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Balor01
2013-03-22, 06:55 AM
Hey playground,

I have made a (rather interesting, I think) setting where there is a number of Village-states. A small and enclosed valley, filled with several dozen villages which are in constant conflict, but realistically unable to conquer each other. There is a lot of assassinations, poisoning and all sort of events of the type.

Now, my PCs are starting this as members of one of the village. They may go on their own soon, or involve themselves in villages' plans of glory and domination, I do not know, but the problem is, I do not know what sort of quests to give them in this setting.

Raiding a tomb means stepping in the territory of another village, leaving the village means losing all the support they get from being "members of a clan".

So, I would like to ask: What sort of tasks or interesting quests could I set up for "young ones" in the village? Extra points for bizzare/cruel stuff. I'd like these villagers to look a bit freaky. Like inbred Swiss/Dwarves or something.

All I have so far: Take this girl and expose her to elements (let her die of exposure while she is bound to a tree) because she broke the village code. (Fled from her husband).

Driderman
2013-03-22, 07:44 AM
Well, depending on how degenerated and/or dangerous you want it...

- Capture and bring back a young woman for her forced marriage to her rapist (because you obviously have to marry the first person you have sex with).

- Kill or capture someone from an enemy village and bring them back your village so they can be made into food.

- Raid neighbouring villages for wives.

- Poison, or otherwise contaminate, fields/wells/game of neighbouring villages

- Do a hall burning (set fire to a family home with everyone inside and the door barred, traditional viking method of settling a blood-feud permanently).

- Fight other young ones of your village to prove who is the strongest ( up the stakes by making it Battle Royale style, leaving them on an island/dropping them into a cave/whatever and only x number of survivors get to leave).

Negativethac0
2013-03-22, 09:22 AM
Talking from the top of my head here, without knowing the setting in detail:

- Being asked to find an item wanted by all groups, making the players decide who to support
- A nighttime raid to go to another town and slaughter their livestock
- Same, but make it look like an accident
-Same, but instead go crazy on the wives and children, and make it look like an accident.
- Sabotage in another village, such as destroying a dam and flood valuable crops.
- Drop poison or some alchemical substanse into their water supply
- Spread a vile disease by infecting their food
- Frame a highly respected citizen with false evidense (adultery, necrophilia, murder, etc.) Perhaps make a setup for someone of influence, so they can blackmail said person later.
- Sabotage one village's festival by doing one or more of the above
- Steal something that is desired by two powerful groups and make them blame each other.
- Raid other villages or small travelling groups, sacrifice them to 'the thing in the forest' hoping to gain its favor.
- Go undercover in one of the other villages, disguised. Overcome the challenges and odd customs they have; messed up foodstuff, wide acceptance of domestic violence,

If you're going for the more horrific twist and messed up situations, I suggest taking a look at the 'Heroes of Horror' book. There are some pretty sick ideas in there : )

I know not all of the ideas might fit into your vision, but hope they can be of use. Sounds like an awesome campaign.

Balor01
2013-03-22, 09:32 AM
Excellent. All of these will be very useful.

Doorhandle
2013-03-23, 06:25 PM
*A member of your clan is going to attempt all-out-war on every oither clan. Kill him before we get curb-stomped.

Craft (Cheese)
2013-03-23, 08:32 PM
Extra points for bizzare/cruel stuff. I'd like these villagers to look a bit freaky. Like inbred Swiss/Dwarves or something.

What kind of "bizzare and cruel" are we talking about here?

- Bob has a crush on Alice, but he knows she'll never accept him. So he wants you, Player, to help him by stealing some of her personal belongings so he can add them to his shrine to her.

- Alice, however, has another problem: Her lover is her father's prized stallion, Lucky, and her father wants to use him to stud, but Alice doesn't want Lucky to "cheat" on her by mating with any of the mares.

headwarpage
2013-03-23, 08:42 PM
The charismatic, skilled, and generally awesome young leader of a neighboring village has the potential to break the stalemate and conquer the entire valley. Undermine his power base (preferably by implicating him in some sort of debauchery involving sheep) before he can pull this off.

Vknight
2013-03-25, 03:00 PM
Better yet hook him up with Alice

Lenny the Penny, is setting fires to peoples animals on every side, kill him before he causes enough damages to have people march on his location near your village. Or put him to work for another village across the valley

Spamotron
2013-03-25, 03:23 PM
A clansman who left the valley years ago has returned claiming that an army of outsiders is planning an invasion and that the only way the villages can possibly survive is by banding together.

The Village Elders have asked you to remove the "obviously delusional madman," as quietly as possibly before he causes a panic.

Pokonic
2013-03-25, 05:56 PM
* The local hills has a bloated ogre beast living there. Capture it.

