Adventures for All Character Classes (SB)

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==The Sacred Mountain and the Two Tribes==
Two tribes in the campaign setting consider the same mountain sacred. One tribe worships a "Great Hunter" hero spirit, while the other worships a similar spirit called the Silver Bear. Each think of the mountain as the natural home of their spirit, and are unaware that another tribe has a conflicting belief. Therefore, both spirits live on the mountain in the spirit world, without ever meeting or being aware of the other's existence. Each tribe can contact its spirit at the mountain, leave sacrifices, ask advice, and so on, without the interference of the other spirit.
Because each tribe thinks of the mountain as the home of only its own spirit—and the spirit is created and defined by their thoughts—so it is for each spirit its sole domain.
At some point, the tribes become aware of each others' beliefs; perhaps they bump into one another as they make sacrifices, or a group of outsiders (like the player character) makes them aware of each others' beliefs.
Each "knows" that its own spirit is the sole original occupier of the sacred mountain, and thus concludes that the other must be a recent interloper. Thus, both spirits consider themselves as rightful masters of the mountain, and take the other to be an invader. The tribes tell many stories about the conflict between the two—a conflict which becomes very real, as the two spirits begin to fight in the spirit world.
The conflict between the tribes is irreconcilable. A DM could use such a setting to weave adventures illustrating the tragedy of the situation, or simply use the conflict as a way to ensure that there is always plenty of fighting for the player characters to get involved with.
==Mining the Sacred Mountain==
A tribe believes that its ancestors live on a certain mountain (as the site described Chapter Seven), upon which it is blasphemy for a mortal to trespass; a group of "civilized" merchants believe that money can be made by mining a precious metal from the mountain side, and are equally insistent that it is absurd (if not immoral) to forego any potential profit.
The player characters could be involved on either side in the forthcoming conflict. The ancestors threaten to curse the tribe if the insult is not avenged, and the merchants don't intend to let "a bunch of ignorant savages" stop them from acting on the charter granted to them by the local lord. Characters could either be sent by the tribe to drive the miners away, or might be hired by the merchants to oversee or protect the mining operation. An interesting adventure might be to have the characters start out on the "wrong" side of this conflict (which in up to the DM to choose), and then have them realize this fact early in the adventure. Then, the characters must undo whatever actions they took early on, and from there strive to help the good side to victory.
==The Ghost of Your Father==
One of the player characters is the son or daughter of a man who was often absent—perhaps a great wizard who traveled the world seeking lost lore, or a warchief who was preoccupied leading the defense of the homeland. On one hand, the father taught the character all that he or she knows, and was dearly a great hero, but on the other, his absences made the character miserable as a child.
As a child, the character therefore had two conflicting images of the father. First, the loving patriarch, a man of great virtue who loved and cared for his child. Second, there is the irresponsible monster, without love and reveling in his child's misery; the character remembers his or her mother's tears, the feeling of helplessness and isolation, and the sense of betrayal each time the father went away. Now, in adulthood, the character still has two conflicting images of his or her father, built upon these conflicting memories.
These feelings find form in the spirit world. Two spirits exist: one the loving, protecting father, the other the callous, monstrous father. Perhaps the character, at times of great stress, finds that these spirits appear alternately to him or her. First one appears to save the character from some danger; then later another attacks or betrays the him or her. The character is not even be aware that there are two separate "fathers," and so finds the childhood confusions being played out in adult life.
Only if the character can come to terms with his or her emotions do the spirits cease to torment. But perhaps the only way to come to terms with these emotions is to confront both "fathers," perhaps to defeat the monstrous spirit, and to understand the reality of the father's life.
==. . . And Again . . . And Again....==
The characters are traveling through a sleepy rural area when a murder takes place, without any witnesses, clues, or evident reason. The characters, being wise in the ways of the world are asked to investigate. The next night another murder takes place in a different part of the region, again with no witnesses, clues, or apparent motive.
Another murder follows, and then another, each more heinous than the previous, and each committed without witnesses or clues left behind. After or just before the fourth murder, the characters catch the culprit—a gibbering lunatic who claims that "voices in his head" told him what to do. And of course, the day after his arrest there is another killing.
If the characters look into the local archives (at a town hall or monastery, as appropriate for the campaign), records show that a series of five murders took place exactly one hundred years ago, and every one hundred years before since the archive began; the sites and times of the murders are always roughly the same.
Catching one murderer does little good. The spirits which possessed him or her simply possess another random local. These were created by the violence of the original set of murders, centuries ago, and are shadows acting out the killings each century and so reinforcing their powers. If the characters can prevent further killings, then the cycle may be broken.
