Welcome wayfarers to a little pre-Thanksgiving snack; a few weeks ago, I cooked up this big list of ideas for encounters that could happen out in the Wilds. With the final polishing work on the Liberation of Sliberberg, I could not do anything with it, but with the editing, revisions, and art generation of the Liberation of Sliberberg. I decided I wanted to work on shorter posts that I could crank out in a day or two for a couple months. Without further ado I present the first of these encounters, the Bickering Wolfpack

The Bickering Wolfpack

The players travel along one of the few safe roads through the wilds, far away from any town. It is currently a sunny day, and the forest is deceptively peaceful; read the following.

It is a sunny day out in the wilds. The light filters down through the trees and gently tickles your body. The awakened birds above have decided to put on an opera, and you can hear the soprano wheeling away above your head. Suddenly, there is a rustling from the underbrush, and grey lupine shapes emerge in the shadows. Their eyes gleam with intelligence, and their mouths curl into what looks like knowing smirks. The show above you falls silent. The big wolf in the lead snarls, “Spread out! Don’t let them get away—we’ll decide who gets the honor of the first kill.”

Most animals in the Feengrenze are awakened, a necessity in a world where whimwhirls can leave you with extra legs or missing a mouth entirely.

The Greypaws. The pack of wolves sizing up the players is no exception. They call themselves the Greypaw clan, consisting of the following members.

• Rock is the leader of the Greypaw clan. He is big, muscular, and very proud of his abilities. Intimidation checks made against him are made with disadvantages.
• Maple is Rock’s mate. She is lean and has a silvery coat. She is calm but protective of her mate, daughter, and sister.
• Heather: Rock and Maple’s daughter. This is her first hunt, and she is eager to prove herself.
• Rock’s younger brother, Pine, is a brutish bully who mindlessly follows his older brother’s lead. Deception checks made against him are made with advantage.
• Crag: Rocks brother and littermate; he is a hothead who is jealous of his brother’s position in the pack and always looks to knock him down a peg. Persuasion checks to incite him to anger are made with advantage.
• Holly: Rock and Crag’s sister and littermate; she always tries to incite her siblings to blows, much to Maple’s displeasure. Deception checks made against her are made with disadvantage.
• Snow: Maple’s sister and Crag’s mate. She is a timid and nervous she-wolf prone to second-guessing Rock and jumping at her own shadow. She is Pine’s favorite victim. Intimidation checks made against her are made with advantage.

Rising tension. The encounter starts with the Greypaw clan slowly circling the players while commenting on how tasty particular players look, using descriptive phrases like the short one with the metal clothes or the skinny one with the stick to refer to particular player characters. Rock will then call out to his clanmates, telling them which player characters. However, Snow will hesitate to attack the player character chosen for her. This causes Pine to call out, “Maple responds to Pine’s jab at her sisters by shouting, “Pick on someone your own size, Pine! Oh wait—you can’t!”. After this exchange, the adult wolves start to bicker with each other as Heather watches.

The argument. The players can use the distraction to attack, sneak away with a DC eight stealth check, or, if they are feeling particularly devious, egg on the wolves so that they stay bickering. They can egg on the wolves with good roleplaying or a DC ten Deception, Intimidation, or Persuasion checks. Players can also make a DC 15 insight check to determine what checks to make against each wolf, as described above. It is up to you to decide the direction the encounter will take if the players decide to let the family drama play out. Still, some suggestions are to have Rock, Pine, and Crag fight it out with Maple desperately trying to break up the brothers, Crag storms off, and the remaining wolves are too preoccupied to fight, Snow running away crying after being ganged up by Both Rock and Pine in the argument or all the adult wolves letting the players go after the screaming match ends since the wolves are too tired to fight.

Heather’s change of heart. If the argument continues for more than a few minutes, Heather wanders over to the players, looking particularly disappointed about how the hunt is going, and starts a conversation. If the players are nice to Heather, share some food with her, and pass a DC 8 animal handling check or a DC 10 Charisma check, she starts liking the player characters and will even let them pet her. If the player does end up fighting her family, she does not participate and will join the players as a companion. She uses the stat block of a wolf.