Ropes and Leather

[chronoplasm]

Salzhaf
Salzhaf is a merchant town on the eastern coast of Meerwasser Lake.
Most of the money in this place is made by transporting goods (mostly salt) across the lake, and through tourism.
Thousands of pilgrims on their way to the holy city stop at this town each year to rest and see the fabled place of Gallowrock where Saint Vargas slew the Gallowrock dragon.
A lot of these pilgrims seem to have been disappearing a lot though, as of late.

Saint Vargas and the Gallowrock Dragon
A hundred years ago, Saint Vargas, on his way to the holy city, decided to stop in this town to rest and to get a ferry-ride across the lake.
While staying here, he learned of a local mystery that had the people of the town nervous and confused.
The people of this town would take their criminals to a place on the coast called Gallowrock where they would hang the criminals from a naturally formed arch. The people would leave the hanged men there to rot and to be picked at by birds. At one point however, the bodies seemed to dissapear at night. Any guards that stuck around to investigate would disappear as well.
Saint Vargas decided to investigate for himself. Rather than sleep in the inn, Vargas camped out on the sands of Gallowrock in hopes of finding out where the corpses were going.
That night, he awoke to see a terrible dragon rise from the waters and eat the hanged bodies.
Vargas attacked the creature, tying it to the rock using one of the nooses, and stabbed it through the heart. Then he skinned the beast, threw the carcass back into the water, and took the creature's hide back to town to craft it into a suit of armor.

Pilgrims flock to Gallowrock each year to see the place where Saint Vargas killed the dragon, and then they go to the museum of Salzhaf to see the legendary dragonhide armor on display.

Situation
The town has been very concerned recently about the mysterious disappearances of tourists.
Among the missing is a wealthy nobleman and his body guards.
The adventuring party has been hired to investigate the disappearance of the nobleman and to rescue him if at all possible.

The party's investigation will bring them to a cave that reaks of excrement and decay.

The Kobold Tannery
It would seem that a tribe of kobolds has settled into one of the caves along the lakes coast, and built a tannery.
Apparently the kobolds have been kidnapping people and skinning them alive to make leather.
Many horrors await the adventuring party in this vile place.

• Acid pits are used to remove hair from skin, and can badly damage player characters that fall in.
• Kobolds armed with flensing knives pop out from behind strips of drying leather hanging from the ceiling.
• Excess leather is boiled to make glue, which the kobolds will hurl at player characters as an attack.
• A kobold shaman dressed in a long leather coat and wrapped in old ropes can use necromantic incantations to reanimate a rat-infested pile of flayed carcasses.

The final horror is found in the temple and shipping area at the end of the dungeon crawl.
The nobleman is found tied up at the altar, seemingly alive.
This is in fact a disguise;
The Gallowrock Dragon is wearing the nobleman's skin as a suit.
The dragon is just a skeleton now, with bones lashed together using enchanted nooses.
The dragon wants its skin back; and it wants to see punishment if not to the one responsible for taking the skin, then to those who keep the skin and refuse to return it.


Your thoughts?

 

[ajanders]

Creepy!
Icky!
Nice!

Two thoughts...
1. Any dragon that can fit into a human skin has got to be a very small dragon. Or it's missing a lot of bones. Just something to think about for a very nice villain.
2. Is there anything gained by making the dragon appear to be tied up for sacrifice? Just let him wander about and be the evil boss he deserves to be.
3. You might want to keep an eye on how powerful this dragon is relative to the party: one valid solution to this issue might be buying/stealing the armor and returning it to the dragon...you may want to examine the morals of the dragon (perhaps the Saint was in the wrong?) as well as the expedience of the party (steal the armor vs TPK and the dragon razes the town.)

There is a 4E monster in the Open grave book that actually is an animated skin. You may find it helpful.

 

[chronoplasm]

1)
I'm thinking maybe the skin suit is enchanted to allow the dragon to fit.
I was thinking maybe the party would find a workshop within the dungeon with a leather bag of holding to foreshadow the events to come.

2)
I figured that since the dragon knew the party was coming, it decided it would concoct a ruse to trick the party into 'rescuing' him and taking him back to town. Perhaps this would save the disguised dragon the time of travelling back to town himself and explaining how he was able to 'escape' from his captors?

