Journeying Jormungandr

GLOGtober 2023 #2: d66 Eccentric Encounters On An Ancient Road

GLOGtober 2023 prompts are here.

3. Random encounters on an ancient road.

d66 is so much more than d20.

These encounters are probably best used on a "strange encounters" subtable that is rolled perhaps 2-in-6 times, or whenever it feels appropriate.

1 - Peculiar People

  1. A traveling brain surgeon and his apprentice. He'll swap out one of your templates or levels for another for a fee. Let his apprentice do one, and both are free. Just sign this waiver...
  2. A traveling tinker who offers great deals on various trinkets and gear while spinning entertaining yarns. One of the finest living pickpockets.
  3. An aged, hard-eyed knight bringing a runaway prince home. The prince seems sweet, but is a lying, manipulative brat - but his father, the king, really is a cruel bastard who's marrying him off to a mean old duchess. The knight just wants the reward to retire somewhere with nicer royalty. Beware - he's an old man in a profession where men die young.
  4. A dandy dueling teacher and a dozen dead bandits who had kidnapped her. They mistakenly allowed a sword in her reach (in the hands of their best warrior), and she realized too late that she killed everyone who knew how to do things like build a campfire, handle a horse, or set a camp.
  5. A wizened old pilgrim overtakes you, moving at a glacial pace. How's he passing you while going so slow? 1d3 or making something up: 1 - he's blessed by the god of travelers, harm him and get cursed; 2 - he's got magic speedwalking boots, travel at sprinting speed while walking; 3 - he's sprinting, and his cunningly constructed cloak creates the optical illusion of slowness.
  6. An exhausted revolutionary faction, mostly consisting of 3d6 bleeding-heart poet types, accompanied by 1d6+1 hard men and women filled with purpose who are well and truly tired of babysitting the poets.

2 - Rare Rides

  1. A self-driving carriage rolling along, mysteriously abandoned. Its can follow basic instructions yelled into a dictaphone on the front, and has a top speed a bit lower than an easy stroll. If you try to tow it or make it tow something, it's safety features engage and the brakes switch on, requiring ten minutes of work to disengage.
  2. An ancient longboat, sail and mast burnt, seemingly recently stranded - and far from any sea. Closer inspection indicates it fell from the sky - and it was a controlled decent. On the end of the bone oars are enormous, streel-strong white feathers instead of paddles.
  3. A witch. Her broom broke down, and she absolutely refuses to walk to the next town. She'll demand a ride, or to be carried. Acts threatening, but she's out of magic from trying to jumpstart the broom. She's cute, but the first time you mention it, you should say she's "suspiciously cute/pretty/attractive/whatever".
  4. An armored man resting his giant dire riding pigeon while he cooks up a hot lunch. Skilled with his crossbow.
  5. Nine goblin bandits on three tandem bicycles.
  6. A massive carriage, the size of a tavern, trundling along and blocking the entire road. Transporting some financier bigwigs, apparently.

3 - Abnormal Animals

  1. A crate of 2d6 baby giant rats abandoned by the road. They are pink, hairless, and their eyes have yet to open, but they're already cat-sized.
  2. A platinum stag, sapphire horns bloody, devouring the freshly-slain corpse of a massive grizzly bear.
  3. A horse-sized octopus piloting an inverted (keeps water in) Apparatus of the Crab. Kinda racist and condescending towards vertebrates.
  4. A superb talking stallion. Eager and impatient for a worthy rider who is chaste in body and noble in heart. In enough of a rush to settle. Tries to avoid discussion of the elven countess who he had agreed to serve, who is only 1d6 days from catching up and is quite upset.
  5. A normal-seeming dog. If the party consists of mostly generally decent people, he'll happily join the party. If they're not, he'll look at them with a sad, disappointed look and fade into mist. The dog is mostly normal, albeit smart and well-trained, but gets +5 on all saves and +10 max HP. The dog clearly does not approve of evil actions.
  6. A carriage-sized housecat, sleeping by the side of the road. Friendly and playful, but playful can be pretty dangerous at its size.

