Exploring an Untouched Forest

[Crow]

So I recently TPK'd my group (or nearly so).

They now have a new set of characters. They have started in a coastal city in a rugged and mostly untouched portion of the world. Each year, there is a great boar hunt, the winners of which are showered with gifts and adulation. The intrepid group (at level 1) managed to trap and bring down a dire boar, which won the hunt. While enjoying the feast, a skald inquired as to what the heroes of the boar hunt would do next. Raising a horn, one of the characters declared that their group would trek into the untouched forest and into the mountains beyond, in search of some fabled ruins on the opposite side of the mountain range. This was met with applause and astonishment, and was declared a worthy expedition. The heroes were outfitted with horses and supplies, and given gifts (all mundane) to assist them in their endeavour.

The group consists of;

Human Wizard, Focused Specialist (Conjuration)
Human Warrior (Unearthed Arcana Generic Class, actually pretty cool)
Human Druid (chose to pass on having an animal companion until later levels)
Gnome Spellthief (also pretty cool)
Wood Elf Psychic Warrior

What I need, is help with ideas regarding cool things for them to find as they trek through this deep forest and mountains. I would like this journey to take a few sessions, so ideas for cool "side quests" would be fun. The forest is mostly untouched and primordial, so all sorts of mysterious crap could be in there. It is known for sure that it is home to massive spiders. There will be no ruins or leftover settlements in this forest (they really are untouched, to add to the sense of discovery).

What sort of cool natural features or occurances can the players run into that will make for good adventures? What kind of things can they find that could later translate to wealth for the players? What kind of quests can I run that don't require the meddling of humanoids (other than the party) to set in motion?

Any help would be much appreciated. The players seem pretty excited about exploring the unknown and forging a greater name for themselves. Thanks in advance!

[Pharaoh's Fist]

What I need, is help with ideas regarding cool things for them to find as they trek through this deep forest and mountains.

The Elf King's halls.

[Temet Nosce]

Hmm, it might be a good area to have magical locations as treasure (can't recall which book those are from though...)

Also, it would be amusing to toss some dinosaurs at them.

[TheThan]

Well if it is an untouched forest (I take it you mean by human(oid) hands). Then you have all sorts of options. Off the top of my head here’s what I have:

• Awakened wolves
• Mischievous fey
• Satires having a party
• Spiders
• A dryad with a crush on one of the party members
• Treants
• A treant with a crush on one of the party members
• A war between a druid and a blighter
• Dangerous plants (assassin vines, fungus, tendriculos, shambling mound, man eating fly traps etc)
• A forest fire

[chiasaur11]

Also, it would be amusing to toss some dinosaurs at them.

Dinosaurs are a must.

Actually, this might be great for a pulp adventure bit, if the party's good for it. Dinosaurs, prehuman (and elvish, and gnomic) civilizations, lost temples to spider gods, daring adventure, lightning wit, and cliffhanger endings.

Or just dinosaurs. Either works.

[Johel]

....

• A treant with a crush on one of the party members

Can be both comic relief or horror fuel, depending of the treant's gender and... private stuff. I mean, do they reproduce like normal trees or are physical contacts... you know. Ouch...

Our DM did something about a cursed forest, which was halfway into the Plan of Shadow. It had this place, a former meeting ground for the Fair Folk, now corrupted. A wooden throne had been carved into the remnants of a tree.
Whoever sat on it was exceptionnally aware of his surrounding but slowly lost touch with the material plan. The sudden powertrip made it hard for the victim to actually stand up from the throne, as he was convinced that he was now the forest's master.

[lsfreak]

Depending on cosmology, the ruins of creation. An old obelisk that's one of the binding stones that holds the world together or anchors the (insert overlaying plane here) to the world. The burial ground for the angels or demons whose energies they sacrificed. The site of a tainted battlefield from before the trees existed, and those that have grown since are "wrong" or just plain can't grow (a mile-wide saltflats or black-basalt desert in the middle of a lush forest). It's not a plot hook, really, because there's nothing the PC's can do with it... at least not yet. If they come back in 15 levels, then there'll be something.

[Drakyn]

You could try going untouched....I mean, REALLY untouched. As in, "players are the only things with an Int score above 2 for a thousand miles." Not even a treant to talk to, much less a nymph, and if you've got some ancient ruins they're as ancient as ancientest McAncientstein. Nothing but some beautiful, beautiful scenery, a lot of weird places to explore ("Why does this enormous, water-filled rift in the forest floor apparently have a giant snake in its bottom?" "Dunno, makes as much sense as that thousand-foot, hollow rock spire we found last week that was sitting in the middle of a forty-foot clearing absolutely bare of any sort of plant life. Boy, finding out it was full of dire bats was a laugh and a half."), and every single magical beast, beast, and animal with templates you can find.

