Holiday Iron DM!!!! {Final Judgment Posted!}

[Zappo]

Zappo vs. Quickbeam

Ingredients: Angry Halflings, Kazoos, Cavalry, Wishing Well, Hat of Disguise, Hydra

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The Ride of the Halflings
An adventure for characters of level 6-8

An orcish warlord has hired a large goblin/hobgoblin mercenary force and is using it to attack the peaceful Meyridia (or any suitable small to medium kingdom in your campaign). The local army, taken by surprise by the combined attacks of orcs and goblinoids, has already suffered a major defeat and the hope for victory is slim. The King of Meyridia has only one hope: the fabled Seven Kazoos of Cumbradol. These mystical artefacts, created millennia ago by a powerful halfling wizard, are reputed to hold the power to call forth, when played together, entire armies for their owner! Six of these Kazoos are already in the King's possession, having been a treasure of Meyridia's crown for centuries, but the seventh and most important has been lost two thousands years ago when the halfling wizard died, and was never recovered. A wandering bard, however, has recently approached the King's court, and he claims to know the location of the last Kazoo...

Part One
The PCs are summoned by the King of Meyridia. The town, the castle, and the court itself are all shrouded in gloom. It will be a matter of days before the humanoid armies knock on the capital's doors, and everyone knows it will be a hard and uncertain battle. At the King's presence, the PCs are introduced to Riker Seltman, wandering bard and expert of antiquities. The bard wears somber clothes and is a fairly serious guy. After the King has explained the land's situation, Riker tells the PCs about the Seven Kazoos. After extensive research, he has located the Seventh Kazoo, the one which controls the magic of the summoning. It is in a cave, in Meyridian border territory, and the PCs are being paid well to go there and recover it. Then, Riker and six other skilled players will use the Kazoos to summon an army to defeat the orcs and goblins.

The travel to the border regions is uneventful. As they near the mountains which comprise Meyridia's northern border, however, the PCs are attacked with increasing frequency by advance bands of orcs and goblinoids. Eventually, they reach the place Riker marked on their maps: a dark and ancient cave, far from any known path.

Part Two
A large subterranean complex awaits the PCs. It seems that it used to be a big halfling house - a very long time ago. Shards of pottery, some rusted tool, broken glass, and some still recognizable stone work on the walls. This was, in fact, the home of the wizard who created the Kazoos. Now, however, it is mostly an empty cave. The most important rooms are described; the DM can leave the rest empty or add more encounters. Some ideas include exploring orcs, trapped areas, or a few old and still-active golems.

- One of the outer rooms is the lair of a pack of dire wolves. There are five of them (for higher level parties, the DM can use wolves with more HD).

- As the PCs explore the house, they enter a square room, with a stone well in the middle of it. The well has some writing in Halfling, which simply says "Wishing Well". It is magical, and the wizard used it for his hosts and friends. When someone is going to embark in a task - a travel, a quest, whatever - he could toss a coin into the well, and say "I wish you well on your task". This would grant the target a +1 competence bonus on any skill check made to complete his task, until the task was completed or until the bonus had been used twenty times. The magic is still there and odd enough, now that the wizard is dead, the powers of the well can be activated by anyone, for anyone. The sentence itself need not be precise ("I hope everything goes the right way" would still work as long as the PC is talking about a definite task), and it can be in any language.

- The room where the Kazoo itself is stored is occupied by a powerful nine-headed Hydra. The monster is so huge that it can barely slither in and out of the cave, and it is hungry. It will attack the PCs if they come close. If the PCs defeat it or escape its attention somehow (invisibility won't cut it, since the beast has Scent), they will find an old bag in a niche in the wall. It is a bag of holding, and it contains the Kazoo as well as a few potions and scrolls. It is a beautifully crafted instrument, built in wood, gold and silver, and it radiates a powerful magical aura.

Part Three
Meanwhile, something is going wrong at the capital city. An orc rogue has managed to infiltrate the court using a hat of disguise and has heard of the PCs' mission. Being too late to stop them, or even to inform his superiors, he waits for a good opportunity...

When the PCs return to the capital city, possibly having to defeat some more humanoid explorers, they meet the King's army halfway. The ruler has decided that he doesn't stand a chance in a prolonged siege, and he is going to try to defeat the orcs on the open field, hoping for the Kazoo to be delivered in time. When he sees the PCs, he is overjoyed. He gives orders to a lieutenant to give the Kazoo to Riker and get him and the six kazoo players ready on a nearby hill.

But instead, the orcish spy poses as Riker and obtains the Kazoo. He reaches the hill with the other players and begins a horrible kazoo performance. The puzzled rest of the orchestra try to play along, and the distorted notes fill the air and seem to coalesce in a huge dark mass of goblins riding wolves, which immediately attack the King's encampment! The orcish horde, seeing this, attacks just moments later.

