Background:
Females who live in villages, and males who are chased away at a young age, only meet for trading and breeding. Soon after the wedding night, the woman lays her fertilized eggs into the man's body. While this on itself will not cause his death, the feeding children will. (A long time ago, they used to lay the eggs into animals, but they became "resistent" and the children died after hatching.)
Adventure beginning:
When the adventurers arrive at one of the black widows village, there's a celebration going on. (A man of that race has just arrived, too, and he will choose his wife that night.) The black widow women would not reject a man of another species and I expect at least one player character to also choose a woman. The next day, they will learn about the eggs...
So, now they have two possibilities: Removing the eggs and get killed respectively kill half the village to be able to escape (removing eggs is considered murder and would result in a death sentence) or not removing the eggs and dying in a painfull way.
My problem:
I don't want the PCs to die (at least not this way), so I'ld like to build them a back door. They may be able to talk their way out and lessening the death sentence to some kind of quest. It should be something more interesting than "find the monsters that are threatening us and kill them", but I couldn't think of anything yet.
Furthermore, you could always just rely on your PC's ability to destroy, wreak havoc, and run.
What we need to know is what your PCs are (race/class), their alignments, and what kind of equipment they've got. Also, What is the CR of these 'Black Widows'?
And in the end what matters most... how ingenious are you PCs? Do the have that "do the unexpected" streak? Or are they more "Chase the Plot Hook!" types?
Well, if your PCs are smart enough, they'll remove the eggs on the down low, and just tell the 'black widows' that they must be resistant as well. A heal check DC or a Heal spell may be in order to do this, but thats up to you.
It's unlikely that the PCs will learn about this part that early, but thanks to remind me that something unexpected like that could always happen. I tend to forget that. ^^;
Furthermore, you could always just rely on your PC's ability to destroy, wreak havoc, and run.
What we need to know is what your PCs are (race/class), their alignments, and what kind of equipment they've got. Also, What is the CR of these 'Black Widows'?
Human cleric, gnome monk, Tiefling swashbuckler/rogue and a human paladin. All characters are good or neutral aligned.
As for the equipement, I can't tell yet. We rotate DMing and there're still some sessions before the party will reach Xen'drik. By then, they may have an airship (for story reasons not because of high level wealth).
The black widows should be a LA +0 humanoid race that advance by class levels, so I will be able to scale the CR.
And in the end what matters most... how ingenious are you PCs? Do the have that "do the unexpected" streak? Or are they more "Chase the Plot Hook!" types?
My players sometimes have unexpected ideas, but in generel they don't make a DM's job to hard.
The paladin is the group's leader, so even if the PCs manage to avoid the whole egg-situation, he would be fast to offer help anyway.
But that's definitefely a good starting point and during the last few hours I fleshed this out a little bit more:
Some hundred years ago or so, one black widow man, a druid, fell in love to one of the women and it bothered him that this love would lead to his death, so he spent his time doing researches to find replacement egg bearers. Learning some of the giants magic, he finally created a mushroom/plant race.
(I think of these as some kind of biological constructs, their highest desire in life is to be such an egg bearer. They're probably not really a kind of construct as they should be able to reproduce. They also have some natural weapons to defend themselves, maybe spikes or needles.)
When he headed back to his love to tell her the good news, she was shocked. (The use of arcane magic in generel, and giant magic in particular, is absolutely forbidden as it has been the reason for the giants' downfall and the strange things that sometimes still happens on the continent.)
Somehow she died in an accident. The others blamed him for her death and he's got killed without telling anyone about the egg bearer race.
After some years passed, the older egg bearers became uneasy, they felt that something was missing and during certain nights every month they travelled to the nearest black widow village. They just stand there, waiting till dawn, then leaving.
Some more time passed and the egg bearer species became aggressive. They thought someone or something was preventing them from getting what was rightfully theirs. They attack the village's palisade but do not attack the black widows intentionally.
For the black widows, seeing this species attacking the palisade every now and then has become normality. They found out that the easiest way to deal with them is to keep the palisade in a good condition. (Do you know how many predators will lurk around if you have dozens of corpses laying around your village on a regular basis? ;))
That would be the actual situation. If the adventurers follow the egg bearers, they may be able to find the ancient giant laboratory the druid used and studying the notations would reveal for what the plant species was intended and how to control them (just a few basic commands).
So, that's what I have until now. Aside from the missing names (and my English), do you think there's something I should ameliorate?
I thought of this possibility, too, but there's one problem: If this way exists, why don't all the men just catch replacement egg bearers themselves?
A few ideas: Maybe the replacement requires difficult to obtain magical plants. Perhaps the Black Widows take offense to the procedure, and lash out against those who attempt it. Maybe finding a suitable replacement is difficult, as the incubation period is short and the distance to a nearby town long.
So, that's what I have until now. Aside from the missing names (and my English), do you think there's something I should ameliorate?
It looks fine. The egg bearer race removes some of the dillemas otherwise incurred, but I'm sure they'll have plenty of time to mull over them before the solution is uncovered.
Just in case that the player of our "don juan" type cleric tells me that he's doing something to prevent a pregnancy of the woman and the Tiefling is not in the mode for an adventure, I thought about letting a black widow couple use my own character (a spellscale wizard) as an unwilling replacement host. In this scenario, the eggs would not be children of any of the PCs, but removing would still be considered murder.