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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Radiating Gnome" data-source="post: 219424" data-attributes="member: 150">Tea partyOpiumTalking MouseMurlynd’s SpoonPixiesDire Bear(Serving Wench)(Nagging Wife)(I couldn’t work a third one in without it feeling REALLY contrived – there you go, Rune.)If  Betty Ford were a Pixie . . .A mostly-roleplaying interlude adventure for 4 5-6th level characters. A little background and setupThe mysterious Brisby Forest sits in a dark, undeveloped part of the Kingdom of Something Appropriate.  It is only frequented by daring adventurers, who rarely return and those who do return never speak much about their experiences.  The Druids in the Kingdom of Something Appropriate do enter the forest from time to time, but are very close-mouthed about what is in the forest.  This sort of mystery draws some odd folks, that’s for sure.  Near the Brisby Forest is the city of Groveton, the fief of Baron Thorvald.About a month ago a young rake named Thordis – the son of Baron Thorvald -- who had a taste for hired women, strong drink, and stronger drugs, disappeared.  He hasn’t turned up in any of his usual haunts, and the officials that the baron has been sending around to look for him have not been able to find any clue of his whereabouts.  Not ready to give up, but aware that his son’s taste in entertainments may mean that the official channels are not the best way to make inquires, the Baron asks his advisors to find some investigators who might have more luck – good hearted folk who might know a bit more about the darker side of the street, but who still want to see justice done, and a son returned to his father.  The PCs, a bit more experienced than the average rabble, are recommended to the advisors by a barkeep that knows them, and they are asked to the baron’s keep for a meeting.The PCs will have been in the area long enough to know the reputation of the Baron – a bit out of touch but a good soul – and his son – a dangerously unpredictable loose cannon who is always looking for some sort of trouble to alleviate his perpetual boredom.  The Baron’s butler will help the party clean up a bit for their audience with the baron, trying to impress them with the importance of the man they are about to meet, but the Baron himself is warm and personable, meeting with the party in a library rather than a throne room, and coming out from behind a desk to shake their hands.  He’s obviously worried about something, and doesn’t waste anytime telling them that his son is missing has he’s prepare to make a generous offer for his return.  And he will make good on the offer.  He will start with an offer of 1000 gp for his son’s return, but will offer just about anything for his son’s return – up to, as a last ditch offer, a magic item for each member of the party, designed and constructed by the baron’s personal wizard (anything the wizard, who is 9th level, is capable of creating – a list of possibilities will be provided.  Of course they’ll have to wait around for delivery, and the wizard won’t start until Thordis is returned).  Baron Thorvald loves his son and is not about to take no for an answer.  If the players ask why the Baron’s wizard or even any of the local clerics, the answer is that they have not been able to success fully scry his location, or contact him – there are powerful magical mists that seem to be hiding him.  A good sense motive test (DC 20) will also lead intuitive PCs to the conclusion that the Baron’s advisors may not have tried all that hard to find Thordis – they do not think he should be heir to the throne of the baronry and are of the opinion that his disappearance was simply good luck, or perhaps divine providence.The Hook: The Baron’s largess.  The party might refuse, theoretically – because, after all, who wants to live the high life.  The Baron might resort to some other forms of compulsion, in that case – threatening to imprison the PCs and their families and close friends, shutting down the tavern of the friend who recommended them, etc.    Part 1.  The Investigation Begins. A little gather information work in town paints a pretty stark picture of young Thordis.  He was more than a womanizer and brawler, although he was that in spaces.  He had also developed a taste for smoking opium.The first personality they will encounter as they make the rounds in their investigation is a Tavern that they know was frequented by Thordis. It’s not the sort of tavern they would frequent – wealthy merchants and minor nobles are the usual customers there, and the prices and quality of the service and entertainment reflect the clientele.  This is where Thordis would usually begin his evenings.  Dropping his name a little, at first, will reveal the party line that no one knows anything, but a bit of convincing will direct the party to one of the serving wenches in the tavern – Estelle, the daughter of the innkeeper, who watches her closely from across the tavern room while she talks to the party.  A DC 17 spot check will notice that Estelle is pregnant.  (yes, it's Thordis', but she's not the only one to bear a bastard of his in town).Estelle first insists that she knows nothing.  