Fey-themed adventure

[Ry]

Good day; I'm just starting my third single-player play-by-post game with an out-of-town player. Basically, he's a local gnomish wanderer, who sees it as his duty to protect about a twenty-mile square of small villages. He's halfway between a local messenger and a mayor, resolving disputes and such. The player has strong preferences for non-violent adventure situations, although he's not averse to getting his hands dirty (although this usually means running away and getting a town's worth of guards).

So after careful consideration, I've decided to take a dark, fey-themed approach to the campaign; children disappearing, strange sights by locals - all ignored by the big human kingdom that owns the territory. Development will lead our gnomish hero down dark paths under knotty roots to strange courtyards peopled by sprites and ruled over by a dark faerie witch. So I'm wondering if you've had good experience with fey-themed adventures, and what kind of situations or encounters have been really engrossing for the players. Even if you haven't done anything like this, and you have good ideas for non-violent countryside encounters, please, post them here!

 

[Barendd Nobeard]

There is a (now retired) Living Greyhawk module (written by Chris Tulach) that had a pool of nixies. They kept asking the people to "play and swim" with them (we were a group of six adventurers).

The first person who agreed, got kissed by a nixie who asked, "Do you accept my gift?" The PC said yes, and he could handle the water just fine (I think it was a water breathing spell).

Of course, they were really half-fiend/half-nixies.

Then my PC said he would join in, so he accepted the gift. But this time, the "gifr" was something very different--basically a charm person, so he didn't care that he was drowning in the pool. Eventually, the charm was broken somehow (they attacked me or a party member dispelled it), because I remember fighting the nixies underwater.

They also had manacles attached to the bottom of the pool, so they could drown victims they charmed. In the module text, this was reserved for a PC who had a special item, but it's creepy enough to use on anyone.

Finally, there was a portal on the bottom to another realm.

I'm not sure how this would work with a single PC, but you could tone it down a bit (one weakened nixie/fiend) with some of the same elements. Or the "mayor" could return with some guards. Or maybe the nixies are dead/gone....and the "mayor" sees someone chained to the bottom in the manacles....

 

[Tav_Behemoth]

There are a cool race of stirge-riding fey, the ashmalkins, in A Swarm of Stirges, if I do say so myself, and a bunch of adventure hooks to go with 'em. Some things that would be a particularly good fit with your plans is that the ashmalkins are into alchemical devices and like gnomes (although the feeling is rarely mutual; the ashmalkins' jests tend to be too chaotic and cruel). The ashmalkins are a CR/ECL +0 race, so while there's tons of room to customize them with classes, a single PC can hope to square off against a squad of ashmalkin warriors (unlike, say, nixies). And there's a lot of background provided concerning political conflict, both between different ashmalkin nations and with the Unseelie Court, that could sustain a deep non-combat-oriented game.

One cool thing you could do with this would be to present the initial situation as an infestation of stirges. As your gnomish wanderer looks into why the stirges are so much more active than usual, you can gradually reveal the complex ecology of the stirge nest & that the ashmalkins have been breeding and training the stirges as mounts, building strength for their Court-related struggle against the faerie witch and only incidentally causing trouble for the village.

A good resource for a threatened-village adventure is Open World Press's Hamlet of Thumble. There, the threat is gnolls IIRC, but you could use the village personalities, locations, and dynamics Ed sets up with an ashmalkin threat or a fey invasion of your own.

 

[John Q. Mayhem]

There's a good thread on this in house rules.

 

[The_Gunslinger658]

Wow! Some fantastic idea's, mind if I steel er I mean borrow them?


Scott

 

[Ry]

Oh, one other thing I forgot to mention: The PC is a toned-down bard, with a Nokan (japanese-style flute) - I was also thinking music could be part of the plotline, and develop a bit more gnomish culture along the way. Anything (modules, old dice tales) along that line would also be appreciated. I'm definitely going to have some children being willingly kidnapped by an Unseelie queen (maybe even a good one, too) to fight in their little war.

I'll search the House Rules for that other topic, and I think I saw a few threads on why gnomes are so great a little while ago here... but keep the ideas coming, and I'll try to post mine back here, too.

 

[Ry]

There is a (now retired) Living Greyhawk module (written by Chris Tulach) that had a pool of nixies.....

I think this would work as described; even just luring him under and chaining him up. Eventually he realizes the magic is wearing off, and he feels his lungs get heavier and heavier. If he falls for it, then it would be a fine spot for intervention by an escaping gnomish child (that is, escaping from being kidnapped by Unseelies). If he doesn't fall for it, then the nixies can turn into another relatively straightforward menace, which he can run away from (and return to once he has a mystical-fey-seemingly-mundane item).

Actually, this is reminding me of some of the old King's Quest series... I'll have to check out some info on those - they had a few neat twists on "use item X for solution Y" that could fit the niche. Of course, the key here would be to provide the items, and then pretend the PC's clever solutions were the ones I planned on.