by Lucy Hewitt
(from an original plot by Anke Buttner)
A rumour has reached the covenant of a bard who has developed a remarkable reputation for both excellent singing and enraging the parents of a number of young ladies by leaving them in a delicate condition. If appropriate to your saga, he may also be rumoured to carry <insert relevant plot hooks>.
Sooner or later he turns up at the covenant, riding a very impressive black stallion, and dressed in fine robes. Evidently this is a man who has done well for himself, and he is invited to sing.
The covenant is overawed by his performance - he appears to have something akin to the Enchanting Music virtue, and tells stories which have all the staff (especially anyone young and female) hanging round him for the rest of the day. However, any magi or magical companions will realise that there is something rather odd about this ability, as he looses the plot of his own stories and can't seem to hold a tune very well.
The horse is a spectacular specimen, possibly a warhorse, but it seems to be having an unpleasant effect on every other animal in the stables, as the rest of the covenant's stock panic if left near it. If asked where he got the horse from, the bard will explain that he acquired it from a horse trader in exchange for a story - and that it wasn't a very good horse then, but seems to have got better since (to any observer, this is blatantly obviously an animal worth a king's ransom).
If asked about the young ladies, the bard will plead total ignorance. It wasn't him, he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. FBotSL will demonstrate that he is telling the truth.
Later that night... one of the female characters (a maga if there is one young and vaguely attractive) will awaken from her sleep to discover a male figure attempting to get into her bed. It looks like the bard, but isn't quite solid. If she raises a hue and cry, the figure disappears into mist. Any attempt to find the culprit will reveal that he is in his bed, and fast asleep, but there appears to be a commotion going on in the stables.
The figure is an incubus, whose spirit is inhabiting the horse. Its essence is contained in an obsidian arrowhead which has been shot at the animal, and is currently lodged in the flesh around its heart - and working its way inwards If it reaches the heart, as it will do within a day or so, the horse dies, and is transformed into a demonic animal. The only way to dispose of the spirit permanently is to throw a DEO at the arrowhead itself (or wait for the horse to die and use a larger DEO on its demonic form). Normal parties may just kill the creature, those interested in a challenge can attempt to remove the arrowhead without doing further damage.
Once the demon is destroyed, the bard looses his ability to fascinate, and reverts to being a not-terribly successful juggler and tale teller. If the horse survives the night, it reverts to its former, rather broken-down but serviceable nature, and its owner refuses to have anything further to do with it, leaving the covenant on foot and as fast as he can manage.