So, the players my on-and-off game will reach the mysterious main continent soon, at which point the game switches to hexcrawl mode. The idea is that hundreds of years ago an epic apocalypse forced the few surviving folks off the main land, and they have been living on a huge island since now.
I want to introduce a few horror elements to the game to spice it up a bit. So far I have been looking at the old Cthulhu d20 book, also a few things from Conan d20. A friend of mine showed me Tomes of Ancient Knowledge from Legendary Games, which had cool ideas I am totally stealing. I am not familiar with the Carrion Crown AP (for which ToAK is intended), is there anything in it worth considering? Or anything else you can think of? I'd appreciate any ideas you guys might have :)
My goal is to add unknown items or monsters to generate the feeling that things are definitely not ok in the continent, also to hand the players a few oddities (if they survive), since they are limited to CRB and APG.
|
Too many ideas really:
-Pcs could find a cave with beautiful maidens. It's actually the grotto of a hag luring adventurers to their death. Hags in general make creepy opponent easily, you should have a couple of them with class levels here and there.
-A cave where trolls worship a strange horror and bring him food. If the pcs try to go inside the cave they would find a sleeping titan, thanatonic titan or the Hekathonkheires.
-A village with lumberjacks and carpenters. They actually all happen to be afflicted werewolves. Welcome strangers but suggest them to leave them before the next full moon.
-Vampires, Liches too easy to make stories, tombs etc... around them.
-Abandoned Manor, houses with ghosts , specters , wraiths etc...
-Bat cave, but full of dire bats! what a twist!
-Glabrezu and Succubus make excellent social encounters and so easy to tempt your players into doing bad things. Glabrezu even more so with their free wish and they could look like an innocent or regular person.
Ah, you're going traight to scenes and encounter setups. My problem with horror encounters is that I can't really rely on elements based on civilization "as known", since the majority of the old continent is abandoned wilderness. There are a few settlements or small kingdoms, but I can't use haunted manors as much as I'd like to, and I don't want to overdo it or my players will become full-time drifters and never go into town again :)
Still, I like your idea of a bat cave (I already noted hag, succubi, wraiths and such as possible monsters).
Rite Publishing has many supplements for the Kaidan setting of Japanese horror (PFRPG), as well as a series of Haunts supplements that might really help. #30 Haunts for Kaidan has story rich haunts that make haunts more than just an encounter, but plot hooks that really enrich your story.
Also 101 Mystical Site Qualities to give unique options for unique locations in your haunted land. 101 Hazards and Disasters might really dress up your survivor horror element.
While the entire Curse of the Golden Spear mini-adventure arc (3 modules) are all very horror and horror/survivor built, so all 3 adventures are worth checking out. The first module The Gift has some supremely horrific encounters to spice up your campaign.
Finally, there's a one-shot horror adventure for Kaidan called Frozen Wind, that also is rich in horror/survivor so might be extremely helpful, and it's a FREE download - so worth checking out.
Perhaps I'm biased, but I wrote a short encounter site product called Haiku of Horror: Autumn Moon Bath House - which is a haunted Japanese bath house inn with a unique ghost in varying CR, a unique curse and more.
Short version:
Mysterious empty campsite is a prison built for a cold-based creature that subsists by sucking the life out of people. The creature has modified it to act as a trap. Players can kill the creature or help it escape.
Long version:
A day or three before they find this place, a wind storm kicks up. It is relatively minor and lasts for only an hour or so. A particularly skillful outdoors-man type may also comment on the lack of large animals in the area.
Instead of an abandoned mansion, have them find a large (30+ people) campsite that looks like it was abandoned minutes before the part arrived. Cook fire is going, food on dinner plates, still warm beds, but no foot prints. There is no magical aura either. It smells like food and people and horses. The only sounds are normal forest (or jungle) sounds.
In fact, things look too ordered; the tents are in a perfect line, the dishes all have the same dent in them, the fire isn't actually consuming firewood (and all the logs in it and nearby are exactly the same shape and size).
There is also a breeze outside the circle that isn't there inside, though it is only faint at first and should not be noticeable when they first arrive. With some work, they'll find the breeze is directed towards the camp from all angles. The longer they stay, the stronger the breeze will get until it becomes difficult to walk out of the campsite.
