I went back through our posts to refresh my brain on our crowd-sourced adventure. Apart from the quick blurb we had for the “Park and Deadly Tree”, our last post was July 31st!
I’ve been reading through “The Folklore of Discworld” and it mentioned banshees (banh sidh) as horrible spirits who herald the coming of Death. If you’ve not read Discworld novels, Death is the anthropomorphic representation of Death… and He loves cats. That’s why they have nine lives.
Given the Gallows in the courtyard area, and the amount of death and corruption, there should be a banshee or two wailing through the night to terrify the players. A ghostly visage, combing her long white hair, wailing at the coming of Death. This undead would fit wonderfully into this area of the adventure. The party could mistakenly believe the banshee is responsible for the petrified apple attack that is coming from the tree.
The banshee could even be harmless. It’s merely the herald of Death, not the cause of it. However, they are vengeful spirits. As told in the Folklore of Discworld, (I’m paraphrasing) “A man stole the banshee’s comb and it haunted him until he returned it. He put the comb on the end of a pitchfork and put it through a window. The banshee took the comb and the pitchfork. The pitchfork was a twisted mangled mess outside the house.”
Firstly, your banshee idea triggered the thought about what else would be attracted to this city?
When I get a chance I will have a look at creatures attracted to marshes, ruins and death. If anything could survive then it will add another layer of threat.
Things went a bit pear shaped in August for me. I was supposed to take a month off to go horse riding. Two weeks in Iceland, a week of horseback archery and a week of Icelandic competition.
As it was one week in my wife had a fall from a bolting horse, not one of ours, and broke her collarbone. So that put paid the our adventures.
I knew that Brian was snowed under with work and the forums would go dead so to keep the blog alive I resorted to frequent posts that required very little research or prep.
That is why, I think, the adventure fell by the wayside.
For my next post I want to look at the very beginning again. Who are the major players behind this adventure, what adventure hooks could we offer and who stands to gain? Put your thinking caps on!
My God, I hope things are better for her. That’s a frightening experience. Those horses are a lot higher up once you’re sitting in the saddle. I’m afraid of heights too, so that makes it worse for me.
In between July 31 and now, we also had the 30 days of RPG questions which took away an entire month of other-topic posting.
I don’t recall if this is something I stuck in my campaign or if I took the idea from what we were working on. There is a group of elves who hire out the PC party to go after the throne. The elves can’t touch the throne because of the chance of corruption. It did something particularly nasty to elven-folk? That’s the storyline I’m using at least. The elves want the throne in their kingdom for safe keeping or to destroy it, but the area it’s in is causing issues.
My players all like to assume that what I send them is exactly as it appears to be. They never research, they never roll Lie Perception, they never do basic Surveillance or Streetwise to get background. I may have the elves hire them to get the throne at no risk to them and them use the throne for evil.
I remember elves hiring the PCs As well but I think I will re-read the first post.
Mrs R is all fixed. It was a clean break quickly healed.
We ride small, tough Icelandic horses. It isn’t being 5′ off the ground that hurts but the 30mph just before you hit the rocks that does it.