Low Combat Adventure: Children in the Night (Ready To P.E.A.C.H.)

[brian 333]

A small village of less than a hundred homes, (225 adults,) has gone quiet within the last two weeks. It no longer communicates with other villages and has not sent its harvest tithe to the local lord of the nearby town. Rumors may speculate as to why, but it is apparent that nobody really knows.

Hooks to involve the PCs:
Just passing through.
Worried healer invites them to accompany her on her regular rounds. (low level option)
Hometown of one of the PCs who returns after adventures.
Town lord asks them to investigate. (high level option)
The village might be abandoned, leaving the silverware, china, and money caches of the villagers unguarded.

The Village:
A typical farming village in many ways, except that the village is at the mouth of a large cave system which the villagers use for mushroom cultivation.

The center of the village has a shallow well fed from a spring and a horse trough is set to catch its overflow. Overflow from the trough runs down a stone-lined, foot deep, three foot wide ditch which divides the dirt road out of town until the road turns and the ditch ends allowing any remaining water to spread out into a marshy area which is overgrown with mushrooms.

The Spit And Whistle is an inn that can accomodate thirty guests in its common room and up to two dozen in its six small rooms upstairs. The sign is a rusty iron spit such as might be used to roast a large animal, and the whistle is a wooden tube with a spinning turbine that is powered by a huge forge bellows. The whistle can be heard for miles around, and is blown for one pump of the bellows at sunrise and sunset. Blown at any other time or for longer durations it is a call to arms.

Mudda's Loom is a cloth shop operated by a gnome family. They keep ferocious badgers as pets.

Feydor's Dry Goods Emporium is a warehouse with empty lots around it. Although there are no arms or armor for sale, most other goods are available.

The smithy has no sign, but is obvious by the metal junk around it.

The village road ends at a cave entrance over which a wooden door and wall has been erected. Outside the cave are stacks of logs of various kinds.

The village appears prosperous, but is rather quiet. Its inhabitants are grim and have little to say. They have even less to say to outsiders.

Visiting The Village:

The villagers say little, but encourage visitors to be on their way before dark. The innkeeper will not rent rooms. The mushroom caves are off limits.
It is only after a long look around that a PC will realize that, other than a few babies too small to walk, there are no children in the village. The villagers will cast guilty glances, but will not answer questions about the children.
There is one fresh grave in the graveyard, Billy Shears, and the birth and death dates show him to have been seven years old when he died two weeks ago.

Confronting The Town Elders:

If sent by the lord this might seem the wise thing to do, or PCs may choose to do this for other reasons.

Fael Marat, owner of the Spit and Whistle, tall, clean shaven, speaks in a high-pitched voice.
Mogen, mushroom farmer, fat, sweats and smells of it.
Clera Dinsdale, midwife and healer. stern matriarch, shrill voice, strong opinions on everything.
Crue Wat, village herbalist and undertaker, soft deep voice, sorrowful eyes.
Fern Hiver, beekeeper, appears aged and fragile but is very tough.

The Elders will, if confronted as a group, evade answering direct questions, will blame their failure to tithe on a local blight, and dismiss concerns over the missing children.

If confronted separately first their answers will not all be the same. For example, one might say the children are camping and another may say they are visiting a nearby village.

They will all stress that the visitors should be out of town by sunset.

The Mushroom Cave:

The villagers will resist any attempt by outsiders to enter the cave, but will not stand up to threats of force. They are also easy to sneak past.

Inside the cave entrance are a dozen torches with Continual Flames.
Along with several edible varieties grown in logs or in various loams, there are several small plots of poisonous and/or hallucinogenic mushrooms being grown. (cooking or herbalist skill) (healing skill can identify their medical uses)
In the cave there will be occasional growling and other sounds echoed and amplified by the cave walls. This may be discovered to be caused by a small rat-hunting dog who went too far into the cave and fell into a crack. It can be rescued.
The cave is a red herring. It has nothing to do with the adventure, but the villagers want to protect their trade secrets.

As Night Falls:

Toward evening the villagers become anxious that the visitors should leave. They will begin with suggesting, then make some veiled threats they have no means to carry out. Some will beg them to leave, and others will try to bribe them with their pitiful treasures.

When it becomes obvious the adventurers won't leave the innkeeper invites them to dinner. A large number of townsfolk join them. There will be little talk; the townsfolk will eat and drink with empty expressions.

And the adventurers will wake in beds the next morning in the inn with bedmates who tell them what a wild party it had been and how much fun they had.

Blame The Beer:

The villagers excuse the 'memory loss' on the mushroom beer. They so seldom get visitors they forget how powerful it can be.
The truth is that the innkeeper and the herbalist poisoned them with a sleep draught. They intend to do the same the next night, making certain those who don't eat or drink are shot with a blowgun that fires poisoned darts.

The Children In The Night:

The first night one or more of the party remain awake they will hear the children arrive.

