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Friday, November 8, 2013

Borrowed Trouble

Sometimes, even while peacefully minding your own business you happen to run afoul of situations that are not of your making or doing. Stuff that isn't really any of your business. Unless you choose to make it yours...

Borrowed Trouble

  1. Six Feral Children glare at you from in front of what used to be a boarded-up window to an Abandoned Property. It's clear that they've only just removed the last of the boards. They've been careful, very quiet about the whole thing. Now you've come blundering by, making noise. They obviously don't appreciate your unwelcome contribution to their endeavor. You can tell by the loaded slings dangling from their hands. It would have made for a tense moment, except a very pale, flabby and quite large Fruiting Body begins to wriggle its way out of the window.
  2. SNAP! A young girl clad mostly in dirty rags has been caught in a wire-snare and is being dragged up to the rooftop of a near-by building. She calls out your name.
  3. Three hags wearing Rashavallan shawls sit on old crates and munitions boxes around a small sputtering fire they've made at the mouth of an alley-way. Then you notice that one of the 'logs' in their fire is in fact an anti-personnel cylinder. A cylinder filled with Black Smoke.
  4. Two well-dressed Urlish Troubadours face off with dueling banjos in the middle of the street. Everyone clears out of their way. Then a small contingent of (2d4) light cavalry out of Wurtem-Zollern crashes through the street. One of the angry musicians is killed outright. The other one barely escapes, but is injured. The crowd that had been gathered on either side to observe the duel surges past after the horsemen. There's a lot of meat on a horse and those soldiers are a long way from home.
  5. Four Gronk mercenaries are trying to sell their Gronk Swords to passersby. 
  6. A large and argumentative crowd has formed around a cart carrying a corpse. Someone has been hung. Some old crone is demanding her due even as a pair of apprentice Midwives are discretely collecting the corpse-seed before anyone might stop them. They work fast and are making their way past you just as the crone and her supporters realize what has happened.
  7. Two badly mauled survivors drag the still bloody hide of a Bruthem down the street. They had a tough go of it, down in that cellar, but they finally killed the thing. Of course there had been six of them when they set out. 
  8. Voices. Two parties engaged in a heated argument. "I tire of this charade," you hear clearly from one party. Then things get noisy. A peddler tromps around the corner pushing a small cart built-up from various crates and bins all nailed together in a ramshackle mess that you're impressed can even roll along on its two mis-matched wheels. They're selling various syrups, ichors and minor jellies. Including one large jar holding what must be a Mind Slime that is staring directly at you.
  9. A crippled Tsalalian refugee is showing off three small splinters from a Quindra to a mid-class scholar-in-training, some professor's apprentice or the like from the Academy. She is looking for samples of uncontaminated ectoplasm, however the Quindra fragments are quite interesting. But it's not really her field of study. Her two bodyguards are nervous about stopping here. One of them is Eloi. You think you might recognize her. There certainly are an awful lot of Tsalalians crowding this section of the street...
  10. A Lurm squatter offers to teach you one of the hundreds of variations on Gloomlight, for a small consideration, of course. If you take them up on their offer and can settle on agreeable terms, about half-way through the process you realize that the old Lurm might be showing signs of Yellow Pox.
  11. Someone, probably a slumming spell-caster, has been hit with a Zymurgic Disgestion spell cast by what appears to be their very angry spouse.
  12. A disheveled former noble from Karlogne is concluding a shady business deal by stabbing his erstwhile partner in the back. Directly in front of you. He's cast Envenomate on the dagger. He only notices you once he strikes the fateful blow.
  13. Five Orphans are chasing after a wounded Grikflit they've been tormenting for hours, forcing it to give them rides and perform tricks. The pitiful thing bumps into you as it attempts to make its escape.
  14. Everyone is running towards you. They're fleeing a patch of Withering Mist.
  15. A microcephalic child is attempting to make a three-legged Vilg on a leash  perform tricks to make money to pay a surgeon to make their head right. That's what the Vilg has taught them to say.
  16. A drunken mercenary and a half-eloi working girl have just caught a Flutterworm that has to be over 20 inches long, possibly a new record. They cooperated well enough to catch the thing, but now neither one intends to share the notoriety or credit. He's carrying three pistols and an artillery officer's short sword. She has six friends that have followed them from the rathskeller.
  17. The last of three gargoyle-hunters drops to the cobbles. Terribly bloody. They may yet be alive. But so is the gargoyle.
  18. Some Morlock with an eye-patch pries the pieces of a broken Synchronocitor from out of the hands of the screaming corpse wreathed in blue flames. The corpse finally goes silent as it collapses to the cobbles in six charcoal-like pieces and the Morlock runs off. The blue flames continue to burn the pieces of the dead stranger's sorcerously carbonized flesh, but do not harm anything else. There's no heat, but it is a light source. It won't take long before someone starts selling chunks of the corpse coal...
  19. A cloth-maker and his four apprentices are trying to replace a wheel on their wagon now that their electric tractor is running again. None of them has noticed that the barrel holding a Drab Jelly has fallen off the back and is leaking.
  20. Two harpies flutter, kick and tear at each other over a left-over lump of Krampus Koal. In the course of their struggle the lump of cursed stuff lands at your feet. The harpies eventually notice that their prize has slipped from their grasp. Both turn their unpleasant attentions towards you...



2 comments:

  1. Lots of useful interactions, and some real on-the-spot moments - 14 definitely captures the surprise. Quite a few also have a sense of bustle, of whole peoples meeting.

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    Replies
    1. It's handy to have a jumping-off point for what comes next sometimes. The smallest off-hand observation can lead to all sorts of fun stuff. It's also good to give players/characters plenty of ways to interact with--and be interacted upon by the events/people/circumstances around them.

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