Where do I go with this?

[faceroll]

A bunch of mysterious animals have been sold in a town of 7,700. They're miniature versions of elephants, rhinos, lions, bears, etc. None of the NPCs have found anything unusual about them, other than their tiny stature. Dispel magic, detect magic, cutting them open, nothing has yielded anything beyond what can be seen by the naked eye.

What are these? Are they a threat? Where did they come from? Assuming the town has access to a 9th level caster, what's the highest level caster necessary to prevent dispel, etc., from working if they are magical? If they aren't magical (as in had spells put on them), what else could they be?


I'm the DM, but looking for input.

[Keld Denar]

Its a ploy by a group of anti-establishmentarianist druids. The trick is to introduce a large number of specially bred miniature animals. Everyone loves them because they are so adorable and the demand for them is really high. Then, when there are enough of such animals in the town, a druid sneaks in under the cover of Wild Shape and cast Animal Growth on all of them to make a 4" Fluffy turn into a 4' Fluffy...who eats your face off.

The animals are bred that way (multiple applications of the Dungeonbred template?), so the effect is not magical. Well, not until you apply Animal Growth! RAWR!

[TroubleBrewing]

A Wizard with a Bag of Tricks has created a skeleton whose sole purpose is to reach into the bag a number of times per day and pull out an animal, which the Wizard then Petrifies, Shrink-Items, and then Stone-to-Fleshes back into an ADORABLE version of its former self. He then sells them to recoup some of the loss of material components.

The Wizard is insane, and has no concept of value.

[grarrrg]

Someone made a portal to the "Sub-Plane of 'Everything is exactly the same as the Prime Material Plane, except that it's only 1/10 the size'"
[note: need catchier name]

A Wizard did it.
He made the portal, and is poaching animals and selling them.

That, or someone else is using the portal.

Or the portal is just 'open' and the animals are wandering through on their own.

[Fax Celestis]

Rick Moranis is the town mayor, and the town is the scene of his next movie: "Honey, I Shrunk the Dragon!"

[Keegan__D]

Wouldn't altering them alchemically prevent their changes from being magical? A good concoction that lasts a long time and isn't physically detectable would work.

[Piggy Knowles]

Someone is trying to make magical animal cross-breeds (think owlbear). They are left with a lot of failures, many of which are simply culled and destroyed, but some of which are sell-able as miniatures.

[McClintock]

A group of wizards are trying to create a game in which to pretend to be normal people surviving in the world. Somewhere near by there is a huge "game board" with jungles, farms, cities and such all at a tremendously small scale. As nosy people start poking around as to the origination of the tiny animals, they get perma shrinky-dinked down to be placed into the game to see if they survive.

SO the extras that are being sold are just the bait to lure would be adventurers into the trap.

[nedz]

Sounds like a port of the 2E minimals; which were: smaller versions of various animals. Hopefully I'm wrong though and the concept is more interersting than this.

[hex0]

They would make cute familiars. Mini-elephant gives you a +3 to autohypnosis so you never forget.

[Safety Sword]

Its a ploy by a group of anti-establishmentarianist druids. The trick is to introduce a large number of specially bred miniature animals. Everyone loves them because they are so adorable and the demand for them is really high. Then, when there are enough of such animals in the town, a druid sneaks in under the cover of Wild Shape and cast Animal Growth on all of them to make a 4" Fluffy turn into a 4' Fluffy...who eats your face off.

The animals are bred that way (multiple applications of the Dungeonbred template?), so the effect is not magical. Well, not until you apply Animal Growth! RAWR!

What if they ARE druids. Evils ones, infiltrating the town to... do whatever evil druids want to do (see: Mind your own damned business you damnable PCs).