D&D Adventures 15: Spectator
The Party finally finds the location of a Macguffin but when they travel there, they find it in a chest, guided by a Spectator beholder. The monster is chatty and bored. He claims he has only a decade left and kindly asks the party to leave.
When pressed, he will claim that their effort is for naught: His summoner was paranoid (and indeed this place was hard to get to, riddled with traps) and set up a whole system that’s hard to pass: There are three items guarded by three spectators that can only be put together by this Spectator to become a seal breaking hammer. The summoner planned that none other than him would be able to command the monsters, so the magical seal on the chest could never be opened. And he was so paranoid that he didn’t introduce himself with his real identity to the other Spectators.
Truth is — that’s not the case. The chest is there for the taking. However, he does tell the truth that he has a decade left and wants to be free. So he devised a plan. If he would ever get any adventurers who could defeat him (and the party could), he gets them to kill other spectators and bring magic items from them. If he’s lucky, they perish in the hands of other spectators and dangers or get distracted by some other grand adventure. If not, he now has access to some magic items that might be useful in defeating the adventurers. Plus, he gets some lowly, disgusting Spectators to be vanished!
So, if he’s pressed, he will act like he’s intimidated into revealing more info, or maybe accepting to help them because either way he will be defeated but this way he at least sees what’s in the chest. He claims he doesn’t know what the items are, hoping to get all items to have a catalogue to choose from. If the party is back, he may do another round of asking for items, choosing carefully this time on what he may need against the party: “Ah, I see now, he didn’t trust me either. The magic formula requires a Scroll of Silence”
This is hardly a campaign, although it’s possible for each spectator’s location to be a tough place to get into, a full-fledged dungeon, etc. that could turn this into quite a side adventure.
