Mink Home

Our player characters live in a small commune of mink more or less in what is called Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park, although as said before, exact geography is largely handwaved.

Mink in the real world are much more solitary creatures, but this is meant to evoke a similar setup to more classic role playing game settings of a small village of people.

This commune of mink have situated themselves a home in, around and under the roots of some fairly close together trees. There are somewhere between 30 and 50 mink that live in this commune, or in the nearby vicinity.

There are a few stoats that are magic users from which the player characters can learn spells from within this commune.

There are also some mink who are traders, and have small selections of goods for sale.

The commune is largely governed by the eldest amoung the commune.

The elders have often asked the player characters to perform duties before, often protecting the commune from animals that might mean it harm.

Many mink in this community have odds and ends that they have collected of human scrap. Paper and plastic are most common with pieces of metal and gem being relatively rarer, but still overall fairly common. Some mink have learned to read the writings of humans, most often those with an mind tending toward the arcane, and might even collect whatever writings they can find.

Give your players an idea of this small commune, and ask them about who their characters know within this commune. If you are having you players start at level one, and work toward being the appropriate level for the adventure, feel free to have either some urgent come up soon, or allow the players to explore the area around their home as they feel fit.

It should be noted now that preserving food is not something that mink regularly do, although storing stockpiling food is something they are known to do. Even still, hunting for prey is often something that may be required of the party just to eat regularly. Whenever they make a hunting foray, make a roll on the associated area's encounter chance, as you would for any other random encounter. With or without an encounter, it is assumed to have been successful, unless an area is stated to be more difficult to hunt in. The hunting foray takes an hour. On a hunting foray without an encounter, it can be assumed that the party managed to find food from sources that are generall fairly easy to deal with, such as small lizards, small snakes, and insects. Also, while the water near the commune is considered safe, once the part has ventured far enough away from it, any time they drink water, roll 1d6. On a 1 or a 2, the water is polluted enough to cause harm to those drinking it. All those effected must make a save against poison, taking 1d8 damage on a failed save.

Home Encounters

Some of the encounters near home may represent having traveled fairly far from the commune, but still within close enough proximity to travel back within the day.

It may be a fun exercise to play through something approximating an average non adventuring day for the player's party to set a bit of a baseline before moving onto the adventure proper.

Head far enough in any direction and you will come to a road. It would take the longest time to reach a road heading to the west of the commune, and shortest time by heading east. However, the road to the north is considered the most dangerous. If you head north or west too far, human civilization can be found, however the roads in those directions are generally good indicators of where not to venture past. Humans are to be avoided at all costs. Despite the commune's interest in humans, the mink of the commune also know humans often bring danger and destruction. See The Northern Road for more information if your players decide they want to cross the nothern road at any point in time.

Once these notions are established to the players, move onto Doom on the Horizon