I have a haunt coming up in my homebrew game and I am wondering how the players would be able to figure out how to permanently remove the haunt.
The rough history of the haunt is that there was a man who was attempting to make peace between the local Fey and lumberjacks. But a local lumber baron did not want the peace and restrictions on the harvesting of wood. The lumber baron paid a handful of lumberjacks to kill the hopeful peacemaker.
The Fey found out about it and found his body handing. The Fey slaughtered the whole town. They the men who did it. The peacemaker was given a proper burial and his final resting place has become a bit of legend and bad adventurers do try to loot his tomb. But thus far no one is know to have succeed.
The hired murderers were turned into scarecrows and are now the guardians of the grave of the man they killed. If the scarecrows are all killed the haunt reforms in 1d6 days.
My initial thought for what would kill the haunt is that they need to bring someone with legal authority to pass judgment on these souls. I am not sure how the group would figure that out.
I am also open to suggestions for other ways to kill the haunt forever. This is something they are gonna want to do since they are looking for ways to earn good will in the area and this is very in line with their current quest.
Thank you in advance.
DAA
Judgment has already been more than passed on the Lumberjacks.
The Lumber Baron is the key here. Also the Fey of course, it was their idea of justice that created the underlying scarecrow magic.
The Fey are probably one source of information.
A surviving failed tomb raider might have information.
Traveling traders might know a bit.
The local Druids as well.
I think a Knowledge Religion automatically identifies a Haunt and how to destroy it, but I've always found it a hokey mechanic. You could try environmental storytelling, litter clues all about, and so on. Have local villagers tell the story, and paint him as the good guy, and the baron as a jackass. Really give off the impression the guy was wronged. If you manage to do that, and your players are good/empathic roleplayers, they'll want to pick up on that. Have some Fey roam around and tell their side of the story. Hell, as a last-ditch effort you could even have the guy turn up in ghost form and say he wants revenge. Maybe not in that form, that's too unsubtle. But have him appear in wisps whenever the Baron is mentioned for a split-second, and portray his general mood through decorations/drawings in his tomb (if they decide to visit it).
Haunts also usually try to damage visitors, or come with a spell effect they try to impose on the players. Have the players trigger the haunt, and have people who fail a Will save be temporarily possessed, or have the players be visibly angry or disgusted at the Baron, or impose a status condition whenever he's around. Try to not take control away from the possessed player, but if someone fails their save (it's maybe cheesy if they make their save, but otherwise have the person who rolled the lowest the possession, even if they would've made it. It's relevant to the story, you can cheat every now and then if it's story-relevant, like a cutscene. It's called plot armour.), take that person apart and tell him the backstory or how much he needs to play his part. Then, through interaction with the rest of the party, they'll find it out themselves, or have them roll Sense Motives to understand his underlying motive.
Haunts themselves are really mechanical things, maybe a leftover from 3.5, I dunno. Written as-is, haunts are boring to deal with. Try to go beyond the mechanical limits of haunts to actually make them interesting.
A Knowledge (history or local) check could be called for to know the history of the area and drop some plot hooks. Daw had some good ideas for party information sources.
As for destroying the haunt: Who is the dominant personality in the haunt? Haunts tend to have a dominant force. So unless each individual scarecrow has to be dispelled, you need to figure out what is tying them together. If they are persisting as a kind of punishment, do they dissolve when the peacemaker's wishes are fulfilled?
From the story you gave, this sounds less like a haunt and more like an eternal Sisyphean punishment that has no "out." Not sure that haunt rules would really apply in this story, since it's not vengeful spirits of the dead. It's a fey curse. I'd almost use some fusion of the haunt and curse rules, and just make there be no escape. The fey are known to be merciless and cruel to those who cross them.
Yay I go responses. Thank you all for your suggestions.
I had not considered curses and I rather like that idea so I will probably be adding that in the mix somewhere. I never liked the religion check that just solves things so this is a fun option.
I love the idea of a double layer where they have to help the peacemaker move on so the lumberjacks can be freed.
Thank you all again. And if anyone else has suggestions I still have a while before the players get to this wonderful place
The Excorcist cleric archetype has a special ability that allows them to roll to figure out how to destroy a haunt, so using a straight Knowledge Religion roll is unacceptable. The GM would do well to proved a backstory that the PCs hear somewhere along the way that helps clue them in on how to destroy the haunt.
They have gotten fairly decent backstory on it and in the next session they will be meeting with someone who was friends with the peacemaker and who has visited the grave/haunt. So anything they have missed or that NPC's did not know they will get out of this Satyr.
The cleric in the party has no archetypes so that is not something I have to contend with. This will be the second haunt they are to encounter and the first one they can do something about.
By and large my group tend to be good about gathering details. They heard about this place and refused to visit it until they had done some digging, which made me happy.