The Witch of Underwillow

 

I placed the little village of Underwillow in the pass that the Class of '81 must go through to get back to their house in Parabor. My players had gifted me a map pack of a hobbit village, and I really wanted to use it. So I decided that Underwillow was a Halfling village. 

Also with this awesome map pack, I created a halfling tavern called The Smoke Ring that the players have since made a habit of stopping at when they come through the pass. Tifinin, who is a bard and who is played by an actual bard, wrote a song called "Round" after being inspired by a night of carousing here. 

Like, yeah, an actual song was written and sung during a game. Needless to say, Tif got Inspiration for that session. 

Anyway, the Witch of Underwillow is a short little module that can be completed in a single session. 

The premise is that a witch that holds sway over the village has stolen a child from one of the villagers. The townsfolk ask the players to go on a rescue mission. 

SPOILERS PAST THIS POINT! If you are a player and have this module in your future, you should probably stop reading now.

It's a pretty straightforward little adventure, but one of the things that is kind of cool about it is that it leaves the DM several options on how to play it. For instance, the DM can choose if the mcguffin is a doll or an actual baby. Maybe the witch is actually a Good Guy instead of a Bad Guy. Maybe there's a second witch. So it's pretty flexible and easy to customize. 

The basic plot is that as it turns out, the child is actually a doll and the villagers are being a bit dodgy about this little detail. But the players don't know that, so off they go to confront the witch in her lair. It being Dungeons & Dragons, the motive for the witch stealing the doll to force a confrontation with the players is a bit...how shall we say...contrived. So since I was shoehorning it into my campaign, I changed the story so that the witch was looking to get her hands on the Eye of Death and knew it was in the Class's possession. 

The witch's lair is underneath a willow grove, and consists of a creepy, subterranean tunnel. 

At one point, the witch will send a pretty scary dire wolf after the players. I think my favorite part was when Macterah, the druid, thought about trying to talk to it instead of going straight to combat. "Hey, I want to try talking to the wolf..." 

And that's when I hit the audio on tabletop audio and played a really scary, hair-raising audio of a wolf growl. The Class immediately abandoned that plan and ran like hell down the tunnel and ended up climbing trees. 

Which I kinda love, because that's a reasonable response, frankly.