The echoes of the feasting songs are fading, but winter still has many cold months in store. In the highlands villages, winter's bite is most cruel. Still, legend has it that even the most desperate can find mercy at the wagoner's table.
This wandering encounter-type adventure gave me a chance to show off a little bit more Seree infrastructure, in this case the towering
tribute wagons they used to collect delicacies from outlying areas of their dominion.
You can use it for that, or you can just take this as the holiday-themed fantasy encounter that it is—a benevolent soul in a dangerous landscape provides for the destitute as best he can.
This adventure also marks a personal milestone:
Stellarium of the Vinteralf was published in January 2014, which means that
The Wagoner's Table bookends
five years of publishing an illustrated adventure nearly every month. It's nice to do that on an up note.
If you like this adventure or want more like it,
consider throwing me a buck on Patreon. Because of my patrons' generosity, all of these adventures are released under CC-BY-NC, so feel free to remix the text and imagery into your own non-commercial projects.
I am so going to use this in my next adventure!! Very Christmas flavored. I think the evil Redcap goblins have taken over the Wagon and kidnapped Astin!! The only people close enough to react are the PCs. Of course . . .
ReplyDeleteI love this! I'm planning to run this encounter in my seafaring campaign, with the wagon reskinned as a ship. For anyone interested in doing the same, here are my notes:
ReplyDeleteRather than each winter, the ship appears and disappears during storms. The pack of wolves can easily be swapped out for any type of sea monster, I went with demonic sharks. Perhaps the underside of the ship is sheathed in metal to protect from bites? The fallen wolf can be swapped for a beached monster, shot by a cannon rather than run over. Additionally, the automotons' crossbows can be replaced with cannons (or ballistae).
The ship's path loops around the sea, passing coastal villages and island ports just close enough to be visible from land. Rather than being horseless, the ship is sail-less: this also allows people to tell it from other ships from a distance.
The wagon's trail was the hardest detail to translate. In the end, I decided that the ship can be tracked by sacks of food that fall off the collection gantries and float on the surface.
Most everything else can be left unchanged, save for some minor details.