The party has the following description of a forest:
The dense evergreen forest known as Shadewood gains its name from the lurking shadows—said to be the spirits of ancient criminals brought to the island to be tortured and executed—that terrorize the darkest groves within. In the forest’s center lies an abandoned pagoda said to be home to a benevolent kami that has somehow made peace with the malicious undead spirits that surround its home.
The forest is about a ¼ mile across with a clearing at the center. There is a small building in the clearing.
However, the party (and I) are getting kinda bored with undead/necromancer encounters. So I want to surprise them with something that seems like a haunted forest but actually is something very different.
The party is level 11 and this should be something they can handle in the evening (maybe 2 evenings) after a tough fight.
Throw out some Fey. You have the choice to have silly-prank loving fey or the sinister otherwordly ones.
There are a few threads with wonderful suggestions as to how to run fey encounters, have a look through the search function.
This just screams for an evil fey encounter. How about a haunted farm? You could give it a few buildings, maybe representing a farmer patriarch, his kids, and his kids' kids all working this farm. You could play up the essential redneckiness of the people, complete with missing teeth. They also don't get visitors often, and are going to insist on showing some fine hospitality. (If you've got dueling banjos, now's the time to use them).
But let's give them an evil secret.
The farm is actually home to a colony of dark fairies. The farmers are not undead, but are actually raised dead folks under the control of the tombstone fairies who are leaders (of a sort) in the colony. Other residents include a family of tooth fairies. For added surrealism, the REAL bosses of the farm could the herd animals, with extra HD and the fey animal or fey creature template.
This has the potential to be ... interesting. Start up the fun in the evening, when the players see the farmers arguing with cattle, or the pigs gathering in what seems to be a conspiracy. The strangeness ought to continue over dinner, then really kick into gear at night, when the players wake up to find Tooth Fairies performing some unauthorized dental work. You'd probably want to give the above critters some extra HD or class levels to challenge your players. And, oh yeah, don't forget twigjacks hanging out in the woodpile.
Other possibilities revolving around the haunted forest scenario include the Skin Stealer, Baobhan Sith, and a Bogeyman. For your group, that last one will be particularly effective if you slap on the Advanced template, give him some minions (maybe a few chaneques and redcaps, and a whole haunted house to play with. While exploring, the players would encounter the fairly weak fairies. During those encounters, the bogeyman could pop out of nowhere occasionally. For example, let's say the players are fighting four redcaps. The bogeyman would burst from his hiding place (probably a closet), flank the players for a couple rounds to get in his sneak attacks, then turn invisible and retreat.
As Errant Mercenary said, there are some great fey encounters on the boards. If you're not allergic to spoilers, search the Kingmaker board for "Spring Feast" (among other things) for some ideas. My players still get twitchy around fairies after that one.
Edited to add: Riffing off of this, if you want to do the haunted house, you could mix in some haunts to make things interesting.
By way of note, you can spice up any creature you like by adding the fey creature template, then slapping on the Debased Fey template. This might be particularly effective if you craft a sidequest involving fey who've been "contaminated" by something. If the players can defeat/cleanse the source of the contamination (probably a bogeyman, a powerful dark fairy with a magic spring, or a lawyer), then they can turn the debased fairies good again.
Well I've already given them the description of the forest and pagoda. So I don't think a farm exactly will work out.
But I do like the idea of sinister fey. I think I could have some fun with this.
I'll need a reason and probably a goal for whey the fey are there and impersonating a haunted forest.
Do you think this should be a situation they can resolve or should it just be a success to figure out it is fey and better to leave them alone? Btw: It is sometimes hard to convince this group to leave something alone.
Never done too much with fey. It just hasn't come up before. So I will start looking up some of those links and doing some of those searches this weekend.
Any suggestions to really get them riled up?
Edit: I like the second post pennywit. I think corrupted faeries will be ideal. But then I might make it something strong enough that they probably can't deal with it at this time.
If you've got a main quest going and don't feel like dealing with an undead/fey side thing right now then just kick the can down the road.
In the middle of the clearing is just an illusionist hermit wanting to be left alone. So he casts images of ghosts and everything. Party investigates a bit but can't find anything wrong. Wizard gives them all some sort of slotless wondrous items that gives them a bonus to illusion based Will saves. They wear this item like a pin on their clothes (or whatever).
Later on you can have someone recognize the pin and do a side quest at that point.
Glad to help. If we're going to do a theme of corrupted fairies, how about this?
Why are fairies in the forest? Because they are part of the natural world, creatures of nature. Now, to the broad outlines of this sidequest (as I'm thinking about it].
The Bad Guys:
I like the bogeyman because he's powerful, flavorful, and (most importantly) he thrives on fear. Let's name him Geremon. I would add the advanced template to him so that he's a worthy threat for a level 10-11 party. Why is he hanging out in the haunted forest? Because he thrives on fear. He loves it. It's his nectar, his ambrosia, and his Coca-Cola. As the forest has gained a reputation for being haunted, he's gained more power, making him a virtual lord among his kind. Geremon, in fact, styles himself King of the Shadow Grove.
