The titel says it all :D
In my campaign I fill the year of the building up of Kelmerane with watered down kingdom building rules and some side adventures and now this idea hit me like a ton of brick: let the circus come to town, but with the most dark of feys in tow, the overall despised pugwampies.
Most of the setting could be transferred into a sand setting without too much hassle, there would be no ice carving, but maybe big blocks of salt of tufftstone. The Ice Labyrinth could be erected in the pesh field, with nasty peshdream-induced madness later on.
The queen of the grove is easily substituted by a character I have already established: Beshvary, the nymph by the waterfalls near Kelmerane, who helped the characters during the taking of the city from the gnolls.
And for a worthy boss type monster in style of the frozen rider? Well, I could just use his stats as given, but sit him on a camele and use fire and sand styled attacks ... or I could make him a Visitor of Leng, a little weakened, but still very nasty, this would even tie in good with the later part of the AP.
Oh, and don't forget the pugwampies :D There aught to be scores of the little pests, many with class levels and lot and lots of pugwampi madness. I know that my players will hate me for this ever after, but that will only sweeten the deal :D And I think that this here would be one of the last times pugwampies could be used to full effect.
So, any thoughts?
....
......pugwampies are, to me, the single most hated low level monster in existence. Any DM, that would consider running not only Pugwampies with *levels* but in a scenario such as the Carnival which involves a time limit for saving villagers from grizzly deaths, during most of which they would likely be cursed...as *well* as rolling twice on just about every d20 roll that would matter....
You sir, are evil.
However I shall take no small amount of Schadenfreude from the horrors inflicted upon your poor PCs.
First - The carnival idea is could be fun... sort of a Something Wicked This Way Comes but with pugs!
Second - I had a ranger pug that had a baboon mount in House of the Beast. The baboon was not an animal companion but a handle animal creature that the pug had tamed over the last couple of years. He was hunting down the "evil" party that killed his paw. (From the old shrine portion.) Overall it was fun for the group as they kept finding snares and pit traps on the trip to the house and finding the leads to their mounts broken come dawn. That kind of thing. They eventually tracked it down. But a Pug with levels was fun to say the least from a DM point of view.
When I told the players we'd sort of "fast foward" through this section, I had a near revolt on my hands. I settled for 1 month per session, and I was allowed to continue DMing the game ;-)
The problem with pugs inappearing again is that my players foam at the mouth at the mere mention of the word "pugwupis". Eyes twitch and nervious gesturers gome out from every player.
I guess I over did it when I had a group of pugs follow the PC's around town after they cleared out the Battle Market. They went at the town sorta backwards - they cleared out the houses by the river, then when straight to the battle market, then finished off the town. The pugs in the battle market - my addition, including the gnoll booth on the first level that sold roasted pug on a spit (showing everyone what the gnolls really think about the little buggers)
Since the pugs say the players beat the gnolls and then the PC's let the pugs out of the cage at the booth, the pugs attached themselves to thier new heroes (awww). The mahem caused by the combination of pugs, remaining opponents, and 1/2 decayed buildings was epic.
I just don't think I'd survive another episode of pugs.