A bit of prodding will reveal that she’s afraid that he got into some sort of trouble in the opium den he frequentsEstelle can tell the party about another rumor – she can tell the part about someone who might know more. Siggid, a woodsman and drunkard who had befriended Thordis in a brawl a few year back They both had a taste for drinking and smoking, so they became fast friends.Going around to Siggid's house will bring out a sweaty, beefy woman, Marga, who wastes no time in laying into the party for not having real, respectable jobs -- why don't that settle down and grow something, build something, craft something -- no, their kind have to go around killing and breaking all the time -- sure, they always have money, but there's a lot that is a lot more important than money, which she wished her deplorable husband might some day realize, things like community and family and trust and honor and all the things that those who live by the sword would have no real idea about, moving from place to place as they do, etc., etc. etc.  If they can get a word in edgewise she can tell the party the she knows Thordis and is appalled that his disappearance causes so much consternation, the no good sack of meat, and not one person has come around to ask about the disappearance of her husband and sole source of support -- is the baron going to do something about her missing husband?  Send some motley lot of mercenaries out to drag him back home to face the music?  She can also tell them give them a few tips on making some contacts with the local thieves guild that runs the Imagatorium, the opium den that her husband frequents with his rich buddy, the prince.  Making contacts with the rogues guild will take some interesting roll playing, but in the long run it's not that hard to find out where the Imagatorium is, once the dealers have given the party the runaround long enough to be sure that they are not going to try to arrest any of the rogues.  In the den things are difficult. It’s dark and smoky and just being there will give the party members a bit of a contact high – they’ll feel a bit woozy, have trouble focusing on faces, etc.  The place is just a room full of velvet pillows and mattresses, littered with people in various stages of stoned out of their gourds.  Most of the addicts there are quite altered, and don't have a lot to offer, but one of the dealers there can tell the party that Thordis and Siggid left a few nights ago, talking about going up to the Brisby Forest to find the Mouse's tea party.  They can pick up only a little more information than that -- they left with very little gear, just rode out of town in the middle of the night and were never seen again.Part 2 The huntShould the party report their findings to the Baron, he will shoot a very concerned look at Ottar, but otherwise encourage the party to continue with their investigation.  The party loads up their gear and heads off to the woods to look for Thordis.  Reaching the woods is no problem, but they are warned off by everyone they pass -- don't enter the woods, you'll never come back, etc.At the edge of the woods, there are no tracks to be found.  The woods themselves are three kinds of horror movie creepy -- misty, dank, shadowy, and just plain scary.  As they take their first step into the woods they hear a screech.  A wilderness lore check (DC 15) identifies the call as that of an owl in distress, but they can’t find the source of the screech if they go looking (it’s actually a pixie sentry).  As they move through the woods, the only tracks they find are the intermittent prints of a huge Dire Bear, but the tracks only appear in intermittent patches, and they are unable to track the bear.A few more jarring, spooky moments later they come upon a small clearing, which entirely filled by a striped tent pavilion.The occasional sound of china clinking can be heard within the tent.  A wilderness lore check of DC 15 will note the heavy musk of a bear in the area, but there won’t be any sign of it in the clearing.  They circle around the pavilion looking for an entrance.  Eventually they find it, being held open for them by a young human boy.  “Please come in,” he says.  “We have been expecting you, and have saved you seats at the table.  There is always room for more at the Party.”Entering the tent the party finds a table laid out to serve as many as 20 human-sized guests.  Most of the seats are taken, but just enough remain to seat the entire party.There are several more children in the room.  They are all similar enough to clearly be siblings of some sort, and all seem to be roughly the same age. Everything in the pavilion is finely crafted, gilded and accented tastefully with gems.  The china is pure white, and the food on the table – a generous supply of fruit and pastries.  What seems out of place at the table are the other guests.  While they all seem to be eating with quite refined table manners, behaving live tea party guests, they are all in dirty, tattered clothing, and are obviously at various stages of starvation and malnutrition.  A child holds out a chair for each member of the party.Once they are seated, they hear a voice. It will require a DC 30 spot check to spot the source of the voice – a little mouse, standing upright and wearing a white robe tied at the waist with a bit of string.  The party members can check each round – roughly after each exchange of questions and answers – to try to spot the speaker.  What’s really going on:Brisby forest is under the protection of a powerful druid named Harek.  Harek has not been around for a few years, though – he left the forest in the care of two of his most trusted cohorts – a Pixie Druid (student of Harek’s) named Angilix, who is the leader of a band of pixies that live in the woods, and an Awakened Mouse Wizard named Welby.The pavilion is a prison of sorts – a quarantine that developed here years ago when some evil hunts men came into the wood looking for sport.  