When the side quest opens, he ought to have a great deal of power, including a brute squad (a gang of redcaps is nice and flavorful), an underboss (perhaps a tombstone fairy), enforcers (I'm thinking chaneques), an intelligence-gathering network (mockingfey work nicely), messengers (how about a couple quicklings?), and a powerful ally -- a rusalka might work for this.
What are they doing and why?:
Somewhere in the forest, a rusalka, Urkima, lives in a pool. She's lived there long enough that the waters are tainted with her evil. Geremon is interested in increasing his influence, so he seeks Urkima's hand in marriage. Urkima, however, sees Geremon as a thug rather than a king. She won't be the Queen of the Shadow Grove unless Geremon has a worthy kingdom, with subjects of a suitable temperament who are aligned to him.
This is where Urkima's Pool comes in. It is tainted with Urkima's evil, and that evil can spread to any faerie who is dunked in the water. When that faerie emerges, he has the Debased template and is irredeemably evil.
How do the heroes fit in?:
I think the whole thing should start with faerie pranks -- really nasty pranks, like sticking a beehive in the fighter's helmet, or kidnapping a grizzly bear cub and sticking it in the middle of the PCs' campsite (to which the mama bear rampages ... )
The faeries might demand tribute (probably something expensive) to stop the pranks.
After this, we move to second encounter, where the players encounter a kidnapping in process. And that ought to kick off the adventure.
I think that Urkima's Pool and Geremon's Palace (really a broken-down, overgrown farmstead built across a string of clearings) ought to be separate locations, with flavorful encounters and minions for both. How does this sound so far?
Haunts are too close to undead. They have recently encountered dozens of various types of haunts.
pennywit
Some of it is pretty good. Might be too complex for a side quest. That is not necessarily a bad thing. Just might have to make it something they work on later.
This is a small forest within a mile of a fishing village on a small island. The fishing village however has some very powerful people (lv 15+) in it. If they found out about and were annoyed by the fey they could easily destroy the whole forest. So there is a real limit on what the fey could do in town and get away with. But I can see them pushing that limit.
The party's main quest is currently tied down in the village. But they usually have the evenings free to explore and look around. The 'haunted forest' rumors attracted their attention.
I'm not sure I have unexplored area left on the island for Urkima's pool(or at least not taken up with something else already). So it would have to be a ways away. Maybe a neighboring island.
Kinda amusing but the branks you described I already did to these players early in their career. But I can always think of new ones.
Some of it is pretty good. Might be too complex for a side quest. That is not necessarily a bad thing. Just might have to make it something they work on later.
Sorry 'bout that. When I get started on something, I REALLY get going on it.
Quote:
This is a small forest within a mile of a fishing village on a small island. The fishing village however has some very powerful people (lv 15+) in it. If they found out about and were annoyed by the fey they could easily destroy the whole forest. So there is a real limit on what the fey could do in town and get away with. But I can see them pushing that limit.
Actually, this makes for an interesting motivation for Geremon. He wants to assault the village and feast on their fear, but he can't as long as high-level types protect it. But, if he can turn more of the fey into debased and/or evil fey, they'll follow him, and he'll be able to field a virtual army against the fishing village.
You know with thousands of years of history to go on, you'd think people would stop giving the world so many juicy opportunities to create undead by forcing heinous anguish on people, even their criminals.
"Torture the CR 4 serial killer and leave him in an unmarked grave!"
*Two months later*
"Where in Sarenrae's flaming knickers did this CR 8 Mohrg come from?!?"
You know with thousands of years of history to go on, you'd think people would stop giving the world so many juicy opportunities to create undead by forcing heinous anguish on people, even their criminals.
This reminds me of the prologue of The Fifth Sorceress. It's the end of the big war between good wizards and evil sorceresses. Evil sorceresses are rounded up and imprisoned. The wizards, however, have taken oaths not to take another's life. So, rather than execute the evil sorceresses, the wizards haul the sorceresses out in a small boat and abandon them in the middle of the ocean. The logic, apparently, is that the wizards wouldn't have directly killed the sorceresses, but they would just die out in the ocean while nobody's around.
Clearly, those wizards didn't read enough fantasy novels.
here are also Lurkers in Light. They are really fun to throw at players, especially ones who are not preped for invisible foes. The fact that the lurkers work best in the middle of the day, in those relatively safe clearings where the evil shadows are not able to enter is great for making the players paranoid.
There is also underground. Trees take water up from the ground, if the water is contaminated, via some evil spring, the trees would start to turn evil, creating the shadowy effect.
Also a good place for the lurkers. Either the party brings light, which hides them, or they are in complete darkness, which also hides them.
