[4e] Elves Presley

[DiscipleofBob]

Ok, bad pun aside, here's the deal.

My players are about to move into elven territory, and by elven territory I mean forest-overgrown ruins with one large treetop village. Their purpose in the area, either pass through on way to the shifter and gnoll lands where the BBEG is causing trouble, or to win the elves' help against the trouble the BBEG is causing. They don't exactly know what's going on in the area, this is just where the trail leads. I'm having a little writer's DM's block with designing the one major elven city, major/interesting elven NPC's, immediately relevant combat or skill encounters, and possibly a hallucinogenic druid trial, but that's later. I'm just looking for a few ideas

Elves in this campaign are rather xenophobic, but with good reason. They pretty much live in one giant tree city with enemies on all sides, goblin barbarians to the west, hostile human nation to the south, gnoll and shifter tribes to the east in conflict with resources, and a fey kingdom to the north. They will meet the party with hostility and at best, take them captive to decide whether to shoot them now or later.

The party consists of the following:
A female human rogue with a noble background,
A male human fullblade fighter
A female tiefling infernalock
A male half-elf bard
A male shifter druid

Also 2 NPC's who might be accompanying them:
A female eladrin with no real power or combat value, she was just rescued by the party, and her sister's being manipulated by the BBEG in the area.
A sentient brain-in-a-jar who helps the party because the BBEG killed his best friend, not to mention he reeeally doesn't want to be dropped. For flavor purposes, I've ruled that the brain doesn't have any senses other than some minor telepathy and whoever he happens to dominates. Oh, and he can't dominate anything without express permission from the party because he's too afraid they might break his jar as a punishment. So basically unless the party specifically gives permission, the brain doesn't even know what he's going on.

So there's definitely going to be a social skill challenge as they try to convince the elven chief to a) not kill them, and b) assist them against the BBEG's efforts in the area. Success means they can roam the elven city freely and plan from there. Failure does not necessarily mean death, but the elven archdruid will step in and request the party be kept captive until he can determine whether or not the nature goddess wants them alive or not. Basically, being stuck in prison, probably having to deal with some sort of hallucinogenic druid vision quest before being trusted.

Stuff working against the party as far as this skill challenge is as follows:

- The eladrin chick who's probably going to be traveling with them. Elves hate eladrin. In this world, eladrin were once regular noble elves who abandoned their soldiers and citizens to start another arcane-based nation elsewhere, leaving modern-day elves to fend for themselves.

- Although he won't be traveling to the elf city with the party, the gnoll chief entered the region allied with the party. Elves are at war with gnolls, so they'll take this as the party being on the gnoll's side. He'll split off before the party reaches elven territory, but probably not before elven scouts see him traveling with the party.

- Same deal with the shifter chief, who was also traveling with the party, but will split up with the party before they reach the elven city.

- One of the party members is a shifter. Yeah, that'll go over well with the elves.

- The rogue of the party has a certain pendant belonging to the missing elven princess. Earlier, the party had to kill said princess as she was a necromancer's girlfriend.

- Oh, don't forget the undead abomination known as the brain in the jar, which might be well-meaning and helpful, but he's still an undead brain.

Stuff which might work in the party's favor:

- The shifter, even though he's a shifter and therefore a natural enemy of the elves, is a druid, and the druids have at least some respect for one another, no matter the race.

- A human woman staying with the elves, Rosalina, is studying botany and other naturey stuff with the elves. She happens to be a childhood friend of the party rogue.

I think that's pretty much everything so far. Any suggestions?

[Pharaoh's Fist]

What is this, 4e?

[DiscipleofBob]

Knew I forgot something. Yea, it's 4e.

[kemmotar]

I'd say it pretty much depends on where you wanna go from there...if you want some sort of combat encounter, you make the hallucination a challenge where the PCs must defeat a beast of legend within them that turns out to be in some weir way their own internal demons thus cleansing them (as far as the elves are concerned) perhaps giving them a +1 moral to something and having proven their worth to the elves they are free to go.

You could add moral dilemas and trouble with the law, for example, an illegal elf merchant contacts the party and tells that if they agree to do something for him he will help them break out and smuggle them outside the city. At that point they can choose to go with him and become enemies of the city or turn him in for an "ethical" reward whereas the merchant guy would pay them something depending on the difficulty of the other mission.
That mission could be something along the lines of go to this heavily guarded warehouse and steal said artifact.

If the PCs do not choose to listen to him, they will gain the trust of the elves and be stationed to protect the warehouse instead. Now depending on how long you wanna make this, the PCs can simply defend against them successfully and be given the artifact to trasport to your next plothook or they could have fallen for a diversion attack (which went far worse for the diversion than planned) but the artifact was still stolen and the PCs get a nice sidequest in the meantime.

If you want a longer sidequest, you could be contacted by the "elven resistance" to help them in infiltrating and/or defeating a group of other elves that are leading the elven cities to war instead of peace to suit their own goals. They must find other contacts and do some stuff on the side that could lead to the next part of your campaign after they've defeated he current BBEG...

[Indon]

Mind you may have difficulty capturing them - PC's tend to dislike being taken into custody.

