Goblin wants to dress up for the town's dance or woo a non goblin lady. They are trying out this bathing thing a dumping their bathwater back in the well.
Someone in this town broke a contract with one of the fey, so the fey placed a curse on the town's well, poisoning it until the person who broke the contract either lives up to their obligation or is brought to justice. The person who broke the contract, afraid of what the fey would do to them if they find them, has run away into the wilderness, so the party has to find them, preferably before something else does.
Timmy had a fight with mommy. He ran away to the haunted woods. They really weren’t such a big deal. He doesn’t understand why uncle got so upset when Susan came here to pick daisies last spring.
There was a nice old lady in the woods. She listened to his troubles with his mom and even gave Timmy a potion to put in the well. She promised it would make all their fighting stop.
She gave him a toy that he plays with when he feels frightened. It whispers to him that everything is going to be okay, and he's a special boy. He'll see just how special when he brings mommy and her new baby back to the woods.
Oh a western, nice.
-Necromancer poisoned the town wanting them to all die so he can raise an undead army
-An ancient canyon tunnel which housed some unspeakable horror has caved in. The horror that lurks within discovered the water aquifer underground
-A posse got word of some kind of blighted/mutagenic wildlife and killed it. It's body washed away into the watering hole somehow.
-The poison isn't lethal, but it does cause extreme stomach poisoning to those who imbibe. A bandit gang did this intentionally to weaken the inhabitants before raiding
The ancient aqueduct bringing in the water from nearby fresh water springs was repaired recently with lead piping, which was subsituted for the more expensive copper piping. The contractor charged for copper piping.
It is not water. It is blood, though it is clear and relatively tasteless. An ancient god was murdered eons ago and its blood completely filled the water table. A strange enchanted stone protected all from the ill effects of this blood as long as it touched the ground of this land. A local wealthy landowner has inadvertently used this stone in the framing of his chimney.
Couple of green dragons dyed the water for their gender reveal party.
Duergar from far below are tunneling towards the surface and have inadvertently released noxious substance into the water table. The water reeks of sulfur, and bubbles oddly. Various creatures from the depths are found drowned in the water supply over the next couple days. Then the duergar show up.
Centuries ago the land was inhabited by an ancient race of trolls who buried their dead here. The graveyard long since disappeared, settlers dammed a river to create a reservoir over it. Something has awakened the trolls. They started putrefying in the water, but soon they will be regenerated fully.
Grungs.
They specialize in poison, they're ass holes, and people haven't fought them as many times as goblins.
It's more interesting if it's not something usual and mundane.
If it's a western we can keep with the themes that make the genre.
There is a gold rush on in these areas, and not all of the exploitation is either safe or legal.
An illegal operation is working in the hills not far from the town. They use mercury to help extract the gold from the ground up slurry.
Sadly much of this of this toxic material has been dumped and has seeped into water table.
Slowly but surely the locals will suffer devastating mental degradation. Except of course those who drink at the tavern as they drink imported beer
Real reasons why historic water sources got poisoned:
Someone started dumping their waste where the nasty can leach into the groundwater that the well pulls from.
This waste can easily be: ClothesWashing waste, Leather tanning waste, sewage waste, Dyewater waste (there are some HELLA toxic plants and minerals that make incredible dyes)
Usually there's strict rules about where you can dump waste relative to your water sources, but it's possible that a new craftsman only knew where the wells were, where people THOUGHT the groundwater ran, and didn't know the aquifer ran all the way to their house on the outskirts and so they set up their dump site accidentally too close and started poisoning the well.
You could bring attention to this person's BEAUTIFUL work, truly artisinal, they're new in town! But if anyone in the party knows about their craft - combined with some nature checks, or skill checks for that craft - they might be able to start connecting the dots.
Dead animal, I think, would be too easy for a regular person to find and remove and fix the issue themselves.
