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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rune" data-source="post: 528433" data-attributes="member: 67">Arwink vs. RuneIngredients:Wedding giftEvil grandmotherRiver SpiritLonely TreantClock TowerRing of SustenanceThe Wedding GiftThis 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).</blockquote>

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