ian (i.) gorlick:
> How about allowing them to use special arrows with similiar effects?
> If the arrow does damage then the seed breaks away and sprouts in the wound.
Indeed the thing that made me switch from the bow to the blowgun in the first place was that you can hardly be hit by an arrow and not notice it. So the effect should be pretty quick, and you lose the mystery aura (People get a sting and hardly notice,then they beging to feel pain in various limbs, next day they become ill, and next day you find them dead with a nice black-an-red flower in the head). If the effect is granted on an arrow, you should make it immediate or peharps rule that the seed magicaly seal the wound so a crude chirurgy is needed to extract it ?
Martin Crim:
> think such deadly darts are extremely rare. There existence may also engender a
> taboo on killing forest nymphs
As a matter of fact, the whole adventure was built upon the vengeance enacted by a group of aldryami against the killers of the nymph. At he end of the winter following the killing, they went to the glade, collected the seed, and set to track the murderers. Soon, some people of the village where found dead with a strange flower on them and the players where hired by the remaining murderers to investigate and protect them. This was a one-off affair. When you kill a nymph, you provide the forest with a weapon against you ( never forget to burn such a place if it happens to you ).
Two related remarks:
To make that nastier, I decided that when someone dies from such a seed, the flower grows feeding on the body, and the next spring it reaches maturity and is worth a small fortune if sold to decadent collectors. Imagine being affected and trying to find someone to cure you while avoiding unscrupulous bounty hunters, or being hired to steal some seeds to be used on slaves by lunar nobles.
For a time I toyed with the following idea: when you kill an aldryami, his/her body rot quickly leaving some seeds that germinate next spring. My players where granted leadership over a small village, so I planned to have them run afoul of an aldryammi. They would have killed him. Unless they had burned the corpse on the spot, next spring some beautiful flowers would have sprout in different place of the village. At first all is wonderfull: nice and perfumed flowers blessing the village. Then strange things happens: some flowers grow poisonus thorns, others infect the fields and kill the crops, others strangles small animals and childrens... Even if you uproot them, they keep flowering again and again... Now you have to seek more radical solutions. Hire troll insect masters (and lose much status in the eyes of your fellow villagers), burn the place to the ground (and make your overlord mad by destroying his property), buy for a high price some of this toxic mostali potion that kill plants (and create an eco-gloranthan disaster), .... Your choice !!
Comments welcome !!
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