Your friendly neighborhood sage has just made a wonderful discovery (or maybe he just had one too many and was just looking at a smuge in this old text). If the tarrasque is scratched at this one spot, it becomes docile, at least quiet enough to be fed instead of just grabbing everything and body within its reach.
So of course you get hired to see if the text is right...
Success means you prevent the destruction usually caused by the monster. Fail and, well... at least the monster won't be quite so hungry when the next victim is spotted.
The ancient text is rather vague about where the spot is, and how hard you need to scratch it (50 points of damage?), and for how long. So our sage is eager to hear from any survivors.
The party has been called upon to investigate dissapearances on the outskirts of a farming community. It started with sheep, but recently a shepherd has gone missing and people are very concerned. The village wise woman (adept 2) has found no trace of the supernatural at work and the local huntsman (ranger 1) has not found any tracks and the skies have been clear. There is nothing near the disappearance except some dense folliage.
A druid will recognize the work of a tendriculos instantly, anyone else has to make a knowledge (nature) check of DC 18. Otherwise, they will have to wander through the forest and basically get jumped by them.
Usually, the tendriculos is solo, but for some reason three of them are working together. They are doing the bidding of a 10th level evil druid who is attempting to destroy the town and let nature reclaim the land. He is only holding back because he fears the town's superior numbers.
A mining foreman approaches the party. He has captured a thoqqua and tortured it so that it will dig deep into the mountain. But it escaped and is now on a rampage. Other such elemental creatures have been drawn to the area as they see the thoqqua as a kind of guardian or at least a watch dog. The foreman acknowledges that he was wrong, but will still pay a handsome price to be rid of the beast.
The thoqqua hasn't "drilled" in straight lines. The party will have to bring rope and there will be many climb checks to be made. Most, if not all, battles will be fought on at least a 30 degree angle.
A bunch of halflings want to be rescued from this "great big guy". After discounting all the claims of him being hundreds of feet tall, and finding the halfings had fled at first sight, the party should conclude the foe is about 10-15' tall, a height the halflings describe the same way they describe anything much above 10'.
The 25' titan just happens to be out of easy sight when the party approaches and if the party decides to attack the "hill/frost/fire giant", he will be seriously annoyed.
Of course he just might forgive the party if they will.....
Strange things are about. For some reason, no ships can reach a certain populated island, some fifty miles off the mainland's coast. When investigations commence, it is found that there is a clutch of tojanida that has been summarily eating every boat to come their way. Once the tojanida are dead, they will still have to find out who or what was it that summoned them here, and why.
A militant druid harnessed an army of treants to destroy a massive city whose ever-expanding borders enroach their old-growth home. Now the party will know how the other side feels, as the lord of the city hires them to deal with the treants while his city is under siege. And treants are very patient creatures.
The party really pissed off that lich, who got them with a mass curse of polymorph into sahuagins. However, if they say they are sorry and beg for its forgiveness, it will likely remove the curse.
Did I mention there is a nation fo tritons between party and lich?
Did I mention tritons don't like sahuagins, except in tiny pieces?
Did I mention the tritons are not going to believe this stupid pissed-off lich story?
A string of bizarre killings has the small town of Palin in an uproar. Several bodies with vicious claw and bite marks have been found. What's more, they are covered in the most sickening stench imaginable. A few villagers have noticed that the rash of murders began shorly after the arrival of a mysterious stranger, speculating that he may be the cause.
The poor fellow behind these murders is indeed the stranger, a half-troglodyte who looks very nearly human. He was an outcast in the nearby troglodyte tribe, and fled to a human town to try to fit in (and to avoid the troglodytes who wanted to find out if he tasted as much like a human as he looked). But poor Galak (that's his name) doesn't understand human society very well. He gets confused, and when he gets confused, his first instinct is to attack. (Or, rather, his second instinct is to attack; his first is to release that awful stench.) If the PCs choose to help him, can they sneak him out of the village before the villagers have him hanged?
Alternatively, he could actually be spying for the troglodytes (and lying to the PCs about his motives), or he may even be a normal troglodyte with a polymorph or alter self spell cast on him. Additionally, his arrival could have been about the same time as that of the PCs', causing the townsfolk to suspect one or all of the PCs instead. The PCs may find themselves trying to clear their names while protecting their new half-troglodyte friend.
A paladin has just lost his powers. Is it because he killed all those kobold babies? Is it because he recently discovered that he was gay? Is it because he put a very sick, old, black, communist jew out of his wretched misery? Is it because he keeps telling everyone at the local tavern that rangers suck? It's up to the PC's to find out.
Meanwhile, trolls have captured the very attractive, chain-mail-bikini-clad, nymphomaniac mayor's daughter and are sending him one of his daughter's fingers every day until he pays the ransom. The party arrives in town on the 9th day, so time is of the essence, because who knows what those sick bastards will do to the poor girl. The trolls haven't yet understood why the fingers haven't grown back.