Setting: Any urban market.
Set-up: (Creating a relationship between the party or a party member and a merchant.)
One stall vendor is particularly impressed by the party's recent achievements. They offer each a gift as well as a permanent price discount on adventuring gear and rations. Their products are of excellent quality.
The vendor is honest, trustworthy, polite and keen to help. There is no detectable deception on their part. Any enquiries will confirm the vendor is well liked and trusted.
If useful, the vendor can be single and appear particularly interested in a party member.
- If the party are on a quest, the vendor states they will use their extensive contacts in the town/city to seek out some useful information for them and arranges a meeting the following afternoon.
- If between quests, the Vendor states they are expecting some particularly good stock to be delivered and will offer the party first refusal.
Encounter: As the party make their way to the agreed rendezvous, they notice the streets are filling with guards; all marching towards the market. Their way is blocked at the entrance. No-one is allowed past the cordon but they can see what is going on.
Guards proceed to round up about twenty people (including their vendor), chain them up and march them off. Guards refuse to provide any information about what is going on.
'That's the third time this year' a nervous local informs them quietly. 'They did the same thing back in the spring, and before that on midwinter's day.'
'No-one knows where they are taken to or why. But none of the people they take have been seen since.'
Happy Gaming,
-Stolph
