The Little Wizard Through the Looking Glass
This is a 3.x adventure for a party of 5-7th level characters.
Hook
The party is traveling in a sea-side kingdom when they are approached by a figure in the shadows, a hint of dark skin and white hair just barely visible through the shadows while lightning bugs flicker around him. He speaks with a rich, deep, sonorous voice.
"I've been watching you for some time and I believe you may just be the ones to help my employer with a certain difficulty. I cannot tell you the precise circumstances, but if you head east from here to the sea shore and use these" – he tosses a two Scrolls of Water Breathing to the party's feet – "you will be met by a large blue-and-yellow fish that will lead you to my employer's castle. There is some urgency in this matter and a significant reward. I'm sure that's enough to get your attention, but, if you'd prefer a lecture, I've a few very catchy ones prepared."
He then slips away. Presumably the party will do as asked, if not, they are attacked soon after by a strange mix of wolves, swarms of bees, and flying monkeys that keep shrieking "they with fish people, kill!" Similar attacks occur until the PCs get the hint.
Exposition
When the party heads into the water, they are met by a huge blue-and-yellow striped fish that immediately leads them off at high speed to a shimmering gold underwater castle with dozens of towers, bridges, and balconies rising from the seabed. They are taken straight to a merfolk-packed audience chamber just as a seahorse announces "King Treton" and a massive merman with an immense, flowing white beard, a five-pronged golden crown, gold bracers, and a golden trident enters in a dolphin-pulled chariot. As he arrives, he ignites a chandelier high above with a blast from his trident and gestures for the merfolk court to disperse.
"It used to be that contact with the human world was strictly forbidden and now I find myself calling upon humans to aid me. How times change. To the point, my daughter Arele married a human – an 83 minute-long story in itself. Arele was transformed into a human so she could live with him, they were married, and all was well for a while. Unfortunately, their neighboring Wizard-King of Oss claimed that during their last diplomatic visit to him Arele stole something from him!"
King Treton sighs.
"My daughter doesn't understand property law, especially human property law. Despite mine and Eric's best intentions and attempts to explain it, she still doesn't get it. Watery-hells, before she married Eric I destroyed a whole grotto full of contraband that she'd taken from who-knows-where!
"While there may have been something to the Wizard's claim, he became increasingly indignant, demanding the return of what was taken though he wouldn't even tell us what it was!"
A troubled expression comes over his face.
"Nothing we could do would appease him and soon he invaded with his vicious packs of wolves, swarms of harrying bees, units of conscripted Oss halflings and gnomes, and an army of flying apes – all the while using his illusions and sorcery to confuse and destroy resistance.
"They brought ruin upon Eric's kingdom and Arele would have died too if it weren't for the quick thinking of a certain operative of mine – you must have met him, used to be an assassin or something for that human alliance before he began helping me. Anyway, he got her here but she's still in shock over the death of Eric. Now the Wizard is sanctimoniously claiming legal right to declare war on me if I don't return it and I don't even know what it is!
He pauses.
"Here's what I want you to do. Talk to Arele, see if you can get anything out of her, and see if you can find whatever this thing is that he wants in her new contraband grotto. I don't even know what most of the things in there do, but the Wizard will probably attack if we can't figure out what it is that she stole. If you succeed at helping me resolve this mess, you may each take something from her grotto – it's all human stuff anyway."
Examination
With that, King Treton bids them good luck and leaves, the fish that has been guiding the PCs leading them to a large cave that looks to have been partially destroyed in the past and is in the process of being cleared and rebuilt. The place is a junkyard of random detritus, mostly salvage from shipwrecks, but with a scattering of other objects from land. There they meet a red-haired mermaid, swimming around touching things and singing annoyingly catchy songs that the PCs will still be able to sing scraps of decades later.
Strangely, she's also carrying around a fluffy white bunny rabbit encased in a bubble of air.
When the party asks questions, she'll answer with nonsensical stuff like "want thingamabobs, I've got twenty!" or "who cares, no big deal, I want more!"
When asked about what she stole, she gets a confused look on her face and says "what does steal mean" and can't seem to wrap her head around the concept.
If asked about the rabbit, she just says "it's so cute!"
The PCs then can search the grotto for clues (there aren't any, but they might find magical items the party can claim as a reward later) and/or try to get something useful out of Arele. If they work hard enough at getting through to her, she finally remembers, "the paper thingamabob! I buried it to keep the water from hurting it!"
If they did well at getting her to remember, she tells them it's buried near the rock that looks like a crab on the shore. If not, she's confused and tells them it's near the crab that looks like a rock. During this time, she lets go of the bunny and it slips away surreptitiously.
With their clues, their guide-fish leads them back to the shore.
