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Pauly
2022-05-19, 04:19 PM
I thought it might be fun to see how other people would run with different plot hooks. I will try to keep the scenario as neutral as possible so allow as wide a range if settings/systems as possible.

Inspired by traveling on expressways in mountainous regions of Japan and the train to Machu Picchu. Sometimes as your vehicle crosses a bridge you look out the window of your car or train carriage and see a small village in a valley, but from your limited vantage point you can’t see how the village connects to the rest of the world.

Setting requirements. Some form of transport infrastructure through mountainous regions. Examples include expressways, canals and railways.
System requirement. Probably requires a system where flight is non-trivial.

Set up.
Because of [plot reasons] the party is exploring/traveling in a mountainous region. From a high bridge/viaduct/aquaduct they see a small village nestled in the valley below. From a cursory look everything appears normal. The ethnicity is normal the architecture is normal, the farming is normal, there is no outward appearance if anything unusual.

But there are some peculiarities.
1. The village does not appear on any map. People have different names for the village, all of which are a variation of “that village in the valley”.
2. You can find no one who has actually been in the village or knows how to get into it.The people from the North side think the access is from the South, and people from the South think the access is from the North. Other people may suggest that the village is accessed by the river. No local is curious about the village, it’s just always been there.
3. The village is essentially located in a box canyon with no known exit or entry points.
4. The bridge you can see the village from is a single arch bridge that is unusually, but not impossibly long. Bridges of similar length are considered marvels of engineering, but this bridge is not remarked upon anywhere. Research into the bridge will reveal that there are no records of the construction of the bridge. You can find records of the roads leading to the bridge, but no records of who built, paid for or designed the bridge. Physical examination of the bridge will show it fits seamlessly with the local roads/bridge technology and is completely normal apart from the unusual length.
5. Organizations that you may expect to have a presence, such as religious groups, traveling bards the post office do not have a record of who is responsible for the village. The people from Town A, assume it’s Town B’s responsibility and vice versa.
6. Scrying on the village or spying from a distance will show [something odd]. Examples might be the crops being 2 or 3 weeks out of sync with other crops in the area, something unusual about hair color, unusual patterns of activity,

So what’s in the village?

Please include the system, setting and party level (if appropriate). Also whether this fits into the main plot or is a side quest and why the party would want to investigate this otherwise normal seeming nondescript village.
Feel free to add any other details/clues you think may be relevant for your take, eg travelers mysteriously vanishing or more travelers than you’d expect for the region, climate peculiarities such as mists or unusual heat, an increase or decrease in expected monsters/dangerous animals.

I have my own answers, which I will post later, but I want to see what other people will do with the set up.

Misereor
2022-05-20, 03:42 AM
I have my own answers, which I will post later, but I want to see what other people will do with the set up.

First the apparently obvious.
- Who built the engineering masterpiece. Answer: Someone capable of building it (duh!).
- Why would someone place something in plan view if they wanted to hide it. Answer: They wouldn't.
- Why would someone hide the access to something that is in plain sight? Answer: Since someone is bound to notice eventually, either to generate interest or to get them used to the idea of a village being there.

The why of it.
To see who is capable of finding the access?
To divert attention from something else that is not ordinary?
To get them used to the village without actually meeting the inhabitants. Until it is time.

So I'm thinking a San Marino scenario.
The inhabitants are people who would ordinarily be persecuted, but led by a builder of extraordinary ability they found refuge in an inaccessible valley.
Since the bridge is of reasonably contemporary design but doesn't actually appear to be used by the village, the reason it was built was to make sure that people from the local area use it instead of the route where they would discover the actual access to the village. Of course the party does find the access (after a bit of carrot waving), but before the inhabitants are ready, and thus there is a decent chance that they will inadvertently set off a conflict. Possibly religious, possibly dynastical, possibly criminal, possibly local, possibly regional, or possibly with neighbouring powers.
Objective: Deal with it.

(Non-system or power level specific. This should work with most settings.)

Olffandad
2022-05-22, 09:28 AM
How about... the hidden village is filled with mundane tax-dodging moonshiners?

They have a valuable recipe for a rare and valuable booze that is highly specific to their village and would be spoiled if too many people tried to visit them, plus the government and organized crime would muscle in on their business and take away their profits and control.

Long ago, they paid off local government officials and censored records and maps to wipe out the official proof of their existence. They never visit the local villages - if they must leave, villagers travel to a major city with fake identities.

The bridge is the village's "emergency exit" in case of disaster, but it is marked in guides and local lore as dilapidated and unsafe, so only really determined (or stupid) people would try to cross it. It looks bad from a distance, but is actually quite sound - and booby-trapped so unwary intruders might "accidentally" slip off.

The villagers also have a secret tunnel or mountain path, so they can ship their goods and import items from the outside. The outside buyers of the rare liquor have every incentive to keep the village secret, to keep the mystique and price of the liquor sky-high.

Scrying on the village from afar shows that their main crop is some unique flower not known to regular botany (the source of their rare liquor, like black lotus blossoms).

