Single session one-shot for one or more characters.
No combat expected.

Adventure Hook

A little old lady who needs help with a spring cleaning ritual and feeding her cats.

DM Hook

The role of the DM is to make it ambiguous whether the players should help the little old lady, Elara, or the demon. There are plenty of hints to make the players distrust Elara. On one hand, there is a little old lady who could answer all the questions but doesn’t want to, and is in a bit of a rush to have a ritual completed, and on the other hand there is a demon that wants to break free but can’t communicate properly.

Background

Hundreds of years ago during a great war in a battle going poorly, Archmage Lady Elara Timell made a desperate bargain with one of the primordial demons she had enslaved to fight at her side. She would live a full, long, and healthy life in exchange for her soul upon death. This let her overload her magic without fear of dying, thus winning the battle and eventually the war.

And then she noticed a loophole in the contract: If she imprisoned the demon so that it could not claim her soul, she could live forever, in good health. She promptly did so. But the seal only lasts about a decade per casting, becoming weakest around the time where the stars align a certain way.

Elara has long since become a quiet force for good. She mostly keeps to herself, and her studies of the skies and other planes.

A few renewal cycles back, the seal got so weak that the demon managed to curse Elara. From that point on, the seal can only be fully renewed by someone who doesn’t know they are doing it. The more the person knows, the weaker the seal will be, meaning Elara herself cannot renew it at all. Thus, she enlists aid from taverns and passersby, in the guise of an old lady who needs help with a spring cleaning ritual and feeding her cats.

This time, the seal is weak enough that the demon can communicate a little, and play some simple tricks on Elara.

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