Aelx Emberhelm Samples

One-Shot Adventure Sample

Haggish Dealings

“Dear young adventurers of the Adventurer’s Guild, I, Lord Reginald McGrath of the city of Hereford, am once again requesting the aid of the Adventurer’s Guild. I need some strapping young fellows to fetch us a large boar from the forest for the Debutante Ceremony. This feast is happening in 3 nights time and will require the boar to be kept living in some capacity. In exchange I not only offer gold but the opportunity to participate in the town wide ceremony and feast. Mead will be on the house!”

The Setup

The city of Hereford is a ranching town about a 2 days journey south of the Adventurers Guild. It is a well established hot spot for any meat connoisseur due to its abundance of a specific cow called a Wagu cow. This cow has a gene mutation that produces a unique meat well known for its marbling and therefore is highly sought after. According to the headmaster of the Adventurer’s Guild, Angie, the Mayor of Hereford, Lord Reginald McGrath, makes a request of the guild every year to travel to the forest that separates town from civilization and acquire a live dire boar for them to roast and serve at a celebration they host called the Debutante Ceremony. In this ceremony, where the party is welcome and encouraged to participate in, 3 young ladies of the town are selected to be gifted beautiful ball gowns and ride off to the capital. There they will participate in a courting ball and marry off to rich men from around the world and live out the rest of their lives happy and healthy.

However, not everything is as it seems. The truth is these girls will not be going to the capital, they instead will be shipped into the forest where a coven of hags will take them and feast on their bodies and youth, killing them in the process. This ritual is used to maintain the hag's illusion of being beautiful young humans. In exchange the hag cast an enchantment on the cows of Hereford, enhancing the meat to become its well-known taste and gaining its unique marble texture. Thus making the town rich and gaining the mayor the title Lord. The mayor and the hags have had this arrangement for almost a decade and it has been quite prosperous, for a price the mayor was willing to pay.

The Play

In the center of town is a courtyard with a large fountain of a bull, a large spit being constructed, and a beautiful carriage adorned with silver and purple embellishments. The party will be instructed to seek out Jo, the owner of the feed and tack store to get the run down on where and how to catch a giant boar.

When you find Jo he is hiding in the bales of hay, distraught and crying. His daughter, Sophie, was selected to be given away and while he would be thankful he just can't help but mourn that he will never see or talk to her again. That's right, in his grief Jo will explain that in the ten years of this ceremony no one has ever heard from their daughters again. Not a single letter. Many assume that they deem themselves of a higher status and forget their family. Jo doesn't care about all that, he is just sad his little girl is going away. Jo will instruct the players that the boars like to eat the plants near the ruins in the forest about 2 hours from town. He will mark a map and then ask the players to leave him be.

Branching Choices

If the players decide to hunt the boar for the ceremony they will first need to roll a series of survival checks to track the boars. Once found the dire boars will become aggressive very quickly and may get a surprise round on the players if they fail their survival check. One boar will have to be kept alive and brought back to the town. This is where the player will discover that for this ceremony the boar is cooked alive, dying while screaming and suffering. An arcana check can remind the players many evil magics require the target to be fed with anguish. If the target is the girls, the meat may help magic transference in some horrible way.

To be continued...