I recently watched the Simpsons Treehouse of Horror episode in which they did a parody of “The Island of Dr Moreau” and thought a mad scientist trying to turn people into animals could make for a fun minor character in my campaign. My players are en route to a dungeon and should be there in a few sessions, I’m thinking of making the dungeon the lab of a mad scientist who has gotten locked out of the lower levels due to a containment breach.
The details I have so far is that he is a gnome, currently named Prof. Moreau, who has created mongrelfolk while trying to turn a human into an animal.
The mongrelfolk are safely contained in the lower levels and have started to create their own society, I think the boss of the dungeon should be a Gibbering Mouther called One, as in Attempt One.
I think the Mongrelfolk should worship one as their leader and hate Moreau for keeping them locked in the lab.
What I’m stuck on now is what life is like for the mongrelfolk, what they believe and how they have organised society.
Make them live in terrible conditions, and look like monsters at first glance. This way your players will react to them as standard dungeons & dragons monsters, by which I mean kill them all. Afterwards, they find council chambers, crude medical facilities, nurseries, etc that imply that their society was surprisingly egalitarian and had a budding democratic government.
Give just enough of a hint beforehand so that they could have resolved things peacefully if they had been paying attention.
If harming your players emotionally is the goal.
That was similar to the cut ending for I am Legend.
And the original ending in the book and old film
This is a really good idea, I might make their laws very simplistic. I might even steal the ones from Animal Farm.
In my mind the mongrelfolk definitely won’t be inherently evil. Paranoid or scared of outsiders, definitely. But they should have near-human intelligence, but slightly diminished.
Professor Moreau to me is the evil one but purely because he doesn’t hold much regard for the lives of the people he has experimented on, especially in a world with polymorph magic and Druidic wildshape. Though Moreau will be helpful to the players and give them no good reason to kill him, since they’re his chance to regain control of his lab.
I’ve been going back and forth on if Moreau will want the mongrelfolk dead, since they’d hold more scientific value to him kept alive.
Maybe he doesn’t want them all dead, but he regularly abducts and dissects individuals who catch his attention. One is of specific interest, but has never been caught because the mongrelfolk are protecting it.