The point of the adventure is to prevent the fifth (and possibly the fourth) killing. The characters know roughly where and when each killing will take place, but as to the victims, all that they know is that the last victim is always a visitor to the region—just like themselves.
==Blasphemous Blackmail==
A shaman (perhaps even a player character) has suddenly finds himself unable to cast a number of spells. Not understanding why his patron has withdrawn its support, the shaman attempts to contact the spirit, but is unable to do so. Then, word is received from a spiritualist shaman that he has "kidnaped" one of the character's patron spirits, imprisoning it with a contain spirit spell. The spiritualist offers to free the spirit in return for a large sum of money or a famous item currently in the shaman's possession. If these demands are not met, the spiritualist warns, the spirit will remain trapped and the shaman thus without its spells.
The party's task is to find and release the spirit, or submit to the blackmail and secure the cash or item that the spiritualist wants. (However, the problem with blackmail is that if it's successful once, the blackmailer is likely to squeeze the victim for more.) Dispatching the spiritualist and retrieving the kidnaped spirit is the better approach, but the only person who knows where the containment bottle is hidden is the spiritualist, and so the PCs must first discover its location. Storming in and killing the spiritualist would be counterproductive, as they might then have problems locating the bottle.
Of course, an added wrinkle in this scenario might be that the spiritualist is not acting on his own accord. If there is a high-level mage somewhere among the party's enemies, then the spiritualist was actually geased into abducting the patron spirit, and that the blackmail scheme was actually the only way he could make the PCs aware of his presence and hopefully get them to free him from the geas (which he cannot reveal, due to the enchantment). In this eventuality, the spiritualist no longer has the character's patron, and the party must penetrate the sanctum of a powerful enemy to retrieve the spirit.
==The None and Only==
The local inn has been run down for some time, and when the owner dies, a stranger comes to town and offers to help the widow run the place. All he seeks is board and lodging.
The stranger alters the inn's name from The One and Only to The None and Only (at least, the name changes on the sign, though no one sees him repaint it). The ale is of exceptional quality (and no one ever has a hangover after drinking it), and the food is wonderful. Slowly it becomes evident that the beer barrels never run dry, and the larder is always full. The stranger stops charging the locals for their beer or dinner, and more and more of them give up work entirely to sit around the inn.
There are no fights in the tavern, excellent entertainers turn up to perform for free—moments after a patron wishes that type of entertainment was available—and the atmosphere is always friendly. The place is, in fact, the perfect village inn, such as no one has ever seen. And this is unsurprising, because the stranger is a might-have-been spirit (about 6 Hit Dice), formed from the unfulfilled dreams of the world's drinkers. DMs should make the place as weird and Utopian as they like.
However, the drunken locals begin to neglect their work; fields go unsown, cattle are not milked, and the buildings become dilapidated. The local rulers are upset—as a village that produces nothing yields no tax revenues—and the village priests are distressed that the people are turning from virtue and embracing the sin of gluttony. Worse still, at least from the point of view of the head of the local temple, the atmosphere is so amicable that the righteous, as well as several clerics, laugh and drink happily with blasphemers who should be their sworn enemies.
The town's rulers eventually decide to hire the characters to convince the villagers to return to tending to their everyday duties, using whatever means they deem necessary.
The trick here is to convince the villagers to turn their backs on what seems like a perfect existence: an almost impossible task, particularly since the might-have-been spirit will be doing its best to convince them the player characters that there's nothing wrong with the poor commoners finally finding release from their everyday grind. Short-tempered, task-focused parties may just go ahead and destroy the inn, which will certainly to stop it keeping the people from their work, but will result in them facing much hostility from the people. Another party may defect to support the new proprietor they may have to defend the place against other heavies sent by the rulers. The best course is a slow approach, to attempt to figure out what's happening, and somehow dispense with the spirit.
==Grandmother's Footsteps==
The player characters are hired by the leader of an immigrant community, whose members have recently been subject to an increasing number of attacks by the native population. Ousted from a neighboring area or their homelands, the people have come to the area and started to buy up farms and set up businesses. An unknown number of locals have now begun to burn down these farms and businesses, attack livestock in the fields, and so on.
The majority of the locals, though uninvolved in the violence, refuse to give information to the immigrants, and the local law enforcers are uninterested in investigating. They protect their own. The characters, however, eventually discover that one extended family is behind the attacks, operating from a homestead out of town which they run and guard like a military camp.
