| Douglas Muir 406 |
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Setting is a large city or metropolis in a climate that gets plenty of snow in winter. Years ago, a young woman froze to death in a town square one night. The details are only discussed in whispers... because the night after she died, the Tree of Frozen Tears started appearing.
The Tree appears an average of once per winter, always in a town square or other open public space, and always late at night on nights that are particularly dark and cold, usually accompanied by bad weather -- heavy snow, freezing rain, or thick fog. ("Once per winter" is a very irregular average, by the way. Years may go by without it appearing, and then it may pop up twice in a week.) Nobody sees it come, and nobody has yet seen it leave. It seems to stay around long enough for someone to see it -- sometimes a few someones -- and then disappear. In appearance, it's a white tree of an unknown species, with leaves and pale flowers... and it's all covered with a thin layer of ice.
There's general agreement that to see the tree is bad luck. The locals disagree on the details, but the most common version is that to see the tree means you or someone close to you will die. This is handy for foreshadowing, especially if the players aren't sure whether to believe it or not. (And it's not like a typical campaign lacks for deaths.)
Approaching the tree requires a saving throw, either Will or Fort. Fail it and you take cold damage and are also paralyzed, imagining that you're slowly freezing to death -- sort of like ghoul paralysis, except that you're reliving the girl's death. Attack the tree, and the fog/rain/snow swirls for a couple of rounds, effectively blinding everyone. When it passes the tree is gone. Determined players may find a way around this somehow, but it doesn't matter. Even if the tree if is burned to the ground, it will simply come back on the next appropriately dark night.
The tree does nothing aggressive. In fact, it does nothing at all; just stands there, its frozen branches glittering, eddies of snow whipping around it. But you can creep out the players by having something Bad always happen soon thereafter. And you can prime the pump with NPC reactions:
"Hey, we saw this strange tree..."
[NPCs fall silent, edge away from PCs, make warding gestures...]
The Bad things that happen should be worse than simple monster attacks. They should be very dangerous and creepy monster attacks, or bad things happening to loved ones, or horrific things happening to likable NPCs, or the whole campaign suddenly taking an unexpected and not-good direction.
The tree is, of course, a potential plot hook. The PCs can choose to follow it, or not. If you really want to nudge the PCs, you can have the tree appear more than once. The plot itself is a Gothic one, involving a prominent family in the city. It's longish, so let's put it below a cut.
We have a wealthy family, respected, maybe aristocrats. Call them the Beauforts. They've been a big deal in the city for three generations. Walk into their house and there's a big wall of family portraits. It's dominated by a huge picture of the founder, Victor Beaufort, a famous adventurer and hero. Victor has been dead for 50 years but the family tradition of public service lives on. The family has produced several adventurers -- mostly wizard types -- and a lot of successful leaders of the city or kingdom. And they're /good/ people. Maybe a little haughty and standoffish, but basically kind and decent.
The girl who died was a Beaufort daughter. Beautiful, intelligent, just starting on a career studying magic. Then she runs out into the snowy streets and freezes to death. Note that this is not something that's publicly discused; just finding out that there was a dead girl would require a Knowledge (local) or Diplomacy check, and finding that she was a Beaufort would require a second, harder one. People like and respect the family, and nobody's eager to discuss a mysterious tragedy from years past.
Missing piece: Victor, the founding hero of the family, is still around. He's a vampire, and his crypt is in the basement of the Beaufort townhouse.
I see Victor as an enchanter, but season to taste. Anyway, he's very smart, and very, very cunning. He leaves his family strictly alone... in a perverse way, he still sees himself as their patriarch and protector. He hunts very carefully, in districts of the city far from the Beaufort home, feeding off transients and the homeless. Once in a great while he may "help" the family by disappearing a political enemy or a business rival, and woe to the Beaufort servant who tries to steal from her employers, but for the most part Victor is cautious not to do anything that could be traced to his descendants.
The Beauforts have no idea he's there. Or rather, they do, but they can't actually think about it. Victor has every member of the family firmly enthralled. He starts with the domination and the enchantments at a very early age. By the time the Beauforts are adults, they have almost no free will where Victor is concerned. So although they may occasionally meet Victor and take instructions from him, they never remember it. Once in a while, they go down to the basement; the rest of the time, they're blankly unaware that there /is/ a basement.
Elaine was the odd exception. Victor was fascinated by her beauty and wit. She was, in some sick way, his favorite. So when she reached adolescence, he revealed himself to her, and offered to instruct her in the darkest of arts. She would first become a great enchantress, and then she would join him in undeath. (N.B., you can't have a proper Gothic without a creepy sexual subtext.) Incredibly, Elaine rejected her great-grandather's offer. She fled his underground lair and tried to wake her family. But Victor had placed them all in a deep enchanted slumber. So in desperation, out she ran into the snow...
There are a couple of possibilities here. One, Victor hit her with some spell like confusion or feeblemind, so she wandered in the dark until she just froze to death. Two, he pursued her through the streets, until in desperation she pulled out a knife and killed herself. Also, he probably zapped her with something to prevent her from getting help... silence cast on her, say, or a Suggestion that she not speak to anyone.
So Elaine dies and comes back as the tree-ghost. (Why a tree? Maybe she wanted to join an order of wizards that had a tree as a symbol.) That was ten years ago. Today the tree is... oh, something between a true ghost and a haunt.
Enter the PCs.
