If you read my post yesterday, then you know that I have a goal of posting an adventure hook every day for one year. Let’s see how I do. Oh, and don’t worry, I will still be posting the once a week review, advice, or session recap.
Alright, here we go:
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ADVENTURE HOOK 002
Location:
A temple at least 1/2 day travel from the party’s current location.
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Situation:
The normally quiet, unassuming, and genial priests that maintain the temple have started to cause disturbing incidents in town when they come for their once a week visit.
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Problem:
The townsfolk have become scared of the priests and their acolytes, who have begun to threaten them with eternal damnation and “pain upon this land” if they do not tithe all of their income to the temple.
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Tasks:
The players need to
1) Protect the townspeople
2) Find out why the priests have turned bad
3) Find out who is controlling the priests
4) Find out how to stop the bad behavior
5) Stop the priests
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Things to explore:
1) The party may need to speak to several people in town to get the full picture of what the priests are doing, and also to contrast that with the way the priests used to act. This could be a skill challenge.
2) The party may need to do a skill challenge in which they bargain for control of the guards/police in the town so that they can set up proper protection for the townspeople.
3) The party may find that the priests have fallen under the control of an evil necromancer/wizard/demon/magic crystal/whatever flavor of bad guy you choose. They will need to neutralize it.
4) The party may find that the priests have come under the new leadership of an ambitious priest that feels he is doing the right thing by scaring the townsfolk into submission. He/She may prophesy the end of the world or a large war, and only be trying to prepare the town.
5) The party may find that the temple needs money to maintain the structure; donations are down and the Church leaders feel that the people are to blame for the decline in conditions at the temple.
6) The party may find that the temple leaders are buying off the guard captain – he looks the other way while the temple acolytes sneak in and steal small amounts of valuable goods from merchants. The priests then sell these goods to other towns for inflated prices (the goods can be rare and only available in a few places, one of them being the town). The bad behavior of the priests is a red-herring designed to keep the focus on their zealot like activities and keep eyes away from the thefts and their collusion with the guard captain.
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Okay, there you have it – Adventure Hook 002! Hope you enjoy it. Drop me a comment to let me know what you think of it.
Want to write a guest Adventure Hook? Let me know! Drop me an email at GamerDMSamuel AT yahoo DOT com and we’ll talk. It will also enter you in my contest and you could win a copy of Martial Power 2!
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Until next time, I wish you good gaming!
~DM Samuel
Technically, a ‘tithe’ is “The tenth part of the increase arising from the profits of land and stock, allotted to the clergy for their support” (thanks wikitionary). But otherwise looks good.
A variant on part 4 is that the seer of the temple has seen a great danger and the temple really does need the money to gather proper counter measures or the entire area will suffer from .
Thanks for the comment.
Yeah, I know a tithe is technically 10%. I could have said that they weren’t offering the proper sacrifice, but that sounded more malevolent to me than just using the word tithe, which has a general meaning of “giving to the church.”
Oooh – good idea on the seer of the temple – I like it!
Cheers,
Sam