As the newcomers arrived, the family muttered that "Grandma wouldn't've liked this," and their thoughts formed a spirit, appearing and claiming to be the matriarch's ghost. The spirit (treat it as an ancestor) embodies the family's distrust and resentment. She communicates via the family's dearest child, possessing the girl and giving orders through her, which the family obey dutifully.
To resolve this situation, the party can destroy the spirit, which is only a short-term solution as the family's xenophobia will cause it to reappear Id4 weeks later; they can take up armed resistance against the family, which will start a bloody smallscale war and get them in trouble with the local authorities; they can gather evidence and force the local authorities to act against the family; or they can try to convince the bigots that they are wrong by proving the immigrants are human beings just like them. Of course, the ancestor spirit will do all it can to blind the family to this simple truth.
==The Guardian Angel==
One of the characters receives a visit from an immaculate, giant talking fox, which claims to be his "guardian angel." The fox warns the character of a terrible danger that threatens to destroy his family, friends, beloved country, sweetheart, or some person or place that is dear to him.
The danger, according to the fox, comes from a group of trappers who are supposedly possessed or being manipulated by a potent evil, which intends to perform some hideous rite in the area that they are working. The "guardian angel" suggests that the characters destroy or drive the trappers away.
The "guardian angel" is, in fact, a devious fox totem, which is lying to the character. The trappers are innocent of any true evil intent, but are merely making a living trapping foxes for their pelts. They are, however, killing more foxes than the totem appreciates, and have trespassed at a shrine to the spirit.
==The Lover Returned==
A young woman, who is either a former adventuring companion of the player characters, or the daughter of an ally, suffers the ultimate tragedy on her wedding day: Her husband-to-be is killed on his way to the ceremony.
She languishes for weeks, refusing to leave her room, and barely eats or drinks. One day, however, a servant of the household approaches the characters with a fearful revelation that the young mistress has been chanting and performing strange rites in yard behind the house. One morning after chanting thus, she was cheerful and happy, and spent much time over breakfast talking about how her husband had finally arrived and that soon they would be married. The servant has come to the characters, because another servant went to the local temple, and they are convinced that she has raised the dead. Now they are preparing to put her on trial as a necromancer. The servant begs that the characters go speak with her.
The young woman has not yet been arrested, and is unaware of the mounting danger. She is shocked and appalled at the news that some think her a necromancer. She reveals that she had dealings with a spiritualist during an adventure, and that he showed her certain rituals that would cause the spirits to give her her heart's desire, in exchange for his life. She had not been raising the dead, but beseeching the great powers to restore her love whole and intact. On cue, the supposedly dead fiance strolls into the room. He willingly subjects himself to any spells the characters wish to use to verify that he is alive, and then joins them on a trip to the temple to stop the wheels of inquisition before they crush his love, as well as to set a new date for their marriage.
If there is a mid-level solitary shaman in the party, however, the fiance will be immediately recognized for what he is: a hero spirit formed from the young woman's love for her fiance and the sacrifices she performed to nourish it. The shaman must decide if he is to shatter her happiness by attempting to reveal the spirit, or to simply let things run their course.
Regardless of what actions the characters take, a sequel to this adventure can be run. After many game sessions have elapsed, the characters can receive a desperate plea for help from the young woman. She has fallen out of love with her husband, has received the temple's blessings to be free from him, but he refuses to let her go: He stalks her everywhere, and has even killed two hounds she bought to protect her and placed them in the bed they once shared. She fears for her life, and begs the characters to convince her former love to leave her alone.
If the husband is known to the party as a spirit, and the player characters have been dealing extensively with these beings, they might recognize that he has become a rogue hero, being that he has lost his primary (and perhaps only) worshiper. Even if the player characters leave the spirit alone after their first encounter, the showdown is now unavoidable.
==My Darling Daughter==
A prominent family in the city, merchants or nobles, are concerned at their daughter's strange behavior: The girl has become terrified of the servants, but refuses to explain why.
Seeking a man of wisdom and renown, the girl's relations contact a respected wizard or priest in the party of player characters, and ask him or her to talk with the girl. Careful questioning or more subtle investigation may reveal that the girl has an irrational fear that the servants are plotting to murder the family. As the party investigates, it becomes clear that the child overheard part of an innocent conversation, and misinterpreted it. The misunderstanding is easily resolved, but the child's fear remains.
Before long, her fear has formed itself into a bogeyman, which causes strange incidents—medicines and rat poisons are mislabeled, a family pet is found mutilated, an assassin's knife is found in the servant's quarters: Now the entire party is called upon to investigate what now seems to be real assassins.
