Slime City

After the events of the campaign that I made this post about, I introduced a new antagonist in the form of the Lady of Slime City and the agents of her authoritarian government which was expanding its influence to other settlements in the area. Much of the sessions that followed involved going to places and talking to people inside the city, and while I will post the maps and stuff from the adventures outside of the city, I am presenting pretty much everything I have made to detail Slime City here. I took a long time to post all of this stuff partially because I was working on other things but also because I couldn't really figure out a good way to present all of this without rewriting everything into a spreadsheet, which I don't feel like doing at this time.

This is the Banner of Slime City, a golden snail on a field of purple. Allied towns are expected to fly this banner and pay a 50% tax on all exports to the Lady of Slime City in exchange for protection from her army.

This is the version of the map I made to hand out to players. Slime City and Slimeburg used to be smaller, but they both grew into each other over time.

This is the GM version of the map I originally made with less of an eye appearance.

Some more detail on the various neighborhoods of the city, to give them flavor.

Two pages describing all of the important buildings and landmarks. This would've been a spreadsheet for sure if I wasn't running this location in a place with limited wi-fi.

I also made a series of charts showing who is in charge of each major faction in the city and who is loyal to them. These turned out kind of hard to read but I managed to run the game with them just fine.

I made a quick chart to come up with quests for the various people on the org charts to give out. I didn't end up using this because the group managed to come to people with goals and quests already in mind, but I had this ready in case they ever walked up to someone without doing any preparation and wanted to know how to get on their good side.

This is a random encounter table I came up with for when the group traveled between neighborhoods. It honestly created some pretty fun scenes, but that might just be a result of my group being a bunch of solid role-players.

Ultimately, the party wanted to overthrow the government and liberate the people under Slime City's control, so I made a list of things they can do to make that happen. They ended up doing a few things that weren't on the list, but those were events that got a lot of public attention and made the government look bad.

I only ever needed to develop the Lady of Slime City's Court and the training grounds for her army as individual maps for combat and exploration, as far as locations in the city go. The court is where the Lady Herself hears petitions from her citizens and has a lot of information the party might want while also being where criminals are held before their sentencing. The training grounds commander tries to keep everything going on inside a secret, so getting in and causing some chaos is a great way to bother the government of Slime City.

The group I ran this for had never tried a city-based adventure before and wasn't super used to having such a large sandbox to play in, but they managed to figure it out in time. Their adventure here ended with the entire city getting destroyed by one of the player characters, setting that character up as the next villain, but I wouldn't mind running this setting as a starting place for a group of characters, even. Maybe all of this stuff will only make sense to me since I made it in the first place, but I think it's a solid take on a fantasy city.

The Old Gritville Mine: Noxious Cemetery

This post is part of my take on the dungeon 23 challenge, the Old Gritville Mine. The premise and explanation for everything can be found in this post and this post, but those should be the only required reading to figure out what's going on here.

Introduction: This week's section turned out to also be undead-themed, but in a much more conventional way. The hardest part about the concept of a noxious cemetery was coming up with which of the many sources of bad smells in a cemetery to focus on. Overall I am enjoying this room-a-day thing so far, especially if the random word generators continue to give me solid concepts like this.

Room Descriptions

• 1/9- Stinking burial Ground
• Smells of sulfur coming from the Volcanic Crematorium
• Smells of rotting flesh from the Cursed Charnel House
• The writing on the headstones is too faded to read
• Next to the Volcanic Crematorium is a stone statue of a dancing skeleton
• Door to Undertaker's Shack is made of wood and locked
• 1/10- Volcanic Crematorium
• Smells strongly of sulfur, is very warm, and the back wall glows red with heat, far too hot to touch
• One of the cremation chambers is actually a secret tunnel to the Gilded Graveyard
• A lever disguised as the mechanism to turn on the cremation chambers will actually lower the red-hot wall, releasing a wave of lava
• 1/11- Undertaker's Shack
• Smells like rotting food
• Underneath the rotting corpse of the undertaker is the Undertaker's Shovel, a worn shovel with magic runes on the handle
• The pantry is full of rotten food and a flesh-eating slime, which jumps out at whoever opens up the pantry
• The wooden doors to the shack are both locked
• 1/12- Cursed Charnel House
• The key to the Undertaker's Shack is hidden under the bone pile
• Smells of rotting flesh even though there is none present
• The bones fly around the room if anyone disturbs the bone pile, battering anyone inside
• 1/13- Undertaker's Equipment Shed
• A bunch of shovels sitting on a wooden rack
• A wooden wheelbarrow
• 1/14- Gilded Graveyard
• Tombstones here are gold-plated
• Guarded by 12 golden skeletons which attack anyone who enters the area but will not follow outside of the Gilded Graveyard, each skeleton is made of pure gold and is worth quite a bit after being dispatched
• 1/15- Overgrown Graves
• A large orange tree has grown out of one of the graves, its shallow roots covering up all of the other graves and tombstones in the area, the oranges from the tree are edible and just as nutritious as regular oranges, they just reek of rotting flesh once they have been peeled

Magic Items

• The Undertaker's Shovel
• Digs a 3ftx6ft hole that is 6 feet deep with perfect edges with a single scoop in the ground and almost no effort from the digger
• Looks like a worn shovel with a steel blade, wooden handle, and magic runes carved into the handle

The Old Gritville Mine: Broken Cafeteria

This post is part of my take on the dungeon 23 challenge, the Old Gritville Mine. The premise and explanation for everything can be found in this post and this post, but those should be the only required reading to figure out what's going on here.