In the general chaos, the real Riker meets the PCs, and the trick is revealed. The PC must now climb the hill, while fighting skilled goblin warriors on wolfback, bring Riker with them, wrest the kazoo from the false bard and try to get the situation under control.

When the orc is killed, the goblins around the hill vanish. Riker begins to play. Seeing the need for a quick cavalry unit, he chooses Wagner, and the other players (assuming noone killed them - otherwise, the PCs will have to do!) play along...

After seconds, the air ripples around the hill and dozens, hundreds, thousands of blonde, armed and angry Halfling women, wearing chainmail bikinis and mounted on war ponies, ride on the battlefield. All of them have Barbarian levels, and they immediately activate Rage and charge the orcs and goblins. As the Ride of the Valkyries for kazoo plays in the background, the horde is taken by surprise by this ferocious attack combined with the King's own forces and is quickly forced to retreat. After the battle, Riker (short on breath by now) stops playing and the halfling Vaklyries vanish, riding away on sunbeams.

Later, the King rewards the PCs (and the real Riker), and declares a national fest, effective immediately.

 

[el-remmen]

Received - consider your entry posted. . .

 

[el-remmen]

Yikes, I guess, Zappo hadn't read the last few posts. . .

This going to get confusing quick. . but I have a solution - Zappo I will be ediitng your entry to add the ingredients and your opponent's name at the top.

I ask in the future that all entries start with a header including the list off ingredients and who the constestants are for this round.

See Zappo's entry for a sample. . .

 

[Drawmack]

good entry Zappo, this competition is going to be a tight one. I just hope that I can make it to round too. *Is hoping word count actually matters*

 

[KDLadage]

I am here and will be for a while.

 

[el-remmen]

If we are lucky d20 Dwarf will apear in the next 20 minutes (b/c I am going out) and then we can probably get all of the first rounds done over this weekend!

I'll post again when I won't be around for the night.. .

 

[Mirth]

If you want to give me an early Xmas present, I'm still here

I'm just saying ...

This is my last ditch effort to be a contestant in case I was being too obtuse.

 

[el-remmen]

Someone is cutting it close!


Rune has 1 hour and 14 minutes remaining

 

[Mirth]

Begging post deleted.

 

[Rune]

Arwink vs. Rune

Ingredients:
Wedding gift
Evil grandmother
River Spirit
Lonely Treant
Clock Tower
Ring of Sustenance

The Wedding Gift

This is designed to be a very short (side-trek short) scenario for four high-level characters, level 15-20, and with few encounters in it, but potentially lethal ones.

Our story begins a long time ago, in happier times. In fact, it was nearly twenty-five years ago, the River Spirit was to wed the daughter of an influential Wizardess. However, despite the obvious intensity of the love shared between her daughter and the River Spirit, the Wizardess plotted continually to impede the marriage, all the while presenting a front of approval. The Wizardess had higher aims for her daughter; she hoped to present the daughter as a potential bride for the Prince of the Realm. With a typical mother’s irrationality, she just knew that the Prince would fall in love with the girl at first sight. Nevermind the girl’s silly crush on the River Spirit.

Then things began to go terribly wrong with her machinations. The River Spirit knew well the animosity that the Wizardess bore toward him and decided to call in a favor owed him from ages in the past. He knew an ancient treant, now grown to gargantuan size, who had, as a sapling, been caught in a forest fire. He had sheltered the young treant and had watched after him in the many centuries as he grew. The two had formed a friendship and the treant never suspect that the River Spirit’s intentions could be anything but good. Now, he asked the treant to be present at the wedding, but to be wary of an attack from the Wizardess, who, he explained, had no great love for nature and an excessive number of fire-based spells in her arsenal.

The wedding, itself, naturally, was held in a wooded glade, through which the River Spirit’s river ran. Predictably, the Wizardess did show up for the daughter’s wedding, as all of her schemes had failed to deter her daughter from marrying the spirit. Her last desperate plan would have to do. She brought great spells of flame down upon the woods, in order to disrupt the wedding. Then the treant made itself known. She was really no match for it, nor for the trees that it animated. She would have died that day, save for the intercession of the River Spirit, who wished to be thought of as benevolent. In actuality, his plans were far more cruel.

He asked for the treant to imprison the woman within his branches, but he also gave to her a ring of sustenance, so that her days would not be short. Furthermore, the River Spirit, in order to emphasize the enormity of time that the woman would lose, fashioned a massive clock into the branches of his treant friend, so that for the rest of her life, the woman could listen to the loud grinding of gears and the slow ticking of life passing her by. To complete the task, the Wizardess’ spellbook was taken and destroyed; the treant would easily be able to withstand the onslaught of whatever spells remained in her memory.

A lesser woman would have taken the ring off and starved to death. Instead, the Wizardess plotted her revenge.

The wedding came to pass, but the River Spirit was cheated of his bride when she died in childbirth. In a primal rage, the River Spirit’s river swelled and he cast the newborn baby far away from him. The baby was rescued and raised by nearby villagers, but a slight bluish tint to her skin always hindered attempts by her adopted parents from hiding her origin.