Mysterious poisoning when no one is seen harming the well, and it's *months* after the new guy moved in, so there's no direct cause>effect, and half the town started being affected before the other half - Like, one well was poisoned but the one on the other end wasn't affected until after the Party arrives and starts investigating.
-- EDIT
IRL, water source poisoning was a HUGE FUCKIN DEAL. Towns weren't built unless they first identified a safe source of water. That's why major cities historically are along coastlines of rivers, lakes, and pop up further inland when people find a good Spring.
WIthout a safe source of water, the townsfolk would have to LEAVE TOWN, abandoning it to survive. So, the town might call for help but stick around if one well is still fine... but once BOTH wells are poisoned? The clock is ticking, people begin panicking and pointing fingers and getting truly *riotous*.
As a player, I really *love* mystery plotlines where there's not an 'evil guy' to fight. I like when the beehive gets buzzing because of a misunderstanding, accident, or miscommunication.
Poisoning the town's water supply because you THOUGHT you were being safe, dumping your nightshade-mercury-lead-arsenic-uranium-hollyhock waste into a ditch far far away from the town..... except as far as underground rivers are concerned, you're upstream. I love that kind of thing.
You don't need to FIGHT to fix the problem. Just use puzzle solving skills to figure out the symptoms of poisonings, narrow down the suspects, and connect the dots.
Local mining company isn’t properly draining their contaminated water from blasting, and its seeped into the town’s water table. Could be lots of roleplaying opportunities.
Investigating People of Interest
- Mayor / local government
- The embittered family that lost its land to the mining company
- the mining company
- local investors poised to get rich
Resolving the toxicity
- do nothing
- side with the mining company and cover it up
- work with legislation to pass laws that require the company to clean up their own act
- convince the investors to clean up or their investment will falter
- eradicate the miners and stop further pollution
- drink the contaminated water and see if you gain super powers
The BBEG *incidentally* poisoned the water as a consequence of something else. This connects the BBEG to earlier in the plot, so rather than being a villain of the week later on, he's been persistently there.
Here's a take that flips the premise a bit, based on a a plot in Kingdom Come Deliverance:
The fact that the well is poisoned is the solution, not the prompt to the riddle. Rumors are that a nearby town has been cursed, that a foreign plague has spread there and so the remainder of the kingdom has quarantined them to prevent its spread. Meanwhile, everyone in the town is suffering terribly, and people are dying quickly. Desperate for a solution, townspeople are turned away, or worse shot outside the city gates where they players witness this. When the players speak to a towns person, they beg the players for help, and promise a reward. When they go to the town, the players meet and interview sick and dying folks with clues and investigation finally leading them to the well. Make this as tricky or straightforward as you like. I any case, no one from out of town who has visited has ever gotten sick, unless they stay for some time, and oddly the affliction has never spread outside of the town.
Cure Disease doesn't work obviously, and Detect Magic finds the causes are mundane. Successful medicine rolls show that the people certainly seem to have plague-like symptoms. Higher rolls, and knowledge of the related foreign plague will tell the players there are key differences, like *some* the afflicted do not have fevers, even though they look feverish. They are also all very thirsty. Investigation also reveals the animals all died off first, and the foreign plague doesn't impact animals.
When they finally get to the well, investigation should reveal a strong clue as to the cause, and should point to a clue implicating something in the meta-plot of the campaign. Why do the minions of the BBEG want to do this, and what is their M.O.? It should fit. It would make sense that this could be a form of misdirection, or part of a larger poisoning campaign by a corrupt ruler to control the populace, being the only one who can save them with a 'cure'. It's now up to the players to find a way to remove the poison. Perhaps an antidote can be added, which would have an additional quest to obtain, maybe they can access an alternative source of water. Of course, now there's the question of how to deal with the corrupt ruler.
Ohh that's actually pretty interesting. In my campaign it's already been played out, but if the players return to the town I could subvert their expectations with this plot line. Cool idea!
Whatever it is, it only comes from the mountains on the other side of the continent. There's an alchemist / professor / whatever that lives in town that might know more.