Introduction: So this was the first reality bubble for this project, and the random generator ended up giving me Broken Cafeteria, which I took in the direction of undead. The idea is that because the people are dead and don't need food, the endless cycle of mimicking lunch time comes off as broken to me. I don't know, maybe it's a reach. Whatever.

Room Descriptions

• 1/2- Skeletal Cafeteria Hall
• Several long folding tables with benches attached to the sides
• 10 human skeletons that continuously get in line for food, get served nothing, sit down, pretend to eat for a bit, and then return their dishes to do it all over again
• Door to the Garbage Pit is solid steel and locked
• 1/3- Haunted Kitchen
• Pots, pans, knives, plates, and silverware moving around as if being used, they will attack anyone who interferes or gets in the way of them pretending to cook and clean
• The freezer door is frozen over with a foot of ice
• Door to the Garbage Pit is solid steel and locked
• Door to Secret Cleaning Supply Closet hidden behind shelves of clean dishes
• 50 steel lunch trays
• 1/4- Way Too Cold Walk-in Fridge
• Everything is frozen over, making the floor slippery and difficult to traverse
• The freezer door is frozen over with a foot of ice
• 1/5- Empty Pantry
• Many empty shelves
• One skeleton with particularly thick bones and twice the toughness of a regular skeleton that attacks as soon as it sees anyone, trying to bite them
• 1/6- Necromantic Garbage Pit
• Used magic circle with a single massive skeleton in the middle, touching it causes the skeletons in the cafeteria to become violent and attack everything
• There is a hole blown in the wall that acts as an exit to the reality bubble
• The Ring of Rending Flesh is on the giant skeleton's finger
• Door to the Garbage Pit is solid steel and locked
• 1/7- Deadly Walk-in Freezer
• The Garbage Pit key on a string around the neck of a single skeleton in the middle of the room which attacks when touched, all of its attacks deal extra damage from the skeleton being so cold
• Both doors are frozen over with a foot of ice
• It is so cold inside the freezer that it hurts to spend more than a minute inside of it
• 1/8- Secret Cleaning Supply Closet
• Door is hidden behind the clean dishes shelf in the Haunted Kitchen
• Contains all sorts of cleaning supplies
• The Sinister Arm sits on a shelf for anyone to grab

Magic Items

• The Ring of Rending Flesh
• Instantly removes all flesh from a skeleton
• Can be used as often as the wearer wants
• Cannot be used on living things
• A golden band with a small ruby carved into a skull on it
• The Sinister Arm
• Anyone can replace their own left arm with this item in order to gain the power to permanently animate one skeleton under their control per day, as well as cause living things to flee by magically inducing a sense of terror at any moment they please
• The articulated bones from an adult human left arm, blackened by fire and covered in glowing cracks

The Old Gritville Mine: Surrounding Area and Entrance

 This is the first post with maps and such for my dungeon 23 challenge, the Old Gritville Mine. It includes a map of some of the local area, but most of the details are found in this post on Gremland as the focus of this post is really the dungeon. For convenience, I will also repost the introduction text.

Known as the Old Gritville Mine or the Haunted Mine, this ancient mine is the original reason why Gritville exists, and also the cause of the worst tragedy in the town's history. About 100 years ago, the miners are said to have uncovered something terrible, warping the space inside the mine into a series of ever-shifting reality bubbles taken from all over the prime material plane. Ever since that haunting day, the entrance to the mine brings people to an unstable world of pocket dimensions which shift and move around inside of the mountain without disturbing the surface. Each bubble of reality seems to consist of 7 rooms at most, which can be of pretty much any size and contain pretty much anything. Because of their motion, these pockets of reality maintain only ephemeral connections to each other. While passages and rooms inside the same pocket reality stay consistent, the hallways that leave and connect to another reality bubble will have new, random locations at the end every couple of hours. Some of these bubbles seem fairly similar to what one would expect from a series of mineshafts and excavated ore pockets, some seem to take people to other planets entirely, many appear to be taken from a much more mundane location, and yet more seem to be the awkward fusion of 2 or more unrelated bubbles.
Roaming the rooms, hallways, and various pocket dimensions of the Old Gritville Mine are all sorts of creatures. Although it is possible to run into survivors of the original accident, most of them are long dead, usually killed by one of the many horrible creatures from the more exotic reality pockets. Aside from alien horrors, many normal, regular people were also sucked into the mine and a few survived long enough to establish small camps, farms, and even towns in the midst of the broiling chaos of reality bubbles. While rare, these safe havens represent the only thing keeping most who get lost in the Haunted Mine from a painful death at the hands of a terrifying beast.
Although returning to the entrance of the Old Gritville Mine is nearly impossible because the pocket dimensions are always shifting around, the few who have returned have come back with riches, magic, and powerful objects beyond imagination. While these brave adventurers come back wealthy beyond compare, they also speak of dangers and horrors that they never wish to see again. It is up to each adventurer who hears of the Old Gritville Mine to decide for themselves if they will challenge it. Many have come back with great success, but most have never been seen again.

