Friday Encounter: The Sacrifice

This encounter's another one to subvert your players' expectations and present them with a moral quandry to solve. It works best on the road, since the PCs should ideally be unfamiliar with the local area. However, you may wish to plant some rumors in nearby settlements so that the players know what to expect - or at least they think they do.

While traveling, the party comes upon a small village where a strange ceremony is taking place. Four young men and women are parading through the streets bedecked in flowers and accompanied by guards, yet despite the festive scene, the townspeople are all watching silently with grim expressions. Even the youths on parade appear to be nervous, avoiding eye contact; some can even be heard sobbing. If the PCs decide to ask the villagers what's going on, they'll explain in hushed tones:

The village is in debt to a cult of demon worshipers, after an inhabitant of the town sold his soul generations ago. Now, the cult demands a sacrifice of four of the town's youths every spring, or the forces of Hell will be displeased and seek to collect their bargain by force. The sacrifice has happened every year for as long as anyone can remember, and no one has dared to defy the cult for fear of the consequences that may bring. Although the townsfolk regret having to sign away the lives of their children, they see it as their unfortunate duty to bear, and don't dare to question it. In particular, one girl, Katrin, is the beloved daughter of the town innkeeper, Rikerd Gerst. If the PCs stop at the inn, he will be visibly stricken with grief.

Naturally, this all sounds like a setup for the PCs to put a stop to the cult. If they ask around, the townspeople will give them directions to the site of the sacrifice a short distance away. If you like, you can spin this out into a full-fledged dungeon, or if you'd like to keep things simple, it could just be an altar in a grove.

Either way, if the PCs choose to pursue the sacrificial victims, they will find them gathered around a raised, stepped platform topped by an altar, with robed cultists watching silently. Enter Action Time at this point, and track the number of rounds that pass. The altar is a terrain feature with the Three-Quarters Cover, High Ground, Ledge, and Steep tags.

There are eight cultists gathered - six stand chanting in a circle, while one leads the victims, and an eighth waits by the altar with a curved sacrificial dagger. Each round, the cultist leading the victims will walk them higher up the steps to the altar. If the PCs show themselves, the six chanting cultists will attempt to hold them off, but the other two will not cease their duties.

Starting at the third round, if the cultist leading the victims and the dagger-bearer are still alive and not incapacitated, one of the victims will be laid on the altar, where the dagger-bearer slits their throat, killing them instantly. From then on, these two cultists will kill one victim per round as long as they are alive and not otherwise engaged in combat. If one of them dies or is incapacitated, and there is a cultist in the group that can fill the position, that cultist will attempt to disengage from combat and take up their role. This happens even if the PCs are an obvious threat. If this happens, the timer pauses for one round, but resumes from where it was left the next round. If all four victims are killed, the two cultists join in the fight.

If the PCs manage to defeat the cultists and return the youths to their families, the townspeople will be grateful, rewarding each PC with 100 GP per victim rescued safely. However, they will still wonder with noticeable anxiety what will happen now that the ritual has failed.

As a matter of fact, their fears are warranted. If the blood of less than four innocents was spilled on the altar that night, the pact is broken, and the sacrificial altar collapses into a hellmouth - a portal to the pits of Hell itself. The terrain around the altar warps, with the ground becoming parched and cracked and the trees gnarled, storms crackle overhead, and demons pour forth from the pit, laying waste to anything in their path. The PCs may well have traded one problem for a bigger one - and they might need to take greater measures to seal the portal they've created.