I’ve got a party exploring a crumbling underground city where the souls of all of the people have been trapped in a magical artifact and the bodies are animated by some dark force tonight.
They’re headed to the wizard’s tower to attempt to free the souls and lay them to rest, help me to Think Dangerously and come up with some trouble for them!
The wizard’s laboratory has a huge telescope-looking device with a helix of pipes on one side ending in a huge bulb of spiked metal. If someone flips the switch while pointing it at someone, the unlucky target is instantly vaporized by a blinding bolt. It contains 1 ammo in such sparks. It’s not obvious until you use it which side is the business side.
Very heavy. Forget about Weight—when you pick it up, you are Encumbered.
How about some good questions to lead them into setting up the dangers themselves?
– What maniacal, magical traps is the wizard rumored to have set to protect their sanctum?
– What mysterious guardian blocks your way into the tower and by what means may you pass?
– Who else, other than the wizard, stands to benefit from the imprisonment of the city’s souls? How will they try to sabotage your mission?
– The tower and the underground city have been long neglected? What trouble will this cause for you as you explore the tower and its environs?
And, you can make these and other questions even more powerful by adding specific details from the adventure thus far. Tie everything back together and make it look like all the random stuff that has happened in the adventure has been part of the plan all along!
Put them in a spot: as I read it the souls are trapped but the inhabitants are not dead, they’re just being magically controlled because their souls are trapped by the device, so you can force some really hard choices. No-one they’re fighting actually wants to be fighting: kids, women, the stable boy, pregnant women! These enemies will do damage because they’re compelled to do so and the characters (and hopefully the players) won’t want to fight back.
Brian Holland oh man that’s brutal, I love it!
John at Deep Six Delver that’s awesome, even if it doesn’t make it into this tower it’s definitely going to get pulled out at some point