Room Description

• 1/1- Old Gritville Mine Entrance
• A nondescript mineshaft entrance with a formerly well-trod path
• Inside the tunnel it becomes unnaturally dark after 60 feet, it is impossible to see past that point

Factions

• The Miners' Children- descendants of the miners who survived the accident 100 years ago. They are generally friendly and use a crudely drawn lantern to identify themselves.
• Treasure Hunters- people who have entered the Haunted Mine to get whatever they can sell for a high price. They are generally untrustworthy.
• Ranklings- otherworldly creatures that feed on feelings of annoyance that have gained a strong foothold in the mines by bothering anyone they come across. They are somewhat similar to the gremlins infesting Gremland, but they are mortal creatures.

Random Encounter Table (2d6)

Roll on this table pretty much any time the party spends more than 10 minutes hanging out in an unprotected space

2- The Skwankor, on the hunt for food

3- Treasure hunters from the outside, paranoid of others and quick to rob anyone they meet

4- A group of ranklings looking for people to bother

5- A random wild animal that wandered into the mine, lost and scared

6- The sounds of an unknown creature in the distance

7- Nothing

8- Voices in the distance, although the source cannot be found

9- A group of treasure hunters trying to find safety after losing all their stuff

10- A foraging party of Miners' Children, willing to trade or lead friendly people back to their home

11- An unattended cart of supplies rolls by, apparently self-propelled

12- The Duck Man, Mary Lou the giant Duck, and his shop/wagon looking for magic items but willing to trade with anyone he happens to meet

The Department of Modron Violations

 This adventure was a side quest from the main campaign and took place directly after this adventure, although this adventure is more-or-less standalone.

The Setup

    One of the characters' parents have been kidnapped by modrons for violating the rules of the cosmic plane of law. After several weeks of research, the party has discovered a way to teleport themselves to where the parents are being held. This place, the Department of Modron Violations, is in the middle of what appears to be an endless field of grandfather clocks, and looks like a single-story brick building, although it also has a basement. Outside the main entrance are two modrons wearing security guard uniforms and standing around a weird grey arch.

The DMV

Key: A dot with a curved arrow one square away represents a door, the arrow indicating the direction the door swings open. If there is a letter "L" inside the curve of the arrow, that door is locked and the party must find the key, pick the lock, or break the door down to get through. The triangles made of lines represent stairs, with matching shapes in the corners of the stairs indicating which stairs connect to each other on the two levels. The stars indicate the items that are found inside the room.

    The Department of Modron Violations, or the DMV for short, is the place on Mechanus, the cosmic plane of law, where spirits of law and mortals that have broken the rules of Mechanus are sent as punishment. Most of the building is devoted to bureaucratic tasks, and there are not many cells due to the low rates of crime on Mechanus. When the party arrives, pretty much all of the staff in the building are in a meeting in the conference room. The only modrons not in the meeting are the receptionist, the injured file jockey, and whatever guards are posted around the building. Only the receptionist is upset about not being at the meeting, everyone else is too busy with their work to care.

Upper Level: Before the party can even get inside the DMV, they must get past the two security guards who stand in front of the door. They operate a grey, plastic arch that looks like a modern metal detector. The arch is magical and will sound and alarm if anyone walks through it while carrying a weapon. The arch is magical and can detect things that are considered weapons. The guards are not particularly strong, but they are able to call for the building to be locked down if the party gets violent with them.

    Once inside, the receptionist will say hello and offer to help the party. They will readily explain why the one player's parents are imprisoned and they will explain that there is a "simple" paperwork process that can be followed to get them out. The issue, however, is that this process could take years and may even fail. The receptionist is, however, upset that they are missing the meeting that the rest of their coworkers at the DMV are attending, and can be convinced to give the party the security and accounting keys from the office out of spite. 

    The meeting room and conference room are full of several dozen modrons who perform various office functions around the DMV. They are entirely entranced by the information being given by their manager, and the manager is too deep into their own speech to notice anyone walking around in the rooms. The workers, entranced as they are, will only respond to loud noises or physical contact, not that the party is aware of this. One of the workers in the conference room has a bright blue folder in front of them that is cold to the touch.

Lower Level: The mail room is very well organized, although the only interesting thing inside of it is a bright red folder on one of the upper shelves. Inside the file room is an injured modron, showing signs of both burns and frostbite, and several massive filing cabinets. The modron will explain that there are three colored folders (red, blue, yellow) that need to be retrieved and put in the matching cabinets. The modron is too injured to do this right now and will give the party 3 magic files that unleash the power of a single spell when opened if they help. The only real complications are finding the files and safely putting them back in the correct cabinets. Opening the blue cabinet unleashes painful amounts of cold that will cause frostbite after a few seconds, red unleashes fountains of fire, and the yellow cabinet shoots out lighting bolts when opened. The spell files that the modron gives as a reward can be either random or player choice, depending on how nice you want to be.

