Campaign Miscellanea

Outstanding Plot Hooks

A list of treasure maps, legends, rumors, vendettas, and similar that have yet to be pursued.

• There are rumors of a city across the mountains to the North. Supposedly some merchants on charter recently made it back - only two of the band survived the journey, with a single wagon of goods, and they have been cloistered with their house since then. So, nothing firm can be obtained. But it is said in the rumor-dens that this metropolis is much larger and more prosperous than even Veya, an ancient and decadent people inhabit it. There is also a great netherworld beneath the city, full of treasures and fell creatures. You cannot properly find a name, as even the existence of this city is considered somewhat mythical. All that is known is that to reach it, you must go through the bear mountains and travel North.

• Captain Hollis the mercenary was offering 150 gp each to escort a caravan going south and protect it from beast-men, but he has now left. Maybe we should keep an eye out for when/if he comes back/is killed.

• The Duchy of Karnak lays some distance East of the crossroads where your band of adventurers met. It consists of a large town around a castle, where the duke resides, and a number of outlying towns, villages, thorps, and hamlets. The people in the villages close to the tomb of Renf have been sorely afflicted by a lycanthrope. The Duke was an axe-wielding terror upon the battlefield in his youth, and made a widow of many women. However, he has grown grossly fat upon having gained a stronghold and servants, and is in no condition to pursue a bloodthirsty monster through the moors and forests of his realm, and he has lost too many men-at-arms in attempts to slay it. He has offered a "great reward" to any who can kill the beast, but has refused to disclose the nature of that reward. He fears that thieves might make off with it if there was widespread knowledge of what is in his possession. While this is certain to unsettle potential slayers from attempting the quest, the Duke is known to be a man of his word. If he says that he has a great reward, it is the opinion of the local wags that it must be great indeed.

• Tragus the Green, a locally famed Knight-Errant, set off into the wilds hunting for a fabled (and possibly enchanted) beast known as Gwydian's Carp. It is said to reside in a lake near the Weeping Wood, and to have devoured hapless victims without number. He traveled with an entourage of some size, and was not without arms, armor, and treasure to fund his expedition. If he and his band have truly fallen, their wealth may yet be where they left it.

• Burig also uncovered that there are various kinds of demons that exist. Some are physical beings that can be slain by steel or other means. Others are insubstantial and usually locked outside the physical world, and in order to affect the world in a meaningful way they must take over some physical body, in the way that water fills a bottle or air fills your lungs. The process can take some time and represents a great effort for the possessing demon, and having been so long denied the world of the senses, they are usually fairly mad and likely to engage in whatever debauchery they can manage for as long as they can manage.

Because they have spent time drifting outside the bounds of time and space, they often know things which could not normally be known.

Killing them permanently represents a tricky proposition.

• Burig and Corvus paid a flask of their own blood each to a Traveler met at Edible Fungus in exchange for the following lore (copied directly and verbatim from this IC post: http://forum.rpg.net/showpost.php?p=13461543&postcount=110):

"The Lost City of which you speak is nothing more than the bars of a cage. The Dreamer in the Dark, a Princess of Chaos, is trapped and bound deep below the streets. Though she strains and sobs at her imprisonment, and twists the earth around her into nightmare labyrinths, she cannot escape. To descend below the city is to enter her thrashing fever-dreams, and none can say what might be brought back to the surface."

"The creature you know as Nalgnashnee is not bound by the same constraints as mortal creatures. It swims a sea of possible futures and alternate pasts, as a fish might explore in coral. In one future you slay it, or harm it badly, or one of your companions does so. Therefore it seeks your destruction. The sights of time are ever uncertain, like a world viewed through a broken kaleidoscope, but those spirits cannot understand that they flee from terrors of their own making. They cannot understand your temporal existence any more than you can understand their boundless one. To us they are mad beings, and create danger in attempting to avoid it, or run into the arms of ten hazards while fleeing from one."

• Within Veya

• The Stone Flagon, a den of vice and villainy which is said to have no equal within a hundred miles. Its proprietors took over a small, crumbling riverside fortress which once belonged to some fallen aristocratic family. They have since partitioned it off into what must be half a hundred purveyors of liquor, intoxicants, the flesh-trade, games of chance, some discrete slavers, and quite likely a few practitioners of the Art. For anyone who dares to enter its thief-infested halls, The Stone Flagon is as good a place as any to ask after strange and unusual services.