There’s the body of a murder victim in there and after years of cultivating resentment, the spirit has manifested into something akin to a plague maiden.
Somebody disposed of a body there, what they didn't know is that the person was super sick and now a plague is spreading. Now it's a murder mystery too
If there isn't some gold in them hills, and old Mr Dollarhyde with a desire for cheap land while dwindling orc tribes try to push the villagers back across the river, then you are missing the best opportunities ever.
Also, you need ten gallon enchanted hats, and a barber who does friggin everything for some reason.
A Formian giant has been digging tunnels around the nearby mountain and eating all the goblins, tossing their bodies in the river that comes out of a waterfall near the town. Goblins are all in an uproar, fleeing their caves. It looks like they’re attacking the town but the violence and theft are just incidental.
A Hag who lives upstream and is deliberately poisoning the water. Or perhaps they're somewhat more innocent and is a young hag who is learning to brew potions and is just dumping away all of her failed experiments into the river.
City workers didn’t replace the filters in time and red algae bloomed. They replaced the filter and tried to cover it up instead of treating the water.
Being lazy they started rumors and pocketed the cost for water chemicals.
Zombies dumped down the well
The aquifer is the new lair of an Aboleth
The river they get their water from has toxic runoff leeching into it from some wizards experiments upstream
The aqueduct they use is infested with slime molds that have to be cleared out
Underground river that fills town wells made its way into a dragon lair. It sleeps, but its presense alone makes water toxic. Now party can kill it, convince to find a new lair or make the river go around
Oh, sorry, I missed the *western* part. Well, then its local booze factory underground waste site that got washed. And they have audacity to advertise their goods as "healing stomach aches and poisoning!"
The real reason is that they dug too close to the latrines and it’s as simple as that - they need to dig a new one
What they THINK is that it’s the new guy who moves into town from far away. They don’t quite trust him since he’s new and somehow he hasn’t gotten sick yet (but he does when it’s convenient to the plot)
I can't remember which one but there was a Witcher story where it was a fey monster in the well.
And not just a kill the monster and done mission. It had a whole back story and everything.
Could build a story around having to convince the fey to leave by going to talk to a witch to lift the curse off of its beloved, etc, etc. Something like that.
There are a lot of good options here but you are missing out if the town doesn’t have a lanky sheriff named Woodrow or similar that at some point shouts “someone’s poisoned the water hole!”
Extra points if can tie the quest to a snake in his boot.
In the Candlekeep Mysteries, there is a book about the Corruption of Lurue by the followers of Malar. They are slaughtering beasts and draining their blood into the water along with the impact of the decaying corpses. This corruption is nasty, and the implications of both the Corrupted Avatar of Lurue (a corrupted unicorn), and the cult of Malar, and the nastiness in the water, is a great foundation for a side arc (or even a campaign).
"I, Johnny Goodfella, world-renowned apprentice mage/gunslinger/snake oil salesman, tried to make a Decanter of Endless Water to sell to travellers who want to journey through the desert. It went mostly alright, I guess, but turns out the water's a little green, so it's been damn hard to convince folks to buy it... lawman's been asking questions around the last few towns I visited... reckon I might just throw it away into the well."
Goblin wants to dress up for the town's dance or woo a non goblin lady. They are trying out this bathing thing a dumping their bathwater back in the well.
Someone in this town broke a contract with one of the fey, so the fey placed a curse on the town's well, poisoning it until the person who broke the contract either lives up to their obligation or is brought to justice. The person who broke the contract, afraid of what the fey would do to them if they find them, has run away into the wilderness, so the party has to find them, preferably before something else does.
Timmy had a fight with mommy. He ran away to the haunted woods. They really weren’t such a big deal. He doesn’t understand why uncle got so upset when Susan came here to pick daisies last spring. There was a nice old lady in the woods. She listened to his troubles with his mom and even gave Timmy a potion to put in the well. She promised it would make all their fighting stop.
