The Curious Collector of Redwillow Forest
The Curious Collector of Redwillow forest is a fiction one-shot ran by Felix.
Scrim (played by Rhu)
Keffos
Lucy Fernlight
Daisy
Party
Synopsis
The oneshot begins with the party deep in The Redwillow Forest after having completed a quest. They quickly realize that they have become lost and the sun is about to set any moment. The party discusses setting up a camp for the night, but as darkness closes around them creatures of the forest begin to hungrily watch them. They see many creatures with the faces and feathers of an owl but the body of a snake watching and waiting for the party to go to sleep. Concluding that it would be very dangerous to sleep outside, the party starts walking toward the lights of a conveniently located manor that did not appear to be there just a few minutes prior. As the party reaches the manor they notice a strange symbol on the door that does not belong to any known family or organization. They knock and a tall, strange looking person who introduces himself as “The Collector” greets them and insists they come in to rest for the night. He assures them that he does not consider this a favor and the party owes him nothing in return, they simply wish to keep them safe for the night and send them where they belong the next day. When the party asks what it is that he collects, he tells them his collection is made of interesting creatures from across various environments and even from different planes. He also tells the party that his manor is open to those passing through the forest who want to see and interact with these creatures. Daisy and Lucy are extremely excited to see the beings he collects, and the Collector assured the party they will be able to look at the collection the next day. The collector feeds the party dinner and leaves a pet snake behind to show them to their room for the night. When they get to their room the party starts to go to bed for the night, leaving Scrim to take first watch in case anything goes wrong and casting a spell on the door to set off an alarm if anyone tries to come in during the night. As Scrim is keeping watch, a magical effect begins to take hold of their body trying to put them to sleep. They manage to stay awake, but in this moment the Collector comes into the room. Daisy, Lucy, and Keffos are so deeply asleep they do not respond to the alarm, and the Collector quickly knocks Scrim unconscious. The next day, the party wakes up in a much smaller room, barely large enough to hold four small beds for them to sleep in. The party quickly determined that their host has attempted to add them into his collection. They figure out that the room they woke up in is the beginning of a dungeon, and there are symbols on the walls that will give them a word that unlocks the door. The symbols are: | || || | _ The party recognizes the symbols as a reference to a collection of paintings, and correctly guesses that the word they need to spell to open the door is “loss.” In the next room of the dungeon, there is nothing except four strange puppets about 40 feet away. They do not react at all until the party goes to move or attack them. As the party begins to move forward, the puppets begin to ask, one at a time, “Would you love me if I was a worm?” One of the puppets is attacked, and when it gets back up off the floor it casts polymorph and turns the offending character into an earthworm. Scrim steps on their friend to deal damage and turn them from an earthworm back to their normal body. The puppets continue to ask the party the same question, and after they are not convinced, the ground begins to shake and a massive purple worm comes up from under the floor. It is extremely upset at the party and charges forward. After defeating the worm, the party goes into a room that is simply an empty hallway with a floor that is glowing softly. No matter how hard they try to move to the other side, once someone walks halfway through the hallway they cannot seem to move forward. After casting dispel magic on the floor, they noticed the right wall seemed to disappear for a moment. Upon investigation, the wall was found to be an illusion and everyone was able to simply step through. As they successfully walked out of their dungeon, they could hear the Collector applauding their performance and congratulating them. The party threatens to kill him, and the only response from the Collector is laughter. Now in a different hallway, the party finds a map of the interactive exhibits. They head to the next room named “Denizens of the Deep” and find a table set up with water breathing potions for patrons to drink so they can freely interact with the creatures in the exhibit. The room they enter is dimly lit and full of water that seems to go very deep down. They also find that the doors to leave the exhibit are enchanted so that patrons are always aware of the nearest exit to them, and they can tell that the nearest exit to them is about 180 feet away and 20 feet under the water. As they enter the water, the party encounters a giant scallop beholder along with four large orange fish that appear to be wearing cowboy hats made of their own scales and eerily human looking teeth. The party begins to fight, but at the end of the first round notice that all the fish below then seem to be swimming away from something massive and dangerous. Lucy goes down during the fight and is brought back to consciousness by Daisy. The fish attempt to hold the party back by biting the nearest person and keeping them held in their mouth. At the end of the second round, the party gets the first glimpse at the creature that is slowly rising from beneath them as they spot a massive tentacle coming up from the depths. During the third round of combat, Daisy expertly summons two giant octopuses. The are able to grab the entire party, including Keffos who is in the mouth of one of the fish, and dash the rest of the way to the exit before the juvenile kraken below them was able to come up to greet them. In the next hallway, the party assesses where they are while catching their breath. From here, they have three rooms they could choose from: “Dragons in a Dungeon, “Behold, the Megoosa!” or “The Terrifying Tarrasque” (which is currently closed as the tarrasque has become increasingly violent and started attacking visitors). The room with the dragons is fairly large, and the room with the Tarrasque is massive, meaning that if the party chooses to go into one of these rooms they will encounter more dangerous beings but also be able to make their way through the manor much faster. After some discussion, the party decides