River Stopped Flowing
Pinned to The notice board
A neat and formally written parchment announces:
Adventurers Required.
As many of you will have noticed, the river has stopped flowing and is already close to being dried up. As of yet the cause is unknown. We are looking for capable adventurers to follow the riverbed upstream - or what was previously upstream - to find the root of the problem and return water to us before any reserves we have also run out.
8000 gold reward is what we are able to offer. However, the reward will dwindle the longer it takes, as eventually we will have to use this to purchase water from neighboring settlements.
Speak to Seneschal Janella of the court before embarking.
[A red wax seal bearing the insignia of a tulip within a decorative shield is pressed into the bottom right.]
Ways to approach
Here the party are faced with a problem and a timer (assuming they care about the gold reward). Before proceeding with the cause we should determine the time-frame by which the reward will dwindle. The court will of course account for a reasonable amount of time to take care of the problem, which we can say is a week. After that, the reward will drop by 100 gold pieces per day.
As for why the river would stop there are so many directions to take, but to name a few we could go with goblins damming up the river in the mountains in hopes of driving the people away so they can take the settlement for themselves. In another situation, dwarves tunnelling through the area may have caused a rupture, both sending the river underground and unleashing some mean beasties - The dwarves will happily build an aqueduct in exchange for defeating the malevolent creatures. And finally, for door number 3 we have a moral quandary; the source of the river is actually an elemental rift to the plane of water whose presence causes the world’s water levels to slowly rise and allows for nefarious elementals to slip through to cause havoc - The rift was sealed by druids looking to protect the world at large but now the heroes need to find a solution for all parties.
Possible Repercussions
The party not taking on this quest could mean the end of a local settlement altogether. Without a significant enough source of water they’ll likely have to move somewhere else or attempt to bring water back to them by diverting another river. , which could be terrible for a local ecosystem. Depending on which route you take, there could be larger implications at hand; a new goblin stronghold terrorizing the local region after the people have moved away and they’ve released the river again, or dwarven tunnels rampant with foul beasts.
On the other hand, if you don’t want to punish your players emotionally for their choosing another path, consider the idea that the problem was taken care of by other mercenaries, although perhaps at a greater expense to lives and resources.
