
When entering a new city, you see blue flames flickering over the tops of buildings further in. If you approach them, you’ll find a courtyard filled with people. They’re yelling angrily while watching a metal column engraved with runes and surrounded by magical, blue flames.
Nearby, and held by a large group of heavily armed, dour men in dark leather armor is a tiefling. He is struggling and pleading loudly, looking at a woman in the crowd and begging that she knows him; he would never hurt little Eril. She turns away from him.
At that point, a robed man amongst the armored group magically moves the tiefling to the stake; binding him with chains. The tiefling begins screaming horribly as the flames envelop him, and another man in the same dark armor and a hat steps forward; pointing a loaded crossbow at him.
He yells questions at the tiefling like ‘What have you done to the children?’, ‘What are your devellish plans?’, ‘Do you want to bring more demonkind here?’, ‘Did you turn the child into a demon with some foul ritual? Sacrifice his soul, perhaps?’, and ‘All this suffering will end as soon as you confess.’
After the tiefling was moved the group of men will have formed a protective ring around the stake, holding the eager crowd away from the tiefling and their leader.
Eventually the screaming tiefling will confess to killing Eril to collect his soul, and the man will shoot the arrow into his head; killing him. The crowd will yell joyfully about the tiefling scum, while the woman the he pleaded to will be silently crying.
Then, an old man will approach you in the crowd. He’ll say in hushed tones that you look like outsiders, and he needs your help—would you follow him to somewhere more private?
If you do, he’ll lead you to an abandoned alleyway, and quietly explain that he can’t tell this to anyone else in the town because they’ve been overcome by the beliefs of those zealots. But the tieflings aren’t responsible for the missing children. He’s a junk collector, the man continues, and he goes through the sewers regularly to find goods to clean and sell.
That’s how he found the missing children, alive—but locked in some kind of cell, guarded by the zealots in the sewers. The townsfolk have killed many tieflings already, and he needs you to get the children out to prove the remaining tieflings innocent and put an end to all this madness.
WHAT’S HAPPENING? A tiefling hunter named Joram and his zealots have come to this city. The hunter has stolen children and locked them in the sewers; blaming their disappearances on the tieflings, so they can purge the city of their presence.
Joram believes that all of them are inherently evil due to their demonic heritage, and that the ends justify the means. To him, they cannot be trusted—even if they may seem like upstanding citizens, at some point their wickedness always shows. They are masters of deception, and you cannot trust a single one of them.
Note that if you have a tiefling in your party, as you enter the town the people will whisper while shooting them glances. They will be afraid or angry, and mostly avoid talking to them.
christopher cochran
2021-10-16 02:26:45 +0000 UTC