Help me plot my campaign encounters!

[Nellisir]

I'm starting a new summer campaign in a few weeks, and I'm searching for encounter/adventure inspiration.

The characters are starting at 1st level, and I hope to have them up to 4th or so by the end of the summer. The setting is a high fantasy quasi-norse/russian/germanic/celtic one, with some variant races and classes (domovii, leshii, and jotunar -- champions, magicians, and scouts...).

The meta-goal of the campaign is to acquaint the players with the broad strokes of the setting -- the places & faces that matter.

The campaign will center around the PC's quest to return a liosalfar's body to the nearest known liosalfar stronghold -- a place that isn't really very near at all (but those light elves -- they'd be darn useful allies to have!). To get there, they'll be trudging (oops, no teleporting!) across a few hundred miles of relatively unfriendly wild terrain, culminating in dangerous sprint between Isenhamar, the stronghold of The Ice, and Tuonela, the Black Land of the Dead. And all this with a coffin on their collective back.

I need ideas for relatively quick (1-2 sessions) encounters that are a) interesting, and b) varied. I'd like to throw in a small dungeon or two, a hamlet or two, and a roadside encounter or two, but I'm currently stumped as to what form they each might take.

What do you think?
Nell.

 

[Arrgh! Mark!]

RASCISM

Wandering troup of musicians brings a curse to any they sing to. Your characters enter the village and hear the musicians, who are unwittingly bringing a plague through an amazing song taught them by a (insert race that hates other race).

INTOLERANCE

A religious cult victimises a minority, those who oppose them logically are heretics to be burned. The cult involves mainly those light elves you're talking about.

FEAR

A great beast, known only as the Cold Fear preys on travellers. Rumours are rife. People close to the characters end up gruesomely dead. Always at night, in the dark, when the moon is dark. He who dies next has a black circle mysteriously appear on his head. Warriors stronger and more experienced than the characters die screaming for their homes.

The circle appears on a characters head.




Not exactly high fantasy, but I try to have human problems.

 

[Immak Antunel]

I could see some kind of necromancer being like "oooh, some people with a coffin... I wonder what's in it..." and trying to take a peek. Necromancers fit with the theme, right? I'm pretty sure. Anyway, maybe a light elf would be particularly useful for some evil plan.

I realize this encounter might sound more like a continuing issue than a one-shot, but so long as the necromancer isn't so powerful, it could easily be a shorter event. For a dungeon crawl, bad guy could even succeed in snatching the body, and the party must recover it.

Ooh! Ooh! And afterwards, once the body is recovered, some illusion producing fey or other deceptive spirit/critter could scare the party into thinking that the light elf corpse has belatedly reanimated. I think most fey can do ghost sound, and it shouldn't be hard to simulated a scratching noise coming from the coffin...

EDIT:spellin'

 

[Inconsequenti-AL]

Sounds like fun!

Played something recently with some of the elements you are going to be using. There was a strong Norse and Russian theme to it.

One fun encounter we had was with a fair sized and important village. They were not happy with the protection they were receiving from the nobleman they'd chosen to rule them, so they'd put the contract up for grabs. Seeing a whole bunch of local princes competing to impress the villagers certainly highlighted some of the differences between Russian and European feudal systems.

We got involved in this, helping one minor noble get the contract... Helped us out later as well.

Here's a random one: A burial mound has been constructed for a local nobleman. Traps, a small maze and a few undead guardians. Unfortunately, the wrong corpse was interred. The family want adventurers to go in there and swap the corpses. There's a bonus for doing as little damage as possible to the place.

 

[megamania]

Sounds like fun!

Played something recently with some of the elements you are going to be using. There was a strong Norse and Russian theme to it.

One fun encounter we had was with a fair sized and important village. They were not happy with the protection they were receiving from the nobleman they'd chosen to rule them, so they'd put the contract up for grabs. Seeing a whole bunch of local princes competing to impress the villagers certainly highlighted some of the differences between Russian and European feudal systems.

We got involved in this, helping one minor noble get the contract... Helped us out later as well.

Here's a random one: A burial mound has been constructed for a local nobleman. Traps, a small maze and a few undead guardians. Unfortunately, the wrong corpse was interred. The family want adventurers to go in there and swap the corpses. There's a bonus for doing as little damage as possible to the place.

Clever way of showing the differences of the two systems.

The tomb is humorous and I could see borrowing that one



Beyond that- I know little of the culture systems you are looking to use. Proberly over used but the use Loki- the god of mischief allows for many possibilities but with little knowledge of the cultures I can't begin to flesh out the idea. However the tomb idea sounds like a grand Loki trick.

 

[Nellisir]

Beyond that- I know little of the culture systems you are looking to use. Proberly over used but the use Loki- the god of mischief allows for many possibilities but with little knowledge of the cultures I can't begin to flesh out the idea. However the tomb idea sounds like a grand Loki trick.

Don't worry about the cultures too much -- I'm basically smashing alot of folklore together and picking out the bits I like (ie: domovii, aka russian hearth spirits, co-existing with Ceildin, a Scots-Irish human race, near Tuonela, the Finnish land of the dead, which also borders the lands of the liosalfar, the Norse light elves).

These are great ideas, folks!
Nell.

 

[Qwillion]

Considering the norse background and the use of light elves, dark elves woudl seem vary appropriate,

The dark elves might use non-dark elf minions as spies to gather information, gain the confidence fo the players, (they might give him a few potions or such as gifts to the party), and maybe a trick to bypass a ward, trap or monster they will set in the path of the party.

I can see a group of dark elves offering trade for the coffin, as they want to burn the body as a sacrifice in thier dark ceremony to create a terrible weapon (artifact/weapon). The original non-dark elf minon could set the whole thing up, and the dark elves could pose as light elves.

Either the players learn they have been had and have to go take the body by force, or the dark elves take the body by force (this would be particularly great if you hedge this by faking the players out by aluding to ending the campaign early)

I will look again later.

 

[Nellisir]

OK, so the player's have mostly finished their characters, and it seems to be working out quite well. The party has 2 Aesar (human) champions (eidilons from Morningstar; same role as paladins) who are brothers, a korrigan (gnome) wizard, a (race undetermined) ranger, a domovii druid, and a firjotun (quarter-hill giant) fighter. Lots of muscle, a little magic, no stealth. Should be interesting.

The party is going to be given the casket, with the liosalfar's body under a simple permanent minor image spell to look human (albeit dead and moderately well-preserved). The characters will be informed as to the true nature of the corpse. The suggestion will be made that they pass themselves off as family members or hired guards taking their beloved (grandfather/uncle/father) to a) a particular holy site or b)the clan's ancestral burial ground.

I don't intend to give them anything to make carrying the body easier. Nothing, IMO, says "let's go travelling" like a casket, a cart, and a donkey. No bags of holding, no reducing, no flying.

Than again, nothing says "plague", "weird", or "what's in the heavily guarded box" like a casket, a cart, and a donkey.

I'm gonna have fun with this.
Nell.

 

[Nellisir]

I'm going to start things off with a basic uruk (orc) ambush, and tiny dungeon crawl in their lair in the dungeons of a ruined tower. Nice, simple little shakedown; let everyone figure out their characters and show them a few differences between Winterfall and generic D&D (ie, uruks are monstrous humanoids and advance by gaining HD & size, not classes).

Cheers
Nell.