Editing Tales of the Scarecrow (section)

===The Farmhouse===

The outside of the farmhouse has a pump that produces disgusting, thick water. If drunk, the drinker is infested with parasites, which first make them require twice as much nourishment each day, and then, after two weeks, start showing up in their urine (ew) and sap 1d3 points from a physical [[Ability Score]]. Again, surprisingly, given the author's prior work, it ''can'' be fought off by a player's immune system, but failure to do so makes these losses permanent. There're also a lot of dead and eaten horses lying around, riddled with puncture wounds from the tentacles, whose saddle bags contain a bill of sale for Richard Fox, which is supposed to somehow tie this module into an existing campaign.

Inside, there's a lot of dilapidated furniture, two corpses, and a single living man. This man, Richard Fox, has, naturally, given the author, resorted to cannibalism to scrape by, but only after his friends all died from natural causes, and is otherwise a surprisingly decent person, if obviously rattled by his experience and desperate for food and water. If given provisions, he admits to being wealthy, and offers to pay a reward if they can somehow escape. He also admits to having purchased a number of magic items nearby, though he doesn't know what they do, and while he won't pick a fight while trapped by murder-corn, he will press legal charges if the PCs steal any of the cool magic items he paid handsomely for. He is also, equally surprisingly, a friend to the end, and will attack the PCs or attempt to undermine their efforts to escape, no matter the consequences to himself, if they try to loot or desecrate the bodies of his dead friends.

Both friends ''do'' have a lot of valuable swag on them, and one of them was a thief, unbeknownst to his friends, who'd swallowed his ill-gotten gains - though how the PCs are supposed to figure that out from the fact that he's chipped a tooth on a gold piece is beyond the scope of this article, to say nothing of opening him up like a freshly caught trout in front of his traumatized buddy to get at the loot in his guts. There's also a valuable harpsichord in the farmhouse, inexplicably untouched by time and the elements. It's worth a lot, and while a skilled player plays it, the tentacle monster won't attack, so it ''can'' theoretically be a way out... but, again, how the players are supposed to figure that out is unknown. ''Especially'' since, if an ''unskilled'' player plays that harp, it whips the monster into a frenzy instead, giving it extra attacks.

In addition to a couple of books, Richard Fox's magical swag includes a neat magic sword that hits all foes as if they were armor class 14, but on a total attack roll of 16 or 17 hits a random other target instead, rerolling the damage on such a strike and "banking" it until the next attack if no other targets are in range. The book, with uncharacteristic generosity, describes a few ways which players can turn this to their advantage without ordering the GM to punish their creativity. That said, again, taking it means robbing ol' Richard, who won't be crazy about having his magical swag swiped after paying a fortune for this sword and those books.

You know, so far, while unnecessarily cruel and weird, this module's almost been tame, by Raggi standards. Maybe ol' James is mellowing out a little?

Oh, hey, Richard Fox ''also'' has two books in his possession.