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Message: <blockquote data-quote="el-remmen" data-source="post: 8151492" data-attributes="member: 11"><h3>“Twinkle Twinkle Poison Star” - For D&D (but adaptable to other genres)</h3>Measured StepForeign CoinDream SurfSilver StarHeavy MetalDisguise KitHooks:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Following trail of sick people exposed to strange foreign coins to their source</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Passing through town when the suicide happens</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Helping a blackmailed friend</li> </ul><h3>Intrigue</h3>Ashtown: PCs witness a businessman’s suicide. He leaps from a roof w/a note explaining an extortion attempt threatening to reveal his shameful secrets. He couldn’t face his family/colleagues but did not want that info used against them after his death, thus his confession. The note also hints there is a connection between the blackmailing and the occasional disappearances of people for the last 20 years.The blackmailer is Fortinbras Huxley, a man of some influence. While he has a reputation for being a joyful, if intense person, who loves to dance and hum (think Laura Palmer’s dad), he gained his position through blackmail/theft, gathering material by dream surfing using The Orb of Dreams, an enchanted polished chunk of the Silver Star that he retrieved in his adventuring days—an oneiric search engine that examines sleepers’ dreams in a three-mile radius, revealing secrets. He can also use the orb to communicate with victims and implant suggestions/geas.Huxley uses info to:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Extort money (or learn what to rob)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Get victim to do something related to town economy/politics</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Force them to go to Bucanero Vecchio and dig</li> </ul>Investigation reveals others have had to deal w/blackmail, forced to do things ranging from spreading around some of poison foreign coins to selling property that‘d been in the family for generations, to murders/other crimes (but getting victims to admit this is difficult).The investigation leads to Huxley, though he has a gang of rogues that he has manipulated w/the orb. He uses them to stage events that make him look like a victim/throw off suspicion and/or interfere w/the PCs.Huxley’s interrogation includes ranting/singing about his dreams influencing him to send people to BV and dig up the Star Beast. He also mentions the “Silver Star” dance. Among his things is a disguise kits that holds some of the foreign coins on leather thongs, and clothes and whitening powder. Successful interrogation of few traumatized victims who returned from BV explains they were given this gear to slip by BV undead.Local authorities/family members will ask the PCs to go investigate.Alternatively, PCs could find themselves blackmailed/geased after a night in the town and be requested to go to BV to dig, meaning the intrigue might happen after part 2.<h3>Bucanero Vecchio</h3>BV is an old dwarven stripmine that left the area polluted with heavy metal poisoning, particularly lead. Drinking water or spending hours here will lead to saves or be poisoned. Worst of all is the radiation from the Silver Star, a weird metal meteor that crashed into the former mountain millennia ago. Digging up the meteor led to the downfall of the dwarves.BV features black sand, stone ridges, tar pits, chasms, pools, and a quarry half-full of nasty water, w/countless caves along the sides leading to what remains of the dwarven tunnels. The area is overrun by emaciated undead, people who’ve succumbed to the radiation of the Silver Star, however, using the disguise kit and carrying the toxic foreign coin (which hold enough radiation to fool the dead who sense it), allows PCs to pass undetected assuming a performance check to emulate their rhythmic shuffle. The undead include skeletons, zombies, and ghouls, but the oldest have shriveled into shades, so wraiths/spectres.The tunnels are full of desiccating dwarven undead. There are also dwarven treasures (“poisoned” foreign coins made from the meteor + magical items cursed by the stone’s influence).The PCs eventually make their way to the partially unearthed Silver Star. The radiation of the pulsating stone is more powerful the deeper the PCs go. The pulse is very musical. It hums different harmonies punctuated by blasts of its damaging poisonous aura (describe as radiant, but it’s poisonous and/or necrotic). Approaching the stone, requires measured steps, dancing in time w/the pulsations, using fractured lead-lined mine walls as defense. For a sense of the rhythm hum “Shining Star.”Collapsing the stone chamber to bury the Silver Star for another 10000 years leads to the undead dissipating/collapsing within a few weeks (turned w/advantage). The townsfolk collect all the “foreign coin” and melt them down and throw the slag back in BV.Alternately, the PCs may decide to finish unearthing the Silver Star, in which case it will crack open releasing the cosmic starbeast within that will threaten the town and eventually the world.</blockquote>

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