    Inside the vault, in addition to piles of gold, is a powerful magic item known as the Blindfold of Law. When wearing the blindfold, one is blinded and takes psychic damage if they break any laws after putting it on, but they find that they are significantly smarter, wiser, and more perceptive while they wear it. These effects are not readily explained unless someone with prior knowledge of the artifact is there to do the explaining.

    The first cell with several skeletons inside also contains a standard set of polyhedral dice made out of pure diamond. The dice have no special effects but they are worth a lot of money. The cell with the rogue accountant is relatively clean. The accountant was imprisoned for embezzlement, but managed to steal the yellow file on their way in, just to cause some chaos. They want to be free to explore the multiverse, and will trade the yellow file for help in that goal. Crazy Steve does not know how or why he ended up in his cell, but he is also willing to exchange "helpful information" for a bit of food. This helpful information will turn out to be knowledge of the secret escape route hidden behind the wall of the parents' cell.

Running Notes

    There isn't much to say about this one. My group ended up missing a lot of the side content for this adventure and really focused on saving the parents, so I can't really speak to how it all would play out. This was designed to be a low combat dungeon, so the best advice I can give is to have fun with it and let the players know that security is light and hardly anyone is going to care to sound any alarms, given the fact that most staff are mesmerized by their meetings while the players are there.

The Battle for Polip

 This adventure was originally made as a direct sequel to this adventure, although this one probably won't matter much to a party who has not gone through several adventures in service to Polip before.

The Setup

    After finding out that the kobold invasion of Polip was coming, the day has finally come. Hopefully, the party has had enough time to gather forces and prepare defenses, because the kobolds outnumber the people of Polip 6 to 1. It is unknown what direction the kobolds will attack from, how their forces will be divided, or what they will be armed with, so whatever was done to prepare will have to do.

The Battle

    When the battle begins, about 1/3 of the kobold forces will be above ground, barely visible in the distance, and then the other 2/3 will come out of tunnels in the ground about 100 feet from the walls of Polip. The kobolds are armed with spears and swords, but they are highly determined to take back the valley they view as their ancestral homeland. The kobolds will most likely fight to the last man unless one of their leaders can be convinced to negotiate. 

    Run this battle using whatever mass combat rules you are comfortable with. I ran mass combat rules that only barely gave the effect I wanted, so I don't really feel like sharing them here. What is important is that the goal of the battle is to defend the town from the enemy forces. I gave the town walls and the town itself hit points and if both pools got depleted I would've considered that a win for the kobolds. The party was able to build extra defenses and do special training to get various bonuses during the battle, but that was highly improvised based on what the players came up with for defenses.

Running Notes

    When I ran this adventure, I ran it basically as described above. The party had been able to gather several groups of allies that they could use to fight the kobolds and was able to prepare several different defenses that added to the hit points of the wall and gave their allies bonuses to things like perception. I also ruled that characters could train with their armies to give the troops better stats during the battle. As I said, I wasn't super satisfied with the mass combat system I used for this, but I think I could tweak it for a better experience. I'll make another post if I ever do run a more effective mass combat encounter.

The Octopus Cult in the Ancient Outpost

 This adventure was originally made as a direct sequel to this adventure, but does not necessarily require that the party play the previous content.

The Setup

    After successfully convincing two companies of mercenaries to assist them in their fight against the invading kobold army, the party returns to Polip ahead of their new allies. Upon their return, the party discovers that Mayor Octavia has been kidnapped by a cult that worships octopuses. Enraged by the way the party treated the Octopus Queen, the cult has demanded the release of their captive god or they will destroy the town. 

    Most people in Polip weren't even aware that there was an octopus cult in the valley, but 1 in 10 will have heard rumors. Nobody has seen Oswald, the leader of the Arboreal Octopus Hunting Guild, since the mayor was kidnapped, and most people will say he was generally a private man who spent a lot of time at home. The town guards will say that he would leave just before the town gates closed once a month and not come back for 24 hours, never explaining what he was doing.

    Searching Oswald's home will reveal that no one is home and it seems like Oswald left in a hurry several days ago, leaving behind a lot of essential items for long-distance travel. Close inspection of his writing desk will reveal a locked drawer. The drawer is trivially easy to break open or pick, and contains a map leading to the ancient kobold outpost that the cultists live in.

The Dungeon

Key: A dot with a curved arrow one square away represents a door, the arrow indicating the direction the door swings open. If there is a letter "L" inside the curve of the arrow, that door is locked and the party must find the key, pick the lock, or break the door down to get through. The triangles made of lines represent stairs, with matching shapes in the corners of the stairs indicating which stairs connect to each other on the two levels. The stars indicate the items that are found inside the room.

    The ancient outpost, called a fort by the cultists, was built by the kobolds and was one of the first buildings taken by the colonists several hundred years ago. While the building is still sound, it is weathered and has not been well-maintained. The cultists have done their best to improve the long-abandoned outpost, but none of them have the skills of the ancient kobold builders.