The campsite has no trampled undergrowth either; just bare dirt with a ring of identical black marbles, about the size of an eyeball, encircling the camp at about four foot intervals. The stones should be hard to find, perhaps buried almost completely. The players can either find it by examining the edge of the bare dirt patch or, if they are being obtuse, the setting sun can glint off of one that was exposed when the players entered the camp.
The stones can be picked up, but they go from cool to scalding as they are moved away from the perimeter (eventually hot enough to do 1 point of fire damage for every foot they go past five from their original spot). If dropped, they roll back to their original spot and cool down. They will slowly get hotter as the winds pick up. Once the wind is at maximum, the stones will be too hot to approach without taking fire damage (1 point for every foot closer than 5 a round).
The party should be given hints about the wind if they find the stones first, or about the stones if they notice the wind first. These two things are working together. In fact, the wind is caused by the heating stones. The wind will uncover the stones, in case the players still haven't noticed them.
So your players are stuck in the ring of burning stones with howling winds outside. They will see small creatures and bits of trees blown into the campsite and those things will burst into flames when they cross the boundary of stones.
The heat will slowly push them into the camp as the wind begins to push through the stones and drive the heat forward. At this point, there will be a new tent at the center of camp that wasn't there before. It is deep blue and the flaps are open. A pleasant coolness radiates from inside, as does a soft sound of beautiful music. Eventually, small snowflakes will begin to drift out and melt on the ground.
Inside will be larger than the outside suggests. A huge royal hall with walls of dark blue cloth and furniture of ice. At the center is a dias with a huge throne of ice sitting upon it. To one side is a gorgeous carved ice organ playing of its own accord. The room is full of ice statues of adventurers, animals, and explorers each carved with unbelievably fine realistic detail (because they were real; think flesh-to-stone but with ice).
On the throne is a level-appropriate creature (ice giant would be fun, but anything ice-themed works; perhaps with winter witch class levels which would let you use a fey creature). The creature will welcome the players, thank them from coming by, offer them refreshments which are provided by invisible servants.
The gist of the conversation is that it was imprisoned inside the ring of stones and it has had to make do with whatever wanders in. It created the campsite, it laid the trap, and it will drain the life from the players until they are nothing but ice sculptures. It isn't especially malicious about this, it is simply surviving like any other creature. Of course, if the players could free it, it would let them go.
So either the players can kill the creature, at which point the stones turn to dust and the campsite decays a gooey magic-stuff which evaporates to nothing. Or they can offer to help.
If they fight, make it good and very difficult, with plenty of ice-based creatures (or ice sculpture versions; just invent a template that gives a creature a vulnerability to fire, healed by cold magic, and extra cold damage with their attacks)
To help, they need to get a number of the orbs from the perimeter inside the center tent and put into a large cauldron (see, winter witch!) in the hall. Of course, it will be doing more and more fire damage as it goes, so your players will need to be inventive with how they get the ball, how they insulate it, how they move it through, etc.
The specific mechanics, how much damage it does, how insulation or ice blocks can be used to make it easier, etc, is something you can figure out. I'd keep it pretty fast-and-loose so the players can get some feeling of success by coming up with novel ideas. The important thing is they can't just saunter over, pick one up with some metal tongs, and wander back to the cauldron. Should take a bit more effort (maybe works once, but the tongs shatter once they get to the cauldron).
And if you think they are being a bit too cavalier with helping the creature, make sure it is obvious that it isn't a good creature and it'll go out and continue eating people (obvious disinterest or lies in discussing why it is in the trap, etc). Maybe even change the cauldron to needing to place the stones into various ice sculptures, which destroys them (or if you want some more combat, turns them back to flesh and has them attack the party).
Either way, there should be some passing comment on the morality of the choice. At least in my mind; your mind may differ.
The hardest part is managing the time table of wind and heat that will keep the players from leaving the camp and not experiencing any of this fun. Perhaps when they look to be leaving, a *thump* is heard from the center of camp and a large block of ice with a pile of coins frozen inside appears. While they try to get into the ice, the wind will pick up and the stones will heat up. This is a bit cheap and I'd suggest avoiding it, but sometimes extreme efforts are necessary.