Ten Random Urban Encounters

Featuring three guest entries by my wonderful partner <3 <3

Another 10 entries forthcoming.

1. 🏊 A body washes up in the canal. It’s someone the PCs have previously met, but are not particularly attached to. Cause of death: internal organs have turned into clay.
2. 💰Wealthy patrician is at the city gates comforting a weeping horde of his clients, saying he'll return from exile once he clears these trumped up charges brought by those Senate populists.
3. 💂 Local priesthood (plump, greased hair, purple and white voluminous robes, tall black hats) emerge and offer ritual blessings, which are an augury spell that contingently activates at a time of the GM’s choosing. These are made in exchange for (roll 1d3):
   1 - five silver pieces, which the recipient puts in a pentagonal arrangement on an embroidered cloth the priests carry
   2 - a thimbleful of blood and some skin scraped from inside the recipient’s cheek.
   3 - all of a person’s head and body hair. The priests are followed by obsequious barber-acolytes with gleaming razors, portable privacy screens, and bags of already-collected hair.
4. 🐈 Party comes across an important local shrine which has been taken over by a clan of feral cats. The locals are frightened -- they see it as a bad omen. If anyone approaches the shrine, the cats rise on their hind legs and say, in high-pitched unison, "Nenji demands an offering'. The party can appease the cats by offering them an item and making a DC 20 Charisma check to convince them of its worth; success means the cats will accept the offering and leave. Locals will reward successful dispersal of the cats.
5. 🔥 Workers building a new public bath have accidentally excavated the true source of the hot spring’s heat: a ten-foot-wide superheated featureless metal orb. Once unearthed, it floats randomly through the air, melting/igniting whatever it touches. Destroying the orb opens a permanent portal to the City of Brass.
6. 👶The party is waylaid by a distressed woman who says that cultists have snatched her newborn baby because they believe it is the avatar of their obscure deity. She is too afraid to confront them because, despite being crazy and inept, they are extremely devoted and fanatical.
7. 👆 An enormous, levitating palanquin stops next to the party, bystanders whisper that it’s Madame Gorgon’s carriage and make a wary retreat. A hand, big enough to crush a skull and wearing an onyx ring the size of a bar of soap, emerges and beckons the party inside. The Madame isn’t really a gorgon -- she was only called that as a kid due to her freakish size and countenance. She is hiring adventurers to retrieve her magical sword, which was stolen and taken into a dungeon too cramped for her to follow.
8. 🗯 The party passes a well. There is anguished shouting coming from it. None of the local people on the street are reacting to the shouting. A passing child sees the players taking notice and says “ignore it -- it'll stop soon. It’s always like that in the mornings.”
9. 🐞 Hundreds of small brightly coloured beetles all of the one species, fly in and land on surfaces near the party, following them indoors, if possible. They’re a local species, but this isn’t normal swarming season for them, nor are they swarming anywhere else.
10. 💪 Annual holiday where people fistfight to settle the previous year’s grievances. Results of duels are legally binding. No armour, weapons, or spells allowed; fights are non-lethal but “accidents” can occur; there is a thriving black market in stimulants. A scrawny, wheezing youth spots the party and begs they hide him from an absurdly muscular man following him, intent on starting a duel.