[Weezer]

^Agreed, not sure how common it is but all of my players seem to have a "give me Liberty or give me Death" attitude about letting themselves get arrested.

[Myshlaevsky]

^Agreed, not sure how common it is but all of my players seem to have a "give me Liberty or give me Death" attitude about letting themselves get arrested.

This can be really annoying. It gets ridiculous when it's at the level of a one-cell jail village watch.

[kemmotar]

This can be really annoying. It gets ridiculous when it's at the level of a one-cell jail village watch.

hehe...actually I'm facing the same problem as a PC in a campaign atm...we're being dragged off to jail (we didn't really know we were going to be accused of anything until we were presented to the judge:smalleek:)...but of coure we're not taking it...

Case in point being that this is, from what i understand, this is the main elven city...I doubt their guards and jail are very easy to not go to...If all fails, what our DM did was use a staff of law (you could just use an "invented" spell that does the same thing) that has an ability that acts as a dominate/compulsion but does not absolutely control you, it just makes you REALLY want to follow the laws, ie what the guards say...granted its partial railroading but sometimes PCs just need to realise they're not the most powerful people in the game world and cannot, in fact, do absolutely anything...plus you get out of the "you just killed X amount of guards in the elven capital while escaping...you will be hunted like dogs until you are dead..."

[DiscipleofBob]

Mind you may have difficulty capturing them - PC's tend to dislike being taken into custody.

Yea, I'm aware of this little problem, and still figuring out ways to deal with it. So far, all I have is this:

The fact that the party is strongly advised by the gnoll and shifter NPC's to not piss off the elves, since their help will probably needed against the real BBEG in the area.

This isn't just an elf village. It's the only elf village in the campaign world, so it contains all of the most skilled and powerful elven warriors and druids. So these guys will be more than the level of a local town watch. Granted, it means I have to do some homebrewing as their aren't a lot of elf monster stat blocks for a level 6 party.

Also, the entire region is heavily wooded, giving elves significant advantage with terrain if it does come down to combat.

[Yakk]

First, conflict sucks. The elves would warn off a party that isn't welcome.

They will ask why they are there. If given no response, they are told to turn away. If given a good reason to be there, they are asked to wait, as the message is relayed (a bird in a neaby tree takes off and flies away). A short time later, they are given options.

If they want to proceed, they do it either as escorted captives, or will be considered hostile. They can instead turn back and not enter elven lands.

The scout (possibly a raven or cat familiar) gives them 24 hours to retreat, be surrender to an escorted, or be treated as hostile. If they advance without surrendering, they will be treated as hostile.

The escort they surrender to? The cat familiar.

"You are to stay near me, in my sight, at all times. You are to obey my instructions. If you choose to break these rules, you will be individually or collectively treated as hostile invaders."

At some point, they are asked to surrender their weapons. . . to animated bushes. They will be returned to you when you leave. If you don't want to surrender your weapons, it will be treated as a hostile act.

With a high perception check, they get to see hints of elves in the far distance, watching them from cover. The elves have no interest in fair war.

If the players decide to go to war, they don't see the elves. They are attacked by traps, enchanted plants, conjured creatures, long-range bow ambushes, etc. Attempts to light the forest on fire fail (the elves have fortified their home against that obvious attack). The trees themselves close in on them, and darkness falls. They are never given a break. And ... they never get to kill an elf.

[DiscipleofBob]

First, conflict sucks. The elves would warn off a party that isn't welcome.

They will ask why they are there. If given no response, they are told to turn away. If given a good reason to be there, they are asked to wait, as the message is relayed (a bird in a neaby tree takes off and flies away). A short time later, they are given options.

If they want to proceed, they do it either as escorted captives, or will be considered hostile. They can instead turn back and not enter elven lands.

The scout (possibly a raven or cat familiar) gives them 24 hours to retreat, be surrender to an escorted, or be treated as hostile. If they advance without surrendering, they will be treated as hostile.

The escort they surrender to? The cat familiar.

"You are to stay near me, in my sight, at all times. You are to obey my instructions. If you choose to break these rules, you will be individually or collectively treated as hostile invaders."

At some point, they are asked to surrender their weapons. . . to animated bushes. They will be returned to you when you leave. If you don't want to surrender your weapons, it will be treated as a hostile act.

With a high perception check, they get to see hints of elves in the far distance, watching them from cover. The elves have no interest in fair war.

If the players decide to go to war, they don't see the elves. They are attacked by traps, enchanted plants, conjured creatures, long-range bow ambushes, etc. Attempts to light the forest on fire fail (the elves have fortified their home against that obvious attack). The trees themselves close in on them, and darkness falls. They are never given a break. And ... they never get to kill an elf.

These are all absolutely wonderful ideas, and I'll be using a bit of these, if not for the current elven predicament, later when the party has to go up against various plant monsters.

Which reminds me, I need to come up with some good plant-based encounters. So far, I have seed-spewing pods which dominate humanoids, as evidenced by flowers growing out of the victim's head, a giant quadraped rose whose petal colors and energy resistance change each time it's attacked, and the MM stuff like Vine Horrors, Shambling Mounds, Dryads, etc. Any suggestions there as well?