While on the road between towns, a disheveled man runs up to your party. He is exhausted and, while desperately trying to catch his breath, pleads for your party’s help. He introduces himself as Roger and gestures wildly behind him toward the horizon, noting his farm where he works as a warrener (one who raises rabbits for fur/meat). He will explain the terrible situation that has befallen his homestead.
The Dilemma
He will explain that, a few weeks ago, he left his farm to attend the annual “Rab-Bits n’ Bobs” Expo for warreners in [Major City Name]. He trusted his property to a couple of farmhands who irresponsibly failed to lock the cages. The end result was a lot of unintended bunny love-making resulting in an explosion of the local bunny population.
By the time Roger returned to the farm, his farmhands had run off entirely, and the property was overrun with hundreds of bunnies.
Unsure of what to do, he consulted a wizard to use magical means to de-populate the area in the most humane way possible. Since this situation was so unusual, the wizard needed to improvise a spell and, in some ways, succeeded in reducing the population: he magically merged all the hundreds of rabbits into a single, towering “rabbit golem.”
The wizard was then promptly swallowed up by the rabbit golem and is currently being endlessly tickled inside the creature from the nonstop rubbing of whiskers, twitching noses, and soft rabbit fur, rendering him useless in helping any further.
The Response
If your party decides to pursue this side-quest, they will follow the warrener back to his farm. As they get closer, they should hear/feel the ground shake a little beneath their feet (clear indication that the big bunny is, in fact, real and currently traipsing around the property in its new gargantuan state). Upon arriving, they will see the beautiful behemoth in the process of digging a burrow into the ground; alternatively, you could also have your party arrive to a giant hole and needing to find a way to coax/flush the creature out.
To solve this crisis, the party will need to either…
- Magically reverse the spell, thereby returning to the original problem of an overrun farm but saving all the bunnies
- Destroy the rabbit golem
Reversing the Spell
In order to reverse the spell, your party will need to rescue the wizard trapped inside the moving bunny bodies.
To do this, you will need to complete a series of checks:
- An athletics check to wriggle your way into the bunny golem’s “body.” If they fail the DC, the party member simply falls out of the body of rabbits.
- Once inside, the party member will need to pass a perception check to figure out where the wizard is being held and push their way there. This should be a more challenging DC than the one above. If the party member fails, they also become “trapped” like the wizard in a vortex of tickly cuteness.
- After you have reached the wizard, he will be in a tickling fit. Passing one final check, persuasion or intimidation, will convince the distracted wizard to pull a magic scroll out from his sleeve and hand it to the party member. The party member will then need to exit the bunny in order to unroll it and read it to cast the reversal spell (you could also make the wizard of a particular race and have the scroll in some language of your choosing for one more added hurdle).
After the spell has been cast, the bunny golem will collapse back into hundreds of bunnies, each hopping around and, probably now, scampering off into various directions, even into neighboring forests and off the farm proper.
The farmer will still be irritated and run off to try and catch some of the rabbits to return them to their pens, but the wizard will be grateful, awarding the party with either some magic scroll or, to fit the quest more precisely, a “Ring of Animal Influence.”
Extra Idea: If the party fails to wriggle into the golem, they could also dress/create an illusion of a carrot and be “swallowed up” by the bunny willingly through its “mouth”. This can fast track your player character straight to the “stomach” where they can encounter the captive wizard.
Destroying the Golem
Alternatively, your party can just fight the beast.
However, it should be noted that the beast does not “aggro” until attacked. The golem’s HP is determined by the number of rabbits in its body. Therefore, an attack dealing 16 damage will result in 16 bunny bodies being thrown from the golem.
Note: Because no one (hopefully) wants a bloodbath of hundreds of rabbits, have it so that, as an added side-effect of the wizard’s failed magical solution, the individual bunnies just “pop” into sparkly rainbow confetti/glitter that sprinkles to the ground; we need to make this carnage tasteful.
Once provoked, the bunny golem will attack.. Here are some potential stats (modified from a typical Stone Golem):
- Armor Class 1 (they’re soft bunny bodies)
- Hit Points 400-500
- Speed 30 ft.
- Damage Immunities: Poison, psychic.
- Condition Immunities: Charmed, exhaustion, frightened, paralyzed, petrified, poisoned.
- Senses: Darkvision 120 ft., passive Perception 10.
- Languages: Understands the languages of its creator but can’t speak
- Challenge: 10 (5,900 XP)
- Immutable Form: The golem is immune to any spell or effect that would alter its form.
- Magic Resistance: The golem has advantage on saving throws against spells and other magical effects.
- Magic Weapons: The golem’s weapon attacks are magical.
- Multi-attack: The golem makes two slam attacks.
- Slam: Melee Weapon Attack: +10 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: (3d8 + 6) bludgeoning damage.
Since rabbits aren’t typically “fighters”, when the golem reaches bloodied status (1/2 HP or lower), you can opt to have it try to run away, hide in its grotto, or conceal itself behind cover that’s big enough (e.g. the farmhouse).
Once the golem’s HP reaches 70 or lower, have the remaining rabbit bodies collapse and scurry off to corners of the farm, with the now freed wizard falling onto the ground.
The wizard will be thankful but very embarrassed that his own actions got them into this mess in the first place and grant the party his “Ring of Animal Influence.” The warrener will be grateful and offer the party a reward of gold (whatever he was going to originally pay the wizard for services rendered). He will then excuse himself to catch/herd the remaining rabbits back into their pens.
Note: No rabbits were harmed in the making of this encounter.
