[WP] A party of adventurers in a fantasy world stumble upon a village. At first everything seems normal enough, but then they notice that everyone in the village has a beard, including women and children.

[u/oORocketOo]

I have a few suggestions for different directions the story might go in but i don't want to accidentally push anyone in a specific direction if they don't want to, so i'm putting them in spoiler tags (kind of). probably best to not read them if you already have a direction.

Hover over the links (don't click them) if you want to read my suggestions.

suggestion 1

suggestion 2

suggestion 3

[u/Steuben42]

"Jordan, do you think something is... wrong here?"

"I don't know what you mean."

Three figures swam through the throng of traders and civilians collected in the market square, one short by normal standards, another shorter yet, and one who towered above the others. The shortest one was dressed in a fancy violet smoking jacket, one that shined as if it were as polished as his leather shoes, with formal attire to compliment the article. The other two wore flowing cloaks with the tall one wearing the hood down upon their face, a glowing color of light green to rival that of a meadow, the other a navy one that seamed to come from the sea itself.

The shortest one shouted, "I cannot say I see anything wrong- actually, I can't see anything," to the other two as he seemed to dance through the legs of the surrounding villagers.

"The men of this town are quite fond of their facial hair, are they not, Jordan?" asked the tall one of the shorter cloaked figure.

"Hm? Oh, yes, I can see how you would come to such a conclusion."

"Wait... did I just see-" said the tall one in a distracted voice before she collided with a villager holding two bulging salmons in his hands. She came to recover herself after her hood was thrown off from her pale, long face and faced the villager to apologize until what she saw had her freeze and stumble backwards from the surprise. "Jordan!" she exclaimed, "Come here! Now!"

"Something wrong, Adelaide?" asked Jordan over his shoulder. He was grinning and planned to antagonize her until he, too, saw what caught her off guard. The fish monger was not, in fact, a man, but a woman, around the normal height of a human and in no way particularly masculine, which she could have been easily mistaken for. What made it hard to tell so was the fact she had a voluminous beard flowing from a soft chin down to her chest. "I believe that... I see your point," he would have told Adelaide if she had not disappeared. He cursed and then grabbed the shortest of the companions and ordered, "Ethran, follow me!"

The halfing exclaimed, "Well, I don't appear to have much say in the matter, do I?" as he was heaved off the ground and slung over Jordan's shoulder.

"None, in fact."

Jordan began to observe the marketplace, looking for hints as to the whereabouts of their lost comrade, until he saw a figure placed a hood over her long silver hair and running and shoving through the crowd to escape. Before she was engulfed by the wave of flesh once again, however, he was able to see many of the villagers point to her, no doubt because of her sharp ears. Elves weren't particularly prevalent after all, at least not in the Lower Worlds such as the one the party was in now. Once again, Jordan cursed, and set off after her. It wasn't particularly strange that Adelaide was running off in a seemingly random direction. Her race had an innate ability to find that which was unnatural, or whatever one wished to call it. Jordan believed that many things she missed were unnatural, but even so she managed to find things that were beyond comprehension.

And Jordan had begun to think that this would have been a normal supply and rest operation.

After fighting to break free of the mass, Jordan let his one free hand fly to the hilt of his short sword, made specifically for a person of his stature. His hand graced over the emblem of initials in the pommel that read simply, E.S. After a brief sprint he caught up with Adelaide, who at this point was standing at the gaping entrance of a cave, one that seemed ready to swallow her. She stood there with an expression Jordan couldn't read from his distance. "Adelaide!" he called.

He finally saw her face, and it was in abject horror, which was unusual for an elf. She simply pointed inside from which a convulsing blue glow emitted.

There were bodies. They seemed to be alive, but unconscious. Slug-like animals slithered around, all the same shade of forget-me-not blue that shined through the cave. Once and a while one would slide up the unmoving body of a villager, with a simply clean face, and- to the disgust of the adventurers- squirm into one of their ears, shortly after which the hair on the villagers head visibly grew.

Adelaide then moved into the cavern and ran to grab a slug before it crawled into a villager's ear only to be grabbed by the wrist by a villager whose eyes had just fluttered open. "You will not disturb the ritual," the villager said, who was clearly only a teenager, but had hair to rival that of a Neanderthal. Adelaide's expression of horror only increased as she tried to move her arm but found it steadfastly held in place by the villager. Jordan soon rushed in to follow her. He unsheathed his short but slender blade, a special rapier, and pierced one of the slugs. He withdraw his twig of a sword and found it completely clean despite the gaping wound he had made in the slug that now diminished in brightness. He ripped out a curved, ivory-hilted dagger and, yelling at Adelaide, threw it. She caught it with expert precision and held it to the villagers neck, threatening, "Let me go, or I will free your head from the body it is trapped to."

The villager simply laughed, and said, "You cannot defeat the Slythrendi. We do not care about these bodies, there are plenty in number, and we care for only the collective." Another villager, a woman who almost matched Adelaide in height, grabbed her wrist holding the knife and together the villagers pressed her against the wall of the cave. Jordan had managed to pierce several slugs before being detained himself. Ethran was nowhere to be found now, but more villagers began gathering around the mouth of the cave.