However, it's actualy the deformed, pregenant daugher of the local chief, who wants to raise her presumably gigantic offspring as a champien fighter. Treat the daughter as a typical MM Ogre, but the child itself might be even more twisted.

A local women has given birth to a goat. The husband, however, is more concerned that the baby looks like the pride of another village's herd. He want's you to quietly kill off most of the goats there before he brings his supposed child to the public, to curb fear of accusations of infildelity.

A band of, shiver, outsiders have started to travel through the vally. Unfortunatly for them, they were buying there safe passage with gold belonging to some far-off king, and they have run out of stuff to pass out. However, there armor looks shiny and they might have nice stuff on them. Also, the local elder needs a wife-bribe to pay off. Capture them or kill them dead.

A nasty village, even for the settings standerds, is known for there rituals in the forest involving grindstones, thorny bushes, and young maidens. Your goal is to slay one of the high priests while he is lost in your clans domain while learning the location of where they dump the maidens to die so the village can keep up it's population growth. It's not like there going anywere, with no legs or arms.

DeltaEmil
2013-03-25, 06:09 PM
Orc raiders/scouts for the big army of outsiders mentioned by the obviously delusional madman have been sighted by members of the player character's village. Lure them in a trap, so that they can be captured, and be used with the village's wenches to produce strong half-orc children, who give the village an edge over the others.

Or the same above idea, but with ogres, to make good half-ogre children.

Make a deal with the orc horde to spare your village, by sacrificing a bunch of your children and women as well as all the other enemy villages.

Go raid that spooky abandoned mage's tower that has stood there since long before the first villages were founded. There might be a ritual to summon some kind of demonic monster to destroy the others. Alternatively, use the demon to make strong half-demon children. Of course, the demon isn't some sexy succubus, but something disgusting and horrible, like a big squid demon, a giant stinking frog, or a huge mangy dog walking on two legs with crab pincers and a smaller set of arms.

A rich merchant and his entourage / a high priest and his progression / a group of strangers (who are in truth adventurers) seek shelter for a night in the village. Find a way to kill them and get their loot without too many casualties on the side of the village.

Inquisitors are roaming the valley searching for heathens. The village just happens to worship spirits / demons / deities that are considered heathen. Hide the sacrificial altar / the blasphemous idols / the blood-pit where virgins are sacrificed before the inquisitors arrive. Plant evidence in an enemy village that they are heathens.

tbok1992
2013-03-25, 07:38 PM
Well, here's the most horrible thing a town could do that I could think up. Spoilered to protect sensitive stomachs:

If a woman gets pregnant of wedlock, she is forced, in the village square in view of all the townspeople no-less, to abort it using a hideous rusty device known as "The Hook of Judgement". She is then forced to scoop out the fetus and eat it raw in front of the screaming crowd.

Like I said, horrible. Perhaps too horrible for the campaign. I'm just putting it out there.

DeltaEmil
2013-03-25, 09:22 PM
Well, here's the most horrible thing a town could do that I could think up. Spoilered to protect sensitive stomachs:

If a woman gets pregnant of wedlock, she is forced, in the village square in view of all the townspeople no-less, to abort it using a hideous rusty device known as "The Hook of Judgement". She is then forced to scoop out the fetus and eat it raw in front of the screaming crowd.

Like I said, horrible. Perhaps too horrible for the campaign. I'm just putting it out there.You should make a task or interesting quest out of it. Like for example a mysterious witch is paying lots of money for the scooped out fetus because of its properties that are very useful for her magic potions / rituals. The player character's job is to make such unmarried women pregnant and then steal the fetus before it's being eaten.
Alternatively, lots of women in the player character's village get pregnant outside of marriage, and before they are brought to the village square where they scrap out their unborn babies from their urethra, they suddenly all vanish or have been sprung out of jail. It's the player character's duty to find the missing women and to bring them back to the village to face justice. And perhaps to punish them for having fled in the first place. If they say that they were abducted against their will or don't know how they were spirited away, they obviously lie and are dishonorable, else they wouldn't be pregnant before their wedlock in the first place.

JustSomeGuy
2013-03-26, 06:10 AM
Perhaps the valley/village is sitting on an emerging trade route or has a rare resource, and the 'civilised world' is starting to encroach somewhat. There are several factions, each with different oppinions on the recent developments, such as:

"They'll never accept us and will try to exploit us at every turn!"

"We should exploit them through levvies and taxation..."

"Maybe it will be a good thing, these people from lon don could bring new wonderous things with them, and maybe one day we could even visit"

"Nonsense, these outsiders are trouble! We don't need them, spoiling our customs! Local ways for local people! They don't belong here and we should make an example of any who come"

There could be various 'secret' splinter groups, involved in things like secretly smuggling things out/through the village, or making political/economic deals to try to gain a position of power/prestige with the new outsiders, and others who plot murder and sabotage while maintaining a facade (such as the friendly local shopkeepers' guild, who meet in a secret all-powerful secret society kept secret from even the rest of their village).

