"Iconic" encounters for a 1st lvl Points of Light PbP game

[Graf]

[edit: shortened thread title]
If you're playing in my 4e PbP game here on Enworld please don't read any further.
Likewise if you'd consider playing in a PbP 4e game. You'll really just spoil it for yourself.

Overview
So, to get started in 4e I'm running a PbP game. The basic premise is that the PCs grew up in this town that's under a spell that makes everyone like automatons. They go about their business, but they don't really think deeply (or at all) about their lives.
(Thinking about it now I think I got the idea partially from a Phillip K Dick short story).

The PCs "wake up" one day, and start exploring the world around them. They don't know anything, they can't read, initially they'll have some trouble leaving the town. They aren't even first level yet.

I have some ideas, but honestly I've been focused a bit bigger picture. I'd love to tap the gestalt wisdom of EnWorld.

[sblock=What do I mean by iconic?]
Killing giant rats under the city when you're first level?
Not Iconic.
A greedy merchant who eats and eats and does horrible things to people who owe him money and eats and everyone hates him but he's too rich and powerful for them to do anything. And one day his fancy town house (where he lived with his twelve sons and daughters) is abandoned and nearby houses find that something has been gnawing through the flagstones of their basement to get at their grain stores?
Iconic.
(It's the same encounter, but one is much more memorable than the other, no?)

If this is -not- your thing that's cool. I'm not saying that everyone's game should be what-I-call-iconic. I'm just shooting for that in this game.[/sblock]

Again, if you're playing in my game, or think you would in the future (i.e. you're planning on playing 4e on Enworld when the books come out) please stop reading.

[sblock=Details]
Themes
OOC/Meta:

• The decisions of the PCs matter. The game is extreme PoL. They are going to be the only classed PCs in the world. As far as sentient, powerful, decent individuals they're it.
  They'll effectively decide whether or not human civilization recovers, have an impact on what could replace humans if human civilization doesn't recover, whether or not the gods come back, etc.
  Not that this will necessarily be a big deal, especially at the beginning.

IC:

• It's a world were promises matter and deals are kept. The world around them is proof of what happens when you make bad deals and poor decisions.
• Things your ancestors did have an impact on you now; blood and family relationships matter.
• The remnants of decayed and destroyed empires, covered over by newly budding sprouts will be arrayed around them.

That's the big stuff.

Things I need
Encounters that may include fighting or roleplaying.
It's pseudo-mideval. You can splash in some other cultures or time periods but it ought to fit more or less in a standard DnD world.

Things I don't need/am not worried about
Not having 4e stats (if it comes up we'll wing it or skin it)
Anything like a sentient race (i.e. no goblins, kobolds, orcs, gnolls etc) - an interesting solo intelligent creature might work, especially if it can't communicate well with the PCs but my preference is more for unintelligent things. No camps of slavers, or traveling merchants.

I've listed the hooks that will lead to immediate "nearby adventures" below.
The first one is inside the "quarantine zone"; the others are all outside.

The "what I'm thinking" spoiler blocks are just that. Random thoughts. Respond to, ignore or belittle them as you like.

• [sblock=The castle catacombs]There is a castle on a hill that overlooks the town. The castle was ruled by a very good lord, a long line of very good lords. He understood that something really bad was happening and accepted an offer from a not-good person to protect his town from what was happening.
  The magical effects around the town (people acting like automatons, it being difficult impossible to leave, bad stuff not coming in) are directly a result of his family sacrificing themselves to protect the town.
  
  The ghost of his daughter has visited one of the PCs already. She wants the whole effect to be broken so that she can finally rest.
  [sblock=What I'm thinking about the castle]Honestly I'm struggling a bit to come up with an interesting encounter. Which is bad news since this place is inside the zone and a natural place for people to want to go to first.
  
  My current best guess is to do something with undead or ghosts.
  Unfortunately the four souls of the king, his mother, his wife and his daughter, however pure and strong weren't enough to get serious mojo going. The dark sorcerer needed a bit more "umph". So he took the souls of everyone in the castle, servants, pets, everyone. This would explain having undead of some variety floating around.​
  My problem is that I don't really like ghosts or undead as monsters. They're rarely interesting. And story wise they make poor opponents. Ghosts are either really powerful (Exorcist/Japanese horror movie style) or weak (poltergeists).
  Maybe
  somebody who was in the castle but not tied to it in anyway, like a thief or a spy (so when the lord signed on the dotted line s/he wouldn't be included)? Now they're a monster? But they don't want to kill anyone and so they just beat up one of the pcs and tell them to leave?​
  Of course, that violates my original premise of not wanting anything intelligent floating around. [/sblock] [/sblock]
• [sblock=The ghost town]The town as it originally was (around a castle) and the town as it is now (where the boundaries of the magical effect fall) are different. A chunk of the old town is sitting directly outside of the new town.
  Lights and strange sounds come from it at night.
  [sblock=What I'm thinking about the ghost town]I'd like for something to have moved into the town, some sort of critter maybe? Maybe something that feeds upon the magic of the effect around the town? Can't really think of anything interesting.[/sblock][/sblock]
• [sblock=The bridge to no-where]A river snakes around the town. There is a bridge that leads across it and seems to go no where.
  [sblock=What I'm thinking about the bridge]I'd like to drop some grass covered stone lanterns have them make a winding path deep into the woods, as the players proceed along the path the lanterns get brighter and brighter and the forest gets dimmer and dimmer.
  
  Initially I was thinking about a westernized version of the fox-shapechanger-trickster from Japanese folklore, but it overlaps with the serpent below and would be a bit complex for an early encounter.
  