[Kol Korran]

first of all, i like the character's ambitions! way to go!
as to getting up ideas, i'll have to think of things, but here are a few ideas:

• why is the forest un touched? it must have keepers. check under my sig for the stone giants. make them forest giants, and the Watchers as trees/minor treants. now find a reason for the giants to actually interact wit hthe players- maybe they need a smaller race to help them with something? might be cool to interact with the ancient race.
• a hag... i don't know what exactly, i'll need to think about it- but a hag would be a good challange for a party of that level, and it befits an untouched forest. the hag could pose as a native of the place of another race, requiring the party's help or facing them, your choice.
• the magical locations idea is a good idea. it's in DMG2. how about the pool of life? which may work like reincarnate just without the loss of level? maybe they could also take some water of it, but they can never find it again? the party could be asked to move someone to the pool to revive them (like a stone giant?) or bring water from the pool to a dead person/ creature...
• you mentioned spiders- how about down sized Driders? not as drow who failed lolth, but as a newly fluffed race or even template? maybe some spider worshipers turn their most blessed ones into half spiders? work on that as a concept. those who failed might be turned to another "primal blessed one"- an ettercap.
• Bargehst. again from my link, waorking with tribes of primordial goblins. make a situation in which they have to deal with it (as detailed on my sig), maybe in conjuction with the other ideas? maybe the barghest opposes the hag, who tries to find out the secrets of the spider people? and they all need water from the reincarnate pool the giants guard?

that's all i got for now, i'll try to think of something else if i can. i reckon you can get your party to lvl2-3 with these, if played right, in conjuction with other ideas the rest will post.

Kol.

[Lysander]

As for treasure, how about an overgrown meteor crater in the middle of the forest? It can contain a vast fortune in cold iron fragments but contain various dangerous aberrations that landed with the stone eons ago.

[Shademan]

one word: DRYADS!

check out the "critters" thread in the homebrew section.

[Admiral Squish]

Nothing with an int over two for miles... Constructs.

An ancient race created massive armies of constructs which were programmed to bring about the end of the world so said ancient race could rule. Problem is, ancient race died out, and now the constructs are running full-steam to destroy the world for masters that are no longer alive.

[Drakyn]

Nothing with an int over two for miles... Constructs.

An ancient race created massive armies of constructs which were programmed to bring about the end of the world so said ancient race could rule. Problem is, ancient race died out, and now the constructs are running full-steam to destroy the world for masters that are no longer alive.

That doesn't sound very untouched. A forest that had an army of rampaging robots run through it would probably be not much of a forest. An army of manufactured beings + ruins of ancient civilization seems to be overkill for a primeval forest.

As for treasure, how about an overgrown meteor crater in the middle of the forest? It can contain a vast fortune in cold iron fragments but contain various dangerous aberrations that landed with the stone eons ago.

This sounds awesome. If you want really untouched, make all the treasure stuff like this - not necessarily raw materials only, but just things that don't feel manufactured. An enchanted axe.........made out of a magically sharp flint fragment you find that you just slap a handle on. A staff....made from a strange tree that grew with its leaves in the dirt and its roots in the air. Armour...made from the hide of an enormous dinosaur.
Also, dinosaurs + forest ftw.

[Jarawara]

That doesn't sound very untouched. A forest that had an army of rampaging robots run through it would probably be not much of a forest. An army of manufactured beings + ruins of ancient civilization seems to be overkill for a primeval forest.

No, it's perfect! An army of robots... but they're not rampaging... yet.

Party does something to activate them, accidentally (maybe by entering the cave complex in which they are stored, or maybe they have to actively unlock the great iron seal and channel energy into the control panel, etc).

Then the robots go on the rampage, fault lies with the party.

Best thing is, you've got a great roleplaying option there - if the party is nature loving, they will feel it is their responsibility to stop the robots and save the forest. If they are practical (or just uncaring), they'll just get out of the way and watch as the robots bulldoze the place to the ground. Then comes the long-term rammifications.

When do the robots reach civilization? When do the Druids get wind of this? When does the party have to finally own up to what they've done, and have to find a way to undo it?

