Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wisdom Seeker" data-source="post: 7825420" data-attributes="member: 6954514">• Shivering Tree- The life-tree of the elven grove, made weak by injuries done to it and shaken by glamoured wind.• Paper Trail- The pirates betray their location by use of the shavings they cut off and their murder. Additionally, Garfin's journal.• Illusory Storm- Summoned by the cursed maul and shown to the PCs in prophesy.• Future Ruins- The haunting possibility of a disaster without the life-tree, made possible by the illusions.• Haunted Maul- The weapon used to wound the tree, containing the soul of a late pirate captain.• Land Pirates- The perpetrators, a group of sea dogs who had their ship scuttled and captain killed after the elves wrecked them. Without a ship, they are landlocked and rabid.Ship for City: Five-Room Dungeon for D&DEntranceThe PCs enter a coastal elven grove, Luxelle, to find all is not well. While they are being introduced to the merchantry and workers of the city, zombie brigands emerge to attack them out of the blue. Their injuries are gory and the leader wields a magical maul in battle. Perceptive PCs can tell they are pirates killed by shipwreck. When a zombie pirate is defeated, it vanishes as if it never existed in the first place. Confused PCs will be informed that there are pirates that raid the coast from time to time, but the mighty life-tree Xelle protects the grove. It does so through the use of glamours, illusions which bleed into reality. The zombies intermittently return until someone gets the idea that the tree is acting strangely.Role-Playing ChallengeWhen the PCs approach Xelle, they will find it is not visibly injured from the outside, but it moves as if wind were blowing through it. The life-tree is huge, enough to form a small canopy in of itself. Through investigation, wood chips and fallen small branches signal that someone is cutting at the branches of the life-tree. Climbing Xelle is possible but difficult, and there is one building with direct access to some of its branches, Fairsinger's Lodging (The PCs might stay there). The innkeeper, when interviewed, will speak about a half-orc and a human who came looking for an elf named Garfin on the fourth floor. This paper trail should lead to another crime scene.Trick or SetbackAccess to the tree is possible through the window of the previously described fourth-floor room. Unfortunately, that room is also host to a murder. Garfin lies smothered to death on the bed, and the open window indicates the killers have climbed out onto the tree. A search through the elf's belongings tells you that he is a former pirate under Captain Gatrix and left his crew after they planned to attack Luxelle, jumping off the ship and swimming to shore. Attempts to climb onto the tree branches and onto Xelle are slowed by swaying, unsteady branches and short bursts of wind and rain.Big ClimaxFinally, the heart of the mystery is unearthed. As the PCs approach, the storm gets more and more powerful, and the murderers are revealed, cutting away at branches and into the core of the tree with boarding axes and the haunted maul. The half-orc, Ruusk, carries the maul and tells a different story than Garfin's journal does. According to him, Garfin sabotaged the ship; This left them helpless in the midst of a storm that scuttled the ship and killed the majority of the crew. The maul, enchanted to float, washed up on shore with the survivors. Bearing the lost souls of the sailors, it has been influencing the tree and hopes to obliterate the city in revenge by summoning up a glamoured hurricane. Ruusk and his ally Lacono fight until killed, having lost everything but revenge.Reward, RevelationEventually, the PCs retrieve the maul and halt the storm... but there's just one problem. Xelle shows the party an image of a real hurricane on the horizon. In this future vision, it shatters the protective tree and obliterates the entire town, leaving no survivors. If this prophecy is told to the villagers, it becomes clear that the storm that wrecked the pirates was just a taste of the natural disaster on the horizon. Whoever speaks to the maul finds that it is a sentient weapon bearing the spirit of the pirate captain Gatrix. He is Lawful Evil and satisfied with harming the tree enough to make the villagers flee. Luxelle must be abandoned, or another solution found to empower Xelle.</blockquote>

Verification