Not all adventurers are hunters of magical creatures. Not all magical creatures attack you randomly if you encounter them. There are adventurers who care about wildlife beyond the rewards of killing it. The Compassionate Society of Farnsharp set up the Magical Creature Animal Sanctuary to protect, conserve and educate. The elderly Lady Heather leases the grounds of Heathworth Manor for a nominal fee and is the largest funding donor. A tangled maze of cages, pens and paddocks covers most of the estate. Adverts boast that there’s at least one of every known magical non-sentient animal in the world here.
The sanctuary has a team of keepers to look after the animals and educate the visiting public. In addition to giving tours of the park, the keepers also track and capture any magical creature that gets too close to civilisation.
Defence of Rare Evil Creature
An evil creature from a demonic plane has been brought into the sanctuary. After it slaughtered the village where it first appeared, a passing druid was able to subdue it. It’s now in a sealed private enclosure with a hurriedly prepared suitable habitat. Every other occurrence of the creature has ended with its corpse dissolving or it returning to the plane it came from. A captured one is an ideal opportunity to study it and perhaps learn what’s behind the attacks. As it’s not sentient nor powerfully magical, its presence in this plane is a mystery. The mob at the gates doesn’t care about the mystery, they want it dead for their safety and for revenge.
Capture Wild Creature in a City
It’s large, it’s angry and it’s loose in the city underspaces. Tracing back the subterranean carnage leads to Lord Yarlega’s basement. How the Lord was able to smuggle such a huge creature into the city, let alone fit it inside his private collection in currently unknown. The immediate problem is that the monster is destroying houses as it tunnels through their foundations. The city has placed a bounty on the beast, so it’s up to the keepers to capture it before a hunter kills it.
Increase Visitors by Deadline
Lady Heather’s death has revealed her finances to be in a perilous state. She’s bequeathed the mansion and grounds to the Sanctuary, but even the sale of all the assets won’t cover up her debts. So much is the debt that the city council has ruled the debt must be settled with five days, lest a dozen of influential merchants by bankrupted. One bidder is Lady Heather’s distance cousin Rose. She’s bitter at not inheriting the mansion and hates animals. The other is a veteran adventurer, looking for something to buy with all his loot. Unfortunately, he’s only interested so that he can turn the park into a hunting business. It’s going to be up to the staff to see if they can find a better buyer.
Image Credit – Fota Wildlife Park by Sean MacEntee – CC-BY-2.0