    There are about 20 regular cultists in the fort, 4 regular octopus priests, including Oswald, their leader, Otto, and 6 mutated arboreal octopuses that have become feral and vicious through magic. During the day, about half of the cultists will be on level 1 (L1), and the other half, as well as the priests, Otto, and the mutated octopuses, will be below ground on level 2 (L2). At night, all cultists will be in the dormitory, all priests will be in their room, and Otto will be roaming the halls restlessly. Otto has done a lot to transform himself to be more like his objects of worship. He has extended his torso to make room for 2 extra pairs of arms, half of which have been turned into tentacles, and can summon waves of salt water or ink to attack his enemies. Despite his monstrous form, Otto is still and intelligent and charismatic, having strong control over his cult.

    The Mayor is tied up on the altar of the ritual room. There is a 50% chance that the cult is in the process of sacrificing her for a ritual when the party first arrives at the fort. If this is the case, the party has about 1 hour before the mayor is killed. If she dies, the ritual is complete and the Octopus Queen gains much more power and grows to the size of a house so she can destroy Polip. This problem may be more or less of an immediate issue depending on where the Octopus Queen is and her relationship with the town. It should be noted that the cult sees any direct interaction with the Octopus Queen as a heresy worthy of their current action, which the party probably did if they played the first set of adventures.

L1: This is the level that is above ground. Without knowing of the level built into the hill, the outpost looks like 3 buildings. There are 2 watchtowers and a larger hall. The towers are three stories tall and each one provides a good view of the Slimewater's Headwater Valley as well as the valley beyond the rise of the end moraine, the Great Joinder Valley. These towers are guarded during the day because they contain stairs to the lower level. The main hall contains the room where sermons are held, a room with a large statue of a golden octopus. The guarded room has at least 2 cultists in it at all times who only allow other cultists in. One of the books in the library is a book that teaches one a spell that sprays ink out of the caster's hands.

L2: This is the level below the ground, built into the hill at the end of the valley. The guarded rooms have 2 cultists inside at all times who are tasked with making sure only cultists are on the lower level. If the cult has managed to take back the Octopus Queen as well, she will be in the same room as the mutated arboreal octopuses. The room that the priests sleep in has 4 beds in it, and above each bed is a ceremonial mask made of gold. High Priest Otto's room contains a spell book that teaches one how to cast a spell that permanently turns a human arm into an octopus-like tentacle and requires the use of an altar like the one in the Ritual Room. The Ritual Room is where Mayor Octavia is being kept, tied up, on the altar. The common room has several tables with chairs around them, upon which are two magic items. The vault is not only locked, but has a heavy metal door that has been added by the cultists, making it very hard to get into without the key.

Running Notes

    When I ran this for my group, the overall context was the result of the party ignoring a threatening note left by the cult before they left to hire mercenaries in Jointown. Because they were gone for half a week, the cultists not only kidnapped the mayor, but took the Octopus Queen with them as well. They decided to split the party and ended up leaving one character to deal with almost all of the cultists alone. Otto was a tough fight for them because I meant for the party to work together to beat him, but they instead had only like half the party in the room for the fight. I had described the cultists as masked and robed so that it would be easy for the party to disguise themselves before starting a huge fight, but they ran in guns blazing which was also fine.

The Jointown Mercenaries

 This adventure was originally made as a direct sequel to this adventure, but does not necessarily require the party to play the previous scenario.

The Setup

    After discovering that an army of kobolds is going to descend upon the town of Polip, the players have been asked to go one day downriver. There, over the point where the Slimewater River meets its first major tributary, is Jointown. Jointown is built up on stilts and boardwalks and marks the end of the navigable portion of the Slimewater River, making most of its money by charging for the use of the docks. That is starting to change as the new mayor, Martin Quimbly, has decided to start marketing Jointown as a tourist destination with easy access to the Little Ooze Valley and a lively entertainment district. It is popular with mercenaries from the wars in the flatter lands south of the Cephalus Mountains.

    Upon arriving in town, the players will find that the mercenaries tend to hang out in a bar called the Three Rocks Inn, run by a red-haired gnome named Fuoco who seems to be eternally stressed out by her rowdy clientele. Upon arriving at the bar, the party will find the banners of four different mercenary companies in the four corners of the room. 

ignore the checks and the x, those are notes from when I ran this

The Complication

    These mercenaries are used to being hired out by kings and generals so it is unlikely the party can afford to hire them with gold. The mercenaries are on vacation and are looking more to spend gold than earn it as well. This means that if the party wants any of the mercenaries to help them fight the kobolds, they will probably have to get on their good sides. To get one of the mercenary leaders willing to help the party, they'll need to either give or guarantee the future giving of at least two of the things that the leader in question wants, as written under their name in the above image.

    On top of all of this, none of the companies have enough soldiers to stand up to the kobold army alone, so the party is going to have to figure out how to get two different leaders on their side. The leaders have their own friendships and rivalries, some even want each other dead, so they will have to figure out which leaders are both compatible and want things the party is willing to get for them.

    The mercenaries seem to split their time between drinking at the inn and sleeping on their docked rafts, so it is fairly easy to track them down at their most vulnerable. It is also worth noting that murder is illegal in Jointown so the party is going to have to get around that as well, depending on the choices they make.

