Adventure Brainstorming (Low Level)

[Gilladian]

I'm setting up a new campaign, trying to create a 1st or 2nd level adventure for a small party (as yet unknown makeup but likely including a druid. I had an idea for an adventure -
a monastery (of clerics, not monks) has to pay a tax every year to keep their land - one item they traditionally pay is a number of bottles of a very good mead.

They make the mead from honey given to them (bought from) local farmers. In recent years the honey has not been good. The mead is no longer up to standard, and cannot be used to pay the rent. The monks fear that they may lose their land.

I'm thinking that the reason the honey is no good anymore is that there's been a drastic change in the places where the bees gather their nectar. Or in the bees themselves. But how to make this an adventure? What has changed? Was the change deliberate? Did the farmers do it? The local land holder trying to ruin the monks? Or is it coincidental? How can the PCs help? I am presuming that the adventure lead in is the priests asking the PCs for help in solving the mystery. Can anyone offer some ideas?

 

[kanithardm]

Thats a nice way for your players to feel low level. Having to help monks pay rent

 

[Mark CMG]

I think I'd make them Adepts, Commoners, and Experts rather than Clerics. Adepts being the ones in charge of services and more religious pursuits, the Commoners working the fields and tending the animals (there's always animals ), and Experts being the persons doing the brewing, scrivener work, and more complicated tasks.

I'm thinking that the reason the honey is no good anymore is that there's been a drastic change in the places where the bees gather their nectar. Or in the bees themselves. But how to make this an adventure?

Make them giant bees?

What has changed? Was the change deliberate? Did the farmers do it? The local land holder trying to ruin the monks? Or is it coincidental?

Maybe the monestary was built on or near an ancient tomb that has been forgotten but old documents detailing this have been found by the landlord. Perhaps he is concerned that he can't desecrate the tomb while the monestary still resides on the land.

You could have a follow up adventure in the tomb, itself, since the monks will want to know what is in there, too.

How can the PCs help? I am presuming that the adventure lead in is the priests asking the PCs for help in solving the mystery.

Perhaps. Or the PCs could have relatives whose lives are tied to the monestary and insist the PCs couldn't possibly help solve the mystery but would be saddled with the upkeep of the relatives if they lose their livelihood.

Can anyone offer some ideas?

I've got nothing

 

[TheNovaLord]

In the goodman games adventure with 20 adventures for 1st and 2nd level adevnturers this exact same adventure appears!! DDC 29


plot hidden below...
Adventure Summary
A local beekeeper has gone missing! After investigation
in Beeton, the characters enter the caves below town
where they discover the giant blister beetle colony
responsible for laying waste to Will Dunraith’s giant bee
colony, destroying many of the other farmers’ bee hives,
and even the death of a village child. The PCs find the
beetle colony’s mutated queen, a monstrous mass of
chitin and fungus. This hints at something evil at work,
and soon the characters find its source: a shrine to
Vilim-Zhula, the demon queen of fungi and vermin.
There they learn the true source of Beeton’s troubles: a
fiend-empowered madman.

 

[Mark CMG]

In the goodman games adventure with 20 adventures for 1st and 2nd level adevnturers this exact same adventure appears!! DDC 29


plot hidden below...
Adventure Summary
A local beekeeper has gone missing! After investigation
in Beeton, the characters enter the caves below town
where they discover the giant blister beetle colony
responsible for laying waste to Will Dunraith’s giant bee
colony, destroying many of the other farmers’ bee hives,
and even the death of a village child. The PCs find the
beetle colony’s mutated queen, a monstrous mass of
chitin and fungus. This hints at something evil at work,
and soon the characters find its source: a shrine to
Vilim-Zhula, the demon queen of fungi and vermin.
There they learn the true source of Beeton’s troubles: a
fiend-empowered madman.

First time I've seen that. Looks a little tough for low-level PCs, no? Have you read or played it?

 

[Odhanan]

*reads DDC 29's adventure plot*
... and the madman could actually be one of the monks, who has something against the abbot or the whole community.

