Immigration session and encounters

[Deeds]

The players have helped raise funds for a village so that the villagers can immigrate to a safer city. My next d&d session will illustrate the hardships of the villagers to clearly paint the warmongering villians as the bad guys.

Here is my problem: what are some reasonable encounters for the traveling party? I can't justify more than 1 random encounter on the road (i.e. you are attacked by the local wildlife/bandits, roll initiative.) What are some reasonable combat related encounters the party could face as they escort villagers to safety?

[erikun]

Assuming the party cannot simply teleport all the villagers to the destination all at once:

Wild animals might become a problem at one point or another. Depending on how hostile wildlife is in the place they are travelling through, there are different levels of aggressive they could be. Note that not all wildlife encounters necessarily mean combat: mice getting into the food stores can be just as bad as wolves stalking the perimeter at night, or a group of bison/boars/moose suddenly getting the idea to charge the villagers. Weather is also likely to be a big concern, as even something as simple as finding shelter and getting everybody moved in a group of 200+ is a major concern to do within the timespan of a few hours.

I honestly don't think that bandits would really be a bit concern. Perhaps the stereotypical "golbins attacking because their elves" and so one, to give the party a straightup fight, but realistically no bunch of bandits will want to mess with a group of several hundred people, especially when most are obviously up for keeping the rest protected and safe. You might run into a group of corrupt or low-scruples knights who attempt to talk the wandering immigrants into paying a "tax" for "safe passage", which might be more interesting since the PCs have the option to either talk their way out or fight. (and both would be valid) Past that, there should be concerns of thieves in the group (just somebody who thinks they can take something and wander off into the night) and some people, especially children, wandering off or just getting lost requiring the party to work at getting them back.

And then there is the problem with putting things together once they arrive at their destination. Unless it already has a bunch of abandoned homes when they get there, the immigrants will need to construct houses and start gathering food immediately, even start planting crops assuming they have time in the season for that.

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Of course, you don't need to do all the stuff above. Heck, you don't need to do any of it. But hopefully they should provide some interesting situations for you to throw at the party. Even if you don't want to deal with lost children or mice eating food stores, you can still have a few different encounters like a golbin tribe/taxing knights/boar attack to keep things different.

I would also recommend against flying enemies. There'd be no reason for the flying enemies to fight the party on the front lines, and the PCs have no reasonable way to prevent the flying enemies from wreaking havok on the immigrants.