  I'd prefer something that could be wrapped up relatively easily.
  [/sblock]
  [/sblock]
• [sblock=The town in the distance]The PCs can see this from the highest spire of the castle (and they or some other child) has seen it. The village is abandoned and ruined. As they travel around they will see images of things that happened a hundred years ago (right before their town was created). Seeing some of those figures will give them clues about what happened in the past and how their town was made.[sblock=What I'm thinking about the town in the distance]I'd like to have a fight here. They'll have traveled a ways. Fighting among these images repeating themselves would be interesting; maybe they go into a nearby mini-dungeon? (an abandoned temple of demonworshipers build on top of a temple of the old gods?)
  
  I need something that can plausibly explain these "recorded images from over a hundred years ago". If push comes to shove it could be some sort of psionic welspring under the town that creates Phrenic monsters. Not sure if I want to lead with something psionic in an ostensibly normal DnD game.
  
  Of course if the choice is, psionics, and "mind magic" I'll take psionics.[/sblock]
  [/sblock]
• [sblock=The serpent in the swamp]
  The PCs seem unlikely to come to the serpent first. Nobody's expressed much interest in the hook. Which is fine since it leads someplace definitive, the groups (probable) first adventure.
  [sblock=What I'm planning for the serpent]
  The serpent (a banelar) knows a lot, and never lies (this rarely stops it from deceiving people to get what it wants). It times past it was more than it is now but it chose discretion over valor and lives the life of petty tyrant, ruling over a nearby clan of kobolds.
  Or it did until the kobolds were overrun by more aggressive bunch of kobolds, a vanguard of a new empire rising in the south. The creature could probably take out the new kobolds, but that would be a lot of work, and involve some risk; the creature likes neither.
  It sees the PCs as useful pawns in getting rid of the kobolds. In return it would probably tell the PCs about something valuable that they want which is far away.
  
  I like this arc because it does several things 1) re-enforces the low degree of development 2) foreshadows the appearance of the "Scaled Nation" 3) lets me introduce the existing nature worshipers and a religious schism that I plan on exploiting to create lots of villains 4) the banelar is the sort of intelligent creature I like, it's got a malignant agenda, and is likely to eventually be as much a foil for the PCs as an ally, while still being a reasonable challenge (i.e. in a few levels they're as much a threat to the banelar as he would be to them)[/sblock]
  [/sblock]

[/sblock]

 

[Gilladian]

What's the reason for this curse? Is someone controlling the town this way? Or was it the result of some action taken by the folk in generations past? Is anyone else aware of it?

What broke the curse for the players?

These are all obvious questions the PCs will ask, and you need to plot adventures that will lead to the answers. Or be prepared in some way to reveal the answers as part of their explorations.

I'd tend to think that the curse is a side-effect of some other magical entity or activity going on that has little or nothing to do with the townsfolk.

Like maybe the dwarves mining up on the hill not far away dump their tailings into the river, which taints the town's water supply. Everyone who drinks of it becomes zombie-like. And for some reason, the PCs have lately been unable/unwilling to drink the water. Or they found something better to drink.

 

[Graf]

What's the reason for this curse? Is someone controlling the town this way? Or was it the result of some action taken by the folk in generations past? Is anyone else aware of it?

[sblock=Le Answers]The reasons for the curse are somewhat complex, I didn't want to write out two pages of history, seeing as how the first post was already really long.

Basically the "curse" is actually that they can't remember their past, if they do then they break a covenant (an extremely bad covenant that their greedy ancestors were tricked (sort of) into making).
If they figure stuff out? then they've broken the contract and the creatures their ancestors made the deal with get to come back to their world.

The "daze" effect is a method to ensure that the townfolk don't find out what's going on. It is created by a specific source (i.e. a somebody) who does, in a sense, control the town.
But the town, in effect, is a spell that person is casting, very powerful (effectively epic level) magic that's doing a bunch of things.

The person controlling the town isn't epic level, so "casting" the ritual has taken them close to 100 years. And they aren't completely in control of it.

See? Kinda complex.[/sblock]

What broke the curse for the players?

[sblock]The spell that's being cast through the town is doing a few things, one of them is that it's making the town important.
On a metaphysical level the town is the most important place in the world right now.

Places of importance call heroic souls; which will inhabit the pcs and transform them into "heroes of legend". Except that, because the world is so messed up, instead of being awesome kick butt epic level types; they're first level.

Effectively the catastrophe has "reset" the heroic soul system (think the comic Planetary). The PCs are the first iteration of the heroic souls; vestiges really.[/sblock]

These are all obvious questions the PCs will ask, and you need to plot adventures that will lead to the answers. Or be prepared in some way to reveal the answers as part of their explorations.

[sblock]I appreciate you're trying to help me, but I am aware that I need a plot and that I need to have solutions and answers to basic stuff like that.
I have lots and lots of that stuff.
I do plan (as I mentioned several times in the original post) to get that out to the players as they investigate.

The point of this thread (such as it is) is to get ideas for nifty sorts of "filler" encounters. Ones that have a theme, or are stimulating in some way but aren't just FOLLOW MY BIG MEGA PLOT FROM POINT A TO B TO C.

I have some stuff that could reasonably go on that is directly plot related.
The thing that makes DnD great is that it's often non-linear and player driven. I want to capture that by giving the group the chance to do stuff that isn't just "follow the big red plot arrow".

[edit: My basic plan is to take cues from player decisions; directly and from things they have their characters do. But starting off, it's a bit tricky, they don't know much, they haven't had the chance to make many big decisions yet.
Including ideas from different people would be a bit of a hedge to make sure that they have a wide enough array of choices to effectively point me in the right direction.]

