Help me for tonight - bridging two adventures

[RangerWickett]

Last session in the game I'm running, the party managed to root out a succubus who was screwing around with their home town and, with the aid of a spell that enraged the demon so she would not simply teleport away, they beat her down and tore off her head.

A little violent? Yeah, sure, but she'd been a b**** for quite a while.

The party did not get around to the succubus's lair (and yes, I was seriously going to use the Pleasure Prison of the B'thuvian Demon Whore as the basis of the lair), but they're planning to go tonight. But since it's just a few traps, a bunch of kobolds, and some minor demonlings -- and they party is 5th level -- it shouldn't take too long.

There is a prisoner there who they can rescue who might be interesting to roleplay -- she's a winged elf who has been working with a bard to con the townsfolk into worshipping the bard as a god; she herself has been pretending to be an angel. The demon was sent by villains further away to investigate this, found out about the fraud, kidnapped the elfwoman, and posed as her for a few months, twisting and corrupting the town's connection to their god. Thing is, even the succubus didn't realize the whole 'god' thing was a sham.

One of the PCs is the high priest of that god. The prisoner, when rescued, will try not to spill the beans, but it might be hard.

The next adventure after this one was going to be a bit of vengeance against them. Three years ago in game they faced a monster that had once been a normal woman, but she was cursed. The party defeated her, took her prisoner, learned of her curse . . . and then decided it was too dangerous for them to try to help her, and it was for the greater good just to kill her. They beheaded her too. So her ghost is coming back to take revenge on them.

What I need is a nice way to segue between adventures. The group is very self-motivated, and I worry that if I don't give them another thread pretty soon, they'll up and run to fight the people who sent the succubus, and they're not ready for that yet. But I don't want it to seem like all these bad things are happening at once. I kind of want to enforce some down-time.

The succubus did mess with a lot of folks' heads (hundreds of suggestions over the course of weeks or months can do that to a person), so rooting out who might be a sleeper agent could take some time, as would rehabilitating them.

The ghost was, in life, like a medusa, except that her gaze turned people to wood, not stone. I think she could come back to the town, a ghost who carries her own head, but I don't know how she would take her revenge. Perhaps beheadings, in typical horror movie fashion, of people who go off into the woods? Or should it be lignefication (the woody equivalent of petrification)?

I could have the woodusa ghost kill people, and ultimately lure the PCs out into the woods. Maybe it's using its rotted, severed head as something like a phylactery, so if you destroy that, it dies? Or maybe it's like an evil dryad now, using trees to create a body for itself. I kind of want it to take its power from wood, so the party has to set fire to the forest to take it out. I want this, in particular, because there's a dungeon that the party never explored in the forest -- they know it's entrance is there, but they figured it was just a weird cave.

Just rambling. Maybe some of ya'll'll think of something for me to add.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

My initial thought, without really knowing yout group or world...

enforce downtime and lead into the next gambit thusly:

Cleric gets divine inspiration that the town needs to be cleansed...sleeper agents/un-suggest/rebuild the worshipper base. Prisoner flees into the forest shamed and partly, more than likely, leaves her be.

The Woodusa had been buried by those that loved her in life, in a small cavern off a ways from the town. The buried her with a pretty collar, shiny with silver and gold.. and a minor magic that kept the spirit in slumber.

The prisoner finds the burial site and steals the necklace, than returns 'repentant' (and hungry) to the town...selling the choker collar to the local thieves guild so she can buy food.

THe Woodusa starts searching at the edges of town, haunting and woodifying people. The recovery of her choker can put her back into slumber. A ceremony could lay her spirit to rest, and perhaps a miracle could return all the woodifies townsfolk to life...

Which, if it all goes right, will result in a very pious town following the Cleric and provide a potential base of operations for a time to come.

 

[Piratecat]

Are they carrying around the head of the succubus? If so, the ghost could possess it.

Alternatively, you could treat the ghost a little bit like a penaggalan.

 

[Clueless]

I'm always fond of foreshadowing when in doubt... perhaps one of the minor clerics in town starts getting visions of a headless woman? But isn't clear enough *which* one, so to leave the players on a little bit of a red herring while they try to figure out if the cleric is crazy, bonded with the succubus... or what.

Sounds like you've got to give them something proactive to do while they're down... silly workaholic PCs. Puzzle plots are usually good for that.

Maybe touch on a possible summoner in town that could be the 'reason' for the succubus being there? Not that he's really the reason that she was, but possibly he was the doorway/opportunity for whoever truly sent her? That also means that the party will *think* they took care of it so that they'll hold off on chasing the BBEG till you're ready to tromp him out in a grand moment of plot twist. That'll keep them busy for a little bit - esp if the summoner is into the undead more than the demonic, you could have implications of his 'activities' in the woods pop up.

 

[Darklone]

Hmm. I'd do it differently. Have the ghost turn the whole village into a ghost town. All people are gone, it's always night there and so on. Simply make them afraid and don't care too much for the game mechanics (Ghost may have help by the mentioned god). Or better: Give the ghostthing the ability not only to change someone into wood (a living tree) but to change the person back too. Change the whole village into a garden.

Then let them remove the curse on the woman who became the ghost to make her release the village.

I don't like loose ends.