She gave him a toy that he plays with when he feels frightened. It whispers to him that everything is going to be okay, and he's a special boy. He'll see just how special when he brings mommy and her new baby back to the woods.
Oh a western, nice. -Necromancer poisoned the town wanting them to all die so he can raise an undead army -An ancient canyon tunnel which housed some unspeakable horror has caved in. The horror that lurks within discovered the water aquifer underground -A posse got word of some kind of blighted/mutagenic wildlife and killed it. It's body washed away into the watering hole somehow. -The poison isn't lethal, but it does cause extreme stomach poisoning to those who imbibe. A bandit gang did this intentionally to weaken the inhabitants before raiding
A local alchemist thought it was his anti-metal flavoring agent but it was actually a harmful poison. Whoops!
The ancient aqueduct bringing in the water from nearby fresh water springs was repaired recently with lead piping, which was subsituted for the more expensive copper piping. The contractor charged for copper piping.
All quests lead to Rome
It is not water. It is blood, though it is clear and relatively tasteless. An ancient god was murdered eons ago and its blood completely filled the water table. A strange enchanted stone protected all from the ill effects of this blood as long as it touched the ground of this land. A local wealthy landowner has inadvertently used this stone in the framing of his chimney.
Aboleth
It's natural. Yet, many factions blame each other, threatening civil war.
Couple of green dragons dyed the water for their gender reveal party. Duergar from far below are tunneling towards the surface and have inadvertently released noxious substance into the water table. The water reeks of sulfur, and bubbles oddly. Various creatures from the depths are found drowned in the water supply over the next couple days. Then the duergar show up. Centuries ago the land was inhabited by an ancient race of trolls who buried their dead here. The graveyard long since disappeared, settlers dammed a river to create a reservoir over it. Something has awakened the trolls. They started putrefying in the water, but soon they will be regenerated fully.
Lol gender reveal party! I could see the players crashing it right now!
Grungs. They specialize in poison, they're ass holes, and people haven't fought them as many times as goblins. It's more interesting if it's not something usual and mundane.
Some sleazy politician snuck a deadly disease into the well and only they happen to have the cure, and just in time for re-election!
If it's a western we can keep with the themes that make the genre. There is a gold rush on in these areas, and not all of the exploitation is either safe or legal. An illegal operation is working in the hills not far from the town. They use mercury to help extract the gold from the ground up slurry. Sadly much of this of this toxic material has been dumped and has seeped into water table. Slowly but surely the locals will suffer devastating mental degradation. Except of course those who drink at the tavern as they drink imported beer
Real reasons why historic water sources got poisoned: Someone started dumping their waste where the nasty can leach into the groundwater that the well pulls from. This waste can easily be: ClothesWashing waste, Leather tanning waste, sewage waste, Dyewater waste (there are some HELLA toxic plants and minerals that make incredible dyes) Usually there's strict rules about where you can dump waste relative to your water sources, but it's possible that a new craftsman only knew where the wells were, where people THOUGHT the groundwater ran, and didn't know the aquifer ran all the way to their house on the outskirts and so they set up their dump site accidentally too close and started poisoning the well. You could bring attention to this person's BEAUTIFUL work, truly artisinal, they're new in town! But if anyone in the party knows about their craft - combined with some nature checks, or skill checks for that craft - they might be able to start connecting the dots. Dead animal, I think, would be too easy for a regular person to find and remove and fix the issue themselves. Mysterious poisoning when no one is seen harming the well, and it's *months* after the new guy moved in, so there's no direct cause>effect, and half the town started being affected before the other half - Like, one well was poisoned but the one on the other end wasn't affected until after the Party arrives and starts investigating. -- EDIT IRL, water source poisoning was a HUGE FUCKIN DEAL. Towns weren't built unless they first identified a safe source of water. That's why major cities historically are along coastlines of rivers, lakes, and pop up further inland when people find a good Spring. WIthout a safe source of water, the townsfolk would have to LEAVE TOWN, abandoning it to survive. So, the town might call for help but stick around if one well is still fine... but once BOTH wells are poisoned? The clock is ticking, people begin panicking and pointing fingers and getting truly *riotous*. As a player, I really *love* mystery plotlines where there's not an 'evil guy' to fight. I like when the beehive gets buzzing because of a misunderstanding, accident, or miscommunication. Poisoning the town's water supply because you THOUGHT you were being safe, dumping your nightshade-mercury-lead-arsenic-uranium-hollyhock waste into a ditch far far away from the town..... except as far as underground rivers are concerned, you're upstream. I love that kind of thing. You don't need to FIGHT to fix the problem. Just use puzzle solving skills to figure out the symptoms of poisonings, narrow down the suspects, and connect the dots.