Of course, since I've been spending my time on all this 100 year old catastrophe, epic magical spell, mysterious controlling figure, ancient curse, type stuff I was/am having a bit of trouble digging back down to the "interesting low level encounter" stage.[/sblock]

Like maybe the dwarves mining up on the hill not far away dump their tailings into the river, which taints the town's water supply. Everyone who drinks of it becomes zombie-like. And for some reason, the PCs have lately been unable/unwilling to drink the water. Or they found something better to drink.

[sblock]I appreciate you're trying to help but I specifically said I didn't want other intelligent PC races.
It's the only sort of suggestion I can't use.

The game is supposed to be extreme PoL, not FR, no Eberron.
There aren't colonies of dwarves and elves hanging out just over thge hills doing stuff like mining and trading and living normal kinds of lives DnD lives.[/sblock]

 

[Inyssius]

Excellent work so far. I may have to steal all of this, so please keep us posted on further developments and ideas.

Here's what I can think of:
[sblock]Some distance from town along a long-disused and overgrown path, an old and reclusive hedge wizard or witch (basically, a gleaner) lived. She wasn't possessed of any significant power, but knew enough lore to learn that Something Bad was coming an hour or so before it actually came. In a panic, she searched through her books for something that would help, and found a ritual of protection. She really didn't know what it did, but she tried to cast it anyway.

It didn't go so well. Basically, the ritual opened a minor doorway to the Shadowfell, and nasty Shadow things have been coming through for some time. A cloud of unhealthy magic hangs over the shack; inside, the remnants of the witch lie inside a hastily drawn chalk circle. The shack is guarded by the witch's dog familiar: it's still alive, but a hundred years of starvation, disease, and magical residue have seriously twisted the creature. It's about the size of a bear, and violently insane. Swarms of insubstantial shades will also try to kill or possess anything that opens the door.

The witch's books and journals lying around the shack are mostly beyond repair, but some are still semi-legible--if the PCs ever learn to read, they may contain some notes on arcane lore and handy properties of the local flora.[/sblock][sblock]What seems quietly alien to me may inspire unstoppable giggling or derisive snark among your group, but I would make myconids a local power.

They're probably sentient, but they can't speak Common, and done properly they aren't anywhere near humanoid. They're not hostile unless attacked, just mildly curious, but they'll attack the hell out of anyone who tries to stop their slow but steady expansion. Perhaps they've been gaining a lot of above-ground territory over the last hundred years. Maybe they've even encroached on the protected town, and automaton hunters and loggers have been steadily entering their territory, getting enchanted by their spores, and eventually dying and being reanimated (and half covered with fungi and assorted other plant life, since they haven't really had to move in all that time). [/sblock]

 

[Graf]

Excellent work so far. I may have to steal all of this, so please keep us posted on further developments and ideas.

Thanks! You've done a great job of springing off the basic premise in some new and interesting directions!
Actually a chunk of it changed, and then changed again when one of my players disapepeared (the perils of PbM). I'll type up what I have in the next day or two.

[sblock]Some distance from town along a long-disused and overgrown path, an old and reclusive hedge wizard or witch (basically, a gleaner) lived. She wasn't possessed of any significant power, but knew enough lore to learn that Something Bad was coming an hour or so before it actually came. In a panic, she searched through her books for something that would help, and found a ritual of protection. She really didn't know what it did, but she tried to cast it anyway.

It didn't go so well. Basically, the ritual opened a minor doorway to the Shadowfell, and nasty Shadow things have been coming through for some time. A cloud of unhealthy magic hangs over the shack; inside, the remnants of the witch lie inside a hastily drawn chalk circle. The shack is guarded by the witch's dog familiar: it's still alive, but a hundred years of starvation, disease, and magical residue have seriously twisted the creature. It's about the size of a bear, and violently insane. Swarms of insubstantial shades will also try to kill or possess anything that opens the door.

The witch's books and journals lying around the shack are mostly beyond repair, but some are still semi-legible--if the PCs ever learn to read, they may contain some notes on arcane lore and handy properties of the local flora.[/sblock]

Despite being an unabashed eberron fan (and by extension a KB fan), I'd somehow missed that link, very interesting. Very cool. It ties in with the exploration of magic and civilization in Eberron too actually.
[sblock]I love this idea. At first I was like "that's really original. but obvious (in the sense that it fits naturally)". Then I sat back and thought about it for a while and I was like, "on a grand scheme about half of the plot hooks I have set up tie in with this, the idea that destruction was coming, people made desperate choices, and there was fallout.
I will almost certainly put this in the "next town over" or maybe in the ghost town. Good stuff.
Maybe in the ghost town, where the exiled rat creatures have enclosed the creature in a crude ring of iron to keep it hemed in?
Gives the PCs a decsion to make right away. Especially if they fight/drive off the rats and then run into the ring of iron and something evil looking beyond it.[/sblock]

[sblock]What seems quietly alien to me may inspire unstoppable giggling or derisive snark among your group, but I would make myconids a local power.

They're probably sentient, but they can't speak Common, and done properly they aren't anywhere near humanoid. They're not hostile unless attacked, just mildly curious, but they'll attack the hell out of anyone who tries to stop their slow but steady expansion. Perhaps they've been gaining a lot of above-ground territory over the last hundred years. Maybe they've even encroached on the protected town, and automaton hunters and loggers have been steadily entering their territory, getting enchanted by their spores, and eventually dying and being reanimated (and half covered with fungi and assorted other plant life, since they haven't really had to move in all that time). [/sblock]

[sblock]I this is a pretty crazy concidence. I was thinking about something similar and wound up scrawling "fungi dungeon!"
I was going to have the PCs run into two different "power groups" that'd I'd been developing as they were fighting over a dungeon (an easy way to introduce them at weakened strength and thus have the PCs be able to overcome them).
But I wanted the dungeon to be meaningful, so it had to have some sort of good stuff, but didn't want to give it away for free. And I wanted to be interesting, and not just a sort of random collection of unitelligent monsters. Which runs into my no-intelligent monster rule.
Thus some sort of fungi dungeon, it'd play back into a theme that seem to be reoccuring (i.e. non-human life on the ascendance). Or maybe two themes if you also add in people-making-themselves-non-humans-in-an-attempt-to-avoid-the-curse/destruction-and-winding-up-with-more-than-they-barganed-for.