Lea Plath
2013-03-26, 07:29 AM
You guys scare me greatly o.o

Have you ever seen the League of Gentlemen? Lots of potential for ideas there.

tbok1992
2013-03-26, 10:12 PM
You should make a task or interesting quest out of it. Like for example a mysterious witch is paying lots of money for the scooped out fetus because of its properties that are very useful for her magic potions / rituals. The player character's job is to make such unmarried women pregnant and then steal the fetus before it's being eaten.
Alternatively, lots of women in the player character's village get pregnant outside of marriage, and before they are brought to the village square where they scrap out their unborn babies from their urethra, they suddenly all vanish or have been sprung out of jail. It's the player character's duty to find the missing women and to bring them back to the village to face justice. And perhaps to punish them for having fled in the first place. If they say that they were abducted against their will or don't know how they were spirited away, they obviously lie and are dishonorable, else they wouldn't be pregnant before their wedlock in the first place.

... Now treating it with that level of casualness, thaaaaaat's kind of going into FATAL territory. I'd think of the whole thing as one shocking scene that quickly "tells" the players "We need to leave, and we need to leave now."

JustSomeGuy
2013-03-27, 03:01 AM
... Now treating it with that level of casualness, thaaaaaat's kind of going into FATAL territory. I'd think of the whole thing as one shocking scene that quickly "tells" the players "We need to leave, and we need to leave now."

More likely to be interpreted as "We need to slaughter everything in a 5-mile radius, and we need to slaughter now.".

Jacob.Tyr
2013-03-27, 12:17 PM
More likely to be interpreted as "We need to slaughter everything in a 5-mile radius, and we need to slaughter now.".

Yeah... you introduce me to this plot hook and my immediate reaction is going to be "Oh god, we need to kill everyone..."

DeltaEmil
2013-03-27, 01:03 PM
... Now treating it with that level of casualness, thaaaaaat's kind of going into FATAL territory. I'd think of the whole thing as one shocking scene that quickly "tells" the players "We need to leave, and we need to leave now."In FATAL, there would be jokes about how big the fetus is and the mouth diameter of the woman who has to eat it, and random tables for how horny you get after watching the women being forced into cannibalism, and for how likely it would be that you would rape them or so, distracting you from the fact that you're playing a bunch of degenerated villagers who do horrible things like those from Innsmouth. Or like those cultists in the Silent Hill 1 movie.

Bouregard
2013-03-27, 01:45 PM
Honestly, I think you're ll trying to hard...keep it hidden at first. Nothing is more scary then seeing the nice little countryside turn into a hellhole.

A starved looking old man asks the party to help with the soon arrving taxman. Namely to kill him, as he assures the party that the village can't pay the taxes and they will all get hanged for that. They have to bring the body back to prove they done the deed.
If they return the old man will lead them to the well-fed pigs in the backyard, take the corpse of them and mumble something about "Lord thats the sixt this year... they have to run out of officials or I have to get more pigs"

Family C has a dog. A big one. Think of 300 pound abomination that makes a dire beast look like a chihuahua. Utterly frendly to the whole family but extremly bloodthirsty and agressive to anyone who doesn't smells like family C. Family C will call for a manhunt if someone dares to hurt "puppy".

PCs get attacked by generic bandits. A villager observes them and ask to buy the striped corpses. Later that evening he'll send his ugly daughter over with a big bowl of roadkill gumbo. Refusing the gift would be a horrible insult.

For the ambience:

Noone in the village will take coins. They trade with favours and goods. This will mean the local store has nearly nothing thats coming from further away.

They hate magic. Really hate. If something is not easily explained to a 10th century mud farmer, then it's witchcraft and the offender is burned alive.

They hate foreigners. No not racist, more like not-from-our-village-ist. They tolerate them while useful but backstabbing and distrust is to be expected.

If something important happened in the world, then they will only know about it if it was either at least 100 years before or within a days walking distance to the hut their born in.

hamishspence
2013-03-27, 01:50 PM
PCs get attacked by generic bandits. A villager observes them and ask to buy the striped corpses.
Are the bandits weretigers? :smallamused:

Vknight
2013-03-27, 02:12 PM
Are the bandits weretigers? :smallamused:

Were-Tigears
= Were-Tiger + Were-Bear

Another horrible thing for them to do

A child was caught stealing so his he must cut off his own hand. Though a perfectly reasonable punishment doing it to yourself is just that tad more callous. Then add of every day he goes un-caught they will take a toe or finger, from his family members.
The digit is taken at the end of the first day after its confirmed he's gone missing. And its fed to the local priest. He then judges if the family must sacrifice more or not.

Its that just ability to be cruel without resorting to out and out murder