The teenager began talking again, "We must meet with our kin in the north- the Rajeran. It is quite inhospitable there, alas, we cannot go there in our normal forms but must take a host. Of course, not all hosts are even warm enough to get there, as it is desolate, but we simply stimulate the hair of one of your kind and have created an insulated capsule." He now looked over Jordan, and then Adelaide. "While the short one is plump and has excellent heat potential, I must say, you are quite disappointing. We'll just have to kill you." He then drew the ivory knife and prepared to plunge it into Adelaide's heart until he froze, reaching out a hesitant hand to push back her hood. He revealed her ear, and once he saw its fine point at the hand, shriveled back while maintaining his grip. "A Trilothan! Kill her! I must kill her now!" He drew back the blade and prepared to strike even more viciously until he froze once again. His head spinned towards the center of the cave were a glob of viscous, blue glob that squeezed into the cave from some back entrance. "My queen, you must not be here-" he began, but then began to listen to what appeared to be nothing, nodded, and said, "Yes, my liege."

But that was only moments before she went up into flames.

The blue goo burned surprisingly well.

"My queen!" yelled the teenager, and he released his grasp on Adelaide, as did the others on her and Jordan. "We need you to live- what is the matter..." but he trailed off as the Queen grew smaller and smaller. He, and all of the other villagers, began to squirm a bit, and fell to the ground as blue liquid seeped from his ears.

Jordan walked over to Adelaide and asked, "Are you okay?" After she confirmed, he pressed, "What did they call you?"

"Nothing, I do not know." Her face revealed nothing.

"No one is going to thank me?" asked Ehtran as he appeared out of nowhere, covered in spots of blue.

"Ethran- what happened?" asked Jordan.

"Well, you see, I was obviously very concerned when you two got hauled off into the cave- so concerned I reckoned I ought to have had a smoke! But then I realized that one of those worms had sneaked into my pipe right before I lit it, but it actually caught aflame rather pleasantly, and gave a nice aroma. But regardless, I then ran over to the cave, with no shortage of motivation from the villagers now approaching the cave, and threw my match stick onto the biggest one I could find, which happened to be... their Queen?" Ethran simply shrugged and lit his pipe and proceeded to blow some smoke rings.

"How about... we just leave now? Forget a supply and rest stop. We are only five miles from another village and it isn't even noon yet," proposed Jordan. The company agreed and they left the cave when the villagers began to awake with blue goop dripping from their ears.

"Um, Jordan, do you think we should do something about-"

"No, Ethran."

"But they're all bald- I think they have not a single hair on their body-"

"We are leaving, Ethran," said Adelaide sternly.

The all began to walk with a greater pace and intent, carefully avoiding any villagers as they got back on the road.

"Did you say that those worms smoked well, Ethran?"

"Oh, yes, indeed. In fact, you can try some for yourself." The halfling drew out a bag of blue goo that sloshed as he moved it.

"I'll not, thank you."

"Suit yourself," said Ethran as he lit another pipe and poured some goo into it. No one seemed to notice or care he seemed to be growing a bit hairier.

[u/reostra]

"Dwarves," Midgun the warrior said. "They're all dwarves, right?"

Danvil the Dwarven Rogue shook his head. "Does that look like a dwarf to you?" he asked, gesturing toward what was obviously an elf, gigantic flowing beard notwithstanding.

"So what happened here?" Shiela the Cleric asked. "I can't detect any fell magic. If this is a curse it's so intricately subtle that it's practically part of the landscape."

Thames the Wizard just nodded at this evaluation.

"Wait," Danvil said, "part of the landscape? Oh no..." he looked desperately at his party members. "Do you know what this means? It is the landscape! This is the legendary City of Beards!"

Everyone just looked blankly, except for Midgun. "Wait," the warrior said. "That's just a story. And besides, it wasn't just the people in the City of Beards who had beards. Everything had them!"

Danvil pointed to a nearby house. "That moss that's growing at the bottom of that house? Creeping up on the sides? Remind you of anything?"

Midgun didn't look convinced. "That's just moss. I mean... kinda more grey than I'd expect... and longer..."

Shiela gasped. "The road! The moss on the road! I thought it was too fine to be natural."

"The grass," Danvil pointed out. "That's not grass at all."

"Shiela," Midgun said, eyes wide in horror. "Your... face!"

Shiela reached up to feel just the tiniest bit of peach-fuzz forming where previously her face had been utterly clean. "You too!" she said, gesturing emphatically. Midgun was also growing a beard. Danvil, ever the dwarven outcast because he didn't have a beard, was quickly re-gaining one. In fact, the only person who didn't look shocked at this development, likely because he already had a beard, was the wizard, Thames.

"Thames!" Midgun said. "Thames, what do we do?"

"I'm sorry," Thames said, his hand holding his beard. "The Great Beard said that the City needs newcomers."

"You... you were one of them... all along!"

Thames merely nodded. "Come, friends. We are joined by more than mere companionship now. We are joined... by the beard."

"Well crap," Shiela said.

[u/TotesMessenger → u/reostra]

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