Eccles
Ragged idiot in a trilby.
As part of a 'Realms campaign designed to lead up to the City of the Spider Queen book, the group I'm about to run will find themselves ...
An, stuff it. It makes more sense if I just give you a quick rundown on the relevant bits.
1. The party (which includes a monk) goes on a quest (in exchange for some suitable item or spell or whatever) to slay a baby red dragon and return to base with its spinal cord. (Bizarro spell components world!)
2. Later on, the parent dragon goes on a rampage to wipe out the monastary the monk came from, as part of a continued fiery vendetta thing.
3. The monks beg the party to go fetch some famous wizard who makes portals so that they can flee and the wizard'll never catch them.
4. The wizard's portal duplicates the monastery in the shadow-realms, and magically turns all the monks into Shades. So there is a hidden monastary somewhere and a bunch of crusading shadow-ninja monks all ready for the wizard (and his mysterious master) to command to kick butt.
My problem is this:
What can the dragon do that's both scary enough to make the monks want to move, and slow enough that they have time to find the party and for the party to go find the mage? I don't want them to confront the dragon, as they should be 6th or 7th level at this point. And a psycho Great Wyrm with a few character-levels will be a little out of their league...
Any suggestions you can make would be most welcome!
An, stuff it. It makes more sense if I just give you a quick rundown on the relevant bits.
1. The party (which includes a monk) goes on a quest (in exchange for some suitable item or spell or whatever) to slay a baby red dragon and return to base with its spinal cord. (Bizarro spell components world!)
2. Later on, the parent dragon goes on a rampage to wipe out the monastary the monk came from, as part of a continued fiery vendetta thing.
3. The monks beg the party to go fetch some famous wizard who makes portals so that they can flee and the wizard'll never catch them.
4. The wizard's portal duplicates the monastery in the shadow-realms, and magically turns all the monks into Shades. So there is a hidden monastary somewhere and a bunch of crusading shadow-ninja monks all ready for the wizard (and his mysterious master) to command to kick butt.
My problem is this:
What can the dragon do that's both scary enough to make the monks want to move, and slow enough that they have time to find the party and for the party to go find the mage? I don't want them to confront the dragon, as they should be 6th or 7th level at this point. And a psycho Great Wyrm with a few character-levels will be a little out of their league...
Any suggestions you can make would be most welcome!
