DM_Nastics #78: I Don't Remember This Canon

Sankthans-aften (midsummer day)
we usualy (in norway) just light a giant bonfire but denmark makes a witch fetish out of twigs to burn and sweden dances around the maypole.
Mix them all togheter and you got a festival centered around burning a magical and dancing around the fire as the magic user is being burned alive.

Story idea: Your parties magical person has been kidnapped and is gonna be burnt on the bonfire.

This is great. You could go two ways with that idea. If you had the group's magic user be taken they could then help run the monster side of the screen since it is a one shot. The other idea would be that there are a lot of mages that have gone missing, or a super important  one, and you have to track them down and see what's up. Would it be a cult that captures them or something else?

The Town of Love(Valentine's Day)

The PCs have been invited to the wedding of an NPC friend. They arrive to find that everyone in a town is in love. Literally everyone. Small children play house in couples. The old Widows and Widowers have paired off. Every single townsperson has paired off.

They learn on arriving that their friend's fiancée died very recently (within days of their friend sending them the invitation). Their friend is reluctant to discuss this, but if the PCs manage to press hard enough, or in the right way, he admits to murdering his bride's former husband (I had wanted to keep the whole post gender-neutral, but I found it too complicated to casually discuss. Feel free to rephrase if you end up reading this in an episode)


After spending the first night in town, one of two things happens. If the party is made of potential romantic pairings, they begin to feel intense attraction to one another, even if they have no romantic history. This is not lust, but genuine affection. Any PCs who are not of compatible gender/orientation with other party members experience similar affection for someone in town, and immediately become murderously jealous of their new love interest's romantic partner. (They are not required to act on this jealousy, but if they are not acting on it, the DM should remind them and encourage the player to roleplay resisting their jealous impulses). Perhaps one of them even falls for their NPC friend or his fiancée.

The PCs should realize something is up. This will not in any way lesson their feelings, but they will probably want to figure out what is going on. If they are not interested, they should experience strange things going on, such as mischievous laughter and strange lights.

Ultimately, the culprit is a fey creature who is constantly maintaining a ritual over the town, causing everyone within the town's borders to pair off romantically. His primary motivation is mischief, though he will claim to be a spirit of love. If the PCs kill him, the spell will be broken and all magical affection will immediately cease. If they instead bargain with him to stop, he can be persuaded to make some or all of the current romances permanent but stop making it affect new people.

The Gwemer Pale

The Gwemer Pale is a festive event in my Everbough campaign setting, loosely based on the Mari Lwyd tradition from Wales and altered for the Mouseguard-inspired setting. In this festival, the mouse youths of the village will carry a pole through the streets, streaming with banners and sheets and capped with an elaborately decorated hare's skull. As the pole moves around the village, it becomes a mobile party, as each house they visit is expected to provide food, drinks or song to the revelers. The party will grow and shrink throughout the evening as houses are visited, picking up mice, or individuals leave as they reach their limit or look for more intimate settings. The event is largely for the young not-quite-adults, as regular village life does not provide many chances for excess or blowing off steam. It is usually held sometime near mid-summer, but does not have a specific date, instead occurring when the group consciousness feels its time. Occasionally, these roving parties can carry people far beyond the limits of their village, to outlying farm steads or very rarely to neighbouring villages.

The origins of the festival are told differently in every village, but mostly revolve around a mystical white hare - the Gwemer Pale - that once led a group of young hunters on a magical chase through the forest and into the faerie realm. The hunters returned with great wealth and the recipe for some local favourite drinks, though if the players press deeper they will learn that older versions of the story instead saw them hunted down by the fae residents.

In this adventure, the PCs will be passing through a small village near mid-summer and should have been given cause to receive the information above. From their inn, they should hear music coming from out on the street. Have them make saves against a magical compulsion, and then notice that all the other people in the inn have stopped in their tracks, dropped whatever they were holding, and begin moving absent-mindedly towards the exit. They cannot be roused or diverted. Out on the street, they see an elaborately decorated hare's skull with deer-like horns and drapes and sheets trailing down from it. Sharp-eyed PCs can also notice that there is a faint blue glow coming from its eye sockets, and that though the sheets do not reach all the way to the ground, there is nothing below them. Surrounding the Gwemer Pale are the residents of the village, all with vacant expressions and either playing music or dancing around the skull. As the others in the inn join the crowd, it begins moving off into the forest. If the PCs try to attack it, have the ensorcelled villagers dance into their way, or if they do get an attack in the Gwemer Pale is insubstantial.

Eventually the procession reaches a clearing, which an easy spot check should reveal is in a fairy circle of mushrooms and flowers and a standing rock in the center. Within the fairy circle tables are set up and a banquet spread out, and the villagers vacantly take the party there. The Gwemer Pale itself flies up and alights on the top of the standing rock, and as the banquet sets in the air within the circle begins to shimmer. At this point, the PCs can free the villagers by preventing them from eating or drinking anything; slapping something from their hands will shake the villagers free from their dream. The PCs should be being tempted though, as they should see gold, magic items, food and drink, charming companions, or whatever else is most likely to appeal to them. If they can overcome the temptation, and see through the illusion, they can notice that the 'food' on the tables is actually dirt and mold, and fae creatures - frogs in my setting - are carrying villagers off through a portal in the stone. You can run a standard combat from there, as easy or hard as you like. If you have the PCs win, they should great a ridiculous amount of wealth, or if they lose they should be captured and forced to watch as the rest of the village is carried off. Either way, the scene as you describe it should eventually begin to melt away in the morning light, until the PCs wake up in the inn. If they ask, they are told they fell asleep during the tale of the Gwemer Pale and were put to bed. Its a glorious morning out, though they all feel like they were up all night and all remember the same dream. If they go seek out the clearing, they should find the fairy ring, but instead of a standing stone or tables there is simply an extremely old, moss covered hare's skull in its center.