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[Piratecat]

Originally Posted by Mark

A sword, loyalty and protecting a legitimate heir.

Curse you, Mark! Generic becomes less easy. But no worries, let's find a premise and then turn it on its ear.

A ruler - not a very important ruler, honestly, a minor duke with some family estates and a lot of debts - finds out on his mother's deathbed that he was actually sired by the King's father, the late king, before the King himself was fathered. "Perfect!" thinks the Duke who's in debt. "Surely being a royal bastard is still enough to get some of my debts excused." He applies to the King's adviser, and the reverse happens: his debts are called in, he is forced to remit his estates to the crown, and he barely avoids being captured and jailed.

So what does he do next?

In one option, he becomes the bad guy. He finds people who will help him take revenge on the King and take his place. In effect, he starts a civil war that is backed by some extremely unsavory allies (cults? Fiends? A foreign power?) who have their own agenda. They need him to possess a particular sword in order to get him to replace the king (maybe it belongs to the king's bodyguard, or it can cut through the king's magical defenses, or the sword itself is the key to an ancient passage into the castle.) The PCs run into the Duke and his allies as an enemy, and the civil war becomes the backdrop for the campaign.

Or maybe the King's advisor and spymaster is the real villain. He dedicates himself to ruining the fairly innocent Duke, and after the PCs try to help he puts them on the "to be destroyed" list as well. The rightful king is ignorant of this treachery. A sword somehow holds the key to revealing the advisor's perfidy to the king's court, and it's a race to get it and reveal him before inappropriately sent royal assassins can get it first.

In either campaign, loyalty would be the theme: who do you choose to be loyal to, and what would make you break those vows?

Okay, three more. Anyone can play!