As the sun goes down mothers from around the village put food on their porches, then everyone goes inside. If any PC wishes to remain outside the villagers will demand, beg, threaten, and finally inform them that if they remain outside the villagers will have to kill them or die trying because if they don't another child will be slain like poor Billy.

Billy's tale is short. One evening two weeks ago the teens of the village
rounded up the rest of the children and when the villagers tried to stop them they killed Billy and threatened to kill another child for each act of disobedience. They issued a set of rules, and each night since have come into town with the older children to gather the food left for them and to call out an adult, whom they take with them. The adult is always found the next morning by the well very weak and with no memory of the previous night.
One of the rules is that the adults may not be outside between dusk and dawn.

Around nine o'clock the children come whooping into town as if playing some kind of game. They drop off the previous night's dishes and either eat or carry away the current night's offering.

Then they gather at one house and call out a villager to 'come play.' When the villager complies they all head out down a cart road through the fields.

Through The Fields:

Eventually the adventurers will head into the fields to find the children. Tactically it matters whether it is day or night because of the backstory.

Two months ago a vampire escaped from adventurers by hiring a crooked undertaker to bring his coffin to an abandoned monastery where he played as a child. The village he grew up in had long since rotted away, but a new village was just an hour away.

He happened upon a pair of teens in the woods while exploring and dominated them. From them he learned all about the village, and he suggested they bring friends one by one to meet him. Once he had dominated the teens of the village he set them to securing the village itself so that he could feed without worrying about people looking for missing victims. Each night he sends the children to obtain his meal and to remind the village the price they will pay if they disobey the master they have neither seen nor heard.

The vampire Tharis, (or Tarissa,) has a level in cleric, (and perhaps more, depending on the level of the party,) so s/he uses Cure Light Wounds to conceal the wounds from which blood is drawn.

The vampire has standing orders for the children over 5 to swarm-attack anyone caught following them or entering the monestery while the children 5 and under, who never leave the monastery, cluster around the vampire and protect it.

The villagers will resent any killing of children, even if the vampire is slain. In fact, the vampire will threaten, (and carry out,) one or more such murders if in danger.

During the day the vampire will be in its coffin in a secret room in the monastery. The use of non-lethal attacks or of grappling attacks on the children has a better chance to succeed without the vampire to manipulate and coordinate them.

Conclusion:

If the adventure is concluded with one or more children killed the village will hate the PCs. They will get only what they can loot from the vampire.

If they slay the vampire and return the children to the village the villagers will offer them whatever they want and add a horse of their choice per adventurer. The horses are saddle-trained and range in size from ponies to massive plough horses. They will be suitable for further training if the PCs want,(and can train,) warhorses.

If the lord sent them and they killed the vampire he will pay them 200gp per adventurer per level, subtracting 500gp for each child, (other than Billie,) who was slain. He will also allow them to choose a magic item from his armory.

If the lord did not send them but they save all of the children the lord will invite them to a ball held in their honor where magic items will be awarded.


If the adventure goes really badly they might end up on wanted posters.

[brian 333]

Administering this adventure will require a lot of roleplay and improv by the DM, so be as prepared and familiar with thd material as possible before you begin.

P.E.A.C.H., and as long as you are trying to be constructive don't worry about my feelings because I don't bring them to the forums.

[mrzomby]

This looks like a good adventure to me, it has a lot of twists and turns.

Only thing I'm thinking is how to give players a chance to figure out its a vampire before seeing it, without some cliche? this is especially true if you want to give them any chance of saving all the kids and receiving the award. Maybe in addition to the dog, the PCs can find something else in the cave (one of the kids?) and return them to the family and get a little bit of info the townsfolk wouldn't offer up before. Maybe after an encounter with the kids, during the attack they talk about bringing you to their "new friend" or "master" and letting the players try to figure out they need to investigate more. Just 1 of these should be enough to nudge players into bringing something to deal with a vampire and not harm the children.

Reading over the section with the vampire reminds me of the Book of Vile Darkness. BoVD has a magic item that is an armor that lets you hook up to unwilling or willing sacrifices, and any spell, ranged, or melee attack against you effects a living target shackled to you instead of you, this vampire may have something similar that players need to steal before the fight.(perhaps a brooch/cloak he takes off while sleeping during the day?) I don't recall how or if the book says to deal with someone wearing the armor except to keep on trucking and just kill them and the victims.

[brian 333]

Optional:

While searching the Mushroom Cave the party comes upon 14 year old Renda O'Welles. She is hiding in the caves to avoid the other village youths.

In the two weeks prior to the killing of Billy she followed her older sister as she was being taken to meet "A New Friend," and saw the vampire dominate the children who had been escorted there that evening.

She doesn't know anything about vampires, but she knows the kids had to hold the new recruits until it looked in their eyes, and then they turned friendly toward the scary person.