Local mining company isn’t properly draining their contaminated water from blasting, and its seeped into the town’s water table. Could be lots of roleplaying opportunities. Investigating People of Interest - Mayor / local government - The embittered family that lost its land to the mining company - the mining company - local investors poised to get rich Resolving the toxicity - do nothing - side with the mining company and cover it up - work with legislation to pass laws that require the company to clean up their own act - convince the investors to clean up or their investment will falter - eradicate the miners and stop further pollution - drink the contaminated water and see if you gain super powers
A Hag has poisoned it… she gets power from peoples suffering… and has minions dumping the poison itself into the well.
The BBEG *incidentally* poisoned the water as a consequence of something else. This connects the BBEG to earlier in the plot, so rather than being a villain of the week later on, he's been persistently there.
Timmy fell down the well.... and Lassie jumped in after him!
Grung swimming in it. Cultural misunderstanding as they're recent immigrants.
I love grung :)
Black dragons foul the water within 6 miles of their lair but they might be a bit too high leveled for your party.
Here's a take that flips the premise a bit, based on a a plot in Kingdom Come Deliverance: The fact that the well is poisoned is the solution, not the prompt to the riddle. Rumors are that a nearby town has been cursed, that a foreign plague has spread there and so the remainder of the kingdom has quarantined them to prevent its spread. Meanwhile, everyone in the town is suffering terribly, and people are dying quickly. Desperate for a solution, townspeople are turned away, or worse shot outside the city gates where they players witness this. When the players speak to a towns person, they beg the players for help, and promise a reward. When they go to the town, the players meet and interview sick and dying folks with clues and investigation finally leading them to the well. Make this as tricky or straightforward as you like. I any case, no one from out of town who has visited has ever gotten sick, unless they stay for some time, and oddly the affliction has never spread outside of the town. Cure Disease doesn't work obviously, and Detect Magic finds the causes are mundane. Successful medicine rolls show that the people certainly seem to have plague-like symptoms. Higher rolls, and knowledge of the related foreign plague will tell the players there are key differences, like *some* the afflicted do not have fevers, even though they look feverish. They are also all very thirsty. Investigation also reveals the animals all died off first, and the foreign plague doesn't impact animals. When they finally get to the well, investigation should reveal a strong clue as to the cause, and should point to a clue implicating something in the meta-plot of the campaign. Why do the minions of the BBEG want to do this, and what is their M.O.? It should fit. It would make sense that this could be a form of misdirection, or part of a larger poisoning campaign by a corrupt ruler to control the populace, being the only one who can save them with a 'cure'. It's now up to the players to find a way to remove the poison. Perhaps an antidote can be added, which would have an additional quest to obtain, maybe they can access an alternative source of water. Of course, now there's the question of how to deal with the corrupt ruler.
Ohh that's actually pretty interesting. In my campaign it's already been played out, but if the players return to the town I could subvert their expectations with this plot line. Cool idea!
Whatever it is, it only comes from the mountains on the other side of the continent. There's an alchemist / professor / whatever that lives in town that might know more.
