Rules, Regulations, Encounters, and Ideas: Those Pesky Travellers!

If you play the Pathfinder RPG, you’ve probably heard about the Varisians. Not the folks who live in places like Korvosa or Magnimar, but the ones who live in their brightly-painted wagons and wander around, chasing the will of Desna as their Harrow cards tell them where to go.

Perhaps you’ve heard that most Varisian wanderers are the gentle, outgoing, and friendly people they act like. However, there are a few (known as the Sczarni) who really do fulfill that dangerous stereotype of the traveller (often negatively known as a gypsy) who will offer you food and drink and then, while you’re sleeping, take everything you have. Not to mention the hundreds of other scams and illegal means of making money that exist. And remember, these guys live between the cities, not in them. Who do you call when the thieves aren’t in a single area but spread across an entire region of Golarion (or another setting you favor)?

Some of you may be wondering how to go about incorporating travellers into your games, whether as flair or as storylines in and of themselves. Always wanting to be helpful, here are a few ideas!

 

Traveller Caravan Break Down

The PCs come across a group of traveller caravans stuck on the side of the road. Up front, one of the wagons has lost a wheel, and the men of the group (at least, the stronger ones) are trying to lift the wagon so they can replace it. To add issues, make it so they don’t have the necessities for a repair; ask the PCs to help either craft the needed part or run to the nearest town with one of their youths (to make sure he gets there) to buy one. In the meantime, the women and youths are dancing and singing and cavorting.

Which group will the PCs be drawn to? Perhaps that young girl with the red hair and striking green eyes is interested in one of the PCs, but maybe she’s only seducing him so that her brother can rob him blind while they “cavort.”

 

It’s in the Cards

One of the elders is a card reader who offers to read the PCs their future in exchange for a few coins. Drop an important clue to their current (or next) adventure as part of the reading. Or, if the traveller is just a con man, provide a false clue intended to lead the characters into a trap or one that will leave them waiting for a shoe to drop that never will.

 

The Blame Game

A murder has taken place just outside the circle of wagons: a visiting noblewoman claims one of the women of the caravan is responsible for the death of her husband-to-be. In reality, she poisoned him during their card-reading/visit/dance, and he (conveniently) died while the woman in question was chatting him up. Will the murderer get away with it, or will the party find the poison ring she threw away (and was found by one of the youths of the caravan)?

 

“Your Kind Aren’t Welcome Here!”

A caravan has been stopped and is being harassed by guards at the entrance to a small town. The guards are exceptionally rude, as they demand to physically check the inside of every single wagon — an effort that will take them long into the night when the gates will be closed, keeping the caravan from entering at all.

Are they being rude because they distrust the travellers, or is there something else going on?

Will the guards “find” illegal goods in the wagons? Were they there beforehand?

Are some of the travellers on the take, hoping to deliver their goods into the city and being caught in their efforts?

Take it a step further — perhaps the travellers are parked outside a city gate, refusing to pay the toll, but are going in and out throughout the day, buying and selling within the city. The guards think something is fishy, but don’t know what, so they ask the PCs to investigate. Perhaps the travellers are in league with the local Thieves’ Guild and (while the caravan distracts the guards) the real business is going in through the sewer tunnels.

 

Short Arm of the Law

A band of travellers has come to a town to ask for help. One of them has been kidnapped by bandits, and the travellers don’t have the money to pay the ransom or the military power to face the threat. The local sheriff, unwilling to risk himself or his men for “wanderers” who will likely end up somewhere else a week from now and not appreciate what he and his men are being asked to do, asks the party to step in.

 

Unwelcome Guests

A farmer comes to the PCs, demanding they help him deal with a group of “hooligans” who keep destroying a part of his farm lands and tearing up the ground. He thinks it’s (insert monster of appropriate CR here), but it is actually a group of travellers who have camped on the edge of his farmland. They are foraging for food while they wait for their matron to tell them where to go next. A year before, the same farmer slew one of their youths when he slept with the farmer’s daughter, and now they are back, causing issues because they haven’t forgotten the slight.

How do the PCs resolve the issue? Diplomatically, or with blade’s drawn?

Which side do they choose?

 

The War on Drugs

I once ran an adventure where the PCs needed a favor from the town sheriff of Ilsurian (in Varisia, no less.) In exchange for the assistance, the sheriff tasked the party with tracking down and destroying a Sczarni-run drug trade that was corrupting and killing the town’s youth.

Since Ilsurian sits on Lake Syrantula, I had the Sczarni based out of a sunken city on the lake’s southern edge of the lake. It was in a swampy area that was only accessible by canoe (large boats getting tangled in the reeds and barely submerged undergrowth.). Once the PCs tracked the Sczarni dealers (by waiting until dark and then following them as they crossed the lake), they had to make their way across sunken pilings, slender boards offering precarious paths over the silty water, and through partially-collapsed stone buildings filled with all sorts of swamp-monsters (including an Assassin Vine and a Yellow Musk Creeper.)

After making I through the maze, they found themselves in the one building that still stood: an old stone farmhouse with a second floor was just above the water, which the Sczarni were using as a drug lab. Add in a “pet” alligator and a couple of “escape canoes” at the back of the farmhouse, and you’ve got an interesting swamp-based race across the boards, characters falling in (and risking piranha or other hungry water-based predators) and, potentially, a canoe race to catch the villains as they try to escape (while their lab burns, of course).

 

Only the First Taste is Free

In another adventure, the Sczarni had their claws in the prostitution trade in Korvosa, keeping the girls hooked on drugs while they peddled their wares. A bit close to home, perhaps, but it made the players feel vindicated when they finally found the leader and took him and his entire crew down before taking the addicted prostitutes to a local temple for treatment.

 

And in Conclusion …

Overall, the Varisian people are a good people — friendly, caring, and outgoing. They really do want to celebrate life with whomever they meet. It’s the 5% who are Sczarni that have ruined their reputation and made it so that none of them are openly welcomed in any town or city in Varisia. Play up the latter travellers as incorrigible bastards, and you’ve got villains you can use and reuse. After all, like a hydra’s heads, you can take one down, but that just means two more will grow in its place.

Good gaming!

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