The Coming of the Great Red Herring! The End is Nigh!!! D&D 5e

About the adventure

Aeons ago, a giant space herring crash landed in a swampy expanse of the planet the party calls home. Long since drained and cultivated, that expanse is now home to the perfectly arable town of Bodrum, a hub for agriculture, wineries, and fish oil mining. Preserved deep underground, the remains of this incredibly well-fed space herring are excavated by wheelbarrow and bucket for use as fuel, fertilizer, and fine dining. Kobolds, natives of dark spaces and narrow tunnels, excel at this lipid extraction, and they don’t seem to mind the smell, either. Employed by Baron Bodrum Businesses Inc. for the past few decades, these kobolds are an integral part of life in Bodrum. Sure, pies go missing off of window sills and horses become magically unshod overnight, but without these kobolds, Bodrum would be nothing more than a boring backwater producing buckwheat and beer. While most of Bodrum’s townsfolk believe the oil to come from “dinosaurs or something,” kobold oral tradition teaches the herring truth. Branton Quark, winner of the Guild of Artificer’s ignoble ‘Most Likely to Accidentally End the World’ award three years running, has been stirring up trouble in the kobold community. Since losing his job as chief engineer at Baron Bodrum Businesses Inc. a month ago, Quark has been seen posing as an emissary of the Many-Headed Dragon Queen (the costume for which is a very homemade dragon onesie), on Bodrum’s high street. Each day, he hands out flyers detailing the end of the world on the coming equinox at the hands of a second giant space herring in an attempt to scare off the kobolds. Over the past month, the number of kobolds turning up for work has dwindled. Quark showed the kobolds his designs for a giant automaton with which he would fight the space herring, which they immediately vandalized and stole. They have since excluded him from the fabrication process and bent all their resources to its construction, disappearing from the surface three days prior to the party’s arrival. His plan to make the kobolds leave work has succeeded and he is vying to get his former position at the factory back. Meanwhile, in Bodrum, stuff has been going missing. Lots of stuff. Much to the chagrin of the local populace, this includes the town gazebo, which disappeared one night. Baron Bodrum, occasional philanthropist (for tax reasons), has put up a bounty to have the thieves captured, and the goods returned. Are you up to the task?