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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Thasmodious" data-source="post: 4979461" data-attributes="member: 63272">Past Deeds  A short side-trek for 4-6 mid-upper heroic characters     Background  Legend has it that the bejeweled Arrow of Evil Undone was gifted to a great warrior of Bahamut by the fabled craftsman Angulus and consecrated in the sacred pool that lies at the heart of Bahamut’s temple in far off Khalzyr.  The blessed arrow, the story goes, was used to slay a demon-lord of the ancient world, bringing peace to the land of the First Kings.  The sacred arrow hung in a place of honor above the throne before that kingdom fell into ruin.  The relic was lost to the ravages of time.     Centuries later, a private collector of antiquities and a wizard of some renown, holds a contest to entertain his idly rich friends, luring groups of adventurers to compete in a series of challenges for a prize taken from his collection.  Priest of Bahamut and master craftsman Illian Moonstrider has learned that this collector claims to have the Arrow of Evil Undone and to be offering it as the prize in his upcoming contest.  He has charged his apprentice, Burglecot, with scouring the countryside for servants of Bahamut powerful enough to win the contest and return the Arrow to the devout…     Cast of Characters  Burglecot – halfling apprentice craftsman.  The halfling is forgetful to an extreme degree and rarely accurately remembers anything.  The problem is that he does not recognize his fault and fills in the blank spaces in his memory with the needed, and fabricated, details. For example, he is unlikely to remember a name, but will call the person by another name, insisting that it is correct.  Burglecot dresses sloppily in stained clothes and his eyes are hidden behind a mane of thick, untamed hair.  Golden Zipper – the faerie dragon whom the PCs must convince to guide them to the tavern.  Golden Zipper is a nickname he earned there due to his coloration and flitting nature, having competed in the past.  When he speaks, it is in short phrases punctuated by hisses and he is constantly flitting back and forth, his wings a blur, much like a hummingbirds.  Grishnak – the defending champion.  Grishnak is a greedy, treacherous, nasty, one-eyed goblin who somehow sports a pair of functional wings.  He is a crowd favorite and mischievous tavern patrons will encourage the PCs to ask him why he has wings, a question that is more likely to end with broken teeth rather than answers.     ‘Bloated’ Boris – a great, boisterous, hugely fat man with an outrageous mustache that is nearly as thick as a tankard and is curled garishly at either end.  He is the bartender and innkeeper at the Oasis.  He seems very affable, but astute individuals notice a number of strange details about Boris - an unusual grace and quickness that belie his size; movements that are slight ‘off’, such as picking up a large barrel of ale without his arms seeming to flex, he freely converses in any language…  Rojas – eladrin wizard of some renown and a collector of fine antiquities.  The Oasis is his establishment and home and he is the host of the contest.  He is quite friendly and seems to finds everything amusing, easy grins bandied about at every opportunity.  He has stark, silver-purple hair that sweeps back in spikes and his dress is opulent.      The Hook  Burglecot forgot to assemble a crack team of dedicated followers of Bahamut anxious to reclaim a sacred religious relic and now he is desperate, looking for the first armed group that doesn’t look likely to kill or rob him.  He finds the PCs.  The meeting could be on the road, a side-trek on a journey, or he finds them in town.  Either way, he approaches the group thinking they have already agreed to help – “we have to get going, the contest starts in two days and we don’t even know where it is!  Come on!”  From there things likely get more confusing, but eventually the PCs can learn (eventually being however long the DM wishes to torture them):  * There is a contest with a prize that is a sacred religious relic  * A priest of Bahamut wants to return the item to his faith  * He’s willing to pay, handsomely  * The location of the tavern, the Oasis, is secret and hidden  * The contest is dangerous and challenging  * They have to find someone called Zapper or Clipper who lives in the woods     If the PCs agree to act as Illian’s agents, they can learn in town (with some decent information gathering) that Zapper is a faerie dragon named Golden Zipper who lives in a glade in the forest outside of town.  He is generally friendly with the locals, as long as they respect the woods, especially the glade where he lives in the bough of a great oak tree.       Getting Zipper’s Help  Finding Zipper is not difficult (unless the DM wants it to be, of course) and in short order the PCs are standing at the foot of the oak tree negotiating with a golden-hued and hyper faerie dragon.  Golden Zipper knows of the Oasis and years ago competed in one of the contests there, winning a magical feather token and freeing the oak tree bound into it, in which he know lives.  He only competed to free his friend and will only help the PCs if he believes they serve their cause nobly and fully intend to honor their agreement with Burglecot and turn the relic over to the priest of Bahamut.  After some discussion, Zipper will agree to guide them to the Oasis.  If they treat him well and make a good impression, he will offer to join their team and help them in the contest.  