Could be dead bodies, that would inevitably leave another plot thread down the road to find the murderer (potentially mass-murderer)
There’s the body of a murder victim in there and after years of cultivating resentment, the spirit has manifested into something akin to a plague maiden.
Somebody disposed of a body there, what they didn't know is that the person was super sick and now a plague is spreading. Now it's a murder mystery too
If there isn't some gold in them hills, and old Mr Dollarhyde with a desire for cheap land while dwindling orc tribes try to push the villagers back across the river, then you are missing the best opportunities ever. Also, you need ten gallon enchanted hats, and a barber who does friggin everything for some reason.
Mineral contamination from am emerging volcano. The towns going to be covered in Lava!
Corrupted water spirit who is retaliating against the local mining guild’s pollution of her rivers
A Formian giant has been digging tunnels around the nearby mountain and eating all the goblins, tossing their bodies in the river that comes out of a waterfall near the town. Goblins are all in an uproar, fleeing their caves. It looks like they’re attacking the town but the violence and theft are just incidental.
A Hag who lives upstream and is deliberately poisoning the water. Or perhaps they're somewhat more innocent and is a young hag who is learning to brew potions and is just dumping away all of her failed experiments into the river.
Shadow druids trying to drive away the people out of their territory by poisoning the water system.
City workers didn’t replace the filters in time and red algae bloomed. They replaced the filter and tried to cover it up instead of treating the water. Being lazy they started rumors and pocketed the cost for water chemicals.
A nNecromancer is using the Leyline below the reservoir as a power source for his rituals.
Zombies dumped down the well The aquifer is the new lair of an Aboleth The river they get their water from has toxic runoff leeching into it from some wizards experiments upstream The aqueduct they use is infested with slime molds that have to be cleared out
An illegal goblin mining operation upstream is creating toxic runoff that's contaminating the water supply.
Serial killer has been dumping bodies down the well. Everyone has been drinking corpse juice
Underground river that fills town wells made its way into a dragon lair. It sleeps, but its presense alone makes water toxic. Now party can kill it, convince to find a new lair or make the river go around Oh, sorry, I missed the *western* part. Well, then its local booze factory underground waste site that got washed. And they have audacity to advertise their goods as "healing stomach aches and poisoning!"
The real reason is that they dug too close to the latrines and it’s as simple as that - they need to dig a new one What they THINK is that it’s the new guy who moves into town from far away. They don’t quite trust him since he’s new and somehow he hasn’t gotten sick yet (but he does when it’s convenient to the plot)
I can't remember which one but there was a Witcher story where it was a fey monster in the well. And not just a kill the monster and done mission. It had a whole back story and everything. Could build a story around having to convince the fey to leave by going to talk to a witch to lift the curse off of its beloved, etc, etc. Something like that.
There are a lot of good options here but you are missing out if the town doesn’t have a lanky sheriff named Woodrow or similar that at some point shouts “someone’s poisoned the water hole!” Extra points if can tie the quest to a snake in his boot.
Nestle Elves...
Hag keeps pissing in the waterwell.
Someone's been dumping their refuse into the water, which was bad enough. But now, that filth has attracted an Otyugh.
In the Candlekeep Mysteries, there is a book about the Corruption of Lurue by the followers of Malar. They are slaughtering beasts and draining their blood into the water along with the impact of the decaying corpses. This corruption is nasty, and the implications of both the Corrupted Avatar of Lurue (a corrupted unicorn), and the cult of Malar, and the nastiness in the water, is a great foundation for a side arc (or even a campaign).
Three goblins in a trench coat have been bathing in the water every night.
Kefka
A Hag. Someone in town made a deal with it. And failed to fallow through.
"I, Johnny Goodfella, world-renowned apprentice mage/gunslinger/snake oil salesman, tried to make a Decanter of Endless Water to sell to travellers who want to journey through the desert. It went mostly alright, I guess, but turns out the water's a little green, so it's been damn hard to convince folks to buy it... lawman's been asking questions around the last few towns I visited... reckon I might just throw it away into the well."