What would happen to a village plagued by Primal Fear?

[tortor]

Imagine a handful of psionic creatures which feast on fear and have subdued an entire village with multiple casts of Primal Fear a day and then feasting on and amplifying that fear.

What would the people be like when the Players arrived, how would they act?

[Ortesk]

Imagine a handful of psionic creatures which feast on fear and have subdued an entire village with multiple casts of Primal Fear a day and then feasting on and amplifying that fear.

What would the people be like when the Players arrived, how would they act?

They are constantly being psionically being made afraid, over and over. Question, why are they still living there? have they any clue the cause of the fear? Is nobody there higher than level 1?

Without knowing, they may beg the players to help them end the fear. Or may be torches and mobs if they are becoming paranoid, xenophobes as a side effect of the fear

[tortor]

Exactly, I'm trying to figure out what the correct village reaction is to constant bombardments of fear. I'm thinking withdrawing and becoming more xenophobic etc.

[Ortesk]

Maybe add to it to make it more...thought out?

They should have left, but they didn't. People in that time frame are usually very superstitious. Maybe in the woods is a pack of lycans working for the psions? When people run, they get ate. Then pieces show up in the village streets.

Maybe the psions are actually causing the fear, but are swearing that they are helping. The village has something they want, and the villagers are giving it to them to protect them. Occassionally they mass feed off the village when people get too...relaxed. Usually they just feed from a few, who beg them to remove the demon. They do some fake ritual (wear this blessed necklace, but it only lasts for 1 week. I will need more of X if you want me to reimbue it) and then they don't feed off that person. Basically a well thought out extortion.

If you do that, village style woods where they kill them if they leave, and the bad guys are actually loved as heroes...then the village will be xenophobic. Maybe the players are enemies, they work for the monsters? They behave like hackdirt from oblivion. Dealing with innocent NPC's, who are too scared to talk about what is going on, then having to find out about the psions and what they are doing, and the beasts in the woods, should make for an amazing scenario where it makes sense.

Hope that rambling helped

[ATHATH]

Gruesome Lurkers (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psb/20070711a&page=2) would be the perfect monsters for this, by the way.

[Telonius]

The people are having their worst fears played on, but not running. Perhaps that means that their town is the one place that they feel safest? If they're in a relatively isolated community, that would probably make sense. Perhaps a particular enemy (orcs, goblins, whatever) is the fear that's being played up. So they start jumping at shadows.

They also haven't asked for help. Maybe somebody mentioned asking their feudal lord for help. But then they got paranoid about that: surely he knows about the threat, but he hasn't sent any aid. Has he abandoned them? Or maybe he does know, but is going to require a levy of soldiers from the village, taking the village's children away and leaving them defenseless. So they withdraw even further, and set watch on the roads, worried that anyone approaching is working for the king to steal people away.

[tortor]

Gruesome Lurkers (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psb/20070711a&page=2) would be the perfect monsters for this, by the way.

That's precisely what I'm using <3