Chase
If the party is looking for a crab that looks like a rock, they find a crustacean the size of a small house covered with lichen and moss so that it looks like a moving boulder scuttling slowly along the beach. When they approach it, it attacks.
If they were looking for a rock that looks like a crab or if they've already killed or fled from the rock-crab, they spot the crab-rock just in time to see the little fluffy rabbit dig up a book out of the sand. If they approach, it sits there quivering and sniffing until they get close, then explosively transforms into a massive rabbit-monster, part metal with glowing red eyes, obscenely massive teeth, and the remains of what looks to be a straight jacket strapped onto its massive bulk.
It leaps fifty feet away then dashes off at massive speed, wheezing out "late... LATE... important... DATE... no time... late Late LATE..." over and over at it disappears into the distance.
The party them must track it. Whenever they close, they spot the rabbit laying gasping on its back with a tortoise crawling past it, only to have it spot them and take off again as soon as they approach; "late... LATE...". Its trail leads them through poisoned briars, monster lairs, quicksand, and/or bogs that they must make their way through before picking up its trail again.
Eventually, they catch up to it in the midst of a hilly area dotted with hundreds of burrows of all sizes. When it sees them closing, it dives into one.
When they follow it, the party ends up falling into a strange nightmare land full of bizarre creatures and landscapes, a strange phasing and disappearing pink cat with a huge grin that poses them riddles and gets them into trouble with the locals, an insane rabbit in a jacket consorting with a crazy old man in a giant hat that demands they have tea to celebrate their "Unbirthdays", a hookah-smoking caterpillar that demands precisely phrased stories or riddles, and a mad queen and her paper-golems that demands a game of croquet using flamingos and who sicks her golems on them at the slightest perceived insult.
After each encounter, they spot the rabbit laying ahead of them gasping, then leaping up and bounding off. Each time they are a little closer and it seems to be a bit more tired. Finally, they spot a doorknob floating in the air that the Rabbit opens revealing an inky-black portal that it dives through.
When they go through, they find themselves nearly plummeting off the edge of a pinnacle of rock rising in the middle of a mile-wide canyon that drops spectacularly thousands of feet to a misty forest. A city made of green stone rises on the far side with a yellow paved road leading from it off into the distance. The doorway they came through is gone.
A howling wind tears at the PCs and literally steals their breath away. While looking at the canyon, PCs cannot breathe and begin to suffocate. Suspiciously the rabbit has disappeared even though the rocky pinnacle is barely large enough for the PCs to stand on and it would still be falling if it had jumped.
If the PCs figure this out, challenge the canyon as an illusion, and make their Will saves(bonuses if their eyes are closed), they can see that there is no canyon, just an open field with a small wizard tower rising from its center.
Finale
Once the PCs can see clearly, a giant floating flame-shrouded green head can be seen drifting from the tower towards the rabbit, surrounded by winged monkey bodyguards and trailed by a pack of wolves.
The head spots the PCs, stops, and booms out:
"It is finally returned and you would keep it from me? You pursue my agent, so hard taken from that nightmarish Wonderland and infiltrated so cleverly to the conniving, thieving Arele's side? You must work for those usurpers who tried to bring me to my knees while pleading ignorance the whole time! They left me no choice but to attack them! She somehow stole it despite my deadly illusion hiding its secret place in my tower. War was the only option left!"
With that, he orders his minions to attack. The PCs face a tough battle, the vicious rabbit leaping about with its rending teeth, the wolves harrying the party's flanks, and the head launching low-level spells as a 13th level caster. The head also seems to be invulnerable, but if the PCs make Will saves against it, they can see it is an illusion. The actual wizard is casting from nearby via Improved Invisibility.
When they finally defeat Oss (or talk him down in the midst of combat) they find that the book is his spellbook.
Conclusion
When they return, King Treton shakes his head as the PCs claim their rewards. "His rivals could have attacked instantly if they know he didn't have his spellbook, no wonder he kept what he lost missing hidden from us. In his stead I might have done the same. Oh Arele, what am I going to do with you?"
Ingredients
Suspicious Rabbit – agent of the Righteous Wizard that stole the Hidden Book from the Clueless Mermaid. Also a clue to determining the illusion of the Breathtaking View.
Breathtaking View – illusionary canyon that protects and hides the Righteous Wizard's Hidden Book.
Righteous Wizard – Wizard of Oss, owner of the Hidden Book taken by the Clueless Mermaid.
Widowed Daughter – Clueless Mermaid, daughter of Treton who hires the PCs and once wife of Prince Eric.
Clueless Mermaid – Arele, Widowed Daughter of Treton, who stole the Righteous Wizard's Hidden Book.
Hidden Book – Righteous Wizard's spellbook, taken by the Clueless Mermaid. Also Firefly.
