GM advice: Earthmote as gigantic earth elemetal encounter

[CarlosDosBrickos]

I'm in need of a steer. I have the germ of a cool idea, but I can't figure out how to make an exciting encounter out of it.

Here's the setup; whilst tracking a missing wizard the party have stumbled across his domain in the Elemental Chaos. The domain is made up of a number of earthmotes. The wizard is long gone.

One of these earthmotes happens to be sentient, a gigantic non-humanoid earth elemental called Terrain. He used to be best buddies with the wizard before back in the day. His surface is crawling with mud mephits grumbling and complaining about anything and everything.

And... that's it. I love the idea of a location that turns out to be a person, but I just can't find a fun player experience in there. What happens when they get there? Where's the drama, the challenge, the conflict?

I'm happy for either combat or a cool RP encounter, and could really use some inspiration to help turn a vaguely interesting concept into something that will be awesome for my party to play.

Help!

 

[MarkB]

Hmm, sounds like Mogo, the Green Lantern planet.

How about this: Terrain used to get used as a garbage compactor by the wizard, who would periodically remove the compressed waste from Terrain's depths for disposal. In his absence, a lump of waste has accumulated and festered within Terrain, causing him great pain, and he asks the PCs to venture inside, past his internal parasites, and remove it.

In fact, the 'waste' is a mass of gemstones or precious metals. The wizard used Terrain to compress raw materials into useful components, and had left some 'cooking' when he vanished.

 

[Serendipity]

That would be an awesome location/NPC for a social encounter - maybe they have to negotiate or parley with the creature.
(edited to add) IT also occurs to me that it'd be a dandy place for a fight with a rival group or perhaps some enemy faction. Lots of interesting environmental effects and things for the players to get creative with.