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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Prince Atom" data-source="post: 4215684" data-attributes="member: 6046">Well, the cliche elven city looks a bit like one of the big set pieces in the Dragonlance novels, or a more advanced version of the Ewok village in RotJ. All the houses are up in trees, reached by climbing rope ladders or traversing suspension bridges. The houses themselves are bulbous, with very few straight lines or hard corners, and are either plastered white with frescoes or decorated with all kinds of woodcarving.There's this one building, though, that's different from all the rest. It's heavily guarded, and it's in a location that makes it stand out. If all the elfs' houses are in the trees, this building is on the ground. If all of the elfs' houses are along a river, this is set back a ways. Physical isolation from the other buildings is a good clue, as are size and architectural style, that Something Is Odd about the whole building. Of course, that's where the Old One is staying. The climax of the adventure would be raiding that building and defeating whatever it is that is staying there.As far as encounters go... Initially, though it's a bit cliche, the heroes could find what seems like the perfect community; everyone's happy, there's no crime, no one argues, everyone smiles all the time, and yet they are singularly unhelpful to visitors, referring all questions to Someone Else, who in turn just points the heroes at yet another unhelpful person.So how do they get answers? Don't ask the elfs.In one of the monster books for 3E there were a number of dragons which were conceived of as companions to elves. These dragons aren't large and winged, and I forget what the book called them.Perhaps the Great Old One who has enspelled all the elfs cannot similarly trap those companion dragons, and as a result has had his thralls drive them out. The elfs could perceive them as once-friends who've all gone mad or something, and fear them, seeing them as monsters instead of allies.Now, none of these dragons as written in the book would be a threat all by themselves to several 11th-level PCs, but you could advance them or get them all together. They're pretty intelligent and can speak several languages, IIRC, so that may be something for your dragon companion to work with.So once the heroes start interacting with the dragons, who haven't much more idea than anyone else what's going on, but haven't spurned the elfs despite being driven out, the Old One starts poisoning the minds of the elfs against the heroes. So the deluded elfs take up arms against the heroes, who have to defend themselves without doing much harm to the thralls for fear of angering their new dragon allies. Finally, the heroes break into that Odd Building, confront monsters and villains on whom they can vent their well-stoked spleens freely, and kick butt until the adventure is resolved.I don't think you should aim for any resolution other than violence at the climax, if there's some reason the heroes can't do lasting harm to any of the elfs or the dragons. The butt-kickers in your group would be Very Upset if they had no opportunity to do their thing.Hope this was helpful!TWK</blockquote>

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