Friday Encounter: The Clever Stag

In the Lunar Lands, all living things - and some non-living things - are sapient. Every animal has thoughts and feelings, hopes and dreams, just like a person does; they just express them in their own ways, which make sense only to them. Each animal speaks its own language - they consist of certain sounds, gestures, and pheromones that are indecipherable to the uninitiated, but this is a true language, and one can learn to speak and understand it, though this is much harder than learning another humanoid language, and to speak it (rather than merely understanding it) may require the ability to vocalize subtle sounds humans cannot.

Here's an encounter that plays with that idea. It is best suited for a wilderness environment - ideally, it should be used if the PCs decide to hunt for game.

Background

Somewhere in this woodland lies an enchanted tree that has stood for untold millennia. If it is known, it is known only to the beasts of the wood, and any elves and druids in tune with its mysteries. This tree produces a sap that, if consumed, allows a creature to speak and understand any tongue - including those of the beasts and birds.

Also in this woodland there lives a stag named Barkbrowser (a literal translation from the cervid language, the subtleties of cannot be represented in text). Barkbrowser is a vain and conceited deer who is quite proud of his antlers. Although he, like all stags, sheds his antlers in the winter and grows back a new set in the spring, he is not content to let his old antlers be lost in the weeds, but would like to keep them at hand to marvel at his beauty. He regards his own antlers as a human would regard a work of fine art. Despite his vanity, Barkbrowser is a particularly clever stag, even by the standards of men. He fed upon the magic sap, and became fluent in all tongues - and quickly realized how he could use this ability to advance his own goals.

Barkbrowser's last set of antlers recently went missing from his stash. He learned from the birds and the squirrels that they were taken by Marielle Essert, an enchantress who dwells within a tower somewhere in the woods, who intends to turn them into powder for a potion. Barkbrowser knows that he, a mere deer, cannot hope to take on a powerful magician. However, he knows that the gift of speech can be quite useful for his purposes, and intends to use this to get his revenge.

The Encounter

The PCs should come upon Barkbrowser in the woods, perhaps while hunting, or by mere happenstance. Importantly, they should be led to believe that he is nothing more than an ordinary deer - up until they get close enough, in which he calls out to them in their own language!

He will claim that he is in fact a prince who was cursed by Marielle to take the form of a stag, and beseeches the party to help in lifting his affliction. He will not speak of his true name, or mention the magic tree - he wants the PCs to think that his ability to speak human speech is related to his "true" identity. He knows the location of Marielle's tower, though he has not gone inside of it and does not know its contents. What he does claim is that the PCs can find a set of antlers in Marielle's tower that, if touched to his skin, should lift the curse.

Should the party believe the "prince's" story and seek out Marielle, they will find that she mainly keeps to herself and has no outward hostilities to them - however, considering how she has set up her operations in the woods so that she is not bothered with meddlesome outsiders, she won't take kindly to intruders. She has a clay golem, inscribed with the orders to protect the tower, that she has constructed to ward off any strangers, and it will accost anyone who attempts to break into the tower. You can feel free to add other challenges you see fit to expand this encounter, or make the tower into a mini-dungeon, at your discretion.

Marielle keeps Barkbrowser's antlers in her workshop where she makes her potions. A skull is set in a niche over the door to the workshop and will scream if any unfamiliar creature attempts to enter the room (DC 10 Arcana check to identify this alarm). Marielle can hear this scream from anywhere in the tower and will come running if it is triggered.

If confronted, Marielle will have no knowledge of ever placing a curse on a prince and will be quite confused by the allegations. She will try to turn the PCs away, growing increasingly frustrated if they persist, but will not initiate violence unless she feels clearly threatened. She has the stats of a mage.

Further Developments

If the PCs return the antlers to Barkbrowser, they will of course do nothing - he just wanted to look at them. He doesn't care about any acts of theft or violence they may have had to perform to retrieve them - he's a deer, after all, and is hardly concerned with the notion of civilized morality. He's just happy to have his antlers back.

If the party was cheated into such deeds, there will of course be consequences. If Marielle is still alive, she will likely be displeased with the party for disrupting her research and interfering with her studies, and she may seek revenge. Alternatively, if she dies, her relatives or acquaintances may become enemies of the party. And the excuse that they were tricked by a talking deer likely won't hold up in the courts.

Of course, the PCs may wish to research why exactly there was a talking deer there in the first place, if he really wasn't a cursed prince. This pursuit may lead them to the enchanted tree, which could well be useful to them in their adventures. Barkbrowser himself might also become a recurring NPC, especially if the party decides to seek him out - a deer who can speak any language could prove the center of a useful spy network.