The Treasure Map The Trick: The adventurers come across the withered corpses of another adventuring party.. The deceased party still has its gear and even some magic items, so obviously
Trang 1The Treasure Map
The Trick: The adventurers come across the withered
corpses of another adventuring party A treasure map is
clutched in one skeletal claw The deceased party still
has its gear and even some magic items, so obviously
this is a real case of death by misadventure—the bodies
weren’t even looted
The Trap: The adventurers follow the map to an
awful underground cavern complex full of perilous
hazards and monsters, and many are killed
The Finale: The zoogs drag out the newly-dead
corpses from the caverns, perhaps eat one or two of
the victims, scavenge the most useful magic items,
and “re-seed” the trap with the new cadavers, placing
the treasure map in the hands of one of the deceased
party members They also make sure that the magic
items they leave as bait are not useful in their cavern
complex For example, if the complex contains undead,
they might leave a wand of charm person, since that spell
is ineffective against undead The trap is particularly
cruel in the way it instills a false sense of security
The Rotten Log
The Trick: In an especially creepy and dense part
of the forest, filled with fluttering zoogs, the trail is
blocked by a huge rotten log Upon close inspection,
the log is filled with poisonous spiders
The Trap: All the adventurers have to do to avoid
the spiders is to leap gracefully over the log, so they do
Unfortunately, the log’s actual purpose is to conceal the
deep pit just behind it The leaping adventures fall right
into the hole, which is also filled with poison spiders,
spikes, or whatever the zoogs’ inventive imagination
came up with Sleep poison is particularly useful, as
the first adventurer who falls into the pit may not be
able to warn those coming second
The Finale: Usually, only one adventurer jumps
into the pit, but the others are likely to get bitten by
the spiders while they try to rescue their comrade Eventually, the poisoned, weakened party is vulnerable
to other traps and tricks down the line Though the trap is designed to weaken rather than slay, unlucky or unwary parties might even suffer losses from it
Relations Fundamentally, zoogs are pack ambush predators, and have no cultural or biological bias against eating sentient beings Because of this, they are often feared and avoided On the other hand, they are not relentlessly hostile, and have useful lore, magic, and artifacts, so their hard-won friendship can be quite valuable
Folk who live near zoog woods naturally avoid the trees, and sometimes even try to erect fences against the forest Such efforts don’t keep the zoogs away, but they at least render it less likely that an animal or a child will wander by mistake into zoog territory
No other civilized race is allowed to live as a group within a zoog wood Zoogs do not typically “share” their forest with a tribe of elves, though a single dryad
or perhaps a family of half-orcs might be tolerated, particularly if they are beneficial to the zoogs If it is
a large forest, sometimes part of the area is the zoog wood, and the rest might be owned or dominated by some other group
Adventurers Zoogs are curious and inventive and they value practical knowledge, so it’s not uncommon for zoogs
to venture outside their woods in search of this When this happens, the zoogs, being small and physically weak, tend to join a party of the big people Given their size, even some gnomes and halflings are big by zoog standards
Zoogs can prove highly useful members of an adventuring party Their delicate hands render them excellent magicians and rogues, and the ancient lore