[Adventure Idea]

[Angelsboi]

Tell me:

- What level should i make this adventure?

- What would you like to see more of in this adventure?

- Any hints or suggestions?


In the small city of Avernus, a clinic for the mentally insane has been shut down due to evidence that the patients have been abused. The staff of the facility are all of the same bloodline.

One of the family members they keep locked away. Hes a writer and he watches the town through a dusty window from his room. He has inherited a gift from a mysterious uncle. A quill pen.

The PCs enter the town and see several mentally ill people wandering around and some local officials trying to herd them. Then out of no where, the patients and the officials are attacked by bizarre monsters.

Upon examining this attack, the PCs find no monster tracks at all. People start dying or dissappearing and gathering clues leads the PCs to discover that the people who are attacked are the ones responsible for shutting down the hospital.

Whats really happening is the quill pen is enchanted to summon creatures for its owner. The young mentally ill family member is upset that his dad lost his job so hes writing all of his anger and frustrations out in a story, unbeknownest to him, that hes actually causing the story to come true ...

 

[Master of Monkeys]

Good adventure!

What if the quill doesn't summon monsters, just calls them. So, if he wants a goblin, it has to walk from its goblin place and come to the village. This would cause more and more creatures to follow until it gets out of hand and is out of the boys control, monsters start coming to the village without being summoned, that would make this more of a campaign than an adventure though.

Your adventure could potentially be any level, depending on what monsters the little boy thinks of or the power of the quill.

An item like the quill you described is probably of artifact level, unless it only summons lower monsters and only a few times a day. I wouldn't like using a magic item like that an adventure, maybe a campaign, but not an adventure. That's just my personality, though.

 

[Angelsboi]

Wellt he pen has a Summon Monster I, II, III, IV and V in it. And i havent decided how many times a day. Maybe SM V (1 charge a day), SM IV (2 charges a day), SM III (3 charges a day) and so on.

 

[Master of Monkeys]

A few questions you might think about:

How are the PCs going to find out about the little boy?

Are the PCs going to help the village (I know a few that wouldn't)?

Who shut down the clinic? Government commitee? City guards?

Why'd the uncle give the boy the quill?

 

[Angelsboi]

i will have to think about these ...

 

[Master of Monkeys]

A few possible answers to the questions:

How are the PCs going to find out about the little boy?
Maybe they overhear a family member of his talking to someone about their little monster. Maybe they hear his mother crying to herself on the street. Maybe they hear a family member at church talking to a priest.

Are the PCs going to help the village (I know a few that wouldn't)?
You could make it not safe not to help the village. Maybe the boy sees them and doesn't like them so monsters attack them.

Who shut down the clinic? Government commitee? City guards?
It really doesn't matter, maybe just a little.

Why'd the uncle give the boy the quill?
Maybe he thought his little nephew was an angel and would create beautiful things. Maybe he knew what the nephew would do and let him do it because he feared the repercussions of doing it himself.

 

[Angelsboi]

well i do know the biy is quite grown and mentally ill. I also know his familys bloodline is mixed with demons.

 

[corndemon]

I've got a suggestion about the pen itself.

First off, the premise of the adventure, the boy writing out stories that somehow come true, reminds of the short story Word Processor of the Gods by Stephen King. In that story, a lonely, troubled kid who is also a prodigy in science class builds his uncle, a struggling writer, a word processor (using things like model train engines to replace broken pieces and whatnot). The basic jist of the story is, whatever he writes on the word processor becomes reality, and he eventually uses it to bring the kid, who died with his parents in a car wreck, back to life and replace his own kid (who is a little bastard).

If theuncle in your plot was the only family member the kid thought really cared about and understood him, the uncle could have discovered the pens powers (making deep rooted dreams a reality) in hopes of a similar chain of events, the boy goes hogwild for a while and writes stories about his imaginary monster friends killing everyone he dislikes (perhaps the kid thinks it is the loonies' fault his dad lost his job, based on the outline this seems false, since the family wwas abusing the patients, but a troubled kid could easily come to such a conclusion.) The uncle realizes he is dying but discovers the pen's 'catch', you cant write your own destiny with it, so he leaves it to the kid, hoping that the kid will bring him back after death.

Depending on whether the uncle is a good guy or a bad guy, and on how much the players can learn about him, the party might try to bait the kid into fulfilling the uncle's wish, or they may be in a race against time to figure out what is happening and stop the kid before he gives some great evil a second shot at life.

So I wouldn't give the pen set powers in the form of spells, but instead give it a form of limited wish granting that makes what the user writes become reality, except that the writer cannot affect himself in such a way. This also limits the usefulness of the pen if the party gets their hands on it, though I would suggest not letting them do so.

Either the kid, having been stoped from bringing back his evil dead uncle, decides that the pen is better off destroyed (possibly by soaking it overnight in a pool of holy water blessed by a cleric of whatever your god of knowledge/literature/creativity is), or the goodly uncle, having been brought back by the kid and the party, decides to lock the pen away somewhere or destroy it so that the forces of evil can't get a hold of it.

 

[Angelsboi]

cool idea. BUt the uncle is a malevolent 1/2 infernal tiefling. Hes the eccentric uncle.

The monster summoning spells are maxamized and empowered and yes, he does use the pen to take his anger out on people. Remember though. This kid is mentally ill. In other not-so-nice- words, hes retarded and therefore wouldnt think of helping his uncle.

 

[HalfElfSorcerer]

To add a combat encounter at the end of the adventure, have the quill actually be the imprisonment of the demon that is the progenitor of the family's demonic heritage. He was imprisioned in the pen by some hero/deity/power figure or other, but his persona remained consious, and was able to manifest itself in the realities created by the quill. When the adventure comes to a close, lead the PCs to realize that the only way to destroy the quill is to use it to write itself out of existence. When they do this, have the demon emerge from the quill and attack the PCs. Good combat end to an investigation adventure.