Running Notes

    When I ran this for one of my groups, they seemed to key into the fact that I made two of the leaders much nicer than the other two, and that I made the two nice leaders start out as friends. Erik and Amelia are certainly the most harmonious pairing of the 6 possible combinations. We had a great time roleplaying for this adventure, and it ended with the murder of one of the mercenary leaders. As a result, the party is still wanted for questioning in Jointown and what's left of Tony's mercenary company wants to have them killed. Definitely one of the better endings that a quest can have. There's also an optional encounter table I made for the upper Slimewater Watershed.

it's a 2d6 table, since I forgot to write that on the page

An Encounter With Belfor the Wizard

 This encounter had an... interesting resolution when I tried to run it, but I had fun coming up with it so I'm going to write up the original version and how I envisioned it going.

The Setup

Belfor the Wizard has left some sort of flyer in a place the party can find it that invites adventurers and skilled people. Belfor lives a few days' walk away from where the flyers are posted, in an ancient temple complex. The temple has been abandoned for some time, so Belfor has had to make some repairs to be able to use the space. There are three rooms that he has converted for his use, the machine room, the lab, and the storage room. 

The Rooms

The machine room is the largest of the three and contains what appears to be a massive brass cylinder covered in LED lights. The lights blink randomly in many colors, and the cylinder itself is hollow. There are several large red arrows on the floor that appear to guide people into one end of the cylinder. There are also several tables and a chair in the room covered in books and notes. If the party arrives during the day, this is where Belfor will receive them. Belfor also keeps several oozes under his command hidden behind the cylinder in case he needs them.

The lab is full of shelves, a desk, notebooks, writing materials, magical ingredients, and Belfor's bed. This is where Belfor sleeps, and he keeps the door to the lab locked at all times with a key that he keeps on his person at all times. This lab is very well-stocked and players have 50/50 odds of finding pretty much any magical ingredient or spell component. This lab also has notes which explain what the machine does and what Belfor's plan is.

The storage room is full of sealed jars, each of which contains a single green ooze monster. In total, there are 60 of these jars with room for 40 more. The door to this room, like the lab, is always locked and can be opened by a key that Belfor keeps on his person at all times.

Belfor's Request

Belfor, who is surprisingly kind and charming for a hermit living in an ancient temple, asks the party to go out to find and capture any living animals they can find, bring the animals back to Belfor, and then help him force the animals through the brass cylinder. Belfor explains that this will turn the animals into green ooze monsters, which he can then control. Belfor will be vague about how he controls the oozes, but if pushed he will admit that he found a magic wand that allows him to command the green ooze monsters at the same time that he found the cylinder. Belfor also mentions that he will pay the party a moderate sum of money for each animal successfully converted to an ooze, with a goal of converting 40 animals. 

How the party goes about getting these animals is up to the game master and what makes the most sense to them, as well as what ideas the party comes up with on their own. Of note is that other people count as living animals, so there is certainly a much darker route people can take with finding victims. Initially I thought it would be fun to have Belfor request other people specifically, but I think he has a bit more guile than to ask random adventurers to kidnap people to be turned into ooze monster slaves.

If the party does collect 40 animals for Belfor, he will congratulate them and then reveal his true plans with his new army of oozes. Belfor is going to invade and take over the nearest town, and then convert the population into oozes, growing his army even more so that he can eventually establish an entire kingdom of oozes with him as the leader. Animals keep their minds through the process of ooze conversion, horrifyingly enough, so Belfor believes that once he has taken control of enough places, he will only need to directly control a small cadre of elites and all the new ooze people will have no choice but to serve his kingdom and go on with their regular lives, just as oozes. Whether or not this plan could succeed is questionable, but Belfor is clearly much less stable than he initially appeared. He offers to let the party become his generals, not needing to become oozes until the final stages of creating Belfor's ooze kingdom when they will take their places as the aristocracy of Belfor's new ooze kingdom.

If the party is into Belfor's plan, well then they have just created an epic campaign for themselves, even if it is a bit evil. If the party is not into Belfor's plan, he will have his bodyguard oozes reveal themselves and attack the party. Belfor himself will try to stay out of the way of the combat until he gets hit, at which moment one of his defensive spells will activate and he will immediately teleport away to plot his revenge, leaving the now feral oozes behind for the party to deal with.

Notes

When I ran this encounter, one of the characters immediately tried to stab Belfor, skipping ahead to the part of the encounter where they fight Belfor's bodyguard oozes and he teleports away. The way things worked out, one of the other characters was able to grab Belfor's wand before he teleported away, allowing that character to stop the combat by controlling the oozes Belfor had tried to attack the party with. After this combat, the character who attacked Belfor began investigating the brass cylinder, but without finding any of the information that explained what it was, he followed the arrows into the ooze converter and became an ooze, after which he was immediately enthralled by the character with the ooze control wand. Obviously, the player of the ooze character needed to make a new character. 

If I'm being real, I think I want to try to run this encounter again sometime with a different group, because I think there are a few interesting ways it could play out. At the very least, I want to hear the conversations that arise about the ethics around the whole situation, and the looks of horror and disgust upon realizing what exactly is going on.