 

[howandwhy99]

Months ago a meteorite landed with dormant seeds from another planet. Psionic-empowered, brain-sucking flowers grow from the seeds spread around the crater. Normal honeybees harvest the alien pollen, kill their own queen, and create psychogenic honey for the monks. Eating the honey gives one a slight headache afterwards, but brewing it down into mead distills the effect. Essentially, drinkers are dominated and join the bee's hive.

Imagine attacking dominated commoners covered by swarms of bees they use to attack. Do the PCs have any friends in town? :evilgrin:

The dominated are used as protectors by the bees to guard the flowers around the hidden crater. The problem is: the flowers are eating the dominated humans' brains. So the bees are in constant need of finding more creatures to dominate. (Perhaps include some small-brain bears who ate enough honey? Succumbed due to low int / will save?)

The bee hivemind is gaining in intelligence as it is embued with psionic power. It is currently trying to dominate the monk beekeepers so they can be forced to collect more honey and brew more mead (making them appear mad as they work to exhaustion each day).

Here's the catch. The true villians aren't the bees at all, they're the non-intelligent flowers. With such a strong mental bond more bees are being drawn to hive, but can the PCs really kill every single one? Even if they did would the flowers not be found by other bees?

Ideas:

• Lots of swarms, flesh-eating plants, and foes you don't want to kill.
• Chances of playing a dominated PC is high which can be fun.
• You can start with a mystery of drunks disappearing, bee attacks, monks in "seeming" religious fervor, etc.
• Consider multiple drinks with increasing strengths of effect (ale, mead, liquors, etc.)
• And you know, this is the PERFECT game for props. Mead, honey ale, Drambui... oh yeah!

 

[taliesin15]

wow, that last reply about the evil flowers was interesting and involved...here's a simpler one: a band or small tribe of Orcs (or other humanoid or human barbarian clan) recently set up camp near by your poor clerics and have started clear cutting the nearby lands in order to raise their feral warthogs or else that's their way of capturing the wild javelinas in the brush--in any case, its a nature based explanation that's simple (not enough flowers to create the pollen needed within a few square miles) created by monsters the party can defeat

another idea is that the crops and wildflowers the bees use to get the pollen to make the honey have been savaged by say Giant Ants or Giant Rats or Medium sized crazed Were-Racoons or Dire Wolverines or Miniature Bullettes (they still have those in 3.5?)

or a low level cleric enemy of your party's clerics is turning the bees into Undead bees; or else, fouling the water supply

in fact messing up the water supply is another possible plot twist...some Dire Beavers have been so succesful at their dam building that the area nearby is becoming a wetland, and all the old flowers (honeysuckle, clover and such) is dying out, and what grows in their place tends to be fen sucking nightshades, or something like that...

 

[Quickleaf]

Here's the catch. The true villians aren't the bees at all, they're the non-intelligent flowers. With such a strong mental bond more bees are being drawn to hive, but can the PCs really kill every single one? Even if they did would the flowers not be found by other bees?

Someone's been reading Botany of Desire.

A more mundane idea is that the beekeeper once caught a swarm of wild bees, tracking them to their hive and returning home with it. However, a canny thief (The Honey Thief) steals the hive at midnight and the prideful beekeeper, not wanting people to think he's a patsy (nor other thieves to think he's an easy mark) resorts to a buying domesticated bees from a neighboring town. However, the merchant sold him a weak group of bees whose honey is inferior.

The adventurers get to track the thief down, catch wild bees, deal with the unscrupulous merchant, all while warding off the insistent debt-collectors sent by the landlord. Very low-level feel.

 

[Wraith Form]

First time I've seen that. Looks a little tough for low-level PCs, no? Have you read or played it?

It's from The Adventure Begins, a book filled with twenty quick'n'dirty adventures for 1st - 2nd level PCs, so yes, it's for level 1. I own the book and have skimmed the adventure, and when I saw this post it's the first thing I thought of.