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So I've decided that my party is going to have a run in with 1 or more redcaps.
The main problem I am having right now is how to lead up to it.
Currently my party has just left a location a large forest and are on there way back to a village. The village is at least a week away from where they are and they will be going through an area they have not explored. This area is going to be mostly swamp.
More specific details
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The party tricked someone working in a hidden fortress in the forest into getting a wagon. (clever roleplaying led to this)
The party got the wagon, but the person they tricked insisted on providing a driver for the wagon. The driver is a dimwitted inbred dwarf. He was busy working in the fortress and would be the least missed if sent with the wagon. For safety purposes the duped individual who let them take the cart insisted that the other PCs be tied up in the back of the wagon. The 3 PCs tied up in the back are an alchemist, an archeologist bard and witch. The PC (a soulknife) who tricked the person for the wagon is sitting in front of the wagon with the dwarf for the moment.
The party is trying to get back to the village because they believe that a previous contact in the village is up to no good. They seem more intent on getting back to the village then anything else.
My Problems are mainly does anybody have any advice for creepy things to do while the party is riding back to town in the wagon?
I was also hoping that I would have some good creepy ideas for something the redcaps would do out of the ordinary. They dip their hats in blood, but is there something such as collecting vials of blood as a collection in their lair creepy or just really cliche sounding?
The party is APL 6, but play really smart, so anything I do usually has to be CR 7+ to even be a challenge.
I toyed with the idea of making the redcap a shadowdancer on top of the normal stat block, but if I am doing the math right it will make it CR10, which seems like a lot in terms of them being only 6.
The shadow dancer was mostly to hound them with shadowy images as they returned on the wagon. I planned on the redcap(s) having the scent of the party and following them for several days before having any kind of encounter. Basically I am hoping for good ideas to build suspense before the big hoopla!
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Maybe team the redcap with some other creature that has access to enchantment and illusions? Put the people in back to sleep or bring up magical darkness to make them think that they've closed their eyes. Then cast an illusion of the severed heads of the rest of the party and the driver in the middle of them in back of the wagon. Maybe cast another illusion to make the rest of the party and the driver look like other people? You probably won't actually get them to fight each other if they're as smart as you say, but it might have them waiting a round or two to attack and letting the redcap have a surprise action. But it should be creepy.