One Noodle Soup

Written a very long time ago for Glen and Andrew – although I don’t play D&D anymore I still like to write this stuff from time to time 😀 This one never had an ending and a lot of loose threads so I am going to fix it up and ‘publish’ it here.

Feel free to use it if you play 😀

A Very Groovy Adventure.
For level 5-7 characters.
Players should have between 30 – 60 hp

The Town
This is where the players spend about 10 minutes at the beginning of the adventure. Lets call it ‘Lesterville’, named after Lester who started out from the seaside and walked inland with an egg on a spoon to found a new town wherever the egg dropped. Lesterville is a seaside town.
Lester was a twit.

The characters are employed as city council workers when the adventure starts, paying off their debt to society due to one too many destructive nights drinking. Their job involves street cleaning, road maintenance and all sorts of other gritty work around town. They are sometimes called upon to help the city guard with odd peacekeeping jobs.

One of them should take the blame for burning down a pub, causing some major structural damage to a police station and a kicking in a significant portion of the towns garden gnomes. This will give them something to fight about when times get rough – it also sets up this adventure, which I might call Gnomes Vengeance or maybe just The Sting, because it involves getting pissed around by gnomes for a solid 4 hour adventuring session.

They get into work one morning and are assigned to ‘sort out’ some gnomes who are making so much noise there have been complaints from the graveyard next door. As the players move through the gnomish sector on the way to the disturbance, they notice the streets are empty. Occasionally they hear giggling from behind curtains and doors. They start to get a “Something is Going On” feeling.

They arrive at the house in question and find the front door open. They walk through the empty house. In the back yard is a large black tent with construction noises coming from underneath. The noises stop very suddenly. When someone peaks underneath, they see some sort of a tall, rectangular structure at the back of the tent. In front of it sits 5 gnome shaman in a circle of candles and incense. They begin to chant and a wind begins to blow. The gnomes are protected by some sort of barrier, so they will have the chance to finish their spell, which causes the players to be sucked in to the box and transported to the paddle wheeler, which is in the gnome world, preparing to take off.

The Cornflake Box
This is the box the entire gnomish world exists in. The players will get a chance to climb out of it at the end of the adventure.

Gnomish Paddle Wheeler
A flying ship with very large paddle wheels on both sides. It is powered by slaves in both wheels who are coaxed to move down the inside of the wheel by a combination of illusionary magic and dirty trickery. The wheels alternate to allow for rest – the other wheel is powered by brown bears (more on these later).

The players wake up in the left paddle wheel – at this stage they are still on the ground. The wheel is masked by magic to appear as a flat tunnel and the walls look like stone. In fact, they are wood. There is no light, so the players must find a way of illuminating the tunnel. The walls are magically shielded up to about 500 hp damage, after which they behave like normal wood.

The paddle wheeler is bound for the Gnome Citadel, so the players must be started down the wheel. Movement is encouraged by a variety of different methods. The methods become more and more unbelievable as the encounter wears on.

Methods of persuasion…
1 – Blinking Exit sign in the distance.
2 – The ‘host of illusionary frost wolfs’ method. A cold breeze is followed by the distant sound of snarling dogs.
3 – The ‘host of real frost wolfs’ method. A cold breeze followed by 6 real frost wolfs.
4 – Indiana Jones style boulder.
5 – Tour group. A tour group moves down the corridor, looking at paintings that magically appear. The guide urges the players to keep moving.
6 – A slowly approaching gelatinous cube. (real)
7 – Approaching fire storm. A series of explosions is the prelude to an approaching wall of illusionary fire. It may disappear if the characters get too close, but the heat can inflict real damage.
8 – Rabid Gerbils.
9 – Trail of cookie crumbs that turns into a trail of gold coins when the players begin to lose interest.
10 – Beautiful women walk past and beckons.
11 – Beautiful men walk past and beckons.
12 – They hear someone shout “come and get it” and “grubs up” The smell of food leads to a series of different courses being laid out for the companions.