4 - Odd Objects

  1. A Smulton & Goldbeard LLC. Patented Time-Locked Chest, fallen by the road, set to open in 15 days. It weighs nearly 600 pounds and seems nigh-impossible to breach. The chest contains rare and exceptionally boring histories about a specific, irrelevant dynasty, which might be worth something if you found someone boring enough to care about them. The chest itself is pretty valuable, however.
  2. The entrance to a purple-glowing curving wormhole tunnel, with a sign saying "shortcut" and an arrow pointing in the direction the players are travelling. After a winding, noisy, one-hour walk, the portal pops travelers out 200 feet further down the road.
  3. A tree, standing alone, and entirely ablaze. The fire never seems to quite devour the tree, and normal-looking birds can be seen roosting in the branches.
  4. A wayside shrine to some long-forgotten badger god, overgrown by vines. If an offering, any sort of prayer, or even a sign of deference is offered, the badger god will begin pathetically harassing and cajoling the "worshipper" in their dreams, thirsty for more worship and full of promises it lacks the clout to fulfill. Any half-decent holy-ish individual can dispel it easily.
  5. A 30 foot radius blasted, partially glassed crater by the road, with a sack of gold coins obviously sitting in the center on a small iron plinth. Totally safe to just grab.
  6. A fork in the road. The fork is made of silver and functions as a magic dagger. It can be used to make an attack against two valid targets. After determining if it hit and what the damage roll would be for each attack, you choose which attack actually happened. This ability can be used once per combat, but is only expended if at least one of the attacks hits.

5 - Magical Maniacs

  1. Two withered old liches of indeterminable sex and obvious power. They're arguing over which is more beautiful, and will aggressively demand witnesses declare a winner. They couldn't care less - they just like screwing with travelers and making them squirm.
  2. A crazed biomancer with dozens of tentacles. Aggressively hard-sells tentacle grafts, which he will provide in exchange for a small sample of your blood.
  3. 1d6 zombies, 1d6 javelin-chucking skeletons, and a necromancer piloting a hollowed-out troll corpse, Titanfall-style. Evil, but not particularly looking for trouble.
  4. An ugly wizard-robed old man who claims to be a diviner and prophecies death at midnight to a random party member in 1d6 days. At midnight on the proscribed night, he'll appear with a clap of thunder to try to assassinate the chosen party member. He has 3 HD, 3 MD, and knows Levitate, Lightning Bolt, and Grease, and is decent with his sword. (If the party is weak, you might want to take away Lightning Bolt and replace it with something weaker.)
  5. 5 goblins sharing 3 MD (they cannot spend a dice more than once per round). They know Raise Goblin (with [sum] max health, requires only a scrap of fingernail), Big Jump (+[5 x sum] feet of jumping for the next [dice] rounds, halved vertically, can jump as part of casting, casts on all the goblins), Scorching Ray ([dice + best] damage to each of up to [dice + 1] distinct targets), and Speak With Nasty Animals (for [10 x dice] minutes). If two of them die, the remainder scatter - at least one needs to survive to raise the others. The goblins have 2d6 health instead of the normal health (as they've all been resurrected previously). Each goblin carries several daggers.
  6. A team of 3 elementalist wizards, analyzing a giant lodestone they excavated. Will pay (with bank notes) for objects made of novel metals and magical metal items.

6 - Strange and Sundry

  1. A clearly ancient stone golem, marching indefatigably along the road, carrying a large messenger bag, sealed with the golden sigil of the emperor of some long-vanished empire.
  2. A vision on the horizon, of a fantastic city of sapphire spires. Strange flying vehicles can be barely seen, flitting from tower to tower.
  3. A deceased former party member or former character of one of the players, clearly uncomfortable and in a hurry in the opposite direction. Vanishes at the next sunrise or sunset if prevented from moving on.
  4. The bodies of two highwaymen, slain in mutual combat. They were fighting over 1d3 random magic items.
  5. A roadside inn of alien construction, seeming squeezed in a space to small to fit it. Its patrons are out of place and time, and the fare is unlike any on the face of the earth. The barkeep - a humanoid in a strange, bulky white outfit with a golden dome of a helmet obscuring all features - accepts any payment, even laughably small ones, with the same professional courtesy. When left, the inn vanishes.
  6. The party arrives where they were going, well ahead of schedule and with no clear understanding as to how.

#glogtober #table