I was thinking the same thing: strange intelligent, but not-communicative with little shared motivations in common with the PCs. Protective without being aggressive.
You've taken it and blow it up to the extreme here. I'm not sure about an overland empire, since there are several violent forces I'm tinkering with having float around but it raises a lot of really interesting possibilities.
I'd consider making it some sort of fungi template and/or set of monsters, so you'd have myconids and then a bunch of different fungi creatures (a liuminecent moss that blasts people on command and is actually almost like a priest caste?).
[/sblock]
Great stuff! Thanks for the ideas!

 

[Graf]

[sblock=beating an idea to death?]
So I was thinking that each myconid would just be a default sort of creature, but that it could pick up and act as a host for a "specialized" creature of some type. Like the glowing priest would be a rod like thing that they'd pick up and it would fuse with them arm, in effect taking them over and then they'd function like a priest-creature. Another would pick up a shield and it'd fuse with it's arm and be like a paladin creature.
So the myconids themselves would just be willing hosts (like worker bees) and their intelligent (or more intelligent) members of society would be generally stationary fungi. Sort of like intelligent magical items.
The other thought was to have them not be items so much as little fungi growing out of myconids themselves.

Then I was thinking 'what if, in the future, some of the heroic souls actually start incarnating into myconids.

In the meantime there is another potential problem: the group doesn't have anyone in the defender role. Ostensibly I don't care, but since I've never run a 4e game before I'd hate to have it wind up in some kind of TPK type situation.
I'd been considering giving one of the PCs an item that allowed them to summon a defender type creature but that had two problems:
1. Giving a single PC an item that effectively allows them to act as another PC is awefully powerful (i.e. they sort of dominate the conflict)
2. The PC turned down the magic item.

So now I'm thinking maybe I should just introduce a myconid paladin early on. He'd have orginally supposed to have been a dwarf but owing to a lack of suitable dwarves he'd incarnated instead. He'd be intelligent but basically incapible of communication and follow the party around due to a connection between his heroic soul and that of another party member. Maybe Paladin with the Fighter feats mixed in?
I'm imagining a myconid with a glowing mantle of mushroom shaped spores around his shoulders.
The myconids colony inhabiting the dungeon mentioned in the post above could be tainted in some way, thus the PCs could purge the myconids of taint; in the process they would gain an eventual ally (and possibly a way to deal peacefully with any myconid empire that's growing over the contenient).[/sblock]

 

[Graf]

So here are where things stand now.

[sblock=Rats]
A greedy merchant who eats and eats and does horrible things to people who owe him money and eats and everyone hates him but he's too rich and powerful for them to do anything. And one day his fancy town house (where he lived with his twelve sons and daughters) is abandoned and nearby houses find that something has been gnawing through the flagstones of their basement to get at their grain stores?

I decided this was too good an idea to languish.
[sblock=Rats in the walls]I've been playing around with the idea that the person-who-created/sort-of-controls the town has powerful transmutation abilities. The idea that there were rich nobles in town that it bought off with promises appeals to me. So in addition to having a deal with the good nobles who ruled the land there was also a "side-deal" with the powerful and greedy merchants.

The town needed a more zones and a "rich people's neighborhood" had been brought up by someone casually (they called it Nobelm I think). Having the mansion and it's abandoned areas as a possible mini-dungeon within the town appealed to me.

And transformed rats are relatively "unweird". Which is good because I tend toward weird, or if you want to be generous "new weird" and the game is supposed to be at least somewhat normal.

I also had been wanted a sort of "critter" encounter in the ghost town and big rats works for that. (I'd been thinking shadow rats originally, but in retrospect that's probably not necessary and it doesn't work well with Inyssius' dead gleaner and the Shadowfell.)

So the person-who-created/sort-of-controls the town cut a deal with some of the rich merchants to support him, in exchange for "freedom from the ravages of time", "a position in the new order suitable to individuals of their stature" and "bountiful and supportive progeny who would never betray them" and then transformed them into rats.
Big rats. So the original signers are ageless oversized rats, their barely sentient but loyal progeny are numerous. They live around and possibly under the town, but they can't get into it (the same effect that keeps the townspeople inside keeps them out).
They see the town as a sort of eden that they've been denied.

Their not so bright progeny will probably initially encounter the PCs and fight, after that they'll sue for peace and ask the PCs to intervene on their behalf. Meanwhile the person-who-created/sort-of-controls the town will hold them up as an example of the sorts of problems that would befall the town if the magics surrounding it were undone.

Handled properly they could become a sort of defense force for the town.[/sblock]

[sblock=The castle catacombs]There is a castle on a hill that overlooks the town. The castle was ruled by a very good lord, a long line of very good lords. He understood that something really bad was happening and accepted an offer from a not-good person to protect his town from what was happening.
The magical effects around the town (people acting like automatons, it being difficult impossible to leave, bad stuff not coming in) are directly a result of his family sacrificing themselves to protect the town.

The ghost of his daughter has visited one of the PCs already. She wants the whole effect to be broken so that she can finally rest.
[sblock=What I'm thinking about the castle]Honestly I'm struggling a bit to come up with an interesting encounter. Which is bad news since this place is inside the zone and a natural place for people to want to go to first.

My current best guess is to do something with undead or ghosts.

