Twenty years ago the Ptolus City Watch backed up by some heavy hitters, assaulted a law breaking wizard in his lair outside the city. It was believed that he died, and to be certain the Watch burned his body. Flash forward to the present.
This miscreant used the spell Magic Jar to escape permanent death. A group of delvers hoping to find and loot whatever treasures were left behind, broke in and found the wizard's vault. It was guarded by a golem and while a battle raged, the wizard, hidden nearby in the gem used for the spell, jumped into a member of the party taking over.
The wizard, now in a fighter's body, wakes up without memory of what happened after swapping from the gem into the body. The fighter's companions left him outside the city with a note explaining that he is a werewolf.
Things progress with the wizard gathering more of his hidden treasure and trying to get cured of lycanthropy while also preparing for revenge on the city and the officials responsible for the raid on his lair.
In the course of things the party gets hired by the priest that was trying to cure the lycanthropy when the werewolf broke free, killed a couple temple slaves, and took off. The priest wants him captured so he can remove the curse. There's a reward of course.
Note: The priest and his temple own slaves. In Ptolus owning slaves is legal. Buying and Selling them is illegal. Mistreatment of slaves is illegal. Kidnapping is illegal. This may be an issue for some characters. There are slavers in the city that PCs can take their anger out on.
Our evil wizard is also looking for his now missing gem which has the fighter's soul in it, and finds out it has been placed in a museum and is about to go on display. He fails his first attempt and the PCs get alerted that he's after something in the museum. The idea is that they'll confront him there, and who doesn't like a good fight in a museum.
Adding a museum to Ptolus is a great idea even if it's a strange one. This one comes complete with some very weird displays, which you can certainly add to, and the glowing gem the miscreant is trying to steal. It is unlikely for this side-show of a museum to be in Oldtown, so I suggest either Midtown or North Market.
Eventually it is possible that the wizard, either cured of lycanthropy or not, gets away and the party has to track him to his new lair beneath the Warrens. A lair complete with sewage, alligators, a rolling trap, and things the wizard conjured forth from a bag of magic beans.
Being fond of combining interesting hazards with monsters, the Brown Mold combined with an Ice Lizard suits my tastes for something to challenge the player characters. (For those unfamiliar, Brown Mold sucks in heat and makes the surrounding area cold enough to cause damage to things that aren't resistant to extreme cold. Bringing stuff like torches that give off a lot of heat makes the mold grow, getting more dangerous.)
Oh, yeah, the adventure writer seems to think it's a good idea for the wizard to unleash a lightning bolt from a wand in a cramped, small lair. That'll end well for everyone!
There you have it. Nothing special, but interesting enough for a mention.
No comments:
Post a Comment