3)
Yeah, I'm thinking of taking one of the Dracoliches from Draconomicon I, powering it down a bit, and giving it some kind of ensnaring rope attack.
Rather than force the party to grind the thing into dust, I'm thinking I might simply hide the dragons phylactery in plane sight and tweaking the lich rules so that destroying the phylactery destroys the dracolich instantly.
Maybe the suit of armor is the dragons phylactery?


4) Oh yeah! I know the skin thing you are talking about.
I also notice that there is a skeleton in there that wears skin. A small group of those in here might be pretty cool.


I think the dungeon should feature a large atrium for the dracolich to move through, and a series of rooms along the way in which the kobolds go through the steps of tanning.

1) Flensing area. This is where the kobolds actually skin their victims. The kobolds guarding this room are armed with flensing knives.
2) Soaking area. There should be a pool of water here in which the skins are cleaned.
3) Scouring area. The kobolds in this room pound and scour the dirty skins to remove the remaining flesh and fat. The kobolds guarding this room are armed with clubs.
4) Hair Removal area. There is an acid pit here where skins are dipped to remove the hairs.
5) Dung and brains room. In this oderous room, the kobolds bate the skin by pounding dung and brains into it. The stench of the dungeon is especially potent here.
6) Stretching room. The leather is hung up to dry here. The strips of leather provide concealment.
7) Glue room. Excess scraps of skin are boiled to make glue.

Equipment rooms and secret passages would branch out from this series of areas to give players ways of bypassing traps and hazards and to add interest to the area so that the dungeon isn't just a straight line.

After the glue room, there will be a storage and shipping area, some workshops for crafting the leather into various items, barracks where the kobolds rest, and finally, a temple where the dracolich resides.

 

[fissionessence]

What if only a few of the dragon's bones are needed to animate a skin? He could have many bodies walking around, in control of them all. Only a few of his bones would be 'unused', such as his skull, sitting back in some hidden room of the tannery, orchestrating everything and giving the kobolds orders.

~

 

[ajanders]

What if only a few of the dragon's bones are needed to animate a skin? He could have many bodies walking around, in control of them all. Only a few of his bones would be 'unused', such as his skull, sitting back in some hidden room of the tannery, orchestrating everything and giving the kobolds orders.

~

Huh...like, say, a Brain in a Jar (reskin...so to speak, as a fleshless skull), with some crawling draconic claws for muscle.
Spiffy.

 

[chronoplasm]

I've always liked those fights in JRPGs where the bosses arms count as a couple of separate enemies that you can target.

Other thoughts:

One of the nobles guards is still alive in the flensing room, though much of his skin has been removed.
If you heal him, he can serve the party as a hireling.
If he is healed by a divine-classed dragonborn, his skin will grow back as dragon scales.

The noble's skin is a magic item. Wearing it allows you to take his identity.
If you return the noble to town "alive", you get a much larger reward for your services than you would if you returned just the skin.

Other magic items can be found in the workshops. There is a bag of holding, a pair of enchanted gloves, and a pair of enchanted boots here made from human skin.
There are also some ritual books here that are waiting to be bound in elf-skin.

 

[ajanders]

If you need to seed in some new adventures or villains, leave some business records around. I'm not sure what kind of person binds books in elf skin, but I'm sure some adventurers need to go smite them a lot.

 

[Rhun]

I love the concept! It sounds like a very creepy adventure. Thansk for sharing your ideas.

 

[chronoplasm]

Transaction records? That's a cool idea!

Wouldn't it be creepy if the last sale went to one of the wealthy merchants in the town?
Maybe he's been secretly helping the kobolds to ship their evil goods? Maybe if the party breaks into his home they could find all kinds of horrible curiosities in a secret gallery behind a bookshelf?

Perhaps the dragon has agents in town helping it as part of some sort of convoluted plan to enact vengeance and get its skin back?

Perhaps one of the dragons agents is a thief trying to steal the dragonskin armor from the Gallowrock museum, and the players get to foil the robbery somehow? Perhaps the robber turns out to be a kobold or an undead construct wearing a human skin-suit as a disguise? This could be a way to introduce some forshadowing.

 

[Quartz]

How about making the dragon a ghost, possessing the nobleman? The posessed creature gains the half-dragon template. Plot bunny: the ghost can only truly be killed by someone wearing St Vargas's armour; equally, if the dragon gets its skin back, it can rise as a nasty undead of your choice. How about a Death Knight Dragon?

How high a level are the PCs?