What difficult demand does a Bat Spirit make of the Druid?
(Context below)
I’m looking for some help/ideas to answer the above question, thanks for taking a moment to consider it.
We’re using the DW Unlimited ruleset. Players are level one, this is our first adventure.
The context is that while facing off against some pirates who had a mage that controlled bats, the Druid spoke to the Bat Spirit and freed it from the mage in exchange for a favor at a later time. If the Druid refuses to deliver on the favor, the Bat Spirit will withdraw its power (bats won’t converse with the druid, can’t shift into bat form) which is significant for this underground campaign.
They’re now at a Kuo-Toan village, with the intent of retrieving a ring from a failed diplomatic mission to the village. There are a few things going on here:
– A kuo-toan OOZE druid, largely fallen out of favor for religious reasons, but kept around because of his ability to create a mind-protecting substance harvested from tumorous growths he creates on the back of large toads.
– A cult that has recently grown up around a kuo-toan leviathan giant (a regular kuo-toan who absorbed a shard of divinity.)
– The diplomat from the failed mission who is being prepped to be sacrificed to the kuo-toan leviathan.
I’d love for the request to complicate their mission, making it a tough choice for the Druid. I’d also love for it to actually be something a Bat Spirit might want – I imagine bats don’t really care about the sort of things the players might be concerned with.
Any ideas are welcome!
Make it a Fruit Bat (most bats eat fruits instead drawing blood), and demanding the druid takes time sowing seeds that can grow into fruit trees down there. It’s a chance to learn a bit more about your world (what kind of trees bear fruit underground?) and forcing the druid decide taking time to do that or focus on the mission… And never forget to keep the clock ticking for them.
Or maybe the bat spirit wants drive all the non animals from the cave. Drive out all the invaders!
Perhaps there is an ecological issue threatening the various species of the cave? Some magic goop that is killing off part of the ecosystem and causing others to suffer? Refuse from the local village has poisoned the water running through the cave? Etc etc
If you want to take a cue from Chinese mythology, you can adapt the Five Blessings concept and have the bat spirit require the druid to deliver the gifts of longevity, health, wealth, virtue, and the peaceful of old age (to whom could be up to the bat spirit or the druid). You could give the player freedom to be creative in how the druid may deliver these blessings.
en.wikipedia.org – Wufu – Wikipedia
Why not just ” seven pounds of insects to feed my children!”
Thanks for the suggestions, these are great. I’m thinking of following Mark Tygart’s suggestion with the twist that the spirit wants the hoard of insects that the ooze druid keeps on hand to feed its toads.
Jeremy Stewart “twist that the spirit wants the hoard of insects that the ooze druid keeps on hand to feed its toads.” Love it!