Unfortunately the four souls of the king, his mother, his wife and his daughter, however pure and strong weren't enough to get serious mojo going. The dark sorcerer needed a bit more "umph". So he took the souls of everyone in the castle, servants, pets, everyone. This would explain having undead of some variety floating around.​

My problem is that I don't really like ghosts or undead as monsters. They're rarely interesting. And story wise they make poor opponents. Ghosts are either really powerful (Exorcist/Japanese horror movie style) or weak (poltergeists).
Maybe

somebody who was in the castle but not tied to it in anyway, like a thief or a spy (so when the lord signed on the dotted line s/he wouldn't be included)? Now they're a monster? But they don't want to kill anyone and so they just beat up one of the pcs and tell them to leave?​

Of course, that violates my original premise of not wanting anything intelligent floating around. [/sblock] [/sblock]

[sblock=Updates to the castle]Not much really. One of the original players who'd seemed interested and was originally supposed to be decended from the royal family has stopped posting. (Perils of PbP) so I'm planning on backgrounding it.
It is possible that the player characters could go here, guided by one of their cousins, who is a sort of oracle of the gods (but silenced, I'm still working on why).

If so they could be somewhat troubled by ghosts, but with her guiding them, possibly with a candle she's lit that gives off some strange radiance, they can go to the chapel of the castle and see the dead family. Maybe the person-who-controls-the-town will come out and meet them then. Give an overview of the deal (i.e. the town is protected, but the price is the magical effect that dulls the minds of the towns inhabitants).
[/sblock]

[sblock=The ghost town]The town as it originally was (around a castle) and the town as it is now (where the boundaries of the magical effect fall) are different. A chunk of the old town is sitting directly outside of the new town.
Lights and strange sounds come from it at night.
[sblock=What I'm thinking about the ghost town]I'd like for something to have moved into the town, some sort of critter maybe? Maybe something that feeds upon the magic of the effect around the town? Can't really think of anything interesting.[/sblock][/sblock]

[sblock=Updates to the ghost town]Between the rats above and Inyssius' gleaner who opened a gate to the Shadowfell I think this zone is done.

The strange lights at night come from the gate, the familiar, a massive hound partially empowered by demonic energy, guards it. They are in turn bound in that tight area by a circle of iron placed there by the rats.

I'm thinking to just go all out and make the hound a hellhound type, when it sees the PCs it'll charge and breath fire, only to have the fire "hit" the circle of iron (really the air above it) and be blocked.

Since the person who controls the town also uses shadowmagic a lot it's convenient for them to have a partially open gateway (especially one that doesn't have their fingerprints on it, so someone scrying for them or their magic won't be able to zero in on the town).

It offers a lot of opportunities for later... do the PCs explore the shadowfell? What if something slips past the hound? Can the PCs befriend the hound and get access to the books and drawings that it's (effectively) guarding)?

I'm planning on having the person who controls the town summon shadow creatures to do their bidding periodically, so if the PCs decide to fight them then closing the portal would be an option.
[/sblock]

l[*][sblock=The bridge to no-where]A river snakes around the town. There is a bridge that leads across it and seems to go no where.
[sblock=What I'm thinking about the bridge]I'd like to drop some grass covered stone lanterns have them make a winding path deep into the woods, as the players proceed along the path the lanterns get brighter and brighter and the forest gets dimmer and dimmer.

Initially I was thinking about a westernized version of the fox-shapechanger-trickster from Japanese folklore, but it overlaps with the serpent below and would be a bit complex for an early encounter.

I'd prefer something that could be wrapped up relatively easily.
[/sblock]
[/sblock]

[sblock=What I'm thinking about the bridge]After I posted my original post I realized I'd been ignoring the spirit of the original idea, which had been player submitted. They'd wanted that forest to lead to some sort mystical realm

The massive forest on the other side of the river would sometimes break the concentration that he usually had with his work. He would stare into it and wonder what was out there. He began to feel truly alive with just the thought of wandering its depths and exploring its secrets. He would occasionally see shadowy figures staring back from a distance, but later he would always chalk it up to his imagination.

Until a few weeks ago, that is. While bathing in the river after a long days work one of the shadowy figures suddenly appeared on the edge of the river and just stood there. Its entire body was concealed in a cloak, but it certainly wasn’t his imagination. Adrenaline surged through him for perhaps the first time in his life. The sky seemed bluer, the grass greener, and the forest beyond the river more majestic. He frantically swam across the river to get to the figure. Who was this man? (or woman)… He got to the other shore, but, as normal, could go no farther once he hit the boundary. He tried with all his might to push past it, but couldn’t. The figure just stared at him and his efforts for a few brief moments longer, before turning and slowly disappearing back into the forest.

I punted. I didn't want a mystical world sitting on the border of the town. I didn't want shadowy humanoids either really.
Instead I tried to loop back, creating a ghost character that would connect to the castle. That player quickly lost interest (though they've pulled out of other online games as well so it's hard to say whether this was related or not).

So that's a moral I suppose, if you say "player guided" and someone wants to put a magical plane filled with magical cloaked fairy people on the border of the town it'd be best to work it in.
I'm not really sure how I'd do that if the player came back though. I'd considered having them be approached or challenged by fairies who'd been blocked from the plane by the events a hundred years ago as some sort of emessery but I don't really see the fairies playing fair. Of course, tricking a PC is pretty easy when they don't know anything.