If the PCs do not have horses, Burglecot will purchase enough for everyone and they set off, following the faerie dragon as fast as they can.     The Oasis  The tavern itself is located on a demiplane Rojas created and controls.  The actual structure of the tavern can be shaped at will by the wizard.  The Oasis is a shelter from the mundane world, a place to house his extensive collection and entertain his friends.  The tavern has a number of entrances, all hidden and spread across the world.  Each entrance resembles a small roadside tavern, only one made invisible.  These entrances are actually portals to the Oasis itself, if a command word is known.  Anyone stumbling across the invisible wooden structure just finds an empty, long abandoned, ramshackle tavern on the other side of the door, and leaves with a mystery and a story.     The trip to the invisible tavern entrance moves at the speed of plot.  When they arrive, Zipper speaks the command word and the group can enter and get their first glimpse of the ever-changing Oasis.     Right now, the PCs see a large, open, rough wood tavern.  Chipped planks of wood, a warm but splintery floor with questionable stains, hobbled together tables and stools, the Oasis looks like any number of taverns the PCs have plied their trade in over the years.  It is packed with unsavory sorts, well armed (their adversaries).  A rough looking minstrel plays a battered lute in the corner near a roaring fire.  At other times the PCs may find the tavern lavish and extravagantly decorated, with Rojas catering to his well off clientele, or perhaps it’s a squat, smoky stone room where the popular defending champion is telling tales and being paid accolades by admirers.       The PCs can quickly make arrangements and express their desire to enter the contest.  If the DM wishes to expand the adventure, a qualifying series of minor trials here would be a good way to do it, as would some time spent enjoying all the Oasis has to offer, meeting the interesting clientele and making a few fans of their own.  The trials are as much to test the mettle of the competing teams as they are for the spectators to assess them, pick favorites and start betting.       The Contest  Setup: The contest itself takes place in what appears to be an expansive cavern under the tavern.  Rows of stone bleachers ring a large field.  The PCs are competing against three other teams.  Burglecot does not compete, but Zipper may, if the PCs have endeared themselves to him.  The defending champion, Grishnak, leads a small group of five grizzled goblins.   Details of the other two groups are left to the DM, they are mostly window dressing.  The only group the PCs are likely to come into conflict with is Grishnak’s.  Each team is ushered into one of four rooms under the bleachers to prepare.  The teams can hear the amplified voice of Rojas as he builds up the crowd explaining the story of the Arrow of Evil Undone and the rules of the contest, stressing the danger and death-defying obstacles the groups will face.  The rules are simple – the first group to claim the prize and exit the ‘dungeon’ wins.     When the contest begins and the PCs exit the holding room, they find the field has been transformed into some kind of maze.  The walls are made of stone, wood, brambles, seemingly anything and the PCs must negotiate treacherous paths while trying to advance to the middle of the field and locate the prize.  They cannot see the other teams or the audience.  As far as they can tell, they are in an enclosed dungeon environment of twisting corridors and deadly peril.       Running the Contest:  Advancing the contest is handled with a skill challenge (10 successes before 3 failures) that should run in the background, the DM keeping track of progress.  There are two ways to gain successes:     1.  Skill use.  Taking turns the PCs describe what they are doing to advance through the twisting dungeon maze utilizing their skills and other abilities in creative fashion.  Each success counts as a success in the overall challenge, a failure counts as a failure.  However, every two successes gained in this manner leads the PCs to face a seemingly random obstacle.  Three such obstacles are presented below.     2.  Obstacles.  Successfully overcoming an obstacle counts as a single success in the overall challenge.  The results of failing to overcome an obstacle are individual to that trial and do not necessarily include accumulating a failure in the challenge.     Three Obstacles  1.  The PCs turn a corner and see a chamber ahead with a pedestal in the middle and an exit across the room.  A series of small, foot wide slots lie at floor level along the other two walls.  As the group approaches the pedestal, both exits disappear and a large number of unarmed skeleton minions drop from the ceiling, thirty in all.  The skeletons attempt to grapple PCs by weight of numbers and then individual skeletons will pluck random items from the PCs gear.  When a skeleton has grabbed an item, they move to the nearest slot and slide it through.  Any slain skeletons reform the following round.  There are two ways the skeletons stop coming – when the PCs are striped naked or they solve the puzzle located on the pedestal (puzzle details left to the DM).     2.  The PCs come upon another wide chamber.  The walls of this chamber are cloaked in darkness and no apparent exit can be immediately seen.  In the middle of the chamber, however, is what looks like a large, clockwork contraption of some kind.  