Infinite Automaton

2024 Secret Santicorn

A late (sorry!) secret santicorn for gearsofascii of blobbing, who requested 1d10 strange events to see or experience while adventuring. I wrote these assuming they might be used as traveling encounters in an area with some kind of foliage but tried to keep them somewhat generic as events.

  1. Wizard falls from sky. Tropentus Blin, studying the elemental plane of earth found himself on the bad side of some gargoyles after taking some stone tablets with elemental secrets. He attempted to teleport away hastily and found himself midair with the gargoyles pursuing through the portal behind him. He appears casting a spell to cushion his landing and is followed a round later by 2d4 gargoyles. Tropentus is 3rd level, uninjured, and has 2 random spells remaining. The gargoyles wish to recover him dead or alive, along with the tablets he carries.
  2. Mercenary company shepherds undead. Their banner is a black stripe on bright orange, flying over two carts with cages for prisoners concealed by heavy tarps near a destroyed campsite. The mercenaries previously released the undead on a camp of highwaymen as a "test" and are now currently struggling at returning a number of skeletons and zombies into the carts with spears and catchpoles. Their captain goes by Maser and has an unhealthy fascination with polearms. There are 4d6 beings here, the two lowest dice representing the number of mercenaries, and the two highest representing the number of undead.
  3. Abducted by a cloud. While only a short distance from the player characters (~100 feet), a merchant caravan's cart suddenly gets jerked into the sky by a giant hook, to the dismay of its accompanying riders. The hook comes down without warning from the sky, its true origin concealed by a large cloud. A giant, living atop the cloud, has just caught a new prize.
  4. Double Moon. Regardless of the current time of day, the moon rises (producing a second moon if necessary). This moon is always full, lacks any recognizable pattern of craters, and is slightly more bluish than expected. All animals immediately panic, and once calmed remain on a hair trigger until the moon's disappearance 12 hours later.
  5. A star falls nearby. It streaks across the sky with a screech before impacting about a mile away. The impact site is a crater 50 feet across and 10 feet deep at its deepest. At its center is a 3 foot diameter hole that extends down an additional 100 feet. At that hole's bottom is a roughly head-sized, roughly conical meteorite of similar appearance to obsidian that acts as a strong magnet, worth 10,000gp. The crater will attract the attention of the nearest settlement within 1d4 days.
  6. A horde of snakes appear. The group is comprised of hundreds of various unrelated kinds of snakes, which travel towards then past the party without issue. They continue onwards towards what seems like nothing in particular, before eventually reaching a large rock with a split in it that the wind whistles through.
  7. All nearby leaves fall. All visible foliage withers abruptly, shrivelling before falling in a matter of seconds, animals fleeing as a result. A nearby hunter has unintentionally slain a spirit in the guise of a boar, and with its dying breath it has cursed the area within 1 mile to be barren for the next decade.
  8. Wizard time travels to meet someone other than you. In a blinding flash of light accompanied by no sound, the great sorcerer Merriweather of ages past (so he claims) appears. He plans to meet a nearby ruler/leader at this very time, at this very spot, but is disappointed to find out that they are in fact not here and now. Surely the (formerly) young leader has gotten lazy or forgotten their deal, and is now useless to Merriweather and his plan to shape the future to his own ends. He refuses to share his plans with those of no import to him apart from the fact that they are herbological in nature. Merriweather is 4th level, has 4 random spell scrolls on him (one of which takes the reader back to Merriweather's own time, effectively removing them from the game), as well as assorted notes on both current local plants as well as extremophilic plants.
  9. Spore geyser erupts. A piece of nearby ground, already bulging oddly, begins to crack as it continues to inflate slowly before something finally gives and a great cloud of purplish particulate erupts. A belowground network of Purple Popcap has finally matured to the point where it has split the ground to propagate its spores. They will linger in a couple-hundred-foot area for a time before eventually being dispersed by wind. Purple Popcap consumes underground root networks until reaching a sufficient size, then produces inert gases to build up pressure underground and propogate itself. If inhaled, the spores quickly induce nausea and cloud the vision, with symptoms enduring for 1d4 hours after exposure. The spores can be distilled into a potent poison inducing vomiting and permanent almost-blindness.
  10. Flash firestorm. A plume of flame in the near-distance burns out the surrounding area in an abrupt conflagaration that is gone almost (but not quite) as fast as it started. A pheonix has died and regenerated in the plume's epicenter, where it will remain frail as a newborn for only the next few minutes before flying off to find a new nest nearby. It was killed by several well-to-do huntsmen, now charred almost beyond recognition in their attempt to retrieve a feather for their leader's cap.