Welcome to the next post in a series where I describe the adventures during a 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons campaign I ran a little while ago.
Last time, our party of first level characters arrived in the town of Tuadun, where they'd been sent (after volunteering) to see the mayor and help him solve some little local difficulties.
The Mayor's Problems
Mayor Gerd Ardrix is the man in charge of Tuadun. He's a jolly fellow, and appears to be well liked and respected by the townsfolk.
As he speaks with the characters, he outlines a number of incidents and concerns, all of which have happened in the last few weeks;
- Mirag is a shepherd who lives at the edge of the woods. His wife Tarna brings his cloth and products to market every week but has not been seen for the last 3 weeks.
- Something killed half a flock of sheep belonging to Wardaff Dybbolson, about halfway between the town and woods. Whatever it was did it in a spectacularly gruesome and destructive manner.
- The chief of the Watch, Captain Mardabh Porubh, found a sheep’s head nailed to his door a week ago. There was no blood.
- There are reports of a gang of brigands robbing travellers on the Filrath Road, which is causing significant trade disruption.
Mayor Gerd has a feeling that these things are all linked somehow, but has no particular evidence so far to say how, it's just intuition.
While the party discusses which of these things to investigate first, Mayor Gerd arranges lodging for them, and suggests they visit Mother White to pick up some of her healing potions which he'll pay for.
Mother White - image created by AI in NightCafe Studio
Mother White
After settling in their lodgings, the party goes off to collect their healing potions. Mother White is the town's healer and wise woman, and really lives up to the stereotype. She lives in a picture-postcard cottage, with a neatly tended herb garden outside.
The inside of the cottage is a cluttered chaos of kitchen equipment, cauldrons large and small, distilling equipment, hanging bundles of herbs, and all kinds of (mostly brass and ceramic) knick-knacks and memorabilia all over the place. None of the party noticed the absence of iron or steel among the stuff filling the place.
Mother White herself is a late middle-aged woman. She plump, jolly and fusses over everything and everybody. After sitting down with a nice cup of tea, Mother White explains that she is more than happy to make three healing potions for each of the party members. She offers them a choice of the standard type which restores 2d4+2 hit points of damage, or personalised ones which act as normal healing potions if drunk by anyone apart from the intended user, but for the person they are customised for they heal 3d8+3.
Naturally, the characters all opt for the personalised ones. Mother White askes each of them to drop a lock of hair into their mix and return the next day to collect the finished potions.
These personalised potions do indeed work as Mother White describes. But none of the players recalled at the time that a lock of hair can be a valuable thing. Unbeknownst to them, she fished them out of the brew and kept part of each hair. The players didn't remember that if someone casts a Scrying spell on them, that person having a lock of hair or similar would give them a -10 to their saving throw.
This would be important later - Mother White is a bit more than just a jolly local healer woman !
To be continued... next time the players set off to start solving Gerd's problems.
Previous posts in this series;
The Tarak D&D Campaign - Setting Part 1
The Tarak D&D Campaign - Setting Part 2
The Tarak D&D Campaign - Setting Part 3
The Tarak D&D Campaign - Player Creation and Briefing
The Tarak D&D Campaign - Arrival At Tuadun