Summary
An annual feast is interrupted by a gobbling ghost spooking townsfolk. The party, who was invited as special guests to the feast must defeat the terrible tom to restore order. The encounter starts as the party enters the home or dwelling where the feast will be held.
This encounter plays out a bit like a Scooby-Doo episode mixed with A Haunting in Venice.
Hooks
- The feast is happening in the town of the party’s home base and they are invited as distinguished guests
- The friends or family the party is visiting are headed to their neighbors for a yearly feast
- A strange missive on a bandit or townsperson notes the date and time of the feast
Shanksgiving
The party walks into a chaotic scene. One member of the feast, Tomm Turnkey (local Dowhar real estate agent) is holding a rag over a bloody hand while another tends to his wound. “I don’t know what happened, I was just pulling out my chair to sit down and something slashed me.”
While everyone is a bit spooked by this, they eventually calm down, sitting down to the start of their feast. Cramtrow Nomnom, a brutish but friendly Firbolg slams his chalice down and shouts, “NOW, we feast.” As his voice echoes throughout the hall, a faint “gobble, gobble” can be heard to anyone with passive perception of 10+.
The guests all begin eating, the wounded man swilling mead to drown the pain.
DMs Note: Consider adding in foods that are special to the party, either due to their background, ties to this particular location, or even out-of-game foods they enjoy to tie them to the meal.
As the second course comes out, one of the members carrying the dish, Thaddeus Cheeks, stops in his tracks. His eyes go white and his body lifts from the ground, causing him to drop the dish of food. Spectral feathers with a blue glow appear around his body and his jaw unhinges. He makes a gutteral noise, then let’s out a complex series of gobbles, as if the gobbles are trying to convey a message.
The other guests shriek as Thaddeus is unleashed from the spectral being and collapses to the floor, breathing heavily and coughing up feathers.
Louder gobble gobbles echo throughout the room of the feast as a poultrygeist emerges from one of the upstairs rooms, in full display of the party and guests. It struts in the air from wall to wall, out of reach of melee attacks. If attacked with magic, the undead turkey swoops down, using its Spectral Shank to slash a guest or two.
Tomm Turnkey who was slashed earlier in the evening seems to be doing worse and worse from the injury on his hand. He is beginning to sweat and is developing a snood over his beak.
The non-party members at the feast beg for the party’s assistance in getting rid of their very unwelcome guest.
Poultrygeist Motivations
The ghastly turkey is tightly tied to it’s corporeal form which is set to be served as the fifth course of the feast. There were things in life it had yet to do and it is causing a ruckus to bring attention to itself.
A few ways to dispatch the spectral birb:
- Fight it! Stat block above, but watch out for that Spectral Shank.
- If someone is strong in Animal Handling, the party can communicate with the beast and determine that it has a strong desire to eliminate Tomm Turnkey. If the party obliges, the Poultrygeist will thank them and vanish out of existence.
- Another option if someone is strong in Animal Handling is to learn that in life, the turkey had yet to fulfill its dream of standing in a rainstorm and staring skyward. If the party can find a way to grant it this one gift, it will disappear.
- Other than Tomm Turnkey, the poultrygeist doesn’t have much issue with anyone else, so the party could just let things continue.
However the party wants to deal with the poultrygeist, they will need to lure it out, doing their best turkey calls, Wild Shaping into a turkey and strutting around the home as a target, or leaving some kind of bird food around.
Consider using this map from Dyson’s Logos as a layout for the area.
Other potential enemies to throw at the party if you’d like to increase difficulty of the encounter