The Town of Polip and the Slimewater Valley

 

General Description

Polip is a small town in a high mountain valley of the Cephalus Mountain Range. The valley is a flat-floored glacial valley about 20 miles long with a stream, the Slimewater, that meanders along the center. Polip is situated along the stream in about the center of the valley, surrounded by the Tentacled Woods on all sides, with a cleared area around Polip. The primary industry of Polip is the trapping and harvesting of Arboreal Octopi, endemic to the Tentacled Woods, for their ink and tentacle meat, both of which have magical properties. The ink can be made into a potent potion of invisibility and eating the meat grants the ability to squeeze through any opening that is at least one square inch in width for a short time. People in the town trade these materials with merchants for most supplies, although there are a few farmers and tradesmen to provide some services. Most of the ~1,000 residents live inside the wooden wall, called the Mantle, that surrounds the town and which has one gate called the Siphon. The town is led by the mayor, Octavia of Polip, who inherited the position from her mother and directly commands the 12 town guards who operate the gate and enforce the laws. Lately, there have been concerning reports that kobolds, once thought extinct in the valley, have been seen in the woods, as well as reports of trading caravans going missing after they leave Polip, only to be discovered days later, skewered on the tree tops.

Adventure Hook

The session begins with the player characters, along with the rest of the townsfolk, being addressed by Mayor Octavia in the town square. She explains that the town is going to experience hardships if the trade caravans continue to be destroyed because no one will want to make the trip if it is dangerous. She also explains that kobolds have been sighted and she needs someone to go to the Kobold ruins at the head of the valley to investigate. Because town guards need to stay in town to do their jobs, she asks for volunteers to come forward to try to deal with each issue. Another group will take whichever job the party doesn't.

What is Actually Going On

The Queen Octopus, ruler of all of the arboreal octopi, is enraged that her subjects are being rounded up and killed en masse by the people of Polip, so she has been ambushing merchant caravans, resulting in the missing and skewered wagons. At the same time, the queen has been feeding rumors to the local kobolds, never fully removed from the valley, that the people of Polip are making plans to drive the kobolds out of the mountains, prompting them to start planning a preemptive strike against the town.

Enemy Factions

The Slimewater Kobolds

Driven into the high mountains at the head of the valley over 200 years ago, the Slimewater kobolds have been living a hard life in a difficult environment. Despite this hardship, their population is recovering and they have sent a group of soldiers, led by a kobold named Kassius, and a priest, named Kubuldikin, to reoccupy the ruins of their ancient headwater city. Most of the city was looted and then destroyed during the initial conquest, so the soldiers have attempted to rebuild and shore up what is left, although they do not appear to have excavated many rooms yet, and what they have done appears to be relatively crude. Kassius' orders are to scout out Polip and hold the forward location for the larger army that will be coming down from the mountains in several weeks' time.

The Queen Octopus

The Queen lives in a particularly dense patch of trees which she has cultivated into several rooms and tunnels leading to a clearing where she keeps her nest. The Queen Octopus must return to this location for at least one hour out of every 12 in order to tend to her eggs. She will defend these with her life. The Queen is horrified at the way her species is being treated, although it is worth noting that only her and the octopuses that hatch from her eggs are intelligent and have the ability to get to her size. She still feels a strong kinship with the smaller arboreal octopi and although she is open to a compromise where she is given offerings in exchange for more humane and regulated octopus harvesting, killing her would also work just fine.

Locations

• Polip

• Tentacled Woods

• Kobold Tunnels

• Queen Octopus' Lair

The Kobold Tunnels

• Room A: Entrance Chamber: The intended entrance to the tunnels that the kobolds use. The tunnel leading outside is blocked by a big, heavy gate that takes 4 kobolds to open and at least 2 normal sized people. The gate is made of wood and iron and is locked unless it is being used. To be able to open the gate, there are always at least 4 but usually 5 or 6 kobolds stationed in this room. In the center of the room is a big obvious trap door with no obvious way to open it. There is a lever in the tunnel behind the left barricade that will cause the trap door to fall open when flipped. Beneath the trap door is a 10 foot drop onto wooden spikes. If the players are exploring the tunnels after another group that failed, this trap is responsible for the deaths of all of the previous party's members.

• Room B: Bridge Chamber: In this chamber, a small bridge crosses over the slimewater, completing the path between the entrance chamber and the mess hall. The slimewater itself has a tunnel leading outside from the headwater shrine. There is an iron grate with bars 1 inch thick preventing people from getting directly to the headwater shrine from this room.

• Room C: Mess Hall: This room has several tables, a long counter for preparing and serving food, and a big oven. The oven almost always has at least a few embers in it, making this room relatively warm but also smoky and hazy, giving everything that sees with conventional vision disadvantage on checks involving sight. If the alarm has not been called, there are usually half a dozen kobolds in here plus the cook.

• Room D: Sleeping Quarters: One of the most protected rooms in the area, there are probably a dozen kobolds sleeping peacefully in the various mats and piles of hay scattered in here. Kobolds are very heavy sleepers and these kobolds will only wake up if the fighting spreads to this room or if they are woken up by an alarm.

• Room E: Headwater Shrine: The center of the tunnels and a place of worship for the kobolds. There is always one kobold priest in here to give guidance to the tribe, tend the three fires on columns that surround the spring, and use the spring for regular divination rituals to hopefully figure out the future.