The incidents fuel the girl's fear and the bogeyman grows in power. Soon it starts possessing the servants and forcing them to attack the family, exactly mirroring the fears that the girl has. The characters can seize individual servants, but must eventually work out that the attacks follow the pattern of the child's fears. Killing the spirit will work, as the child's fear reforms it, and the solution lies in convincing the girl that the danger is past.
==Lord of the Dance==
Missionaries have converted many of the local people, and they have turned away from the hero spirit, the village's founder, whom they had previously worshiped. The spirit feels that its power in failing, and resents the people's abandonment of it, and so begins to work against them by cursing the land and attacking outlying farmsteads. As the people come to fear or abandon the spirit, it begins its transformation into a rogue hero.
The local priests, aware that they have no powers to oppose this thing, hire the player characters to protect the village. The last remaining shaman, however, tells them that the spirit will be appeased only if a ritual dance (more like a mime, telling the story of the village's foundation) is performed immediately and then every year thereafter, and demands that the villagers also sacrifice to the spirit and eat a communal meal in its honor. These were the traditional methods of honoring the spirit, and the new priests are opposed to their "heathen" performance: However, this is the best way to appease the spirit, and so to protect the villagers.
The characters must either test their diplomatic skills, negotiating between the dogmatic priests and the furious spirit, or they must make a stand against the spirit, destroying it and minimizing the loss of life when it next attacks.
Ultimately, the party may have to destroy the rogue hero, but then they will have to locate a high level shaman to cast reinvigorate land, or one of the player characters may have to, or the village be lost due to lack of crops.
==The Stubborn Guardian==
Despite its deceptively easy opening, this final adventure is for powerful parties that should include at least one priest of 5th level or higher
A new trade route has recently been established, carrying goods through the territory of a nomadic tribe. The caravans, however, have attracted the avaricious attentions of a nearby clan of ores (or some similarly uncouth race or group), who have repeatedly raided the merchants.
On the most dangerous stretch of the route there is a ruined castle that the merchants would like to reestablish to protect their caravans: The safety of the enclosure to provide a night's refuge and a small garrison of cavalry to chase off the ores would hopefully end the bloody (and expensive) attacks.
Unfortunately, the castle has a single inhabitant— a guardian spirit who doggedly waits for the fort's long dead commander. The spirit stems from a soldier who was ordered to stand guard until the officer returned, and to let no one enter in the meantime. Soon after the order was given the commander was killed while leading a sortie, and the fort was sacked.
Both the traders and the local tribes have an interest in keeping the trade route open and so in securing the fortress—the traders because they profit from the route, the tribe because the merchants exchange goods from distant lands for their humdrum surpluses. Neither, however, want to aggravate the conflict with the ores, and so they seek a way to deal with the guardian spirit.
The tribe's shamans have contacted the spirit, and cannot persuade it to abandon its watch. Only if proof can be found that the commander is dead will it end its vigil, and finding its loyalty admirable the shamans have urged that such proof be sought in preference to attacking the spirit. And so, the player characters are contacted.
The player characters have to find proof of the commander's death (the corpse, which can be identified by its golden bracers or the pattern that all officers had carved so deeply into their scalps that it marked their skulls), and bring it back to the fortress. There, the shamans and the party can jointly show it to the guardian spirit.
The characters will have to venture deep into orcish territory to find the ancient site of the battle where the commander met his demise. (The guardian spirit knows the direction in which the commander led his troops, and any ore the party captures along the way can tell them of the location of the "Valley of Bones.")
What the party doesn't know, but will learn, is that the many of the men and women who died on that ancient battlefield are now various forms of undead. The bone- and rusted-armor littered area is beset by wraiths, spectres, wights, and wandering skeletons. The commander has become a coffer corpse (detailed in the FIEND FOLIO® MONSTROUS COMPENDIUM accessory.
As if the undead weren't enough for the party to deal with, for every turn they spend in the valley, they are set upon by 1d4-1 disease spirits (of whichever disease the DM wishes), and must save vs. paralyzation to avoid being possessed by each. Not only was this the site of a deciding battle, but it was also the location of an open-air temple, the ruins of which stands amidst the corpses. A successful Religion proficiency check identifies markings on the broken pillars the markings as symbols of an extinct cult worshiping a god of disease and decay. The spirits spawned by these twisted cultists finished off the wounded warriors, and have been fading for the past several centuries: Now the player characters can revive them.
Of course, once the party has defeated the restless dead, and possibly given them proper funeral rights, they will have fight their way out of ore territory, carrying the commander's body (or at least his skull), and possibly severely injured and diseased.