to go through the tarrasque room. Through teamwork, the party becomes invisible and able to fly, and Daisy turns into a giant eagle with Keffos riding on her back so that they will be able to fly even more quickly through the room. Daisy also casts pass without trace to ensure they will be able to sneak through the room undetected. As they enter the room, the party comes face to face with a massive tarrasque, standing only about 40 feet away from the door, glaring and waiting to defend its territory against anyone who wants to enter. The nearest exit in this room is 300 feet away from where they entered. Luckily, though the tarrasque can sense that someone is there, it is unable to pinpoint the location of the party as they successfully sneak into the room. The party then begins to stealthily fly past the tarrasque, and Daisy and Keffos in the lead can see near the exit three baby tarrasque, presumably the reason why the adult began to be so violent and territorial. Daisy, Keffos and Scrim all make it to the exit without incident and wait for Lucy to join them. As Lucy fails a final stealth check, the tarrasque hears her and begins to charge toward her. Thankfully, Lucy is far enough ahead and the party is able to make it through the exit without having to fight the tarrasque. In the next hallway, the party begins to take a short rest as they assess their situation and prepare to make their way through one final exhibit. As they are resting, the Collector once again begins to applaud them, except this time they sound much more agitated than before. A door suddenly appears in the wall, and the Collector emerges and casts power word kill on Lucy. Scrim attempts to counterspell, but the Collector returns the favor. He then throws down a smokescreen and exits through the door he made, which promptly disappears behind them. Shocked by what just happened, Daisy casts revivify on Lucy and the party finished their short rest now more determined than ever to defeat the Collector and burn his entire house to the ground. The last exhibit the party goes through is a choice between “Awe-inspiring Arachnids” and “Big Bugs from Across the Planes”. The party goes into the room (nearest exit 180 feet away), and through a combination of Daisy casting a wall of fire and Scrim casting a wall of wind, they are able to walk through the first 120 feet without incident as swarms of bugs try and fail to attack them. As they near the exit, the party spies three giant mantises. Once the mantises are defeated, the room that is on the other side of the door is a gift shop they passed by as they entered the manor the night before. Trashing the gift shop on their way through, the party makes their way toward where they know the front door of the manor to be. As they exit the gift shop, the party sees the Collector waiting for them with three large snakes and three swarms of bugs ready to help him stop the party from escaping the manor. As the battle begins, Daisy quickly puts up a wall of fire between the snakes and the Collector, dividing the enemy forces. On his turn, the Collector casts Mass Suggestion in the party, commanding them to return to their room. The door to the gift shop behind them glows and transforms into a door that leads into the room the party woke up in at the beginning of the day. Scrim and Lucy fall for the effects of the Collector's spell and spend their first turn returning to the small room. Once Scrim and Lucy have completed the order they were compelled to follow, the full force of the party comes down on their would be captor. Lucy smites the Collector, the rest of the party both dealing damage to the archfey and making quick work of his minions. The Collector attempts to summon a mammoth to help him in the fight, then quickly realizes they are outmatched. As the fight continues, the Collector uses a legendary action to throw up a big cloud of fog, then on his turn casts dimension door to escape the wrath of the adventurers he tried to trap in his home. The party notices the mammoth the Collector summoned disappears and gets the sense that the archfey himself is no longer in the room. The fog is dispelled and it is revealed that he is indeed gone. As the fog lifts and the party is done fighting, they see that where the front door to the manor was the day before, there are now six identical doors, each one giving off an aura of enchantment and illusion magic, with a glyph of warding above each door. The only option is to determine which of the doors is the true exit, as they have seen firsthand how easily the Collector can twist the inside of his manor to trap and confuse them if they would try to pursue him and finish the job. As they open the doors, they find that each one seems to lead back into the redwillow forest, showing an identical seen of trees and sunlight. Scrim is able to dispel the magic on the fifth door, and it seems to still lead into the forest. Keffos throws an item into one of the doorways, and it also appears in the scene behind every door except door number five. The party exits through the fifth door and they are relieved to find themselves truly back in the Redwillow Forest. Back in the forest with plenty of time to make their way out before nightfall, the party begins making good on their promises and set fire to the Collector’s manor. They take a moment to relax and enjoy the catharsis of getting this revenge, and Daisy has her wildfire spirit Aster pass around marshmallows. The party then makes their way back out of the forest having survived a wild ordeal of a day by working together and relying on the strengths of their friends to get through everything that stood in their way, as the brave and capable adventurers of Kauvet are known to do when faced with strange and difficult trials.Trivia
- The Collector is an archfey. While he is not based on any canon archfey, anyone is welcome to use him as inspiration for any real world fey NPCs.
NPCs
Gregal'thriel Bwalsnarfus
(he/him)
- Author of the book "The Curious Collector of Redwillow Forest"
- A human male around 30 years old. He is around five feet tall with long blonde hair, a patchy beard, and big circular glasses.
The Collector
(he/they)
- the fictional archfey who attempts to capture the party and add them to his collection
- Around six and a half feet tall, they have long green hair that looks almost like grass. Their skin looks like it is made of gold glitter, and they have green cat eyes. Their features look vaguely humanoid, but also uncanny, with an extremely plain face and arms that are very thin and seem too long.
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