If travelers somehow show up, the villagers attempt to drive them away peacefully - say, by telling the outsiders that the villagers all have some incurable and contagious fatal disease. However, if the outsiders pry too much, the villagers will get nervous, covertly contact their outside contacts and flee any violent encounters. They might even burn the village to cover their tracks - as long as the moonshiners get away with their flowers, they can rebuild in a few years.

Then, as the adventurers attempt to leave with the knowledge of the secret village, the outside buyers will attempt to whack the players.

Plot Seeds

The players find a bottle of unknown liquor in a Big Bad Person's lair and need to identify it as a clue in their investigation.
A patron wants to learn where the liquor comes from but only has a vague geographical clue.
There are rumors of a rare elixir that cures disease or extends life that originates from these mountains

NichG
2022-05-22, 10:21 AM
So what’s in the village?


System aside...

The scenario makes me think of a two-layered thing. On the one hand, the village collects people and things which have been sort of discarded or forgotten intentionally by the other villages in the area. Those who get lost in the area, those who are abandoned to die of exposure, those whose farms don't do well enough to support themselves and who aren't taken in by others - before they die, they see a path and if they choose to follow it, they end up in the village and become part of it. The villagers and their activities and effects are solid, but somewhat ghost-like in the sense that if they are killed, destroyed, or taken away, after some time has passed they are back at the village, things are back the way they were, and memories of the effect tend to fade. Stuff taken out of the village doesn't immediately disappear or disintegrate, but it tends to be misplaced once people aren't paying attention to it. It is possible for someone to leave the village permanently, but doing so requires some kind of permanent bond to the outside (marriage, adoption, taking someone as a disciple, granting someone formal ownership of land or property, etc). People in the village are generally aware of how they got there, can tell the story, remember events that have happened, etc, but the supernatural aspects tend to slide out of their mind - they know they've been farming that plot for a long time, but they won't remember if its 20 years or 200. They remember someone being killed and returning as just a severe injury, etc.

So that's the first layer of what's going on. At that layer, there'd maybe be a few people who might want to leave, someone who exhibits more detailed knowledge about the world hundreds or thousands of years ago that might be interesting to the party as far as other opportunities or leads, etc. There'd be someone who has fallen into the role of a village elder who wants to protect the village's mechanism of operation and moderately opposes people leaving (because unlike the others, they had more of a basis to realize that the village is actually making people unaging and they suspect - wrongly - that people who leave will just turn to dust or something).

All of this is basically a cover created in order to exploit the concept of 'forgotten people' and turn it into a defensive ward that enables things within it to generally be forgotten by the outside world. A subordinate (lich, celestial, etc - something immortal or long-lived, dependent on setting) of a major power that lost a world-spanning war in the past built this place to hide from the victors, along with a weapon or potent artifact supporting that reign that the other side (whose equivalent individuals are still around) would want to recover. It's not obviously good for the former victors to get the artifact or for this guy to walk the world with impunity, but things are currently somewhat stable. The subordinate isn't directly posing as a villager (that'd be a big waste of time to them), but rather has a pocket realm attached to an object in one of the villagers' houses - an ancestral / memorial shrine to someone who is absent from the village. It'd stand out as the only explicit reminiscence of a person who isn't alive and walking around the village. Notably that shrine is not in the 'elder's house, and there would be a more central shrine as a diversion.

The PCs, if they unraveled this, would have a lot of chances to mess with the status quo of the world or release a disruptive force. Telling the victors of the ancient battle the location of the village would bring down a planar war on the area, probably way out of its scale of actually resisting, but would be worth a favor from those forces (likely the artifact would be destroyed or sent off somewhere, so the subordinate would die but the former victors wouldn't get the MacGuffin). Stealing the artifact and giving it to those forces directly would avert the cataclysm but would empower those former victors to change something about the world in accordance with their ideals, for better or worse, but would get the PCs significant and transformative favor. The PCs could use the artifact themselves, which would allow extracting and re-distributing a conceptual event - minor uses would be small area and short-lived stuff and would be fairly free to experiment with, but the kind of major use that the former war centered around would require the equivalent of hundreds or thousands of souls bound into the artifact to implement the effect - possible if the PCs wanted to go that route, but not trivial to implement. The PCs could ally with the former subordinate (though he mostly wants to keep the artifact out of anyone's hands and just retire right now, vengeance or breaking the victors' stranglehold on the world would be attractive offers and he would have a lot of lore about ways to power he could give out in exchange) or could decide to fight/kill him themselves and loot the pocket realm, or even use the village as a base for its antimemetic and antiscrying properties (however, without an understanding of the artifact, the PCs' own memories of their base would disappear a few weeks after leaving...)

OldTrees1
2022-05-22, 12:08 PM
It is very rough but the idea was stuck in my head and I needed to put it somewhere.

From the bridge you can look out across the valley towards the village. If you have exceptionally long range vision and weather permits it you might be able to see the mountains on the far side of the valley. However more likely you can only see part of the valley. You see a steep decent into the valley. There is a forest at the base of the mountains. Further in you see farmland. Then a river. A small market sandwiched between the river and the village walls. Then the village walls. The village is dense with buildings but they get shorter the further into the village you look.

