Post by Head Moderator on Jan 12, 2015 18:56:44 GMT -5
Mountmend, a woodcutting and mining center in Sarkotos, is a place where life can be normal one moment and strange the next. The nearby Ballari Ridgeback Mountains provide gold . . . as well as monsters and other strangeness from time to time. For the most part, though, life moves at a steady pace without much interruption. Miners mine, merchants sell, woodcutters cut, people walk the streets from here to there... *splat!* "Ribbit." And sometimes a frog falls from the sky. "Ribbit."
Without warning, one frog turns into a rain of them, each one landing with a splat and yet surviving unharmed. People run scared and lock themselves inside, but the frogs become so numerous that they begin to find ways in. After a while, the cacophony of ribbiting begins to drive people a little crazy, not to mention the collateral damage of the rain of frogs. Before the day is out, frogs fall on the city for over 5 hours, thousands upon thousands of them. When it is all over, the city is knee-deep in the wriggling creatures, which have nowhere to go and no environment hospitable for them.
The PCs, in town (or called to the town), can find any number of people who would hire them to figure out where the frogs came from and whether they portend any danger to Mountmend -- for instance, merchants such as Grisabel the Gifted (human spellborn). Grisabel is already thinking of ways to make money from this event, and so would like the information for different reasons. On the other end of things, a druid named Kotalla is concerned that this marks the beginning of a strange attack on the city, and she wants the PCs to find the source of the frogs and stop whoever is behind it. Kotalla can tell the PCs (assuming they did not already know with a DC 20 Knowledge [nature] check) that the frogs are all the same, and are all indigenous to a remote valley in the Ballari Mountains some sixty or more miles away. Lastly, there is a little girl named Crystalle that would like the frogs all returned to their point of origin, because she is very concerned about their well-being. She is also wealthy enough to pay for their transport (well, her parents are) should the heroes arrange the logistics.
These are some ideas to switch up things in the story! You don't choose them all, you'd choose one idea for motivation, and one idea for complications if you wish.
Ideas for Motivations
Whoever hires the PCs is sincere in what he or she says.
The townsfolk, a superstitious lot, know that some evil magic was behind the attack of frogs, and they want vengeance on the person responsible.
Someone in town wanted the frogs to rain, possibly to disrupt the trade efforts of a rival, or to create an atmosphere of mistrust and fear.
Ideas for Complications
The rain of frogs was caused by Dapex (male elf druid/mage) who found the frogs annoying and used magic to expel every last one of them from the valley that he claimed as his own. However, because they were part of the food chain, Dapex will have other problems soon enough.
In the wake of the frogs, another vastly more dangerous creature comes calling. A red dragon that lairs in the Ballari Ridgeback Mountains saw the stream of frogs and followed it as it went. Now that it has found Mountmend, it wants treasure.
A cult of the little known demon lord Obox-ob has established itself in the valley, and it is using the valley to grow some new vermin for attacking mountain communities. The rare frogs of the valley are natural predators of the new vermin, and in typical demon fashion the cultists removed the frogs rather than find a different valley. The vermin will be let loose on Mountmend as a first test if their creators are not stopped. (In this case, feel free to make the vermin appear as something particularly creepy to the characters.)
Among the frogs, some slaadi begin terrorizing the populace as soon as they land, throwing other frogs around in addition to their normal attack modes.
Way more frogs fell on Mountmend than lived in the valley. Where did the rest come from? Was this some kind of demonic attack? Does the trouble extend to another world, or another plane?