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Across the last two sessions of my D&D game the group sniffed out treachery in their midst. They'd embarked on an adventure as guards on a caravan transporting high-value goods. On their second night on the road, their first night camping in the wilderness between towns, they were attacked by a pair of worgs.

Worgs are like wolves that are slightly tougher, much smarter (they can learn languages!), and evil.

Fortunately for the caravan, Leoghnie, the toughest warrior in the group, was on watch at the time. She killed one and chased the other off while waking her compatriots.

In the morning the four PCs and their NPC ally, Otonio, compared notes. Otonio had already warned them that "Every thief in Durendal knows about this caravan, so we should expect trouble." Ryuu-Han shared that in chatting with his watch-mate last night he learned that most of the guards were noobs. The crew chief was offering shockingly low pay for this being a conspicuously high-value caravan. Otonio amplified that, explaining that he was asked to provide a few "regular" guards from his household before he surreptitiously hired the PCs instead.

Kiarana decided it was time for some divine assistance. She memorized a few Zone of Truth spells at dawn and called the crew together for a team meeting after breakfast.



Everyone, including the PCs, was quizzed with the same questions about knowledge of the caravan being attacked. All of the hirelings disavowed knowledge or involvement in any treacherous plans. Only the lead merchant, Munetoshi, refused to answer the questions directly. He gave evasive answers and complained repeatedly about the disrespect inherent in the process. "Mutiny," he called it, twice. He tried to leave but well-armed and armored Leoghnie blocked his path.

Although Kiarana cast the spell and started the interrogation, Otonio took over as he was more fleet with words. "Your evasiveness isn't a good look," he explained to his boss, Munetoshi. "Your inability to answer simple, direct questions with a 'No' under the cleric's Zone of Truth spell leads us to the conclusion you made treasonous plans against this mission."



The group decided to take Munetoshi prisoner. Otonio got some ropes from the supply wagon and tied him up. Then Leoghnie's player realized, "Hey, I have Rope Use +6" and said she'd tie him up extra good.

About these pictures: I created the latter two illustrations with Google Gemini. I prompted the AI with a variety of information about the group and the situation. I iterated a few times to try to improve some of the details. Some of those prompts worked, some were ignored or only partly heeded. And some things are just funny, like the fact that each picture contains a person with three arms— and which person it is changes from pic to pic!

After wrapping up my D&D adventure, The Collector's Menagerie. the group said they liked the game and the characters and wanted to adventure more. So I put together an encore adventure. This is what happens next, after capturing— and, since it's D&D, by "capturing" we mean killing— the escaped monsters in the dead guy's mansion.

The monsters escaped after the old guy passed away from natural causes. His household staff did not know how to work his magical talisman to recapture the monsters— or were unable to get to it, as it was guarded by a shape-shifting spider with giant spider minions. And the staff tried to keep the situation hush-hush, avoiding calling for the city guard's brute squad as they were trying to preserve things for the decedent's heirs to arrive from the capital city, Lentria, hundreds of miles away.



The heirs, Fumio and Seigo Asano, arrived a day or two later, landing via teleportation magic. They spent a week in Durendal settling affairs. Among their to-dos was thanking the heroes for pacifying their father's monsters. The heroes responded to the invitation to the mansion expecting... well, a heroes' welcome, but found instead the soirée was mostly about two middle-aged men fêting themselves.

In short, the heirs were assholes. But the group couldn't say much against them because they're lordlings. They introduced themselves not with their late father's surname, Asano, but with their grandmother's married name, Sujin. That perked up the ears of a few in the group as Sujin is the name of defeated house.

House Berenar, the ruling clan of the realm, defeated House Sujin 60+ years ago. The elder Asano, related only via marriage, disavowed the name to be permitted to live. Yet now these two were permitted to take the name Sujin in the emperor's city?

Otonio, a member of an actual noble family, House Tashara, a ruling coalition partner with House Berenar, was perplexed. Ryuu-Han, himself secretly descended of a defunct noble lineage, House Hannam, was livid. 106 years ago Sujin conspired to take down Hannam and killed most of his family. What did it mean that these self-important jerks are toddling around beneath the emperor's nose using that name?

Ah, but enough of the history lesson. There was soon a business proposition for the heroes. The brothers wanted the contents of their father's mansion transported to their homes in Lentria. As their father collected exotic items (as well as monsters) for 50+ years there was quite a bit to move— more than could be teleported with the help of the cleric of the God of Trade the brothers brib—donated money to to help. The goods would need to be transported via wagon caravan. And with such an extensive exotic collection moving, every thief in the city was sniffing around. The heroes would help guard the caravan.



Guarding the caravan meant coming face-to-face with some of the group's old nemeses. For example, they had to guard the harpsichord. Fortunately it wasn't the harpsichord with lots of eyes that tried to kill them. It was the actual harpsichord, the one the mimic was... mimicking. Though they kept staring at it sideways to make sure!