When you ask locals about the village they appear aware the village exists, and hear rumors of an entrance somewhere else, but the locals seem unconcerned and uninterested in the village.

If the party searches for a pass/tunnel/path/bridge they find none.
If the party scales down the steep mountain cliffs they will reach the forest edge.

As they trek through the forest they might come across some miners or woodsmen. They have a few scars but otherwise nothing unusual. They seem unsurprised to see strangers. They warn you the cliffs are unstable and prone to rockslides. They offer you a place to stay. If asked about the city they seem rather unconcerned and uninterested in it. However they will talk about the nearby farmers. In the late morning a couple of the woodsmen cart wagons to the forest's inner edge.

If the party travels through the forest they will discover several tables set up where dirt roads meet forests edge. This appears to be a communal gathering place where the farmers and woodsmen trade and talk. If the party joins in they notice a few details. The farmers have some manufactured goods from the city that they trade, it is not only crops. Additionally the farmers and woodsmen will occasionally remark on the dangerous beasts in the woods. The farmers stressing the danger and how brave the woodsmen are. The woodsmen downplaying it as not that bad. If the party asks about the city the farmers will mention the market right outside the gates, but seem unconcerned and uninterested about anything inside the walls.

If the party continues onwards the farmers will offer places for the party to stay at their farms. Around mid morning some of the farmers travel inwards across the river to the gate market and others travel outwards to the forest edge.

As the party approaches the river they notice there it is a wide river and there is no bridge. The farmers carefully ford their carts across the river. There is a market here is plenty of goods. The party even sees some farmers put in requests for less common items. If the party joins in they hear the merchants and the farmers having some good natured banter about the river. The merchants playing up the danger of the river and the farmers downplaying it.

If the party continues they notice the gates are guarded by golems rather than guards. If they continue through the gates they notice the ground slopes downwards. The buildings further in are not shorter, they are lower.

...

The pattern continues a couple more times unless the party turns around (or makes it to the center). If the party turns around they realize all the warnings were accurate (except the most recent warning). The cliffs are prone to rockfalls and their rope has already been dislodged. The forest is full of seriously dangerous beasts. The river is a raging torrent. The golems block their exit. Etc Etc. On the other hand if the party makes it to the center, then they find a maw that extends down into the earth with a faint red-orange glow (a magma pool). I did not make stats for Curiosity, but that might not stop the party from trying.

Yora
2022-05-23, 03:49 AM
My intuition would be something with ghosts. The village does not actually exist and is some kind of illusion produced by a supernatural entity..

There has to be a way to get down somewhere or the players can't interact with it. Maybe also hidden by an illusion

Pauly
2022-05-28, 03:53 PM
I’m running the setup in a Flashing Blades campaign in an alternate history.

In my history the Roman Empires never fell. Rome was split into West (France, Austria, Italy) East (Balkans, Greece, Anatolia) and South (Iberia to Egypt). The Empires retreated to their defensible borders and modern nation states such as England, Sweden, Poland etc. evolved in the bits they didn’t control.
Each of the 3 empires want to keep the other 2 in a goldilocks condition, not too strong to be a threat, but not so weak as to fall.
The Roman Empires have built a network of canals using extensive aquaducts and tunnels to facilitate teade.

The party is in the Western Roman Empire and is involved in the usual action/intrigue of a Musketeers setting. The 3 main factions are
- Emperor. Tactically brilliant, but not forward thinking. Is interested in how he solves problems now, not what the future implications may be.
- Empress. A Livia/Theodora type. Is interested in the peaceful succession of power to her children and grandchildren. Will do anything to prevent any internal power rivaling or threatening her succession plans. Preferred tools are poison, “accidents” and usurping the potential usurpers.
- The Cardinal. A Richelieu type. Is concerned about external threats to the Empire. Wants strong institutions so the Empire can respond effectively to external threats. Deals with problems by cultivating the enemies of his enemies.
There are minor factions representing foreign powers, local lords, guilds and so on, but the minor factions adhere to one of the main factions. If their loyalty to a main faction is broken they will transfer to a different main faction.

The setup.
The party is sent on a fugitive hunt to the region with the village. Basic investigation will quickly eliminate all other possible places for the fugitive to be.

The village.
Can be entered through one of several hidden passageways.
The village is a spy school for the Southern Roman Empire, from which they send spies throughout the Western Roman Empire. The aquaduct from which the village can be seen from was built by their engineers to avoid unwanted construction teams coming into their valley.
The peculiarities of the village are
- Early crops - explained by a particularly sunny microclimate in the mountain valley
- Every villager having brown hair - explained by the villagers being spies selected for being non-descript.

Depending on which faction the party has chosen to support the village can be hostile or a potential ally.

The peculiarities and mystery of the village are played up because my players a genre savvy and I want them to consider possible supernatural explanations. In the setting belief in the supernatural is real, and the rules allow the possibility of the supernatural.