Feel free to make things up on the spot for this part – the main point is to keep the players moving and interested in what is going on. There are two alternating wheels but if they stop for a very long time (go on strike ect…) the ship will start to lose power and then altitude… Descriptions of noises and motions should be used sparingly at first and then more as time goes on until they begin to have some idea about what is going on.

By this time the players hopefully will be ready to break into the ship – obviously only the right wall will lead to the ship and the left outside. they may want to climb the wall, dissuade them if possible with flying monsters or a high probability of falling – if they insist on climbing feel free to get creative and take the adventure out onto the outside of the ship.

As they break through the wall the magical barrier will explode, setting fire to the ship. An access room sits next to the lower point of the wheel. This contains a Gnomish Crystal Ball monitoring the interior of the wheel at which sits a gnomish illusionist. His first words should be something dramatic like “You’ve killed us all, you fools.” They must fight him.

The Gnomish Illusionist
Trained in deceptive magic, cunning and sleight of hand. Some spells he can use are;
Blinded by God (Makes the player “see the light” for D4 rounds)
Sticks to More Sticks (Good for starting bonfires)
Magic Rissole (like a messy magic missile)
Baba Yogi’s Rasta Blaster (pumps out ear bursting hard core reggae)
And all sorts of illusions.

There is a spell book in his bag with all of the above.

The only other door leads to a corridor that runs through the ship to the other wheel. There are 5 doors on either side with signs above them in some gnomish language. The central 2 doors lead to a similar corridor running the length of the ship with the exit at the end of left corridor. At the end of the left corridor is the rudder room, which sits at the back of the ship.

There are alarm bells going off as the ship gives a sharp jolt and the players stomachs hit the roof. All other side doors lead to the passenger compartments. The players hear yells coming from the door leading to the right wheel. The wheel is jammed and the bears are trying to chew through the far wall. The Illusionist from this room is no-where to be seen. His crystal ball lies broken under the table.

A stewardess is speaking as the players enter one of the passenger compartments; “Since we are now plummeting towards the ground from 10000 feet, I would like to take this opportunity to go through some safety precautions. You will find a yellow booklet at the back of the seat in front of you. Please take it out and turn to page 3. We will begin there…” If questioned about the graphic nature of the little yellow book or the calmness of the gnomes, it will be explained that these aircraft always crash.

A copy of the yellow booklet should be distributed to the players at this point…

The Gnomes in the passenger compartments all pull their levers and their seats, attached to bungee ropes plummet out of the aircraft, to detach and drop into the water just before the craft passes over land and crashes in the Bear Woods.

The right paddle wheel holds a troupe of Boris and his Bear Circus Performers and Danger man (read about Danger Man elsewhere on this site).

The players have been hired by the people of Destination town to make the woods more interesting and were paying their passage from . They need to go see the town mayor when everybody “lands”.

Boris Bolshevik and his Barmy Bunch of Blowfish (Leader of the troupe)
Mike the Fortune Telling Bear (very cynical bear indeed)
Fantasia the Bear Stripper (wears a handkerchief around her neck. Will take it off.)
Rudy the Invisible 6 legged Panda (who doesn’t really exist)
Johannesburg the Flaming Black Bear (they set him on fire for the crowd)
Barry the Barrister Bear (Handles all legal matters, dispenses barbiturates)
Larry the Dog (undercover cop investigating the troupe for drug related offenses)

Boris offers the Girdle of the Winter Bear as a reward for rescuing them from the wheel. If the players didn’t rescue the bears they give them the belt to prevent their pants from falling down, or something…

Before parting company, Boris tells the players about a swami who might be able to help them. “Just look for the cloud of smoke, that’ll be him…”

Danger Man will also be joining the party at this point and will remain with them to help out. At some point he will save the party in some magnificent act which will remove him from the adventure in a very stylie way 😀

Part 2 to follow 😀

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 4th, 2008 at 10:10 am by Damien and is filed under Scribblings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.