dailyadventureprompts: Bounty: The Mists of Deadwolf ValleyWaste makes HasteAdventure Hooks: A

dailyadventureprompts:

Bounty: The Mists of Deadwolf Valley

Waste makes Haste

Adventure Hooks: 

• A curse has descended upon Deadwolf valley, a cloying mist that eats away at the sturdiness of tools and structures, causing them to break and fray at an accelerated rate. An ax earns a day’s dullness after only an hour of work, while a frequently used door may fall from its hinges after developing a rapid onset of rust. Even the roads face a similar state, becoming further churned with rocks and tangling roots with each journey. The Source of this curse is a mysterious rider robed in green, who the Lady of Deadwolf, Carlatta Zhay, has placed a fearsome bounty on. drawing in hunters form all across the realm. 
• Realizing what a boon disposable essentials might be, a shady halfing merchant has piled his wagons high with poor quality tools, plates, and all manner of brickabrack to sell to the people of the valley as their own supplies wear away to nothing. For a reasonable(ly inflated) price, Skipp Brookjumper will gladly sell the party any replacement gear they may need, even sending one of his surefooted assistants to go fetch it fresh from outside the mist for an added fee. 
• With the oppressive mist and mounting decay, no one trusts the bridges, which has isolated a fraction of the village’s population on the other side of the valley. With strange noises in the woods and disaster mounting, an elected runner asks the party to detour form their mission to aid in evacuating the outlaying dwellings and escorting the inhabitants several miles down the valley to where they can ford across. 
• Ancient ruins dot the valley, calling for the party to explore them and seek the mysteries and treasures hidden within. Each of these distractions however will take a heavy toll on the party’s equipment, denting armor, fraying rope, chipping blades with each use. 

Setup: Not all is as it appears in Deadwolf Valley, as the figure in green is not the source of the mist, nor as some (including Lady Zhay) believe, some kind of fey bogeman come to extort some terrible price. They are instead Illthander, one of the last of a defunct circle of elven mystics who treated with the inhabitants of the valley long before the kingdom’s founding.   Likewise, though the druid travels in the company of an equine companion They are not exactly a “rider” as this creature is infact a Unicorn by the name of Ovid, who despite exhibiting every quality one would want in a horse, is a bit of an ass when it comes to letting people fit him with a bridle. 

Illthander has come to Deadwolf Valley seeking a particular lost ruin and the dangerous artifact held within. Called “Olinshesh-Ath-il,” by Their ancient kin or “The Vualt of Mist” in the common tongue, this vault was designed by Illthander’s predecessors and built by the people of the valley to contain a weapon known only as “ The Final Blade”, a relic from a forgotten of era of war that wreaked much destruction in its time.   The cursed mist was a defense built into the vault, intended to both slow the progress of any who sought to excavate their way in, as well as hopefully atrophy the Blade into nothing over its long centuries of imprisonment. 

The appearance of the mist in the valley was never intended, but is in Illthander’s estimation a sign that someone has not only breached the vault, but has devised a way to bypass its defenses by syphoning the mist elsewhere. Most of what Illthander believes is similar guesswork, as despite Their sagacious bearing they are working off information handed down from the time of their mentor’s mentor, and quite a lot of information has been lost amidst all that ponderous elven prose.