Encounter Pages: Sabotage


Sabotage
Environment: Coastal village
Encounter Level: 2 (600 XP)

Area: This encounter takes place in a small fishing village. Fishing is the primary economy of the area and a number of families vie for dominance of the market.

Reefclaw stock art by Gary Dupuis.
Available at Rpgnow from Purple Duck Games.
Situation: Recently the Haresn family has fallen on a bit of bad luck. Repeated the traps they have left over night for crabs have been destroyed or severed from their lines. Other times nets they use for collecting fish have been cut with scissor-like cuts. Last night their supply yard was hit by vandals who damaged more of the crab traps, poisoned one of their guard dogs and strangled the other. The family is getting desperate as they have not had a good catch in several weeks. The patriarch of the family suspects foul play on behalf of one of the other families and is seeking to hire adventurers to stake out the supply yard and catch the saboteurs.
   The primary problem the task before the player characters is that the saboteurs are not human at all but instead a pair of reefclaws that have recently moved into the region. They consider the area that the Haresn family fishes to be territorial waters and have been staging nighttime raids on the fishermen’s equipment to discourage them from fishing in this area. Each day, the reefclaws secretly observe the town and the supply yard. Once they have established the pattern of any guards, they slip into the supply yard, destroy everything they can and slip away unseen.

Complications: (Optional)
1) As written there are only two reefclaws, but a school of reefclaws can typically have two to five members. If the characters are having a particularly easy time with the aberrations, back-up could always arrive.
2) The reefclaws infestation could be the result of sabotage. One of the other families hired a number of trappers in the northlands to capture the reefclaws and relocate them into this area. The reefclaws, angered by their captivity are intent on destroying any fishing gear they locate.
3) Beyond having more reefclaws the difficulty of this encounter could be increased by adding the giant or advanced template to the reefclaws or further retooling them by adding a class level in rogue to each.

Rewards: The reefclaws collect no treasure of their own, but characters who successfully destroy the menace of the reefclaws will receive 50 gp from the Haresn family as well a 50% discount on high quality fishing gear used by the Haresn family.

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