Why should your company of heroes have to wait for high levels to encounter a mature, even ancient, dragon? They can have a fine challenge just avoiding getting killed by one.

Such adventures offer the thrill of getting in over your head, getting outplayed, and escaping with your life & yet still accomplishing what you set out to do, because no one expected you to totally solve the problem on your own.

1. Find a Dragon’s Lair

Search an area for the lair of a dragon (or other great menace) and report it back to the authorities. Along the way, you’ll likely stumble across other nasty creatures, of course, including the dragon’s minions.

Implications: At some point, the heroes need to encounter the dragon, of course. This can be done from a distance, just observing it flying around and, if they’re lucky, landing. And that should give them a good idea where its lair is. They’re free to go further an try to find the entrance itself, but the dragon’s minions will not take kindly to being disturbed.

2. Act as an Envoy to a Vampire

Travel to the mountain fortress of a known vampire, deliver a message from the earl, and return with the vampire’s reply. Along the way, you’ll likely encounter lesser undead and various other monstrous inhabitants of the lands.

Implications: The heroes may need to do a little persuading. The message is an attempt to secure safe passage for trade and troops thru the mountain pass the vampire’s fortress guards. What the earl is willing to give up could make the heroes uncomfortable: virgins.

3. Map the Opening of the Lich’s Dungeon

If anyone is ever to penetrate the Mad Dungeon of the Mystic Lich, they’ll need all they help they can get. And they’ll pay dearly for clues to even the first few chambers of the place. Is the opening hidden? Are there sentries? traps? Are they reset for later explorers?

Implications: The answer, of course, is all of the above, so the heroes will need to do some hex crawling to find the place and take great care in delving as deep as they dare and still live to tell the tale–and get paid handsomely.

4. Deliver Messages During a Battle

Heroes of consequence may be commanding knights, mages, footmen, and archers, but they also serve who only stand and wait to deliver messages. When the moment comes, you’re called upon to brave the wilderness at the perimeter of the battle lines and get thru to those who await orders and then to return with field reports.

Implications: Along the way, there are sure to be run-ins with enemy scouts, opportunistic monsters hoping for a slaughter, and even traps laid by sentries.

5. Raise the Alarm about a Demon Lord

An evil overlord has arisen & wrecked a town. It’s too tough to fight by yourselves. But someone needs to tell the earl, king’s justiciar, or at least the sheriff about it so a force of men can be raised. It needs to be clear that such a plan is expected and will work, or the heroes may talk themselves out of even trying to help.

Implications: Of course, the heroes will first need to slip past lesser perils & perhaps also help other innocents get out of harm’s way.

6. Find Who Rerouted the River

The river that feeds the city has gone dry. Travel upriver to find the reason, and when you discover what powerful force can reroute a river, scamper home and explain it to the authorities: some giant beavers have built a dam; an evil cult or lord has dug a trench to reroute it to another city or a castle; or an evil wizard or mad druid has magically rerouted it for their own purposes.

Implications: Whoever is up to no good won’t want the heroes to find them or report back, so the return trip could be an all-out race against time.

7. Find the Likely Resting Place of an Artifact

A sage needs to provide some great hero—a noble warlord or the king’s champions—with the whereabouts of some lost artifact or hero’s tomb. He or she may have two or three other companies of heroes searching, but your duty is clear: search a few hexes or a specific ruins to see if you can locate it, nothing more–do not try to recover the artifact. Of course, what else might be located into those hexes is unknown….

Implications: Expectations for the heroes are low, because it’s thought that the artifact or tomb is guarded by something so vile that none have lived to tell the tale about it.