And if that fails, future games can have new parties of adventurers go out into the "wasted forest", which once was a lush, green, untouched paradise, but now is a devastated landscape of bulldozed tracks and stripmined wastelands. Who knows what horrors lay in the "Paths of Ruin".

[Admiral Squish]

Okay, refinisn the construct idea:

Long ago, the world was ruled by mighty giant civilizations. powerful magical artifacts still float around from the giant empire. But long, long ago, a massive cataclysm brought about an end to the giant's golden age. Now, giants are little more than animals, barely managing to hold together a tribal lifestyle. Giant ruins have collapsed and been grown over for milennia.

The PCs discover a massive pair of stone doors set into a mountainside, each door some fifty feet tall. A ten-foot-tall lever opens them. When they find their way inside, they can hear the chamber they're in is massive beyond any of their dreams. They push forward and find a skeletal giant, covered in cobwebs, sitting against a massive pedestal. they can see something up top, and the giant skeleton is wearing a huge crown. At the top of the pedestal is a massive crystal jammed into a socket on a raised platform. If the PCs touch the crystal, they feel as though struck by lightning, and the platform the socket is set into sinks.

Magical lights suddenly illuminate the chamber. It's several hundred feet long, and probably a hundred feet by a hundred feet tall and wide. The walls nearest them are lined with human-sized tunnels, all the way to the roof. Near the back, the tunnels are larger, and the back wall is a single huge tunnel. The room is filled with the deafening sound of metal on stone. Suddenly, out from the tunnels come marching warforged. None speak a word, by the massive chamber is filled. In the back, you can see warforged chargers, warforged titans... And something tells them they don't want to see what need a tunnel a hundred feet by a hundred feet.

The warfoged immediately target the intruders with a hail of crossbow bolts (Armbows). If the PCs don't get the picture after taking a lot of damage (Don't even think about how many rolls are needed, just make sure they take something like a half - three quarters damage) The melee warriors charge. PCs flee, or it's a complete TPK.

From then on, humanity and the PCs have to fight back a horde of warriors that don't seem to end or tire. Have them riding large-sized spiders or giant wasps, make warforged scouts with ninja levels, chargwers with barbarian levels. They clear-cut the forest, turning the lumber into siege weapons. Warforged spread outward from there, demolishing all in their path. Lay wast to cities, kill the inhabitants, turn the houses into more sege weapons and fortifty the village into a fortress, then move on. And not one of them talks.

By now, giantoids should discover that these automatons not only don't kill them, but obey their every word without question. This is a significant limiting factor, as giants are stupid. The warforged have more tactical sense than the giants, which often leads to warforged-only bands being more efficient than giant-led ones. Plus, the giants would likely use large numbers of the warforged to settle personal disputes, though impactical, since the other giant could simply say stop, and they'd do it.

The BBEG of the game is not a giant, but an iron colossus (remember the huge tunnel?). An intelligent warforged of massive size, he was meant to be the ultimate general of the warfoged armies, second only to the giants. But his milennia of dormancy and massive intellect have caused him to go rogue, killing the giants and intent building his own construct world, where all the meat-races are gone and he alone rules the warforged.

[Crow]

Thank you for all the suggestions. I believe this will get my wheels turning. I have to admit, I probably won't be including robots. :)

[Rising Phoenix]

You could go the Princess Mononoke path... Huge awakened Dire Animals guard the woods, that's why they're untouched. In the center of the woods lies a mystical pool that can revive or destroy living creatures, depending on their acts.

Or you could get inspired by Mushi-shi: primitive, near ethereal life forms that form strange, wondrous and sometimes scary associations with other living things. These include infecting ears to eat the sense of sound, animate dead creatures and use the dead creatures locomotion to migrate...

(In case you are wondering what the hell I am talking about both are anime and both I highly recommend)

Fey and sentient trees are a must as others have mentioned and be sure to make the PCs feel insignificant in front of the glory of nature from time to time especially near any locals of spiritual power you decide to place (Red Wood Trees, Crystal clear lakes brimming with life etc).

Cheers!

R.P.

[paddyfool]

Water, earth and air elementals would also seem entirely appropriate. Small ones are only CR 1, and distinct enough to be quite fun.

And even if this area is untouched by humanoids, that doesn't rule out intelligent opponents. A pseudodragon, for instance, could be fun (although you'd have to figure out a decent motivation for such an "always neutral good" creature... could be that it wants to discourage humanoid incursion into its forest home out of a blend of self-interest, its community's interest, environmental principles, and/or for their own good; and it'll make being in the forest as unpleasant for them as its limited abilities, used creatively, would allow).