NPCs

The players may wish to make note of important or interesting NPCs

• Laman Gallowhaunt, a dealer in antiques and student of history. He knows of a number of sages and collectors who might pay handsomely for interesting finds. He is particularly keen to help sell the bas relief of Renf the Red-Handed, and offers to charge a mere 10% as commission.

• Trithy the alchemy-monger, a wizened crone with a beard. She is an alchemist who can sell a set of books on alchemy for 700 gp and a potion of healing for 300 gp (but it takes a week to manufacture). First encountered here: http://forum.rpg.net/showpost.php?p=12992889&postcount=722

• Mr Candy, someone the party probably needs to kill soon. aka, the Eye for the Thieves' Guild, who saw through all our ruses but Amrose's disguise.

Impressive Kills

• Nalgashnee
• Owlbear
• Minotaur, lieutenant of the Horned One
• A small, 3-headed hydra.
• About one-tenth of the entire god-blessed Thieves' Guild in Veya

Interview with the Goblin

Esme has little difficulty keeping Shomlie disguised as a particularly hideous and deformed child, one so unruly as to need to be kept on a leash. While it is very difficult to prevent him from sneaking out in the night (he likes to construct clever traps from oddments, so as to more easily devour the local alleycats and city rats), he is exceedingly willing to please his new Mistress by answering all questions put to him. In fact, Esme gets the sense that Goblins are beings naturally suited to mental subjugation by the psionic powers of the Flesh Hive, which makes Shomlie much more completely in thrall of the Charm spell than would be a member of any race with more individual identity.

1. What do the goblins know about us? What do they think about us?

"Goblins know someone is killing us! Not much about who...goblins who see the deathmakers not coming back so often..."

2. What are the goblins planning to do about us?

"We makes the traps. Lots of traps being made. Mother makes stronger brothers to fight. We also try and help the other creatures of the underlands, we hope someone bigger and stronger fights them. Shomlie sees he was wrong now."

3. Where are they getting the walking skeletons? Do they arise on their own or are they created?

"They come from deeper into the underlands. The Horned One makes them, so it is said. He and his chosen ones command them."

4. Who rules the goblins? Where is the ruler located? Who protects him?

"Goblins serve the Mother. She makes us, and unmakes us, and rules us through our hearts. All Goblins know their Mother, and she gives us purpose. She is past the Two Lakes, and through the Mushroom Forest. Very hard to reach, for you. They not let past anyone without the Horned One saying 'let this one pass.' Goblins have permission, Mother got it for us."

5. If the ruler is not the Hive Mother, where is the Hive Mother? What protects her? Does she bite? Is she dangerous?

"Mother is very dangerous. She has all the goblins in the underland to protect her. She is very strong, very great."

6. Tell us about the Horned One. What does he look like? What is his relationship to the goblin ruler and the Hive Mother? Is he allied to either, or subordinate, or their enemy?

"Goblin ruler IS the Hive Mother. None of us have ever seen the Horned One. He lives deep down. Bigger monsters are like his eyes and hands. He reaches up through the tunnels."

7. Where is the goblins' treasure?

"I know not. We have shamans who serve Mother directly. They take the treasures. Every goblin gets a few golds for themselves, as birthday present. But all the treasure we get goes to the Shamans, or gets stolen by the Horned One."

8. What traps have the goblins laid for us?

"It has been a while...I don't really know what they might have built. Is new plan...There are tripwires. Rockfalls. Oiled Chutes, false floors, broken glass and iron spikes. Very bad."

9. Tell us about the Worm. How big is it? Does it control the goblins or do the goblins merely fear it? What are its weaknesses?

"Worm is not smart. Worm does not control anything. It just eats people when it can sneak up on them. It is big. Big as four or five mans. Its weaknesses are being chopped up with sharp things, and being stupid. Goblins stay away, but we taste bad anyway."

10. How many goblins are left? How many new goblins are made each day by the Mother?

"I am not being able to count so high...Usually only a few new goblins each day, if we need a lot. Less if we don't need more. We feed Mother much! Goblin traps are clever, we are catching all the animals.