Two-Headed Tales
April 5th, 2011
Hello everyone and welcome back to another exciting Grave Plots, where we hope to bring you an ever-growing supply of plot hooks and adventure ideas. This week I would like to look at a few plots involving another one of my all-time favorite monsters, the ettin.
Ettins are the two-headed giant monsters you probably passed up, not because you thought that they weren’t very interesting but because you were worried about your D&D group quoting the two-headed ogres from Warcraft II. Let me tell you right now to have no fear – after one or two cool encounters with ettins, the stupid jokes will die down (well… for the most part anyway), and with that in mind let me provide you with a few cool starting points for those cool ettin-themed evenings.
Mating Grounds
As solitary creatures, ettins rarely gather with other members of their own kind for any kind of extended period; a good thing too, because their violent and unpersonable nature poses a danger to every living creature (including the other ettins) within the immediate area. The only real exception (apart from the rare cases when they form temporary alliances in order to take advantage of some large or difficult-to-acquire piece of plunder, or when another race subjugates them to serve as slaves, guardians, soldiers, etc) is when they gather to mate. As nocturnal creatures ettins move to their mating grounds by night, appearing to all the civilized world to just suddenly appear in the hills every few decades, dangerously close to town and threatening the livelihood of the townsfolk. For the town of Fairbrook this is exactly what’s happened yet again but, this time the town’s mayor isn’t going to stand for it.
The mayor, a man in his late middle years by the name of Ewan Maltes, fears that the ettins mating in the nearby caves means trouble for his town. Ewan’s fears are not unjustified, as he lived through the last ettin Mating over 30 years ago and remembers the incident fairly clearly: ettins tearing the town apart for any bit of treasure to impress their prospective mate, and killing anyone who got in their way, including Ewan’s own mother and father. To make matters worse, a little over a year later, while the town was still rebuilding, it was assaulted once again by a wave of adult ettins leaving the caves in the hills to seek their fortune, taking for themselves any supplies from the town that they wanted. Now that the ettins are back, Ewan is desperate to prevent a repeat of the events of his past and so he has hired the PCs to stop them.
Personally, Ewan doesn’t really care how the PCs deal with the ettins, though he does mention that he would be perfectly satisfied if the PCs just butcher the lot of them. This would probably involve a lot of dangerous close-quarters fights with ettins of various quality and navigating a tunnel filled with savage but effective traps, or it might mean clever use of a decanter of endless water and several rings of force wall. The PCs, however, have other options for dealing with the ettin problem, including bribing them with treasure. This will quite possibly also involve the PCs having to fight their way past a bunch of angry ettins and then convince several of them to rein themselves and their companions in. It could also involve the PCs convincing the strong ettins to keep the others out of town, perhaps by suggesting that if they can keep other ettins from leaving the caves, they would prove themselves to be more desirable mates. Of course, the language challenges (see ettins in the Bestiary for more details) presented in dealing with ettins might make this a little difficult. PCs could also devise a plan to hold the cave entrance against ettins looking to move out into the town during the mating season, and then herd the remaining ettins a safe distance away from town before letting them out again. Or, they could do virtually anything else your group can come up with. After the whole affair is dealt with, the mayor will reward the PCs in a manner that you deem fitting for their performance: gold for each ettin head, or a golden statue in the courtyard of a pacifist deity, or anything else in between.
Night Hunt
In this adventure a group of ettins have banded together to accomplish a rather lofty goal: to plunder a sacred treasure from the Svar jungle civilization. The treasure in question is the legendary Belt of Tiaz, said to grant the wearer supreme physical strength. The band of six ettins is jointly led by Grauha, a fearsome female barbarian, and by Jormund, a male ranger. Well, “led” is perhaps too strong a term, but the band does tend to default to either Grauha or Jormund for all their decision-making. Though the ettins are currently working together, each of them is plotting to kill the others as soon as the chance arises to take the belt for his or her own. Because of the power struggle between Grauha and Jormund, the band seems likely to collapse under their own weight, so to speak, long before ever finding the Belt of Tiaz among the ancient temples and jungle palaces of the Svar Empire. As an even greater threat to the ettin band, they have some competition to find the belt and they are playing against the clock.
The PCs have heard tell of a spectacularly magical belt of physical perfection called the Belt of Tiaz, and have decided to retrieve the sacred treasure either for their own use or because they are being well compensated by an employer, or perhaps just because they like hunting for magic belts in sweltering hot jungles. During their perilous search they should encounter dangerous natives, deadly traps, and a band of ettins bent on taking out the competition. The ettins ambush the PCs one night, fighting a skirmish with them with hopes either to kill them, or to at least force them to reconsider the search for the belt. The ettins, however, don’t fight to the finish unless the PCs are particularly capable of finishing them off, and this won’t be the last the PCs hear from these ettins.
Following the battle both Grauha and Jormund approach the PCs (at different times) during the same day, when the other ettins are supposedly sleeping, and ask for help in taking out their rival. Each reveals that the ettins are planning a raid later that night, and proposes that, with the ettins under their control (split the remaining four ettins evenly between Grauha and Jormund), they will help the PCs kill the others. Regardless of what the PCs do, the ettins continue to pester them along the way, until the PCs either find the belt or kill the ettins.
Well, that’s it. I hope you enjoyed this week’s plots, and if you would like to suggest a future topic, then just go ahead and shoot me an email; who knows – the next Grave Plots you see might be your idea. Until next week, I wish you all the best with your gaming endeavors.