Offered Wealth
Nearby the village is a large lake said by the villagers to contain a water god. They tell the party that if they want good luck on their journey they should hire a boat and go to the center of the lake and give a donation to the god.
Nearby the village is a large lake said by the villagers to contain a water god. They tell the party that if they want good luck on their journey they should hire a boat and go to the center of the lake and give a donation to the god.
Unscrupulous characters may realize that if people have been giving donations for awhile, there must be a fortune just sitting there under the water. The water may really be inhabited by a god, or perhaps just some dangerous water bound creatures, an elemental perhaps. Either way, there is a reason that others haven’t claimed all the wealth.
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? Responses (7)
There could be a secret guild of some sort that is able to collect the donated treasure and uses it for good or bad depending on the guild. Either way, if the characters are found trying to collect the treasure there will be trouble.
The players could also stumble on who is collecting the treasure. If they find out that it is a good group that uses the wealth to benefit people then they can settle with the secret knowledge of what happens.
If it is evil they find out their schedule and tell the authorities, take it themselves, find out if there is a bigger picture than just a few thieves stealing donations.
A whole guild devoted to this task would need a frequented place or a large city nearby.
But what about thieves guilds - where do cleptomaniacs go on holiday ?
And religion: there surely are rumours of followers of said God
who, pure of heart, and for a noble purpose gained a fabulous amount of gold. Maybe it is the truth.
Turn the whole thing on the head:
Let a big slimy monster emerge and let it state clearly that it has finally enough of those little round metalic pieces and it does not want any more. Understand?
(Extreme: the gold/silver/brass is upsetting the ecology of the lake somewhat - solve that ;-)
To save the day the heroes must convince numerous people to stop with the donations.
A possible twist can have the viligers sending unsuspecting travelers to the middle of the lake as a sacrifice to that god/monster - might have the monster be an aquatic beholder - sort of like givving them the evil eye...
I like Melvin's twist - occasionally the entire boat is taken as an offering :)
And yes, there is something in the water - perhaps a dragon or similar beastly. It would have sorcerous powers so it would occasionally gift good luck on the donors.
Lots of plot hooks can come from that - a jealous nearby town might try to end the local town's luck by any number of ruses - perhaps poisoning the lake, sending warriors to kill the benefactor, dropping trapped gifts to enrage the beast, etc.
Even nobels could get jealous and seek to know the truth, and perhaps capture the beast.
I see it's a sub that gets the creative juices from others flowing. Other than that, it's a fairly straightforward little idea, probably more worthy of an idea seed nowadays but this is old stuff so not gonna quibble.