The Black Dog by Tonia Walden Hook: The PCs are traveling through the countryside when they see a group of people running towards them with weapons at the ready. The PCs may assume they are going to be involved in an attack when they notice they are chasing a large black dog - the dog sees them and runs right for them whimpering. If the party allow it to come close it will scratch a word, "HELP" in the dirt before collapsing due to its wounds. Line: If the PCs choose to save the dog, by diverting the villagers or hiding him, the dog will scratch another word, "Nathan", in the dirt. If they ask around the town they will find out Nathan deTorrens is the name of the local lord's son, who is supposed to be returning to claim his inheritance after the death of his father. However, he is a few weeks late and no one has found out what has happened to him. In the meantime his uncle rules in his place. There are also many stories of the appearance of a supernatural black dog who has been killing livestock and bringing ill luck on the village - the stories seem quite exaggerated and the beast has taken on the proportions of a demon in the villagers' eyes. Sinker: The dog is indeed Nathan, who was sent a cursed amulet by his uncle who said it was willed to him by his dying father. When Nathan put the amulet on he was transformed into a large black dog. His uncle has been spreading rumors of a supernatural dog, in the hopes Nathan will be killed by the superstitious villagers. Nathan's intelligence is slowly waning but he has been trying to find a way to get to his uncle and get the curse removed. His uncle knows the spell to remove the curse; alternately, the party could help him find another magic user who might be able to transform him back to his original state. In either case he will be extremely grateful. It Ain't Easy Being Green by Michael Lampman Hook: The party is wandering through the land, and comes across a recently abandoned village. Looking through the village, they find no people, but they do find a lot of frogs. Line: When they search the buildings, they will find a book in the local church that explains that the town has been cursed, and that anyone in the town, or who enters the town, will be turned into frogs. A local witch apparantly took offense from something the townspeople did, and cast this curse as revenge. Sinker: The only way to remove the curse (a remove curse spell will not do it) is to find the witch, and slay her. Unfortunately, the witch lives about half a day away, and as each hour passes, the player characters become more frog-like: they turn green, they develop webbing between their toes and fingers, their hands start turning into feet, etc. So, as you can see, the players have a small problem; if they do manage to reach her, will they be in any shape to fight her? The witch herself should be of average power, and not too exceptionally tough. The main problem in the big battle should be the party trying to figure out ways to overcome the handicaps they develop from being part frog, such as spelicasters trying to figure out how to cast spells with webbed hands, or fighters trying to adjust to shortened arms, loose-fitting armor, and an urge to catch flies with their tongues. In other words, it's a good chance for the party to have some light-hearted fun, with frog jokes and puns flying fast and furious. Obviously, you'll have to alter the details of this problem to fit the unique resources of your group, as a group with more resources might be able to reach her quickly enough that the curse will have had hardly any time to work, and they will have no problems fighting the witch. In this case, you may wish to use obstacles, either mechanical, magical, or living creatures, to slow the party enough for the curse to start working on them. But before you're tempted to make things too rough on them, just remember this: role-playing a group of frogs sitting on lilypads and eating bugs, is not really all that much fun for either the players or the GM. Information Isn't a "Real" Commodity by S.D. Anderson This scenario is geared for the time travel campaign detailed in SHADIS #11 & 12 (and #18.5), but is easily converted to GURPS Time Travel's StopWatch/ Timepiece setting, or other time travel based games. Hook: PC members have just finished a raid on a base that launched illegal time jumps from their "native" era. People at the base either fought to the death, escaped or committed suicide. Line: Analysis of the equipment captured shows that robotic units capable of manufacturing robotic agents out of raw materials were among the items sent back in time and later retrieved. (In short, they can have robots made from matter that is indigenous to the era the manufacturing robot was sent to.) If cloning/braintaping technology is available at the existing tech level of the campaign, human agents will also have been cloned and sent on missions. Sinker: The Ferrets and their robots don't show up as time displaced. The PCs will have to discover these enemies using nothing but their detective skills. And, because these agents are native to their era, the forces that would send dis, placed matter back to its proper time won't work. Good Luck! There's a Signpost