Again, since I haven't explained explicitly that there aren't supposed to be a lot of humanoids it wasn't a bad choice by the player. But if a new player posted the same thing tomorrow i'm still not sure where I could take it. [/sblock]

[*][sblock=The town in the distance]The PCs can see this from the highest spire of the castle (and they or some other child) has seen it. The village is abandoned and ruined. As they travel around they will see images of things that happened a hundred years ago (right before their town was created). Seeing some of those figures will give them clues about what happened in the past and how their town was made.[sblock=What I'm thinking about the town in the distance]I'd like to have a fight here. They'll have traveled a ways. Fighting among these images repeating themselves would be interesting; maybe they go into a nearby mini-dungeon? (an abandoned temple of demonworshipers build on top of a temple of the old gods?)

I need something that can plausibly explain these "recorded images from over a hundred years ago". If push comes to shove it could be some sort of psionic welspring under the town that creates Phrenic monsters. Not sure if I want to lead with something psionic in an ostensibly normal DnD game.

Of course if the choice is, psionics, and "mind magic" I'll take psionics.[/sblock]
[/sblock][sblock=The serpent in the swamp]
The PCs seem unlikely to come to the serpent first. Nobody's expressed much interest in the hook. Which is fine since it leads someplace definitive, the groups (probable) first adventure.
[sblock=What I'm planning for the serpent]
The serpent (a banelar) knows a lot, and never lies (this rarely stops it from deceiving people to get what it wants). It times past it was more than it is now but it chose discretion over valor and lives the life of petty tyrant, ruling over a nearby clan of kobolds.
Or it did until the kobolds were overrun by more aggressive bunch of kobolds, a vanguard of a new empire rising in the south. The creature could probably take out the new kobolds, but that would be a lot of work, and involve some risk; the creature likes neither.
It sees the PCs as useful pawns in getting rid of the kobolds. In return it would probably tell the PCs about something valuable that they want which is far away.

I like this arc because it does several things 1) re-enforces the low degree of development 2) foreshadows the appearance of the "Scaled Nation" 3) lets me introduce the existing nature worshipers and a religious schism that I plan on exploiting to create lots of villains 4) the banelar is the sort of intelligent creature I like, it's got a malignant agenda, and is likely to eventually be as much a foil for the PCs as an ally, while still being a reasonable challenge (i.e. in a few levels they're as much a threat to the banelar as he would be to them)[/sblock]
[/sblock][/sblock]

No updates on either of these. I like them, as the world gets "more full" they fall back a bit in importance.

Some additional stuff
[sblock=My very first idea for the world]
Was the idea that of a group of pcs fighting/sneaking their way through an abandoned gigantic gothic city to a "map room" that contained a magical map; they would be hounded by demonic creatures and get to the room only to discover that the magical map was missing, but they had normal maps about that they could use to explore this world.

I extrapolated that I wanted the world to have been dominated by fiends for a period of time but not for that long (so they'd left behind creatures touched by fiendish power but no actual fiends themselves) and that the acquisition of "lost knowledge" would be extremely important.

[sblock=The current stab at backstory is an attempt to fill this in]
The world had been temporarily overrun by demons, chunks of it may still be missing either in the hells or other planes near the abyss). The previous empire was extremely corrupt and the ruling class were demonoogists of various stripes. A deal was struck by the lords an ladies where, basically the "past" was traded for the "future" the demons would get the "past" lock-stock-and-barrel and a glorious new future of immortality power and influence would be gained by the rulers of the land (and select families, hangers on, etc).

The humans, being decadent, and some combination of competitive, greedy, shortsighted and some combination of drunk/high/etc. cut the deal without really realizing what was going on (and or closing their eyes to the truth, some thought they'd become demon lords, or that there was a loophole of one sort or another, etc)
And then were somewhat surprised to find out that they were supposed to enact a ritual that would wipe the minds of the entire population of the past. They balked (or their wizards did) and hell came to the planet. Portals opened, fiends bubbled forth, and eventually they realized they had to go through with it.
The ritual (which I am so so tempted to call the Ritual of Babble) sundered their languages fulfilling the pledge and driving the devils off the plane. The plane stabilized, the fiends were basically gone.

The only people who remain and remember things are those who have manged to use magic to distance themselves so completely from humanity that they weren't effected by the Babble effect.[/sblock]

[sblock=the failure of the heroic souls]I flip flop a lot on heroic souls. Not strange really since the whole meta-concept is that they're a plot enabling device.

The core idea, as mentioned above, is that their a bunch of souls that keep reincarnating to fight the good fight. During the corrupt period of the empire most were either corrupted, neutralized or tricked.
A lot of the powerful movers and shakers in the world figured out enough about the heroic souls that they were able to bind their power either in the years before the empire decayed, or during the ensuing confusion.
Most of the big movers and shakers, powerful wizards casting the rituals, people negotiating with the demons, etc. were were heroic souls. And a bunch of evil heroic souls managed to killl and trap heroic souls (preventing them from reappearing to stop the coming tragedy.

I'm thinking that the PCs are much weaker than heroic souls traditionally have been. To the point that they won't really attract the attention of these evil souls (they are weak and weird phenomena, the evil souls who are smart enough to become aware of them aren't inclined to slay them outright for fear that they may trigger some sort of unpleasant reaction, and also they offer potential as servants.)

Fundimentally most of the evil heroic souls tell of themselves as having been "in desperate no-win situation where I had to do what I had to do" or else "I made a mistake, but I never meant for things to happen the way that they did".
[/sblock]

So I originally had this group
[sblock=The Demonic City]Ruled by a bunch of demonologists who managed to graft enough demonic parts into their bodies that they aren't technically human anymore. This is where the map room is. I was thinking of a ruling council of wizards with demonic bodyparts who have a very laze faire attitute with regard to the city's affairs. They each have a small coterie of close advisors/lovers/children (all either orgiinally non-human or warped enough to be immune to the babble effect).
They inforce order over their cities through a corps of fiendish orcs. Their only law, which they enforce using magic, is that no more than 10 humans may gather in one place at one time (to prevent humans from becoming civilized enough to start resisting the babble effect).
The city itself is administered by teiflings, warped humans who are loathed and feared by the masses they oversee. The tieflings are affected by the babble and agressively protect their position by claiming any sort of writing/ore they can get their hands on and turning it over to their masters.
Their cities have bizarre new religious orders, large groups of non-humanoids who hate humans (demonic invasions are nobody's idea of a good time).