When the PCs enter the room, the contraption whirls to life and moves under its own power, attacking the PCs with three deadly attacks – poisoned darts that fly from the body of the device, poison spikes that jam out and retract piercing those who get too close and a whirling lens that emits some kind of beam.  Use the stats for a female Medusa Archer, reflavored to fit these trappings.  The clockwork device has Resist 5 to all damage.  The PCs can defeat the device through simple damage or by getting close and engaging in a skill challenge to disable it (6/3).  If they instead wish to retreat from the room, the DM should inform them that they would have to backtrack for some distance to find a new route and that this would cost valuable time and set them back (give them a failure in the overall challenge if they choose to retreat).  Any petrified PCs are individually eliminated from the contest, unless the party has the means to undo petrification and chooses to take the time.   Petrified PCs are healed after the contest by contest staff.     3.  After hitting a few dead ends, the PCs take a route that leads them to the edge of a long, 20’ wide hallway.  Instead of a floor, however, there appears to be a very deep pit stretching off into the distance.  A number of pillars each about as wide as two feet and at varying height and position relative to each other provide a treacherous path across this obstacle.  PCs trying to assess the depth of the pit cannot find the bottom nor hear anything if they drop something down it.  Crossing the pillars is a skill challenge (8/3) with the outcome dependent upon the degree of success:  Successful – the remaining PCs cross  Each failure – the PC making the failure has a chance to fall in some manner.  A pillar may be a dead pillar, collapsing into the darkness when weight is applied or they may lose their balance or fall while advancing to another one.  An acrobatics check of medium difficulty will let them leap to another pillar.  Failing that, a successful saving throw will let them grab the edge of a pillar and hold on for dear life.  A hard athletics check or help from a party member is needed to get back up.  A PC who fails all this falls into the pit and is not heard from again during the contest (see below).  Challenge failure – if three failures are reached before at least 5 successes, the remaining PCs must turn back and valuable time is lost (a failure on the overall challenge).  If at least 5 successes were accumulated, the PCs, except for the one who caused the final failure, reach the far side.  The one who failed is stuck behind a gap that is too far to jump and most either turn back (eliminating themselves from the contest) or the party must come up with some other solution to get him across.Any PCs who fall hit a magical field after 50' of free fall.  It is a zone of darkness and silence that also applies a feather fall effect to anyone crossing it, the victim floating gently down another 30' where they are met by contest workers who explain they've been eliminated and guide them out through an exit and up to the stands where they can watch the rest of the contest.     Ending the Contest  Whether or not the PCs claim the prize depends on how the overall skill challenge plays out:  10 successes; 0 failures – the PCs reach the treasure chamber alone and claim the prize!  However, Grishnak does not take his defeat well and either attempts to steal the prize later, pick a fight in the tavern, or follow them back and ambush them on the way back to town.  10 successes; 1-2 failures – the PCs are first to reach the treasure chamber, but just as they claim the chest in which the arrow rests, Grishnak and his gang reach the chamber and confront them.  They attack the PCs to try and claim the chest.  If the PCs have only suffered one failure, Grishnak has lost two of his gang to obstacles.  Otherwise, they are a single goblin down.  >5 successes; 3 failures – the PCs make it to the chamber in time to see Grishnak and gang claim the box.  He turns to them and snarls in Common, “stay right where you are or you die here today”   >5 successes, 3 failures – Grishnak and gang win without encountering the PCs.     If the PCs lose, they can attempt to gain the item through other means or accept the loss, which is what Burglecot suggests, thanking them for trying.       Wrapping it all Up  Victorious or not, the PCs are celebrated at the afterparty and are welcome to stay at the Oasis for a few more days.  If they have the Arrow, they eventually return to town and meet Illian.  He is ecstatic that the mission was successful and can only laugh at how Burglecot stumbled his way to a successful outcome.  He rewards the PCs suitably (treasure parcels) and invites them to attend a dedication at the temple to Bahamut where they are honored (and proselytized to if none are of the faith).  They have made a valuable ally and found an interesting place in the world that they can return to and seek further adventures.  And they have a championship to defend next year.     Ingredient List  Invisible Tavern – the Oasis, invisible to the world, and its various entrances are literally invisible.  Golden Zipper – the Faerie Dragon that guides them to the Oasis and likely aids them in the contest  Forgetful Apprentice – Burglecot, apprentice to a master craftsman, and as forgetful as he can be.  Contest Winner – Grishnak is the defending champion, Zipper has won in the past, and the PCs may emerge as contest winners as well.  Flying goblin – Grishnak, the primary monstrous adversary of the adventure  Arrow of Evil Undone – the religious relic that is the prize in the contest and the reason for the PCs to enter it.</blockquote>

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