38. I'll take last watch, guys..." It took you a while to notice it, but the rhythmic snoring and heavy breathing of your fellow adventurers is more than just hypnotic- it's actually it's own LANGUAGE. Some god related to sleep and dreams is communicating with you and only you late at night, bringing you cryptic messages spoken in the tongue of snores, snorts, and solumabic whispers. You have to remain quiet and strain your hearing in order to make out the messages(it's something like an audiatory magic eye in that sense)- A DC 20 Listen and Move Silently check is required to get a full message. Sometimes you need to make a Will save (also DC 20) afterwards to really parse it together.
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Ooh, a second page! Thanks Freehold DM!
39. Life, Without End A portal to the positive energy plane permeates this area. All living creatures heal unnaturally fast (fast healing equal to your Hit Dice), and objects crafted of once living material (such as wood, bone or hide) return to life, in a fashion, as your leather armor ripples on your flesh, and reacts to the touch, and your wooden weapon hafts sprout buds. Most disquieting is the dried rations within your pack, some of which, breads and grains and dried fruit, simply become fresher and more flavorful, others of which, cuts of jerked meat, begin to twitch and move about, as you bring them to your mouth...
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40. Signs and Portents. You were injured in the fight with that maddened, possibly fiend-tainted, wolf, but not seriously. Still, even after magical healing, an ugly scar remained, although your companions do not seem to think it's as bad as you claim. Indeed, it seems to be growing, instead of fading, becoming redder and angrier, and sprouting some darkish hair, although, again, anyone you mention this to says it's all in your head. And then there are the dreams, of running through the woods, head slung low. Are you being chased? No, it feels more exhilarating, more like you are chasing something... And when you wake, there are twigs arranged on your sleeping chest, in some strange pattern. At first, you thought nothing of it, and brushed them aside before noticing anything odd, but after a few days, you recognized that they were always laid across each other in a sort of pentagram-shape. When no twigs are available, instead dirt, small stones and leaf-litter is laid around your body in a similar pattern, as if someone is trying to form a protective circle around you while you sleep, to keep evil out.
Or, perhaps, to keep it in.
You know, it's a really weird coincidence that I've had dreams very similar to that.
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44. Bargain-Rate Fertility Magic Misfire In the alley beside the town brothel, a rat and a pigeon are squabbling over a chunk of discarded bread. The chattering sounds oddly like a pair of children bickering, and when you startle them, they look up at you with human eyes before scattering.
45. The Lady in the... Effluvia? Passing by a slaughterhouse that sluices its waste into the sea via a reeking wooden trough, amid the blood and gore, you see the flash of metal. A gold signet ring bounces down the trough and arcs out to the sea, only to be caught at the last second before it hits the red-stained water by a scaly arm which thrusts up from the befouled water itself.
46. My Name is not Virginia! An odd crescent shaped river stone, clear as glass and heavy like crystal, has found its way into your backpack. Items viewed through it are magnified about two times, although one night you hold it high to look at the full moon and discover that it continues to double in magnification over and over again over time, so that you are eventually seeing a great castle of grey stone, under siege by tall gangly humanoid figures with misshapen heads and bulging black eyes, riding twelve legged creatures that appear to be smooth-skinned behir. As your magnification increases, the crystal’s view focuses in on a single rider, directing the siege from a hill, clad in black and white robes, bearing a staff that appears to be made from the fused vertebrae of some creature’s spine, and with a crystal exactly like the one you hold hanging on a cord around its neck. It looks up, as if able to see you through the crystal, the way you see him, and raises a spindly hand, making a gesture with its six-jointed fingers as if disentangling itself from a spider’s web. All near you hear the word, ‘Nalhuur,’ and your mysterious stone darkens and cracks. Even if repaired, it no longer has any unusual properties when used to view the moon.
