A child from a small village went missing overnight, and the locals have been searching since dawn without finding a trace. The party can ask around and piece together what happened, but the most useful information comes from a nervous farmer who followed the tracks into the woods before losing them at the tree line. He didn’t go any further. With a druid or ranger in the party, the trail picks back up quickly enough, and it becomes clear the child is being carried, not dragged, and that whoever took her knew where they were going.
The urgency is real. Local legend holds that a werewolf bite turns its victim on the next midnight following the abduction, and the party is already behind. The cave isn’t a long trek, but it’s not a short one either, and the moon is rising. They’ll need to move.
The wrinkle is that the werewolf is the village elder, the person who organized the search party and has been standing in the middle of the crowd all day looking as worried as anyone else. He’s been managing the condition for years, and most of the villagers know it or at least suspect it, because he’s done enough for the community that they’ve chosen to look the other way. That complicates the rescue considerably. The party can save the child without the village elder dying, but it takes more than swords to pull it off.
Party Level: 3-6. Make sure the party has access to silver or magical weapons, or the werewolf fight becomes a problem with no solution.
World: Any
Rules-set: Originally designed for 5e but works in OSR equally well.
If this made your session better, buying me a coffee keeps the Vault stocked.
