Eris is a naiad, beautiful and graceful, flirting with butterflies and whimsically governing her sparkling waterfall pools. But when the characters encounter her, she is a starved, ill-looking creature, emaciated, jaundiced and warty. Why is this?
Not far away, a detachment of ogre-warriors have set up camp. This could be part of a larger plotline (maybe they're planning to attack a nearby town, or steal some cattle), but whyever they're there, they still need to wee. And where better than some nice clear pools?
Defiled with the urine of the ogres, Eris's pools have sapped her strength and she has degenerated into an ugly and sickly being, needing help.
She begs the PCs for assistance. Even the most kind-hearted of PCs would ordinarily recoil from this foul-smelling thing, but the promises she makes of recompense for helping her are too good to go unnoticed. She is very vague, as she does not fully understand what is wrong with her pools.
I leave it to the imaginations of the PCs to find a solution to the problem.
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? Responses (15)
Well yes, maybe a local Duke held a party in the gardens of his high mountain palace and the barrels of sour wine were disposed of in the forest below and they've started to leak into the pools: result, one tipsy nai(hic)ad who shlurs her shpeech.
One of the ways raw sewage is processed is to simply areate it in running water. The waste seperates and what doesn't evaporate settles and decomposes. For the Ogres to pollute her pools so much would require LARGE amounts of ogres or a restriction of the water flow. If they've dammed up the streams feeding the water fall and reduced them to a trickle, then the waste wouldn't be areated enough to break down and would pollute the pools.
But the question then is: What have the Ogres engineered that makes them dam up streams?
Ahah!
The plot progresses!
First, the PCs think that it's just the ogres pissing in the stream. But they learn from a local wizard that running water eliminates pollution. Then, they discover that the ogres have dammed up the stream, for some reason....
The damm is a quite cunning application of strategy. The damm will create quite a flood once broken and the water diverted to their target. The taget could be a town or a keep. It could be the regular camping spot for the tax collector and his soldiers.
Or could it be the naiad, that should be harmed?
Maybe the ogres were hired, and later comes some 'hero', to chase them away? The naiad is happy and rewards the hero... would have to be a strange item, that must be given away freely, to work its powers.
Any real heroes are of course a nuisance to dispose of.
Note: the ogres hired may not even know they do something wrong. Not that they would be peaceful do-gooders,
they are just innocent, at least in this regard.
perhaps the ogres are just guards of a greater evil that needs the power from the water also. As the naiad weakens from the lack of available power, the evil becomes able to siphon more.
The problems of urinating and deficating in the water will seem a plausable reason for the waning energy. The dam would be for the planned attack that will be initiated when the evil being is prepared.
Of course, the ogres may not even be associated with the evil energy. The evil could be something defeated, and long forgotten, that has finally coming back. So defeating the ogres might seem to end the problem, only to later have the naiad, in desperation, beg for their return.
Maybe the naiad reneged on it's first deal, and now it comes with gifts and promising more it they would only defeat that which consumes her life line.
Just an ecological side-note...running water, in and of itself, isn't immune to this kind of pollution.
You get a big band of Ogres pissing several gallons and dropping a few pounds of solid waste in the same area of the stream every day, the water will be bad to drink eventually...at least for half a mile or so downstream. Throw in some rotten scraps of food and a corpse or two. Foul stream.
I gag..... Interesting plot line........ creative but I Gag!
Very intresting. 5/5
This is a very interesting plotline that gets better as the submission progresses with everyone's help. I like.
The expanding comments show what a simple but solid idea can inspire, and i think that this is an example of the Citadel at it's best.
I love how the comments have taken the basic idea and made it much more then it started. Kudos folks!
I normally would not HOH a sub of this size, but I would like to point out the process that has taken place here. The HOH is for everyone involved really.
That is a great discussion. Ok idea. I honestly never thought of using ogre urine as a plot point so extra for that alone! :)