Lord Problems
EDIT: Added a fourth one.
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After a Lord compels you to a joust, he may offer you hospitality and send you on a quest. If the quest is accepted, he will supply your whole party with horses and food enough for the journey.
Quests
- The lord is the patron of a magnificent but capricious sculptor (the castle is lousy with half-finished marbles). The lord made the mistake of critiquing the sculptor's work, who immediately packed his things and left for his mother's house. The lord wishes you to convince the sculptor to return, offering whatever he will take to return. The sculptor's mother is a witch who will not receive kindly agents of the lord who hurt her son's feelings.
- The lord's wife died tragically in the spring, but keeps digging out of her grave at night. The best the local priests can tell, she is trying to return to her homeland. The lord can't very well be seen delivering a zombie into an allied kingdom. He would like the players to bring her discreetly to her home soil so she can rest in peace. As she comes within 15 miles of the border, she increases in power and ravenousness to that of a ghoul, once she crosses the border she becomes a wight, then once she enters her hometown she becomes a mundane corpse.
- A blinding plague has spread among half of the inhabitants in the castle, the lord himself has lost vision in one eye (he blames this for his loss in the joust). He wants to consult the sage of the ochre grasslands, but is afraid he will go blind before he arrives. The sage is camping in the shadow of her tower which has been occupied by goblins. The goblin wizard is combing through the sage's books trying to find the true name of the troll who ousted them from their warren (the troll said he would only leave if they could guess his name). The troll is not that bright and will happily tell any non-goblin that his name is Lancewart. Once the sage is able to consult her books again, she identifies a spring in the mountains whose water should cure the blindness plague. If Lancewart the troll still lives, he has moved into a small cabin on the shore, and doesn't take kindly to people stealing his water. The day after leaving the Lord's castle, there is a 2-in-6 chance of each party member going blind in one eye, then the other goes blind in 1d6 days.
- The lord's sister has come to him in distress. Her fiancée has been having a dalliance with another woman. The lord would like the knave to experience a spontaneous housefire, preferably while both he and his lady love are inside. The fiancée is actually meeting with a priestess to prepare for his upcoming wedding. She is secretly a chaos priestess who plans to sacrifice the young couple to her dark lord, who she hopes will turn her into a black dragon (these details are helpfully recorded in her diary, stored in the village rectory.
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Reading: Enshitification by Cory Doctorow
Listening: Warriors of The Dragonfang Order by Coniferous Myst
Playing The World Ends With You (Nintendo DS)