Traveler’s Adventures – The Red Harvest

Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition Scenario by Muqarnas Games

THE CROPS AT HOLLOW BEND HAVE NOT FAILED IN ELEVEN YEARS, AN IMPOSSIBLE RUN OF FORTUNE THAT NO FARMER TRUSTS AND EVERY FARMER NEEDS. THE CHARACTERS ARE SENT TO DESTROY A CULT. BEFORE THE RITUAL BEGINS, THEY DISCOVER THERE IS A TWO-GENERATION-OLD BARGAIN. IT HAS BEEN FEEDING THE FIELDS FROM THE BEGINNING. IT IS RESPECTABLE. IT IS CONNECTED. IT IS NOT FINISHED.

For over a decade, the isolated farming settlement of Hollow Bend has enjoyed unnaturally abundant harvests while its people have grown, season by season, more exhausted, more sicker, and less able to explain why. Hired as outside investigators by a confident landowner in the early morning, your party is tasked with navigating deep rural dread to eliminate a suspected druidic cult performing rituals in the surrounding woods.

But as the investigation deepens, a hidden pattern emerges from the history of the bountiful fields. The farmers’ deterioration is not an accidental byproduct of a random curse or recent druidic sabotage. It is the calculated, rhythmic consequence of a pact struck forty years ago by the landowner’s own grandfather to save his fortune from a devastating drought. He bound an ancient nature spirit known as the Green Mother to the soil, ensuring eternal fertility by quietly draining a tithe of vital rest from sleeping tenant workers who never agreed to the price. With the current reeve knowingly hiding the truth to protect his income, the characters have less than a day to unravel the conspiracy before an entire community is permanently bled dry.

The Red Harvest is a self-contained, atmosphere-driven folk horror mystery and ethical diplomacy adventure for 3 to 5 players at levels 4 to 7, lasting 4 to 5 hours. It challenges players to look beyond conventional dungeon heroism to confront the cold, enduring weight of family complicity, institutional exploitation, and the true cost of prosperity.

Adventure Features:

• Perfect for Mid-Level Intrigue: Calibrated for mid-tier parties (levels 4 to 7), offering a tightly paced, 4 to 5-hour multi-layered investigation and folk horror challenge with rich narrative texture.
• A Calculated Family Adversary: Step away from standard cartoonish villains or chaotic monsters. Confront Reeve Castor, a respectable landowner who inherited a monstrous arrangement and chose to let his tenants pay the price rather than sacrifice his inheritance.
• Deep Multi-Threaded Clues: Piece together a historical puzzle across a tight agricultural timeline. Interview exhausted workers to identify major flaws in the reeve’s story, track careful tree markings through old growth woods, and locate a hidden multi-generational family journal.
• Nuanced Faction Dynamics: Interact with a cautious circle of druids who carry the quiet exhaustion of an eighteen-month study. Navigate their delicate position as they attempt to safely weaken the spirit’s binding without triggering a catastrophic crop collapse.
• High-Stakes Severance Mechanics: Manage the final confrontation through structured ritual choices and defensive coordination. Protect a volatile working perimeter against the spirit’s physical agitation, and decide whether to coerce the landowner’s vital cooperation or break the pact alone at a heavy agricultural cost.
• SRD 5.1 Compatible: Fully compatible with the 5th Edition Systems Reference Document, designed to drop seamlessly into any isolated valley, gothic frontier, or dark political fantasy setting.

“I do not know how a man tells his own child that the prosperity supporting his whole life was bought with something taken, every single night, from people who never agreed to sell it.”

Traveler’s Adventures – The Red Harvest is available through DriveThruRPG in PDF.

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