Over time it has gathered a growing number of evil men – men that Welby and Angilix believe are better taken out of the world.  Most of the pavilion is a layered web of illusion.  There is a table there, and the chairs are real enough, but the only food at the table is a bit of gruel doled out to each guest from a bowl filled for every meal with a Murlynd’s Spoon.  As the spoon only makes enough to satisfy the nutritional needs of four people, the food is being spread too thinly, and the guests are slowly starving to death.  None of the guests have any memory left. Each is some sort of villain from the local area – killers, highwayman, rapists, and Thordis and Siggid are there. The guests will all speak politely to the party, ask a few polite questions, but will only say that they don’t recall if they’re asked any questions in return.  All of the guests have had their memories wiped by the Pixies’ arrows.If the illusion of the pavilion were to be dispelled it would reveal the crude mass grave, which has been dug and filled in by the Dire Bear.  In it are the bodies  of many other prisoners who have slowly starved to death at the Tea Party.Back to the Story . . .Welby will deflect questions about himself until he is spotted, preferring to focus his scrutiny of the party. Welby will question the party about their lives, and their past deeds, with a keen interest in the crimes they have committed against others. As the party answers questions, the children will be milling around, refilling teacups and offering napkins to the guests.  While doing this, the children(pixies) are using their detect thoughts ability to see what the PCs are thinking about while they answer the questions, and if they tell a lie or a half-truth about something, the child will titter and giggle.  If they think of an event in the past that they do not bring up, the child will say something in sylvan, and then Welby will ask the PC directly about the event in question. Welby will spend time examining each of the characters – questioning them about their pasts, etc.  If they sit still for it, he will make a determination about them – should they stay at the tea party, or should they be sent back into the world.  If they don’t have questionable acts on their conscience, at least none that Welby and the Pixies can detect, Welby will reveal himself (if he has not been spotted) and ask them what their business with His Tea Party might be.  Again, if the party lies, a child will giggle.  Welby’s explaination of the Tea Party:“My tea party is the last party that these people will attend in their lives and it is the best party, filled with all the foods they love and new people to meet, every day.  They will never leave.  They belong here – the things they did in the outside world sent them here, one way or another, and it’s here they’ll stay.  Keeping evil out of the world is a good thing, is it not?”Welby’s defense of his own small stature (not just tiny, but FINE):“Don’t judge me by my size, bootfolk.  I am the sworn protector of this forest. If you dare to try to lay a hand on me, the woods will come alive and punish you.”Angilix, the other partner in this scene (the Pixie Druid) prefers to play along as one of the children, and will let Welby do the talking.  The party is in a tough spot. (assuming a mostly-good party) The Pixies are not evil, and they are not doing especially evil things – starving to death at the tea party isn’t the best way to go, but as the Pixies keep the guests pretty devoid of memory, they are not aware of the length of time that they have been there, and without a frame of reference don’t realize that they are wasting away to nothing.Should the party be a fairly despicable bunch, Welby will decide to keep them there, and signal the pixies to attack, putting them to sleep and wiping out their memories.Let me do the talking:Negotiating with Webly will be difficult, as the party will have very little to offer that would make a difference to him.  The one thing that Webly wants enough to consider releasing some of his prisoners is to find his master, who has been gone far longer than he should have been.  Welby will explain that he and the children are waiting for the reappearance of Harek, and if the party could go find him and bring him back – or bring some news of him, they would be grateful enough to release Thordis and Siggid, should the party ask for him, too.  Finding Harek will be a whole separate adventure, not detailed here.  It’s possible that the party will find some other leverage that will convince Welby that he should release Thordis, but as Welby isn’t very frightened of the party, and the children are acting as his lie and bluff detectors, it’s going to be a tough sell.  Welby will have to be convinced to trust the party to not decide to try to have their memories wiped by pixie arrows when they leave the forest.So we’ll do it quiet-like:Should the party decide to try to sneak back after dark to steal Thordis, they’ll find the Tea Party Guests all asleep in their seats, and no one else in sight.  The Pavilion is watched by two Pixie guards each night.  They flit around invisible and amuse themselves as best they can with the bits of cast off treasure equipment lying around the Pavilion – the possessions of the Guests.  The Pixies have listen and a spot bonuses of +8, so it is conceivable  that a stealthy group might be able to get in there to try to rescue Thordis before they notice.  A listen check of DC 22 will alert the PCs to the presence of something poking around softly under the table, but they won’t be able to see anything if they look.  