Originally they were a power unto themselves dominating the region. As I've played around with adding additional power groups to the setting they, bulwarked by their fiendish orcs become an important power. Each of the demonic wizards has epic level ritual magic and is a high paragon-teir solo creature. Their servants are low paragon tier.
They send out trading caravans and solo teiflings (really spies) to the surrounding areas.[/sblock]

I was also considering almost from the begining including
[sblock=The gnomish mistake]This is the idea that probably maps the most closely to Inyssius' gleaner.

When the demons came a bunch of very smart gnomes, who lived in a mountain range to the east decided they needed to call up something that evened the score. They opened up the gate to the worst place that they could; but only for a second as a sort of bluff. They figured they could get the devils to back down.
The gnomes were very cunning, but they had not realized that horrors that were never meant to be lived in places where time runs sideways and backwards. There spell was only supposed to last for a moment, and yet, a hundred years from now that moment still hasn't come.

The gnomes are quite dead, but the Kaotri have risen in their place.

I agree with the consensus that the Kaotri are a cool monster but I've re-imagined them where their primary shitick is "time control". ground zero of the gate to the far realm is a point of null time, a 100 years have passed, but no time has passed there, or all time has, it's impossible to say.
Further out time flows very slowly. For the initial Kaotri community only a few years have passed, which is really good because if they'd had a 100 years they'd probably have sucked the entire plane into the far realm.

I like the idea of the Kaotri as a sort of infection that the material plane picked up when it was sick and is still struggling to get rid of.

Originally I had them "lose" on the plane, but now I'm considering having them "ringed" by the elvin empire and the demonic city.
[/sblock]

I also recently started thinking about:
[sblock=The Vampire Kingdoms]I don't really know why I've decided that there need to be vampire kingdoms floating around. It's probably having played too much soul reaver.
It does offer a few advantages.

• Vampires make good villains; since they're immortal it's easy to imagine that some of them predate the ritual of babble and aren't affected (i.e. they're inhuman enough to not to fall under it, while appearing human enough to be good to rp with)
• Drinking the heartsblood of a heroic soul with the right ritual would allow someone to trap heroic souls in an interesting and useful way (beside putting them in a crystal) -- you can say that the heroic soul, split out over hundreds of vampires allows them access to minor magical items
• If the PCs are going to lead the rebirth of human society then there need to be humans around. Right now most everyone doesn't really like humans. Vampires are a natural group who would want to keep humans around
• Blood cults are a great new religion. It's like the blood of vol (from eberron) on steroids.
• Vampire kingdoms from rifts and Dry Fall/brucolac from the Scar "proved" to me that vampire dominated societies have legs

So the vampire emperor has actually drained about 12 heroic souls (i'm thinking that he's basically just the dude from Ravenloft), he's parceled out 5 or so to liutenants who rule the other kingdoms (they were probably all heroic souls themselves) and is using the other 6 or so to empower his vampiric lieutenants (so they can get use magic items, do the equivalent of gain levels, etc).

I'm thinking that they're currently in a sort of semi-cold war with the demonic city, working on containing the Kaorti and maybe secretly treating with the elvin kingdom.

Maybe six vampire kingdoms (one main one and five regions)? The gore tax is collected in red urns by priests. Vampires only gain in power when they kill mortals, since most just drink the blood (and indirectly at that) they're fairly weak. Vampires who want to gain power and get the right to drink sentients they have to engage in battle.

I'm thinking that the most militant of the vampire kingdoms is the one engaging in war with the demonic city. They recently launched a major strike that got bogged down when too many of their forces stopped to feed.

A pack of rogue vampires (what's left of a squad) slipped down past the city looking for "greener pastures" and show up near the PCs where they find forest animals drained of blood. Defeating the vampires will give them access to their journals, revealing the existence of the kingdoms.
[/sblock]

[sblock=Elvin Empire]There is also an decadent elvin city state that is far away. They have some sort of portal magic and "ate" an elvin god. So the nobles are all holding a little divine spark inside.
Have more but that's the gist. They exile their least favored cousins to man some border posts around the Kaotri.[/sblock]

[/sblock]

 

[Graf]

[sblock=Just to finish the thought... ]
The elvin empire:
A more complete version would be: when the demons invaded one of the elvin demi-gods sent word to his favored clerics that he was arriving personally and to make preparations. The god was a sort of brawling CG Kord type figure. Originally almost barbaric over the ages he'd acquired a sort of drunken monk type of wisdom (the stereotypically zen-type "do don't think"). Unfortunately his order had been infiltrated by some sort of group of ur-priests (assisted, naturally by some cunning devils who saw a lot of opportunity in a captured god). So when he arrived he was bound by some sort of epic level effect. The priests asserted, and the Elvin nobility ultimately assented to, the idea that the god couldn't triumph against the demons and that by holding him back they were protecting elves throughout the multiverse and guaranteeing the perpetuation of the elvin kingdom.
That bought them enough time to "eat" the god. So these ur-priests litterally became divine, when the devils came for the elvin city the newly divine false priests kept their word, the elvin civilization was spared, at least part of it, their city. The rest of the elves died or were accepted as slaves in their city (they did so like having the elvin queen cleaning their chamber pots).