Up Ahead. Next Stop by S.D. Anderson Hook: The party is journeying. To or from somewhere. Your choice. Line: They reach a place where several roads converge. An old fashioned signpost stands at the intersection. Many destination arrows mark the post, some bearing foreign writings, some bearing writing that clearly isn't close to human. The sign post radiates magic and/or psionic power, if checked. Some destinations are to known cities and places. Others are unfamiliar, especially to anyone who knows the local area. And others are out and out Outer Limitsville! Sinker: The post itself is magic, once part of a wizard's house. Any specific powers it may have aren't known, and it may just be that the wood has picked up a substantial charge of magic from being in the wizard's estate. The wizard was slain by a cult of magic haters. Cult members watch the sign from homes built near the intersection. People who practice divining magicks to try and determine the "interplanar" powers of the sign post will be noted and the cult , s bully boys will come along as soon as is feasible to eliminate the "diabolical users of unholy magic". Obtuselisk by Michael Lampman Hook: The party is contacted by a priest(ess) who wishes to hire them to retrieve an ancient obelisk for his/her church. It's currently being held by a mage, who has agreed to give it to the church in return for some magical artifact that they have that is of no use to them. The church wishes to hire the characters to take the magic artifact to the mage, and return with the obelisk to the church, and is willing to pay quite well for this. Line: While this certainly sounds like an easy job, the church will only discuss the job with the party leader, if the party has one, or whichever character the party decides upon to negotiate things with the church. The church will be generous when hiring the party, but not excessively so, as while they consider the obelisk important, they won't break their coffers to get it. Once this person accepts the job, he or she will be placed under a Geas to not reveal this information to anybody else in any form (writing, speaking, gesturing, etc.), not even the members of his or her own party, and to return the obelisk as quickly as possible. The church is a somewhat paranoid religious organization, and worries that were the other party members know of it, they might try to keep it for themselves, or try to sell it to another church for more money. Sinker: Which leads to the real problem, as once the character returns to the party, how does he/she convince them to accept a job he/she can't tell them about? Somehow this person has to convince the party to deliver something he/she can't tell them about, to someone he/she can't tell them about, and pick up something else he/she can't tell them about, and return to the church. How will the party react to this? Will they trust the character enough to follow him/her blindly? If they do, will he/she be able to keep that trust over the length of the mission? Those are important questions, ones that you and your players will have fun finding out the answers to. Enjoy. Son Wrong Car by Matt Staroscik Hook: Any modern or futuristic urban setting will do. The characters must spend a fair amount of time in one neighborhood over the course of a couple of weeks or months. The more suspicious they look doing it the better; any sort of undercover police, private investigators, door-to-door salesmen, or hoodlums will do. Line: The characters catch a couple of hoods tampering with their vehicle. In fact, they are attempting to plant a crude car bomb. If the PCs exhibit a willingness to use lethal force to defend themselves or the vehicle, the punks immediately spill their guts, otherwise they flee. If the PCs do not catch a punk and sweat him to learn his story, engineer more such incidents (becoming progressively more lethal) until they do. Once the PCs catch a would be assassin, he tells the players that he was hired to do the hit by Karl Spindler, a local crime boss. Spindler is the righthand man to Malcom Warner, who is the most powerful underworld figure in the area. Someone has been moving in on Warner's territory and he has assigned Spindler to take care of it; he can't have just anyone making book, dealing drugs and running protection rackets on his turf. Somehow the PCs have been fingered as the offenders. Sinker: Spindler is actually the one making trouble behind Warner's back, using fresh talent from out of town. To put Warner at ease, Spindler promised he'd take care of the situation, and so to protect himself he needs to produce a few bodies. The players are perfect dupes because they have been seen frequently in the area lately. Once Warner is put at ease with a few corpses (if the players get out of the situation Spindler might use some of his own people), Spindler will stage a coup. If the PCs are street punks of some stripe them, selves, they could easily get caught up in the resulting gang warfare. Back to Shadis #21 Table of Contents Back to Shadis List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master List of Magazines © Copyright 1995 by Alderac Entertainment Group This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com