Ten More Random Urban Encounters

New year's resolution is to post here more frequently than once a month. So far this isn't going well.

11. 🐨 A band of albino furred goblins streams into the city (or is forced to camp outside depending on current political mood). They are excellent smiths, but have been forced to flee their mountain home because (roll 1d3):

1. 
“of the metal sickness”

2. “the troglodytes took our home from us”

3. “we don’t know, but every time we fell asleep we’d wake to find more of us missing”

12. 🌿 Angry mob forming over the Senate’s failure to pass a land redistribution bill. Mob’s anger is being stoked by 1d6 telepaths, whose psionic activity has a telltale hallucinatory smell of wintergreen.

13. 🕸️ Locals excited by a new shipment of fine silks, including magical light armor. Shipments are brought by masked men covered in loose, rubbery robes that conceal their entire body. The nobility do not wish to cause these men offense, and use secret police to disappear anyone who physically assaults them or unmasks them. In reality, they already know the nature of these men -- ice golems that function as telepresence robots for intelligent spiders -- and recruit the cleverer assailants as spies/scouts to find the spiders’ hidden city.

14. 🐉 A dragon swoops in, eats the mayor/king/princeps/etc., declares herself the new ruler. One temperamental greedy narcissist is much like another, so most people’s lives are unchanged. The party’s relationship with the ruling elite (if any) is reset, however, as the dragon wants supplicants and/or hired muscle, and the remaining nobility want the dragon gone (filling the vacuum themselves, of course).

15. 🖼 Guards stop and search a wagon carrying sacks of barley, find a large painting reported to be stolen (or so they claim). The painting is of course a magic door to another world.

16. 🎭 Famed playwright offers the party money for a true story from their adventures. He will pay 5 gp for an action story, 25 gp for a comedy/farce, or 50 gp for a tragedy. He is blessed by the gods with an uncanny ability to detect lies, and will simply give the party a wry, incredulous look (and refuse to pay) until they tell the truth. He will also travel to third parties to verify claims and add further detail. Directly deceiving him is very difficult (Deception DC 25), though it may be possible to cause the gods to rescind their blessing. The story will be put on stage in a month’s time, put an unflattering spin on the party’s actions, and become the talk of the city.

17. 🐀 A noble’s pet giant solenodon has escaped. He answers to Bubo, but attacks strangers, which the noble refuses to accept. Reward is 200 gp, and/or an ongoing contract to bring the noble more exotic pets. Use the following modified Brown Bear stats, or add burrow, echolocation and a venomous bite to a mammal of your choice:

GIANT SOLENODON
Large beast, unaligned
Armor Class 11 (natural armor) 
Hit Points 34 (4d10 + 12) 
Speed 40 ft., burrow 20 ft.
Str 19 (+4) Dex 10 (+0) Con 16 (+3) Int 2 (−4) Wis 13 (+1) Cha 7 (−2)
Skills Perception +3

Senses blindsight 30 ft., passive Perception 13

Languages --
Challenge 1 (200 XP)
Echolocation. The solenodon can’t use its blindsight while deafened.
ACTIONS
Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 11 (2d6 + 4) piercing damage, and the target must make a DC 13 saving throw, taking 7 (2d6) poison damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one. If the poison damage reduces the target to 0 hit points, the target is stable but poisoned for 1 hour, even after regaining hit points, and is paralyzed while poisoned in this way.

18. 🦆 Ibis men from the Great Marsh, hawking their wares. Roll 1d6:

1. 
live snakes

2. relics of forgotten faiths recovered from the peat. Fashionable among nobility with a taste for the esoteric, but each attracts the attention of a small god.

3. hired labour. They can fly short distances and have keen eyes, but are noncombatants.

4. woven reed charms worn around the throat, which purify water the wearer drinks.

5. illegal narcotics refined from carnivorous swamp plants.
6. 
pressurised glass bottles of swamp gas.

19. 🚩Dockworkers' guild on strike. Loading and unloading of all ships is delayed as crews have to do it unassisted, and each operation has a 1 in 4 chance of a sabotage attempt. All imported goods double in price. The dockworkers are demanding hazard pay for handling dangerous magical reagents, and legislation to halt a rumoured “replace workforce with animated skeletons” programme.

20. 🍞Grain shortage caused by a slave revolt in the provinces. The free grain dole for the poor has been suspended and prices are skyrocketing. Canny PCs could win the love of the people and/or the Senate by traveling to the provinces and crushing the slave revolt, by finding/brokering an alternate food supply, by robbing the rich and redistributing their hoarded grain, by helping quell the inevitable riot…

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.

Random Minotaur Variants

Someone on G+ asked for minotaur variants, so I wrote some, then figured they were OK enough to post here.

The obvious difficulty with minotaurs is that mythology kinda only had one of them. While I could have looked up how other fantasy worlds treat them -- Krynn, Dominaria, Azeroth --  that sounded terribly dull.

So, here are 6 random abilities (written for 5th edition) to give to minotaurs who stick to the classics: having horns, living in labyrinths, and eating people.

1. This minotaur has a spatial rift hovering between its horns. You cannot meaningfully see through its luminescent surface, but it transmits sound, poorly. As a bonus action, the minotaur can cause an eldritch blast (+5 to hit, 120 ft., 1d10 force damage) to emanate from the rift. The rift persists after death, as long as the skull and horns remain intact. Touching the rift teleports you to a random location within the dungeon (4 in 6 chance), continent (1 in 6), or to a random plane (1 in 6). The destination changes over every 10 minutes.
2. This minotaur has ritually eaten the flesh of an adventurer and absorbed its prowess. Roll a d8. On a 1-6 it has a random Fighting Style from the six available to the Fighter class. On a 7-8 it has 1d6 Sneak Attack and adds double its proficiency bonus to Stealth checks (for a total of +4). It wields the fallen adventurer's weapons. It has another ration of smoked human flesh that if eaten, bestows the same combat knowledge for 1 day. The ration detects as transmutation magic.
3. This minotaur can telekinetically move loose rocks, unmortared bricks and the like. It rearranges its section of the labyrinth to confuse its prey, but may use its powers to aid the party if they offer sufficient tribute. As an action, it can move a quantity of stone that fits within a 10 ft cube, up to 30ft. Creatures hit by the slow-moving rocks take 1d6 bludgeoning damage, Dexterity DC 13 negates.
4. This minotaur hears/smells around corners (blindsense 30 ft.) and throws vials of webbing (as the giant spider ability, and the vials are designed to ricochet off walls without breaking. Its horns are poisoned (one dose, as giant spider venom). Its giant spider farm is nearby. They are docile and affectionate.
5. This minotaur shaman has ritually cut off its horns (no gore attack). It can cast bane, blindness/deafness, and lesser restoration. It has no spell slots, and instead casts spells by bloodletting itself with the horns (inflicting 1d6 damage/spell level). The horns function as a pair of +1 daggers. PCs who loot the horns can cast the above spells the same way. This requires attuning to the daggers. Bloodletting damage cannot be magically healed or recovered with Hit Dice, and goes away only with a long rest, though the obviously-deliberate cuts will show for at least a week. Higher level PCs may discover new spells that can be cast with the horns.
6. This minotaur has necromantic powers, but only over cows. In combat this means it can animate armor that's predominantly leather, as the animate objects spell except it can affect worn/carried items. Animated armor worn by the PCs will tear itself off and begin attacking them. The minotaur also has a side gig resurrecting nearby farmers' cattle that perish from drought or disease.