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47. Rock Garden This oasis contains a cool pool of water (too salty to drink) shaded by a couple of petrified palm trees. Their scaly bark is hard granite, and the overhanging leaves are thin sheets of crystal, strong enough to support their weight, and sometimes chiming against one another in the desert breeze. A couple of gazelle, also petrified, are frozen in the act of drinking from the water, and some small bushes and birds, equally stony, can be seen around the area. The only animate things in this oasis are a number of small boulders and stones that roll to avoid contact with living creatures, and can be taken from the area and kept as curiosities (although they will attempt to roll away in the direction of the oasis, if ever left unattended or unsecured, but being unable to hop over a rise, or muscle their way past any obstacle requiring a Str check). Whatever elemental force empowers these stones will last indefinitely, unless the petrified wildlife is restored to flesh and blood, as the life-force of the petrified animals has somehow become lodged in the stones that surrounded them at the time of their mysterious petrification.
42. Working Relationship
Your party is visited by a pair of outsiders—an angel and a devil, either of whom is vastly more powerful than the group as a whole. Neither attacks or threatens you in any way, instead informing you if asked that they are here merely as observers. While the two are not precisely friendly with each other, they seem to have reached a modus vivendi in which they're able to tolerate their opposite's presence, even to the point where they occasionally trade observations, the angel speaking Infernal and the devil replying with Celestial, perhaps as a courtesy. They refuse to reveal precisely what they are observing, but each, occasionally, notes a seemingly innocuous action by one of the party members, the devil even going so far as to nudge the angel and mutter, "Hmm ... hmm?" once or twice. Neither will "team up" with the party to harm or hinder the other ... and if one is attacked, the other will actually act to defend its counterpart, chiding the party for "meddling in affairs beyond their ken." Divination spells, even those directed to a great power, receive a response akin to "Don't worry about it; it's none of your business."
Eventually, one turns to the others, announces triumphantly, "See? I told you!" and as one they disappear in a burst of sulfur and incense.
This is just evil, downright evil! I love it!! :-D
48. Kiss the Fire
You are the only one awake, looking the movements of the campfire and it's hypnotic dance. Suddenly, the fire takes the shape of a beautiful woman staring at you. She smiles and calls you with her finger. You notice that the fire doesn't burn when she touch your face and gives you a gentle kiss.
You wake up with your body buried where the campfire was, only your head, covered in ashes, appear outside the ground. Your cloth is completly burned.
Another look at the hole reveals two burned skeletal hands at the bottom, trying to reach you and for the first time you notice a small tombstone half buried that says " Maeb Darantis, guilty of using the evil arts against the people of xxx, let the fire free her soul"
49. [Best for a newer gaming party without the means to buy magical weapons yet] After barely escaping with your lives, your brand new companions and you finally make it into a decent town to replenish your supplies, and heal. With the last of your funds, one or more of your party decide to upgrade your weapons. The smithy seems exorbitantly happy to see you, an adventuring party. He listens politely to your requests, and seems to have "just the thing". He goes into his back room and brings forth a [fill in the weapon type the character wants] double wrapped in exotic furs. He allows you to open up the bundle [he doesn't touch the weapon], and after negotiating you know you got a great bargain for such a weapon. Not wanting to jinx the deal you quickly pay the man, wrap up your weapon in the same double furs (as part of the deal), and you and your companions finish up your business and leave town.
You later notice that there are some unusual markings on your new weapon, but not anything that anyone in your party understands nor has seen before. Still later you notice that the inside of the furs your weapon was wrapped in are also covered in unusual markings ... each fur with different sets of markings, and none of them in the same "language" as the weapon itself. No amount of magical research can decipher the runes on any of these items, nor why they are on your weapon and its furs. But nothing unusual seems to happen when you've been using the weapon ... if anything, it seems to bring you a bit of luck [up to the DM how to play that part out].
At some point, later still, your party is intercepted by a messenger dispatched from the town, apparently from the smithy. The messenger says the smithy left town but his wife insisted you have this note. The note you are given simply says, "To your health. Stay out of crypts. Pay it forward."
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1000 was perhaps a trifle optimistic, but we're halfway to 100!