To become involved in this adventure, the PCs must be traveling, for some reason or another, through a wooded wilderness. They may either run across the granddaughter of the Wizardess, who has heard a cryptic message on the wind, or may hear that message for themselves. The message is a rasping whispering wind spell, the last spell in the memory of the evil grandmother trapped in the treant. The message says: “I have been wrongfully imprisoned in the clock tower up the hill for twenty-five years. Please rescue me. The guardian is strong. Be wary.” The message is delivered at the base of the hill, upon which a lonely treant stands.

The reason for this is simply a matter of logistics. The Wizardess can see the spot through gaps in the woven limbs of her prison. This is the first time she has ever seen people come out of the woods since her imprisonment. Whether or not the PCs actually hear the message, the granddaughter has heard it and is heading to its source. She has never heard of her grandmother, nor of her story, so she will be completely impressionable to the version told her by the Wizardess.

What the PCs and the granddaughter will see at the top of the hill is an oddity: a clock tower has been fashioned out of an immense tree. When they approach, the treant will feign sleep, so that the intruders will continue, even upon close examination, to believe that it is a tree. If it looks like the PCs are about to harm the tree, the evil grandmother will warn the PCs not to, telling them that it “lives.” Upon seeing her granddaughter, the Wizardess will immediately recognize her; she looks exactly as her mother did at that age, save for the bluish skin tone.

The girl has, however, no knowledge of her past. Her mother died in childbirth and, in a rage, the River Spirit cast her out, sending her away on the current of his river. She was found and raised in a nearby village, but has always been inexplicably drawn to these woods. She has never before met her grandmother.

The treant has, over two and a half decades of solitude away from his trees, with only the evil, plotting Wizardess for company, begun to go a bit insane. He is still neutral good, but he has is even worse at distinguishing right from wrong than he has ever been. He has also begun to sense that his old friend, the River Spirit, is not as good as he has always believed: not once in the past quarter century has he come to visit the treant. Furthermore, as the woman inside his branches ages (now somewhere around 75 years old), the treant slowly learns the extent of the punishment upon her is The punishment has been harsh on him as well, though; the River Spirit told the treant that she must be held far from any other trees, as she might still be able to wreak havoc upon them with any fire spells that she still had memorized. Because has never forgiven, nor forgotten, the Wizardess for her reckless assault on the trees, he is always careful not to stray from his barren spot at the top of the hill, where he can watch his trees, but may never speak with them. The treant is advanced to 21 HD and gargantuan size.

The River Spirit is identical to a Spirit of the Land (Water Manifestation) from the MM II in every way, except that this one is neutral evil and extraordinarily selfish. He does not particularly remember casting out the infant of his ill-fated bride; it is simply not something he’s thought about for the quarter-century since it happened. Upon seeing the daughter wandering by his woods, he has been struck by the similarities and has pursued her hand in marriage. The daughter is flattered, but not in love with the spirit. Nevertheless, she is contemplating the marriage.

The treant will stay silent during this exchange; he is no longer sure that the events that transpired were very different from the evil woman’s telling. She is sure to tell about her use of the fire spells at the wedding, with speech that is as repentant as possible.

Upon learning that the granddaughter’s suitor is the cruel punisher of this poor old woman, the granddaughter will swear to free her, asking the PCs for aid. If any plans made in the presence of the grandmother (and, hence, the treant) involve violence to the tower, the treant will make itself known at that time. It is possible for the PCs to destroy the treant, but ideally, they will come to a better solution, as the treant is not the villain; he merely holds to his oath.

It may well be possible for the treant to be convinced to let the Wizardess go, but only if the River Spirit can be tricked into granting her freedom. He is less likely to come to this conclusion if plans spoken before him involve causing harm to the River Spirit, which is, of course, the Wizardess’ ultimate aim. If the PCs will help her to escape, the granddaughter will be willing to go through a wedding with the River Spirit, provided that he set her grandmother free as a wedding gift to the bride.

If this plan comes to fruition, the River Spirit will yield to his incendiary desire to wed this spitting image of his lost wife. When (if) the PCs aid the daughter to escape, they may well need to fight the River Spirit; he will fight to the death in this particular battle, but he will not necessarily fight toe-to-toe. He knows his strengths and he uses them. If the PCs end up killing the River Spirit, the Wizardess will be most pleased. If they do not, the Wizardess will ever after seek a means of doing so, or convincing others to do so for her.

The treant may become an ally of the PCs against the River Spirit at some point, if he continues to become more bitter toward him, but if he ever sees any one of them, or the Wizardess, casting fire-based spells in his trees again, he will kill, if at all possible.

The Wizardess is a level five evocation specialist. The granddaughter may have a PC class, but no more than five levels in whatever class she is given.

Possible rewards in this scenario are the ring of sustenance and friendships or alliances between potentially powerful characters (the treant, the Wizardess, or the granddaughter).