• Room F: Kassius' Office: This is where Kassius will be no matter what happens in the rest of the tunnels. He will sit at his desk working on his plans. If the alarm has not been called, there will be two lieutenants in here with him, discussing plans. Kassius has a huge desk with a table behind it, both are scattered with bits of paper, notes, and even a few tools and scraps of metal. Among the notes is a summary of all of the rumors the Octopus Queen has been spreading. Kassius is carrying a note from the main force in the mountains detailing the timeline for their attack on Polip.

The Octopus Queen’s Lair

• Room A: Broken Carriage: This small clearing has a mostly destroyed merchant's wagon in it. Nothing of value is left of the wagon, although most of the planks of the wagon are still intact and it could theoretically be repaired.

• Room B: Refuse Pile: This clearing has a pile of waste from the Octopus Queen, her children, and the remains of the caravans she has been attacking. There are 4 of the Octopus Queen's babies fighting over a human femur in here, although they will attempt to run to the nest if anyone walks in on them.

• Room C: Treasure Clearing: The chest in this clearing contains 6 vials of octopus ink invisibility potion and 10 servings of arboreal octopus jerky.

• Room D: The Nest: This is where the Queen Octopus rests and tends to her eggs, which hang in large mucus-y sacks that hang from the branches of the trees. There are usually about a half dozen of the queen's babies hanging out in these trees, they will try their best to hide from strangers.

Notes for Running:

    When I have run this adventure, I have the party all take the same mission of the two offered and then have another party of NPCs take the other mission. This party of NPCs will die on their mission, prompting the mayor to ask the party to complete the other mission and also figure out what happened to the other party. I think it is important to note that I run the antagonists of this adventure as being open to talk things out if the players attempt that option, since much of this conflict is based on empathetic motivations and misunderstandings.

    When I ran this adventure, I would change up the numbers of creatures and the amounts of treasure to fit the group, so take those numbers more as suggestions than anything else. I gave one group enough invisibility potions to have all five members be nearly always invisible, and that somehow never got abused, despite that being a fairly low-level party.

    What I like about running this adventure is the opportunity to present multiple moral quandaries to the party without making things too heavy. While the Octopus Queen and her children are intelligent, their complaint is really about what they perceive as unethical and unsustainable market hunting, something that has caused the extinction of many real-world species. All of the other arboreal octopuses are relatively unintelligent animals, so the issue for the party is to figure out what their characters think is a fair solution. As for the kobolds, they are the true natives of the valley and they were driven out of their ancestral homes by the ancestors of the current inhabitants of Polip. The players may very well decide that they do not support the colonists and would rather help an oppressed native people retake their home. On the other hand, the player characters may come from a background that makes the characters more sympathetic to humans and the types of civilization that they are more familiar with. Overall, I think it makes a fun first adventure for a campaign set in the mountains and valleys around Polip.

The Exploding Hedgehog Room

This is an encounter that I have sprung on multiple groups through the years to good effect. It is a puzzle with difficulty that varies based on how much the party cares for the wellbeing of an innocent hedgehog, and it tends to go over pretty well with most groups.

The Setup
The party finds themselves locked in a room resembling a science lab of an appropriate style to match the rest of the area the encounter is embedded in. The lab consists of a main lab with a table, a testing chamber, and a hedgehog pen. To leave the lab, the party must locate a key that is hidden somewhere in the science lab to be able to unlock the door and leave.

The Rooms
The main lab is clean and the table holds several pieces of scientific equipment and a journal. The journal belongs to a wizard who claims to have been studying exploding hedgehogs. The last journal of the entry explains that the wizard has gained all the knowledge that they can, that they have left enough food and water to last the hedgehogs the rest of their lifespans, and that the wizard will teleport out of the lab, leaving it locked from the inside, because one of the hedgehogs ate the key and will probably never pass it from its stomach.

The testing chamber is made of a material that is strong enough to be relatively unaffected by small explosions. There are a number of scorch marks on the floor of the testing chamber. The door to the testing chamber is heavy, but has slot that can be opened without opening the rest of the door that is large enough to shoot an arrow or cast a spell through.

The hedgehog pen uses magic to maintain an ideal habitat for the hedgehogs. There are 6 hedgehogs, each with one of the numbers 1 through 6 on its belly, which do, in fact, explode upon their deaths. When I run this encounter in 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons, the hedgehogs have these stats with the additional trait that upon hitting zero hit points, they explode, dealing 4d8 fire damage to anyone within a 5ft radius of a hedgehog when it explodes. The key is inside hedgehog number 6. The hedgehogs are generally friendly and appear to be used to being handled and tested on.

Notes
In practice, this encounter usually ends with the party locating the key inside hedgehog number six, but accidentally killing the poor creature in their attempt to extract the key without harming the hedgehog. It is worth noting that there is no downside to simply detonating the hedgehogs one by one until a key is found, but there should definitely be ways to get the key out non-lethally. I prefer to have this require a roll based on the method of getting the key out. If the party tries to induce vomiting, they need to have someone roll to make sure they only induce vomiting and don't poison the hedgehog to death, for example. This encounter works best when you let the party come up with their own solution with the items and abilities they have on hand, rather than trying to think of a single solution that the party has to figure out, so I try to be open-minded in what may or may not work as a solution to get the key.