Encounters: Winter In Wermspittle (I)

Winter Encounters in Wermspittle (I)

1. (3d6) Street Wolves chasing after a wounded pair of Foragers who blundered into a cellar-den without realizing it until it was too late. One of the Foragers is lagging behind a their frame-pack is bulging with samples and specimens. The other Forager is bleeding and seems to have lost everything except for a rusty old hatchet.
2. (2d4) Alraunes armed with short bows, nets and bludgeons. They have gotten separated from their raiding party and are lost. One of them is wearing a Midwive's fancy-bonnet. Another is dragging a large burlap sack. The sack leaves behind a trail of blood behind it. They are being followed by (3d4) Street Wolves. Maybe it is deliberate?
3. (1d4) Butcher Boys on the prowl for fresh meat. They ain't picky. The leader wears a heavy +1 Leather Apron, all have murder-gloves and the usual assortment of cleavers, knives, tongs and saws that one would expect. Their cart is empty. They just got started.
4.  Killing Frost fills the next 30'. The distinctive blue tinge to everything is easy to spot, this time. Contact with this stuff causes 3d4 damage and forces a Save or suffer severe frost-bite (make the save it's only hypothermia).
5. (1d6) Glimp Shells have gone to ground here. They are nested-down, immured in the cobblestones and hibernating. Only prolonged exposure to heat will get them to revive. Removal of the things will leave a pot-hole and takes a lot of effort, if not expertise or special tools. The Winchers who are still working over the Winter charge triple-rates to remove Glimp Shells, which gets a few Landlords to try and do it themselves...often with less than wonderful results.
6. The thoroughly stripped-down carcass of a Bruthem has been dragged out from an alley and rolled into the middle of the street by more than a score of Feral Children who didn't like having the bulky, useless thing clogging-up their primary mugging-grounds.
7. A run-away Koponu streaks past. It ducks behind a loose board sloppily nailed over a cellar window and is gone.
8. (1d4) Drilg Grout-Gatherers are moving methodically along the street, testing every exposed drain, grate and any other form of access to the local sewers. A lot of the amorphous things are sluggish and much easier to wrangle in the Winter, if you can find one that got caught out in the cold. The Drilg will offer some salt or a few candles in exchange for a solid lead on the whereabouts of a moribund Grout they can capture; or if you'd like, they'll split the proceeds from the sale of the thing, if you'd like to join in their efforts.
9. A smallish Mindslime packed into a leather-reinforced glass jar has been left lying on the snow. It might have been dropped from a Forager's pack. The thing is trying to make a deal, pleading with whomever can hear it, offering to divulge the whereabouts of a particularly nasty old Oozulent Genius it refers to as Slizgaroomph.
10. (1d4) Gauntlim are busy chipping-out some bones that have been frozen to the curb. They have a well-trained pair of Gnawers on stout leashes to keep watch over their efforts. The Gnawers keep away most of the riff-raff and rubber-neckers.
11.  A partially-emptied bottle of medium-strength Dim Ichor lies on the ground, the contents are a bit slushy from the cold, but the small puddle it is frozen into still reeks of the distinctive scent of this stuff. (Base 40% chance to attract a Gloomswallow). Maybe someone deliberately placed this here as bait?
12. (1d4) Flidders have congregated around a steaming vent.
13. A Forager's Notebook is poking out of a dense bank of piled ice and snow. If removed, it contains a few cryptic notes regarding an item known as a 'Drunkard's Gonne,' that may or may not be in a warded glass case down on the fifth sub-level of a private library on Mulberry street.
14. (1d4) Refugees are wandering the area looking to hire-on some protection. They are being harassed by three different gangs of Butcher Boys. They can pay you in sausage and a warm place to sleep. One of them looks Picarrin. If that matters.
15. (1d4) Giant Albino Penguins waddle through the street. They just escaped from someone's make-shift pen. They will make it exactly 1d20 feet further when a mob descends upon them and tears them to pieces. Meat is meat.
16. A Puritan Burner-Crew is gathering here. They have decided to torch one of the local establishments. so far only (2d4) of them are on-site, but one of them is a loud mouth with aspirations to become one of the Select, so they're really riling up the locals. A crowd is starting to gather. Once they learn that it is a brothel that is the intended target of purification, the crowd will become an angry mob. The burners and flame-spouters will disappear before the last Puritan's body gets heaved onto a Butcher's meat wagon.
17. A svelte young girl swaddled in rich cerulean brocade trimmed with black fur stops to ask you directions to the nearest clinic or medical practitioner's offices. She is clutching a parcel wrapped in worm-hide and bound with wire ending in three warded seals. There is an elegant monogrammed 'K' stitched upon the palms of her slender black gloves. You get the distinct impression that someone is keeping a very close watch over this girl. Someone close enough to respond to threats, but otherwise out of sight.
18. Someone held a Blatherer's mouth under water in a bucket until the thing drowned. They left it there. Now it's frozen into the bucket.
19. (3d6) Wild Dogs are chasing after a Refugee in a tattered gray cloak. He looks at you in the hopes that you might help him. He's obviously from Kruschkoi, if that matters. One of the dogs is wearing a silver-studded collar...
20. A Weak Point has been tethered here by some rune-carved chunk of rubble. It leads to a dead, gray hilltop surrounded by churned-up gray mud under a perpetual gray drizzle. It is spooky-quiet. Until you hear a faint gasping, choking, retching sound. Just around the other side of the hill-top there is a dishevelled young medical student on his knees in the mud, puking his guts out. Literally. He has been colonized by Gore-Worms or worse. You can see dozens of the things squirming into the mud. This is their place now.