When the ritual of babble was completed all the non-divine nobles (one family really) promptly forgot everything, and the ur-priests erected a new society on top of the old.
Claiming the divinity of the drunken god wasn't without its problems. The gods famously extreme appetites were transfered to them without any of his wisdom (why? to get wisdom you need to have a certain amount of humility).
I see the city, which is far off somewhere, as a sort of atlantis (again ala rifts) where anything is available for sale, provided you don't irrate it's godlike rulers.

This violated my "nearby kingdom of sentients" thing completely. But it is far away. And I've always seen elves as fairly alien creatures. They live forever, experiencing time and life in a very drawn out sort of way.

They maintain a few simple forts around the Kaorti partially because they were originally responcible for suggesting summoning the far realm to the gnomes (on the theory that shaking up the devils would enhance negotiations). Now that they are the only gods they don't really want to have the plane sucked into the far realm.
And 1) they do so like sending their least favored cousins out to stand guard 2) it is probably the source of fascinating magic.

Also, for some reason, I'm very enamored of the idea of a drunken elvin demi-demi-god kid wandering around with one of his slaves (who's trying to become a paladin) because he tapped into the "wisdom of the laughing god" and realizes he's supposed to be doing something to "stop all this".
Drunken shenanigans, like turning a river to wine might liven up a game that threatens to be too serious.
And the paladin struggling to be a warrior without a heroic soul (the elves have no heroic souls after eating their god, period, even the ones who weren't involved) shows just how inept even the most motivated character is compared to someone with a heroic soul (i.e. a PC). [/sblock]

[sblock=Of course the problem with all this is]For a player driven game this is actually a pretty full setting. There are like 5 different major groups to deal with 1) vampires 2) demon city 3) kaotri 4) elves 5) the scaled empire (remember them?) and that's all in addition to everything the PCs introduce and the plots surrounding the town itself.

Still, the PCs haven't seen any of it yet, so I can make it disappear if I don't get to precious about it.
Or so I tell myself.[/sblock]

 

[Graf]

So the game started and looked dead and then I tried to revive it one way and it would up coming back to life in a completely different way.

Someday, maybe I'll post about it. For now I'll just put up the first monsters the group is facing.

[sblock=The exiled]
Note: The Displacement power is waaay to powerful for a normal 1st level monster, but since the PCs have an item that partially dispels it I think that makes for an interesting challenge.
To my mind it makes the fighticonic anyway.
I was considering giving the leaders some sort of aura but harrier seems more interesting...

Exiled Level 1 Minion (XP 25)
Small shadow magical beast
Initiative +3 Senses Perception +5; low-light vision
HP 1; a missed attack never damages a minion.
AC 15; Fortitude 13, Reflex 15, Will 12 + displacement
Speed 6, climb 3
Bite (standard; at-will) +6 vs. AC; 3 damage.
*****************
Stealth +8
Str 12 (+1) Dex 17 (+3) Wis 10 (+0)
Con 12 (+1) Int 8 (–1) Cha 8 (–1)

Noble Exiled Level 2 Skirmisher (XP 125)
Medium shadow magical beast
Initiative +5 Senses Perception +7; low-light vision
HP 37; Bloodied 18
AC 16; Fortitude 14, Refl ex 13, Will 12 + displacement
Speed 8 climb 4
Bite (standard; at-will)
+7 vs. AC; 1d6 + 3 damage; see also pack attack.
✦Pack Attack
A Noble Exiled deals an extra 1d6 damage against an enemy adjacent to two or more it’s allies.
✦Harrier
If a Noble Exiled is adjacent to an enemy, all other creatures have combat advantage against that enemy when making melee attacks.
*****************
Stealth +10
Str 16 (+4) Dex 15 (+3) Wis 12 (+2)
Con 13 (+2) Int 12 (+1) Cha 12 (+1)

[sblock=Displacement ✦ Illusion]
All melee and ranged attacks have a 50% chance to miss the exiled. The effect ends when the displacer beast is hit by an attack, but it recharges as soon as the displacer beast moves 2 or more squares on its turn. Critical hits ignore displacement.
(See also shifting tactics.)
Shifting Tactics (free, when an attack misses the exiled because of its displacement; at-will)[/sblock]
[/sblock]

[sblock=XP Spend for Encounter 1]
7 1st level PCs (or 5 and 2 NPCs) = 700

3 nobles (125 xp each)=375
13 minions....
lots of guys for their first fight [/sblock]

 

[Graf]

[sblock=Combat notes 1]Yeah, I'm pretty lazy

Verulo hand crossbow
Attack: +6 vs. AC; Damage: 1d6

R1
S - waiting on player
Q - 10 to a noble
N - kills minion - not effected by displacement (crit)
H - Javelin's minion dead (passed displacement)
V - hit turned to miss by displacement
E - Missed

Mystery guest.... probably need to build his frikken character before he turns up, huh?

R2
S - kills one when it gets close
- -6 damage
Q - lost action
N - teleports around and eyebites one to death
H - Javelin's minion dead; goes and stands in mud
- -6 damage +11 damage
V - waits for his shot for eldan
E - Uses Bastion of Defense MISSED (everyone gets 8 hit points)
- -3 damage + 6 damage


R3
S - Dire Wolverine Strike
- -3 damage
Q - lost action
N -
H - Misses with Piercing Strike
- -3 damage
V - keeps fighting the large displaced one on him.
E -
F - charges misses with cleave

R4

Q - finally wakes up, force orb hurts one of the nobles for 10 and kills the remaining follower
E - Vipers Strike Hits for 7
[/sblock]

I think that the two surviving nobles will be called Mocker and Hisser (the one who did all the talking, then broke and ran when it took a serious hit, is, naturally Mocker. Hisser, who did a lot of damage to silvi is the quiet sadistic type).