Elves play pipes while the goblins sing

[cyrano]

For those creative lot among you....
Players in my 7th Sea game are being sent on a quest to allow them to enter the Summer Country, home of the fairies and piskies.
I'm looking for an appropriate quest, and turn to those of you who are not in my game and perhaps have a mean streak in you to offer me suggestions.
My two main qualifications:
It should sound like something you would encounter in a fairy tale of some stripe.
If it would benefit a pragmatic, somewhat otherworldly Scottish family who is setting the quest, that would be especially good.
My players are warned--clicking on comments may reveal spoilers.

Comments

[drastic.livejournal.com]

Pragmatism meets fairy tales, hmm? A pragmatic fellow can't go wrong with a good chunk of money. Everyone knows that if you manage to get to the end of a rainbow, you'll find treasure--but the problem is, you can't quite get there because the rainbow keeps running away.

So it stands to reason that what you need is some sort of leash that can snare the end of a rainbow and hold it in place long enough for enterprising folks to get to the end of and claim the treasure there. Getting that sort of leash is tricky, of course. It has to be sewn together from the threads from a frayed end of a broken anchor rope of a sunken galley, soaked in the blood of a truly just murder, and things of that nature.

Adjust according to how fantastical/realistic the game's running at, and that seems like a decent leaping point.

[starherd.livejournal.com]

hi there...
I know nothing about 7th Sea, but if they're looking to enter the Summer Country,
wouldn't they need a door to go through? Or at least a key?
A door/key that only works at a particular time, and otherwise is completely useless,
I'd expect. But first you'd have to find out *about* the door/key, and then when
to use it, and *then* you have to get the door/key... Of course, with all the reuse
of architecture, any kind of nice, ornate door is going to have been lifted from its
appropriate ruins by some well-meaning noble and slapped on a manor house
or church... or catacomb... or at the bottom of a well...
and any key is going to either be very well lost, very well
hidden, or very well placed on someone's keyring in a stained glass window...
If it looks like a regular key at all... it might look like a knife or a statue or a
mummified finger or a Rat King's* tail or something...
And what if, when used at the wrong time (but still a special time), the door/key
takes you somewhere entirely different...? Or lets Something out?

Not that I'm obsessed with doors and keys or anything. :-)
Don't mind me...

* = Rat King = a mass of rats whose tails have become tangled, then broken and
healed so as to be untangleable. At one time thought to be one large multi-headed
rat, hence the name (and appearance of the Rat King in some productions of the
Nutcracker). (There's Mouse Kings and Squirrel Kings, too. Stuff like that.)

[tersa.livejournal.com]

Must...not...succumb...and read....comments...

:)

[wilson-lizard.livejournal.com]

This probably has nothing to do with anything, but the synchronisity made me do it. :) The following was posted by cadmus, just a few after yours. :) Who knows, maybe it will spark something.


From William Blake via Ken MacLeod:

1. Then the Inhabitants of those Cities:
Felt their Nerves change into Marrow
And hardening Bones began
In swift diseases and torments,
In throbbings & shootings & grindings
Thro' all the coasts; till weaken'd
The Senses inward rush'd shrinking,
Beneath the dark net of infection.

....

7. The remaining sons of Urizen
Beheld their brethren shrink together
Beneath the Net of Urizen;
Perswasion was in vain;
For the ears of the inhabitants,
Were wither'd, & deafen'd, & cold:
And their eyes could not discern,
Their brethren of other cities.

8. So Fuzon call'd all together
The remaining children of Urizen:
And they left the pendulous earth:
They called it Egypt, & left it.

9. And the salt ocean rolled englob'd.
-- William Blake, The Book of Urizen, Chapter IX.

[motleypolitico.livejournal.com]

Not that my ideas are anywhere near so good as others presented here, but my vision of the fae were as mischief makers with a wicked sense of humor.

Who are the enemies of the fae, and what could be stolen from them and given to the fae as an offering? Things like sea-dragon scales, a haunch of meat or fur from a mammoth, a few feathers from a phoenix... Just some real oddball stuff that the fae might find amusing.

Depends on what the fae consider enemies, or at least what they consider worth pulling the proverbial tail of. As for what the Scottish family gets out of it, they end up giving the fae the gift, and if I'm remembering correctly, gifts are a very strong and meaningful force.

[aberdeen.livejournal.com]

Robin Goodfellow will take his queen, once upon a midsummer night's dream.

Your fault.