A Haunted Gallery

[AlanBruce]

Greetings! My party will, eventually, reach a big city in one of the biggest arcs of the campaign.

I have designed a bunch of guilds, using Cityscape as a chassis, but I would like to introduce some low level sidequests that may be done by the Pcs alone or in groups of two as each takes their time to retrain, discuss city politics, etc.

One such idea is an art gallery. The basic premise is that the gallery's owner is losing business because he's prized artists has become entranced by some minor demon that resides deep within the gallery and has consumed the artist to paint and paint and paint. However, each painting has a small semblance of the demon residing in the gallery and are prone to attack those coming to see the art, causing the owner to close the gallery and risk losing business.

So cue in the PCs, who decide to brave the gallery (which could be a small dungeon) and fend off against the paintings.

Now, how to run them? Would the paintings be of MM creatures that spring to life from the canvas and attack those in the gallery? What about the artist himself? I was thinking of having him in the deepest part of the gallery- a cellar, and working on the biggest painting- the demon.

How would you run this sidequest? Any templates that could fit?

Any ideas are more than welcome and bonus points if you can catch the reference.

[Gildedragon]

There is the Relief Golem from DR 334, the Glass Golem (one of the MMs) and the Trap Haunt are all 2Dish creatures, paintings that are traps of Pattern, Glyph, or Symbol spells also work.
if you add sculpture to the mix there is no limit to what you can do as constructs of some sort or effigy creatures.

Animated object canvases, and Ragamoffins are also viable threats.

Take oozes and refluff them to be living paint.

You could also give the monsters some DR/acid to make them vulnerable to something like turpentine (not an acid I know) or have turpentine eliminate the DR for some time.

[AlanBruce]

Thank you! The Relief Golem looks very interesting. Had not considered oozes as living piles of oil paint. The gallery could have sculptures- cue in animated objects.

The stained glass golem from MM2 is a great idea as well.

Will think of some demon boss for this gallery/ Thank you very much again, great ideas.

[Gildedragon]

In a dragon mag there are fairly good rules for hauntings (also in HoH or LM iirc) rather than a physical demon you could have that, or use eberron's possession rules.
If not a pseudonatural radiant idol (Sharn cot) acting as a muse/god of art and madness?