What does scare you in the swamps?

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Olly
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Post by Olly »

I was walking my dogs down some local marshland once, and came face-to-face with a rather annoyed wild boar.

That rather put the frighteners up me a bit. I've heard how they can go nuts on you if you upset them, and that damned 'Ferocity' rule in the Monster Manual did little to calm my fears. :wink:

Anyway, luckily, it just looked at me, sniffed the air a bit and walked away.

Not a spectacularly interesting story, by any means, but maybe it'd be helpful for somethin'.
Last edited by Olly on Fri Dec 16, 2005 9:48 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by ScS of the Fraternity »

I don't know, Olly, that's pretty hairraising.
Boar are deadly little suckers, more akin to a canonball on legs. I've heard that even cougars and bears are afraid to take one on. Worse still, they're as ornery as hell. With a dog at your side, it wouldn't take much to agitate the razorback into attacking.
Worse still, wild pigs tend travel in packs (or at least do in areas that are still wild). One squeal and you might have a while sounder on your ears.
Worse yet, pigs are omnivores. Which means that if they did the deed, there wouldn't be any more evidence other than a coughed-up shoe.

Whats that line from "Snatch"?
A single adult can go through fifty pounds of meat and bone in a single sitting. Hence the phrase, greedy as a pig.
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Olly
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Post by Olly »

Thankyou for making me feel very lucky, but also slightly reticent to go down to the marshes again, ScS. :wink:
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Post by Fido »

On a side note, I used drownlings once and feel that they are very efficient and very fun to play with. (p.47 in Denizens of Dread) They're excellent for swamp areas.
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Post by ScS of the Fraternity »

Olly wrote:Thankyou for making me feel very lucky, but also slightly reticent to go down to the marshes again, ScS. :wink:
If I can make one person afraid to leave their home, then I've done my job.
Fido wrote:On a side note, I used drownlings once and feel that they are very efficient and very fun to play with. (p.47 in Denizens of Dread) They're excellent for swamp areas.
Yep, drownlings are scary little freaks. How did your PCs deal with them? I always thought of them as too deadly - once a PC dives in after the "drowning girl", he or she is pretty much toast.
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Post by Fido »


Yep, drownlings are scary little freaks. How did your PCs deal with them? I always thought of them as too deadly - once a PC dives in after the "drowning girl", he or she is pretty much toast.

Been a while, but they managed to scare them away with a pistol they had, I think.
They thought it was pretty cool and one of them got really scared of drowning when his character got entangled under water. They managed to cut him loose though.
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Post by alhoon »

Wooo! ! !

So we have (I mixed some of your stories/ideas together):

A bogeyman (DT&DL) or a hag that stalks the swamps for children that became too dirty. And yes, Children are really afraid of this kind of thing in a young age, so in Ravenloft a hag may come to existance just from this story.

A swampy river-patch. All the houses are empty as though their residents disappeared suddenly. The nearer one gets to the shore, the more musquitoes can be heard buzzing... And there has been a lost one in the village that is mortified at the sound of a single musquito. When you reach the sore, you can see strange grass tufts that if you pull them... they are the hair of those that came there to investigate before you and they are completely sucked out of blood... And then a swarm of musquitoes attacks accompanied by evil fey.

bio-lumenscent organisms that make you feel safe and comfortable and believe that it is cool to swim in them while you get closer and closer to murky holes when you can drown and to hostile alligators (or any other dangerous terrain). You are always considered surprised if attacked while swimming in these organisms, unless you make a will save at the time you get in them.

A treacherous kind of sentient dogs, working for the snake loa that wants to destroy humanity. They act as common dogs for a time fooling their masters. They have the ability to call on the wildlife of the swamps within 100' radius and make it hostile towards their "master", leading him to death. And it works mostly because humans think dogs are alwayes loyal...
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Post by Gonzoron of the FoS »

alhoon wrote:bio-lumenscent organisms that make you feel safe and comfortable and believe that it is cool to swim in them while you get closer and closer to murky holes when you can drown
heheh... always trust an RL DM to come up with something sinister from something innocuous. :) I like it. BTW, for anyone curious about what the heck I'm talking about, check out www.biobay.com. The pictures don't do it justice, sadly.
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Post by alhoon »

gonzoron wrote: heheh... always trust an RL DM to come up with something sinister from something innocuous. :) I like it. BTW, for anyone curious about what the heck I'm talking about, check out www.biobay.com. The pictures don't do it justice, sadly.
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Post by Korath »

I was always affraid to get stuck in the mud up to my armpits and then having the insects slowly devour me.
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Post by alhoon »

Ouch... change this with the musquito scenario.

People are sucked up to the armpits and immobilized (like grappled by a grave elemental) as crawling bugs and musquitoes start suffocating them and eating them inside out. The victim slowly goes deeper in the mad until only its hair are visible.
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Post by The Lesser Evil »

There's always been a revulsion for insects and bugs as carriers of disease. Mosquitoes are known for carrying a host of dangerous diseases- malaria. etc. What if they carried some sort of zombie plague?
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Post by alhoon »

Thanks Lesser Evil...
I was looking for an adventure idea for tonight :)

(It goes to the D20 thread as the game is generic D&D)

On subject: Fraternity, while you're working on dread possibilities for Sournage, please note that many people have mentioned mosquitoes/plague in this thread.
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Post by Undead Cabbage »

It's semi-aquatic.

In all other terrain, you can see what your feet are stepping on. If the water in swamp land was clear, it wouldn't be so frightening. When in a swamp, if you are either aquatic or semi-aquatic, you effectively have an expansive form of cover which can be either miles away or directly next to the players.

Taking this up a notch, say one of the PCs is dragged into the water. Not only does the PC have his enemy to worry about, but also running out of breath. Being underwater also complicates attacking your foe, unless you are physically 'water-dynamic'.

Taking this up another notch: a swamp is full of the unknown. Because there is so much cover, and because swamps are known for their bioloogical diversity, you don't know what is hiding in the local flora. When I take a step in Souragne, I don't know if my tendons will be chewed out by a aquatic, flesh eating zombie and that gave me some nasty disease, or if a dire-crocodile will pull me under and rip me apart limb from limb, or if I will be sucked under and choked to death by lethal quicksand. Only the GM knows...
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Post by Jasper »

One word-

Leeches....

*shutter*

Thier big bloated bodies gorging on your blood...
Swarming around ataching themselves to your bare skin....
Never knowing they are thier untill you feel faint and notice the blood flowing down your leg....

*Does the willy shake*

Maybe add a random encounter in the swamps that anyone swimming has a 20% chance of having a leech attach itself to a sesnitive spot every other round. A high spot check is needed to notice. For every ten leaches you gain you loose 1 temporary point of Con untill they are all removed. However removing all of them leave you bleeding and prone t oall sorts of swamp diseases.
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