Actually pulling Thordis away from the table is sure to draw the attention of the guards, who will immediately sound an alert.  In the event of an alert, the whole gang from “Boring Party Anyway” will join the fray over the course of the next several rounds, and the party will have their hands full trying to make their escape.Boring Party Anyway:Should the party dispel the illusions in the Pavilion, attack the children or Welby, or pick some other sort of fight, the illusion will drop, revealing a simple wooden table in the middle of the clearing, with the guest sitting on crude wooden chairs in front of chipped crockery bowls of gruel.  PCs may be surprised that Welby doesn’t disappear, although the children do.  This should be a tough, confusing final battle.  At first, most of the children will disappear as the Pixies return to their normal form, turn invisible, and scatter.  One of them, Angilix himself, will stay behind, resume his normal form long enough to say.  You shouldn’t oughta done that” and then “Here, Dogar!  Dogar, Alert!” This, of course, will hopefully give Welby the time to get someplace safe where he can start to cast some spells on the party.  Dogar is Angilix’s Dire Bear animal Companion.  He’ll charge into the clearing and roar mightily, in an effort to scare off the party.  Should that not work, he’ll do his best to try to drive them off by fighting.  While all of this is going on, the other Tea Party guests will also be in the area – milling around as confused as humanly possible.  Most will start to fumble for weapons dropped at their sides weeks or months before, just as a reflex, but each has no memory of anything before the Tea party. They will defend themselves, will take some serious convincing to get them to help fight the bear or to run away with the party.  Webly will find a likely spot and start casting spells to support Dogar.  He is a 5th level transmutter, and has a handful of spells that should make things really interesting as the party tries to drive him off.  He should be very slippery – he has invisibility, mirror image, dimension door, haste, blink, and expeditions retreat – as well as some offensive spells to remind the party that he’s there if they get tired of chasing him.  As a Fine-sized animal, he’s VERY hard to hit, but if he can be successfully grappled he’s probably done for.After about 6 rounds or so, the handful of Pixies who had been the children in the Pavilion will also start to return to the scene of the battle, lending their support to Welby, Angilix, and Dogar.If either Angilix or Webly are captured they can be traded for one prisoner each. Or, the party might try to grab Thorvis and make a run for it, rather than stand in there toe to toe and try to fight the whole bunch.  If the party should defeat the entire force of Bear, Pixie, and Mouse, they will find themselves the proud custodians of about a dozen surviving, starving amnesiacs as well as the equipment that those guests had on them when they arrived at the tea party.  (Assorted goodies, nothing too extraordinary).  The Pixies will also have left behind the Murlynd’s Spoon.  Note:  This is really the only fight in the adventure – there has been a lot of roleplaying and scene stuff along the way, but this fight is about it – for that reason, it’s a doozy.  It’s not necessary that the battle be a slugfest to the death, however.  Welby and the Pixies will probably know quite a bit about the party by the time the fighting starts.  Assuming they’re relatively good characters Welby will feel as though they’re better off in the world, and will try to use spells and abilities to subdue the party rather than kill them.  The party will awaken on the edge of the forest, each having been hit with an amnesia arrow (Fortitude save DC15 or lose all memory, see MM pg 173 for more details).  If any of the party members remember enough to try to find the pavilion again, the clearing will be empty, except for the mass grave, which will now include the bodies of the guests who had been in the pavilion when the party arrived.    The End:Should the party manage to return Thordis to his father, the Baron will be embarrassingly grateful.  He will pay the party the agreed-upon sum, unless it was the magic items, and then he will command Ottar to complete the items.  Ottar will take his sweet time – a month or more per item, depending upon the request, citing the need for rest between, etc.  Thorvald, of course, will be stuck with a much thornier issue – he has a son who had lost his way, and who has been returned to him, but with no memory of his life before – should he have Thordis’ memory restored or accept this as a second chance to raise his son right?The party might also consider trying to find out who it was that put the idea in Thorvis' head to go looking for the Mouse's Tea Party in the first place -- who might know something about it?  But  that would be a very short investigation if Thorvis' memory is not restored, and even then Ottar was disguised by an Alter Self spell, so the investigation will probably not go far.  Opponents, Encounters and rewards:Lots of investigation (reward PCs as a CR 5 encounter)Rogues (mostly 1st level runners, a few big guns around to convince the PCs to play nice if they get rowdy in the Imagatorium.Webly, Awakened mouse Transmuter 5 (Cr 6)Angilix, Pixie Druid 6 (Cr 7)Dogar (Dire Bear, CR 7)8 or so Pixies (Cr 4 each)time for bed.-rg(AM edit -- spotted a typo, realized I'd put the wrong name in for my opponent in the list of ingredients used. still more typos, sorry about that  . . .)</blockquote>

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