Crowdsourcing: I need a threat to the a town in winter

Crowdsourcing: I need a threat to the a town in winter

Crowdsourcing: I need a threat to the a town in winter

Haven’t had time to prep for my upcoming game. Help me come up with a good threat to my PCs town?

It’s the middle of winter. We’ve established that the winter is going to be long and cold and rough. There’s a vast woods to the east, an open plain to the west. This is the PC’s home town.

Things we’ve got going:

– An ogre in the woods who’s been corrupted by something; it’s been finding old sites of power and spreading the corruption. PCs seriously wounded it a few months back.

– A group of ex-slave refugees, freed the nearest town. They were previously slave-taking hillfolk themselves. There’ve been difficulties getting them settled in.

– One of the PCs is an ex-slaver herself. There are bound to be folks with grudges.

– A handful of villagers have started down the path to worshipping something dark and bloody, but haven’t gone too far yet.

I’m suffering from analysis paralysis.

Whatchya got?

14 thoughts on “Crowdsourcing: I need a threat to the a town in winter”

  1. Get the slaves settled in – let hem resolve that heroically and awesomely and then realize that the town doesn’t have enough food for it’s now enlarged population to last through the winter (also puts enemies of the PC close at hand)

    Food is a good all purpose angle in the Winter, since sources of it are rare, and if it runs low, then hunting is the only real option, but if large game is scarce because of a big predator then someone needs to deal with that too.

  2. Winter = Starvation. Perhaps even an embodiment of hunger and primal cold, an evil nature spirit or wendigos. Water (ice) elementals. A pack of hungry wolves led by werewolves (maybe even one in town in human guise, spying).

  5. Fast acting, nasty Disease + sudden awful blizzard. Everybody’s more or less trapped unless someone’s willing to make a heroic Balto-style run to someplace with the cure/treatment. If you stay put everybody gets it and you all die. Alternatively, somebody’s a poisoner and you’re snowed in with them. Flavour with the various slaver tensions you got going on.

  6. Fire. What will they do as the houses catch fire? How can they rebuild with the ground so hard? Do they have the materials? As the arson sets one house after another on fire, space will be cramped, and disease will flourish… Why is this happening???

  7. It sounds like you have the fantasy level tropes covered (ogres, forest corruption, freed slaves, and strange gods), so I’d go with a town level issue – frozen well, defenses are crumbling in the cold, all the animals have gone from nearby woods. Give them something that threatens the folk of the town, not just the players.

  8. The villagers worshiping the dark and bloody thing are really trying to worship a foreign goddess of bounty and harvest, but she hasn’t noticed because they’ve got the rites wrong. Instead they’ve attracted the attentions of the dark and bloody thing which is working on luring them into its proper forms of worship. First up on its agenda is encouraging greed among their followers who will start hoarding food. This will exacerbate the inevitable lean times caused by the combination of winter + refugees. After the hoarding has been going on for a while, it will encourage the taking of appropriate offerings (i.e. theft). The refugees will get the blame. Tensions will rise.

  9. The villagers giving food and sacrificing animals in the woods to what they believe is a god, but is actually a yeti. It takes the food back to its tribe and tells them of the town and it’s bountiful food. They are only interested because their normal food supplies are low. Remember the ogre that corrupted the woods? And the new population in the nearby village? That has all caused a scarcity in food. This ties in everything and presents a new threat to the players.

  10. Thanks all! We’re going with:

    – The folks who’ve been worshiping something dark & bloody…

    – …kidnap and sacrifice one of the refugees, and…

    – …use their ill-gotten spiritual favors to inflict supernatural sickness on those who’ve wronged them (like one of the PCs)

  11. The Ogre corruption and what the villagers are worshipping are somehow connected and their activities have summoned something evil from across the plain.

    The PCs and villagers, notice an unusually thick fog moving ominously across the plain towards town. Who will go missing in the fog? what dark dangers have arrived through its cover? How will it be lifted?

    Feels like it’s time to get a ‘big bad’ involved and they need to knock off some of these bullets to get to him: Maybe the force heals the Ogre’s wound and gives him some dark powers, the villager worshipers turn crazed and the PCs have to assist the good villagers with fleeing to the ex-slave town. Could be interesting dynamic to for the slaver PC to have to ally with them now, perhaps to take the town back, and then the PCs push on to deal with the Ogre and ‘big bad’.

  13. Ever see the Disney animation of Sinbad?  No reason why the “Snow Phoenix” couldn’t visit the town.  Picture a Roc sized bird, snow white that leaves a trail of snow.  Has a Freezing breath and comes after a Blizzard Storm that howls like a hurricane.  In the “Eye” the Snow Phoenix hunts.

    True, it’s a creature feature but sometimes those are fun.  If you need to have minions then the snow phoenix can have a bunch of ice elemental or storm elemental or cold wind furies or heck, animated snowmen.  Attack the village.  Sure, weakness to fire but it’s winter.  Who wants to burn that much wood.  Not to mention the fact that you need to lure it to a bonfire or something.

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