Now, you can adjust the slider on the tree-ghost from "sad" to "horrible" to suit your campaign and taste. The sad version is just this tragic apparition that's associated with misfortune. It wants to warn the PCs more than anything. The horrible version, already discussed, is actively sinister and a really bad omen. Either way, messing with the tree in any way brings terrible dreams for 1d3 days afterwards. Samples:
-- the PC is being chased by something horrible. He goes from room to room, trying to wake up friends (including the other PCs) but they can't be wakened, and the bad thing is getting closer.
-- the PC is facing a strange door underground. Blood leaks under the door. There's something dreadful behind the door. The PC knows he should run but opens the door instead. (It's the real door to Victor's lair, and the PC will recognize it if they ever get that far.) A distinctive lamp burns in a niche by the door; the PC may see an identical lamp in the Beaufort house one day.
-- The PC is running through snowy streets at night. People walk by but they have no faces. Something horrible is pursuing. When the PC tries to scream or call for help he realizes his mouth has disappeared.
You get the idea. The affected PC must make a high Will save, or be fatigued and then exhausted.
Still with me? Okay, so the PCs can be drawn into this in a variety of ways. One is, they see the tree, start asking questions, and end up making inquiries of the Beauforts. Another is, they're already heading for some involvement with the Beaufort family -- as employers, or patrons, or people who are looking to buy something that the PCs are selling -- and the tree has popped up in an attempt to warn them. If the PCs start getting inquisitive, then Victor will take at least a passing interest, and wackiness will ensue. The PCs may eventually figure out what's up, but it should take a while... Victor is cunning, and the Beauforts will not take kindly to strangers trying to pry into the family tragedy.
Possible wrinkle: a decade after the failure with Elaine, Victor has found another candidate.
Option #1, cousin Innocent is being threatened by Victor. Innocent can be male or female, as you like, but should be an appealing young person. Innocent will befriend the PCs, then later will start complaining about strange dreams. Then Victor reveals himself...
Option 1a, Innocent succumbs. Soon the PCs notice a drastic change in Innocent... Option 1b, Innocent refuses, and dies in some mysterious and horrible way, but not before passing some clue to the PCs. (Cue the tree right before this goes down.)
Option #2, cousin Creepy has already gone over to Victor. (Note that Creepy should be young enough to not be a suspect in Elaine's death.) Creepy starts working against the PCs right away. Since Creepy is obviously evil, the PCs will probably think he's the problem. Ah ha ha. Victor is merely using Creepy as a stalking horse.
Mix and match, season to taste. The ultimate goal of the campaign becomes to put the tree-ghost to rest, probably by exposing and destroying Victor. But it should take a while for the PCs to figure this out! You can make this easy or hard, depending on how much your PCs like mysteries (and how good they are at them). Victor becomes the BBG. Play him vicious. His cellar lair should be full of traps and just plain horrible stuff, and just getting there should be a challenge. The party should suffer a number of mysterious attacks before they even begin to figure out what's going on. A vampire wizard, properly played, is a damn tough opponent, and Victor should be high enough level to be a major challenge.
Through this plot arc, the tree becomes the central symbol of the mystery. Don't overuse it -- you want the PCs to be sincerely freaked when it appears, or at least worried -- but keep it in their minds.
Mm, Gothic.
Thoughts?
| DungeonmasterCal |
I love it. I may steal it for a group of teens I'm running for now, if you wouldn't mind. This is right up their alley, I think.
I love stories and games with a Gothic feel to them (and I don't mean whiny, pale kids who complain about the misery of living at home with no responsibilities or actual needs, either).
For years now, the cover of a particular Dragon magazine has nibbled at the back of my brain, but I've yet to put anything together that I'm satisfied with. I don't recall the issue number, but the cover featured an armored rider on a horse standing in a pool of water. The rider's head was a bare skull, and on the end of a long pole he held a lantern. There's something to be built upon there, but I've not found anything that I'm pleased with.
Fasrial
|
That seed is beautiful, and I agree that the creepy sexual subtext does add to the gothic horror quite a bit. Option 1b sounds the best to me, although I see it as the innocent seems to waver, temptation and guilt running strong, but eventually makes the right choice and dies for it.
I definitely like the tree being thought of as a sign of ill omen, but I'm not sure if I like the idea of it actually causing bad events to occur. Elaine doesn't seem like the vindictive type, and her sadness and the horror of her death might be better as something that torments the players and haunts them, but doesn't in itself cause them misfortune.
To up the creepy factor, perhaps have the dreams bleed into reality. Wake up with a mouth full of blood but no mouth wounds, hearing haunting music (Victor plays the organ perhaps?), and having shadows that plague the players (starting off as harmless, then shadows that cause minor changes to the world, then full on shadows from the Bestiary).
Just some thoughts - great ideas all around!
| Douglas Muir 406 |
The tree being a sign of ill omen: that's a fair point! I would consider leaving it open whether the tree is actually bad luck, or whether it's coincidence. (Or Victor taking an interest. That works, too.)
As to haunting music: you can either make Victor a maestro bloodline sorceror or a wizard who has thrown some ranks at Perform. Maestro is a pretty feeble bloodline, one of the two or three weakest really, but very thematic -- and if you're building a vampire sorceror, bloodline arcana are mostly window dressing anyway. Whether wizard or sorceror, I'd build Victor as a controller and manipulator rather than a blaster.
Anyway, glad you liked it. I don't know if many people find these interesting; it seems like posting "should a wizard ever dip a level of druid" is much more likely to get 50+ responses. But the kind words are much appreciated.
cheers,
Doug M.