Adventure 1: GM Notes:
Motivation
This is an introductory adventure, meant to introduce the structure and setting of the adventures in a straightforward manner. So you have the most basic adventure template in this world; there's a village, the village is threatened by the Witch and its Monsters, and the PCs need to protect the village by stopping the threats.
Basic plot
An extended version of the 3 billy goat's Gruff, as a town is assailed by monstrous goats of steadily increasing threat and size. The Witch will circle the town, creating new goat monsters, which will then attack the town and its outskirts until they are stopped. So basically each monster is its own timer that fires repeatedly until it is dealt with, while the Witch is a sort of master-time that spawns new problems until he is stopped.
The village
Mastiano
- Primary industry is goat farming on the poor surrounding lands
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Timeline of events without WitchHammer interference:
Day 0 (before WitchHammers arrive)
Witch is at work and has summoned first 2 monsters. An isolated peasant family is killed by the rime-goat, and the goat-sucker has been summoned and slains numerous goats during the night.
- Increasing alarm and panic as the villagers realize bits of what has happened during the night
Day 1
Sunrise 1 - RimeGoat takes a family farm and makes them into ice zombies (already happened since adventure starts at midday)
Midday: WitchHammers arrive
Dusk 1 - RimeGoat zombies will attack town
Late Night 1 - attack by cattle-sucker goat
Day 2
Sunrise 2 - Rime goat takes several guards
Afternoon 2 - Blizznesss goat attacks and retreats. Continues every few hours. Initial attack will just be after town stongbox
Dusk 2 - Rime goat's zombies attack again
Late Night 2 - attack by cattle-sucker goat
Day 3
Sunrise 3 - Rime goat takes several guards
Midday 3 - Reinforcements arrive. 80 or so. Led by Captain Bosca, fussy, rules based, orderly, competent.
Afternoon 3 - Hircus arrives
Late Night 3 - attack by night goat. or maybe it just hibernates
Day 4
Evening 4 - Grimmoney runs back into the forest, you feel a chill go out of the air
- Start of adventure
- hot, boring, grinding summer of traveling between towns. It is midday and PCs are heading South to Mastriano
- PCs approach a mile or two from town
feel a chill in the air, a slight cold breeze
- dying goat lopes and loops up to PCs, dies, as insides dissolve horribly
- hear the tolling of the town bell. 8 long tolls, alarm! attack!
- see a surly teenage goatherd about 80 yards off the road. argue with him a bit, he will insult the PCs and run off. He is the Witch, off to make more monsters.
- arrive in town, see the gathered people, hear the confusion and upset, watch mayor (Samantha) and leader of the remaining garrison (Winkley) try to calm people down while
Main Town's People of Mastriano:
- about 150 people in the town
- 6 soldiers left by the garrison. Led by Winkley. Their narrative role is to get themselves killed to demonstrate stakes. The rest of the garrison went to get help and will be back in 2-3 days with significant forces.
- Samantha - mayor, 30's , heavyset woman. no-nonsense, rule based
- Giotti - owner of the goatery - heavy set and emotional merchant
- Captain Bosca, who returns with 80 soldiers if needed to help the final goat. Otherwise arrives after the PC's victory. Fussy, rules based, orderly, competent.
Main Locations:
Ruins of the old Grimmony farm - 2 miles of town, roof caved in, a wood and stone building where the wood mostly caved in. Abandoned 8 years ago after the Grimmoney incident. Other members of the Grimmony family moved on after that unpleasantness
Tabitha's farm - .5 miles west of the Grimmoney place, they were the first family killed by the Rime Goat
TownHall - long rectangular building, big enough to fit everyone, very solid wood, firing holes, heavy doors at both side. Has water and food. Has bell at one side
Mayor's office - small stone building, nice roof and construction, a few small rooms inside. Location of town strongbox with its government funds (300GP)
Nearest town - Bostoc, ~500 people, half day away to the West
Nearest large town - Krannok, ~2000 people, 1.5 days away
after: lvl up, townspeople estatic, heat comes back into the air, soldiers come back, collection from the towns people unless they want some other reward
What actually happened
The PCs were monster hunting machines. I thought it would be funny for them to meet the Witch early on but not realize it; predictably they wanted to interrogate the annoying teen and had all sorts of movement abilities to let them do so. I had to fudge, extremely, (sorry PCs), in order to just get him away from their first moves, until I could use some conviently appearing ice zombies to screen his escape.
After that the PCs went on a monster killing rampage, mostly ignoring the townspeople, and using excellent tracking skills to find and kill the Hump-backed goat sucker and then the Rime Goat.
That concluded the first session. I might have finished it out then but I ran out of thought-honey.
For the next session, they used a ranger ability that locates their most favorite prey, which led them to Grimmony as he was trying to summon the Blizzness Goat. He sent the Blizzness Goat off early and only partially completed to try and draw the PCs away, but they had a spell which grounds flying creatures, which they used to keep the Blizzness from getting to far away, which allowed them to focus on Grimony and his float goat and keep them from running off. Battle ensued, I had some fun with the float goat altering reality (merged the paladin with his horse to make a centaur), the shadow had some fun attacking other people's shadows, but Grimmony and his snakes were cornered and then fell to a classic combination of heavily armored tank and back-stabby rogue. After that they circled around and gradually were able to deal with the Blizzness goat.
The townspeople were very happy that not many of them were killed.
I will have my revenge.