the Mad]

Glad to be of help!

My thinking is that there are several ways you can do it. Given that the brother has knowledge of life after death, perhaps he has contracted with the undead...more specifically, GHOSTS. Not violent or angry or dangerous ghosts, but ghosts nonetheless. They must be reasoned with, tricked, negotiated with or bluffed into the players goal. Perhaps the message can be switched. Perhaps the necromancer hasn't told them the truth in order to get their help ("this message is for your 'queen' The orcs are coming and you must deliver it or the castle is lost!").

Perhaps the messengers are magic butterflies or pixies; they are harmless. Killing them would be a terrible act. Perhaps they are friends or guards who have been enchanted. There are plenty of ways to present the players with challenges to use things like rituals, powers and skills (not to mention good old fashioned role-playing) to defeat these messengers.

How many messengers seems appropriate? This challenge shouldn't span more than a couple of days.

 

[WizarDru]

How many messengers seems appropriate? This challenge shouldn't span more than a couple of days.

I would tailor it to how the group is doing in handling them. Two would work, but make sure they're different enough to make it worth it (if using ghosts, make them very different personalities, such as an effete bard and a domineering paladin...this will require players to use different tactics). No more than four, at most. The goal here should be to let the players use their abilities to handle the situation and roll with it. If they decide the best way to prevent the message is to have the object of affection hole up in a fortified church where the ghosts can't go, I'd let it work. So if one messenger is a several very small birds that sing the message, let the wizard use Ghost Sound to block it from being delivered. It could even be someone the players know in the castle, such as it's lord, who has no idea what the message actually IS, just that the brother asked him to deliver it as a favor. The players would have to walk on eggshells with the lord to get the message from him and there might be complications if they don't want him to know the details or why. Have fun with it and the players will to.

 

[HeavensThunderHammer]

Btw: I'd be very curious to know how this turns out, please keep us updated if possible.

 

[Masaryk the Mad]

I've finished my first session of this scenario, and I'll be running the second one tonight.

Here's an overview of what has happened so far:

HR screwed up his courage and approached KAV to ask his favour. KAV gave a long speech, similar to the one laid out by WizarDru, followed by the trifold quest: retrieve two ice lilies from the nearby mountains on the first snowfall, protect the girl from messengers, and deal with the evil secret-keeper in the tower.

It happened to be the day of the first snowfall, so the party ventured into the mountains, searching for the ice lily. The party's ranger made some Nature checks to determine the correct habitat for this rare flower that blooms only at the first snow. The party was able to find a patch of the flower growing in a streamside clearing. Upon approaching the flowers, the snow swirled up in a whirlwind, forming into the humanoid form of a winter nature spirit. I used the stat block for the Spirit of Winter, so that the flowers acted in the place of the binding gem. The party would be forced to negotiate for a flower, because if they killed her, the flowers would all die with her. It took some effort to negotiate through the encounter, as it was not easy to convince the faerie to give up a piece of her life force. In the end, the party agreed to give a little of their own life forces in exchange for the two flowers.

The first messenger arrived, as the party was concluding their negotiation, in the form of a flock of songbirds. The players failed to take note of the hints I was dropping about the birds, ("It almost sounds like they're trying to tell me something..."), so the encounter was mostly resolved with skill checks. My players aren't normally that dense; I guess I must have drained their brains with the Spirit of Winter encounter. They easily outran the songbirds to succeed at thwarting the first messenger.

Upon returning back to home base, HR delivered the flowers to the necromancer. The party then started to develop their paranoia-fueled plan to keep a constant vigil for possible messengers, and a watch rotation was formed. The session ended with HR beginning his overnight watch.


This coming session, the party plans to deal with the secret in the tower, while continuing to keep watch for messengers.

 

[WizarDru]

Cool! Thanks for letting us know how it went/is going. It's always fun to see how the rubber hits the road, so to speak.

 

[Masaryk the Mad]

I finished running this quest this past weekend. Overall, I was pretty happy with how it turned out.

After keeping watch outside his honey's room all night, HR is ready to tackle the evil in the tower. The entire party participated. The tower room in question had, once upon a time, been taken over by a former PC. The PC in question was a 2nd edition character - a Dark Elf fighter/mage/thief. In this room, some of the characters found a loose brick in the wall, and they removed it to reveal a Bag of Holding. While examining the contents of the bag, another party member was investigating some things sitting on a nearby desk - a pile of scattered blank sheets of paper and a stoppered glass bottle.

Being a very curious person, she uncorked the bottle, releasing a shadow creature. The creature would use psychic attacks, which took the form of insidious whispering. Sometimes, the words would become clear, revealing a secret. There were two secrets revealed to the party this way: one related to a higher level PC and the other told of a concealed Linked Portal in the castle.

At the conclusion of the battle, the party noticed that all of its ramblings had been committed to the once-blank papers. Most of the secrets held by the creature were rather inconsequential; however, one of the things that appeared on the paper was a message to the girl. The party was quick to intercept that message.

Knowing that the concealed portal was serious security risk, HR was quick to report it to the necromancer, which was certainly a good choice. He also reported the other significant secret, which seemed like idle gossip, but will be important later in the campaign.

At the conclusion of this meeting, HR asked if he had passed his trial, to which the necromancer replied, "I will let you know after speaking with my sister." It took the party a moment to catch on to the fact that the necromancer was the third and final messenger. The players were a little uncertain about how they should handle that situation, since they did not want to confront a man they were certain would not harm his sister. The trial ended with one of the characters teleporting the girl up a staircase, so they could make an escape, and HR finally making a decisive action against the necromancer.

We still haven't had an opportunity to role-play out the visit home. I'm looking forward to getting to do that sometime this week.

I would like to thank everyone once again for all of your suggestions. I'm really happy with how this quest turned out, and my players had a lot of fun with it.

 

[Dragon Sin-Camealot]

I'm glad they had fun. I'm sure this story fits under the 36 stories on Wiki and/or the 7 plots.

Do we need to find plot 8 and story 37 to impress people these days?