50. Inheritance After some accomplishment of note, perhaps slaying a particularly challenging foe, or attaining a specific level, or starting your own business / building your own keep / siring or bearing a child, a messenger arrives, apparently human (or your race), but of an unknown ethnicity, and wearing clothing and speaking a language utterly unfamiliar to even the most jaded world-traveler. The messenger bears a gift, which turns out to be an item or weapon that has the day before been stolen or destroyed or otherwise gone missing, not merely as good as new, but better (upgraded appropriately for Wealth By Level, and perhaps in some way that would not normally be an option, such as having been transformed into cold iron, silver or adamantine, or reconfigured into a new type of weapon that the character prefers to its original form), along with a note in your local or racial (or class specific, such as Druidic) tongue, saying that it is to be brought to this location at such-and-such a date (this date) and delivered to [your name here]. The note is written in your own hand, signed by you, and dated ten years in the future...
If questioned, the messenger speaks only haltingly in your tongue, and admits that this item has been in keeping for 645 years in their monastery / temple / whatever, charged by a founder of their order / faith / school to be delivered on this date. Mission complete, the messenger sighs and says that the long wait is over, and thanks the character, before aging rapidly and crumbling to dust, leaving behind only bones and tattered remains of clothing.
This thread is too much fun to let slip away into the night...
51. Last Laugh After a serious night of drinking and carousing to celebrate your recent victory over the XYZs and ABCs, you all awake with screaming headaches. But as you remember the lame jester dressed in such vivid colors but who's jokes and antics were so bad they were funny, you can still smile. You and your companions laughed AT that jester far more than you laughed with him, and ribbed him mercilessly. As you all roll out of your beds and start looking around, you each as one open your eyes wide in shock. Looking at each other, your faces are each a unique vivid color matching the jester's outfit. _____ is a vivid ruby, ____ a brilliant jade, _____ a shocking sunflower yellow , ____ an unroyal purple, <etc>! You all quickly realize that no amount of rubbing, washing, or scrubbing can remove the colors, nor any of the various potions or spells that you have available to you. Walking out into the town, the cries of their laughter at your plight only deepen your shame. Its sinking in that you all have a new mission ... find that jester!
Let me contribute.
52. The Mirror
As you walk into the supposedly haunted farmhouse, you see a mirror (with your reflection, duh!). You approach and touch it. As you turn and walk away, you experience excruciating pain. Your last sight is one of arms ripping out of your chest. You wake up on the floor, unharmed. Brushing yourself off, you see a great pool of dried blood on the floor. You look back at the mirror. In it is your mutilated corpse.
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Woo! Thanks for bumping this up TriMarkC and legoguy4492.
53. Goblin Spelled Backwards.
The energies of the First World interact in a contrary fashion with the world in this place. You find that the combat with the fey-touched goblins goes horribly wrong as they are emboldened by aggressive attacks, instead of harmed, but this affect covers the area, and is not a property of the creatures. They have adapted, and use Bluff, Diplomacy and Intimidate to attack your party, with 'biting sarcasm' and 'cutting remarks' inflicting actual wounds! Can you likewise adapt in time, sheathing your blades and sharpen your wits to survive this deadly nithing battle?
Thank you Set, for making this thread!
54.Angels and Devils You spot a small clearing up ahead. Checking the map the villagers gave you, you become excited, this is the spot! You run into the center, finding a patch of burnt ground. Out of it sticks a mirror. You hear noises behind you and turn around to see two angels. One has hands bursting out of its chest, while another has a mutilated corpse at its feet. You blink, and the angels turn into devils. Angels,devils,angels. They come towards you, reaching...
side note: these monsters could make a cool encounter. Angels one round, devils the next.
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55.Glass Bottles You know this is the only person for miles around who has heard of the chemicals your party needs. You head into his lab. Vials and potions surround you, but you notice that there is a group of shelves in the corner. You wander over there. You open the door and to your amazement, there is a group of tiny glass bottles filled with tiny living creatures! You run out and decide never to come in contact with that man ever again! You head back to your lodgings and fall asleep. When you wake up, you feel weird. The outside world looks dark and distorted. You see other creatures around you, in glass bottles. Oh no....
Dot