D&D 5E Help developing Drow plot

Hey all,

I'm looking for any ideas or insight into helping me flesh out the next "chapter" of my campaign. Super open to hear any cool ideas you all come up with!

The heroes are currently en route to a major city which has mysteriously closed it's gates and cut off all communication. One of the characters hails from this city, and is deeply concerned something is wrong (which of course, it is).
The city of Hightower was built above the lair of a prismatic dragon eons ago. Using powerful rituals, the mages of the city were able to coax the dragon into an unbreakable slumber. While the dragon sleeps, the residents of the city profit from the amplification of any magical abilities. As such, Hightower has been the center of magical research for generations. The cause of this amplification however is a deeply kept secret, known only to the ruling family and their trusted attendants, who have all managed to keep this secret from even the most diligent prying eyes.

Every 10 years, the slumber ritual must be renewed, lest the dragon awaken. Only one individual can cast the ritual - the Archmage of Hightower, or his/her direct descendant. When the first-born descendant comes of age (16), the ability to cast the ritual is passed from the Archmage to the child. As such, the bloodline of the Archmages has been carefully protected. One of my PC's is the only child of the current Archmage, and as such is responsible for casting the ritual. However, due to a trip in the Feywild which twisted time, he recently missed the window to recast the ritual...

Behind the scenes, several houses of Drow have been uncovered the truth about Hightower and the dragon. They have spent years watching, waiting for a chance to claim the power of Hightower for their own. As the time of the ritual approached and the PC was missing, they put their plan into action. Arriving in Hightower through a secret entrance to the Underdark, they approached the Archmage with an offer. The Drow had discovered a second ritual which they claimed could keep the dragon in its safe slumber. They would cast said ritual, but had some demands. Without other recourse, the Archmage agreed. The second ritual worked, but has made magic in the area unstable. Meanwhile, the Drow have taken control of the city, using their power over the dragon as collateral.

The heroes are soon to arrive and find the city gates shut. My plan so far is to have them slowly uncover the Drow presence in the city, and learn of the ritual and ideally a way to break it. This will likely lead to them venturing into the Underdark, to encounter the various hazards and monsters down there, as well as the political machinations of the Drow.

Does this spark any inspiration for you? Any cool ideas for encounters or plot developments? Any critiques or issues you see?

Trit

Sounds pretty good. You didn't define what you mean by "the Drow have taken control of the city." I take this to mean they're pulling strings from the shadows, not that they've got a large garrison of soldiers patrolling the streets and the like. If it's the latter, I would find this problematic unless the city is extremely isolated.

I have a couple ideas.
The Ritual could just produce similar results of the previous one. In reality the spell not only puts the dragon into a slumber but slowly drains it lifeforce and magical essence and that power is absorbed to a high priestess of drow who slowly gains power and turns into some kind of drow dragon hybrid. That means that more heros wait more powerfull The priestess becomes.
Could make a choice of braking the ritual, which means the dragon wakes up (priestess may ar may not die due to this action) or slaying the dragon which means the priestess does not get more power but the city looses its amplification of magic.
The Archmage could be dead and the one that looks like him is drow who true polymorthed into an achmage so they can "officially" make this pact between drow and the city. The archmages child could slowly notice weird behaviour of his father/mother.
If you like the direction I am going I can brainstorm more.

[MENTION=6783882]Nevvur[/MENTION] - You have it right, they're pretty much moving from behind the scenes, though they do have a small presence in the city - enough to put pressure on the higher ups and keep an eye on things. They have had the Archmage issue orders to seal the city to outsiders though, which has drawn some attention.

DeXodus said:

I have a couple ideas.
The Ritual could just produce similar results of the previous one. In reality the spell not only puts the dragon into a slumber but slowly drains it lifeforce and magical essence and that power is absorbed to a high priestess of drow who slowly gains power and turns into some kind of drow dragon hybrid. That means that more heros wait more powerfull The priestess becomes.
Could make a choice of braking the ritual, which means the dragon wakes up (priestess may ar may not die due to this action) or slaying the dragon which means the priestess does not get more power but the city looses its amplification of magic.
The Archmage could be dead and the one that looks like him is drow who true polymorthed into an achmage so they can "officially" make this pact between drow and the city. The archmages child could slowly notice weird behaviour of his father/mother.
If you like the direction I am going I can brainstorm more.

Click to expand...

I like this idea quite a bit actually. I will tweak and adjust it a bit to fit the context of the campaign a bit, but the idea that the ritual is secretly giving a priestess incredible power and transforming her feels very exciting! I'm very much toying with the idea that the dragon might wake up, destroying the city in the process. We'll have to see how the heroes handle the Drow issue to see how that plays out!

As for the doppelganger, that is also very interesting. I may make it a character other than the Archmage (I'm thinking he will be constantly "escorted" by a few Drow friends so he's hard to reach/contact), but might make it one of the PC's old teachers.
The wheels are turning!

Trit

You could tie in that Priestess wants this power so she can open a portal to Lolths Demonweb pits and as time goes on the portal gets bigger letting bigger creatures come forth. Might be nice way to introduce some interesting monsters.
You could make so that some high ranking person (even maybe the one that got "doppelganged") was investigating and writing about the situation beforehand and while he got killed his notebook got partly destroyed and pages scattered. Some lost, some partly burned, some fine. You could then make heroes find them in various places or from various people who found them, slowly introducing the story. You could make it so it is not linear introduction but "spotty": pages found in non linear manner. This could be additional tool when PC get stuck somewhere. And you could make the pages your own as props, burning the sides of the pages and some words away. That would be nice way to increase the immersion.
Another idea would be some kind of new objects that are placed around the city with weird symbols. These objects are basically security cameras just giving ability for drow to see what is happening in the city. In general you could go in direction of this drow takeover similarly to the film "they live" (if you haven't watched it, do it!). Basically drow try to hide their involvment as much as possible. There are some amount of people that were replaced with drow doppelgangers who always watching and eliminating anyone who recovers any truth about it. It could be actually quite cool if your party slowly recovers the truth without finding out that drow are at fault. You could make encounters with assassination attempts on the party. Make the doppelgangers true polymorphed to be folk living in the city. Then if assassins are slain there is no way to tell that they are drow. You can draw out the mistery longer.
You could go even further finding out that drow wants to slowly replace all the people in the city making it the first drow city in the surface in very very long time. The Priestess could be trying to replace the dragon in its functions being this new beast that amplifies the magical power. They might want this amplification so they can cast very very powerful spells and rituals so they can black out the sun making the surface world nice for them and in long term take over all the world and most importantly destroying all elf as ultimate revenge!!!
Damn... I might want to run this adventure myself too actually, if you don't mind me borrowing the initial idea of yours. Would be interesting to later compare how both parties acted.

... you've forgotten to tell us what kind of city High Tower is. I assumed it was a drow city... until the drow showed up ha!

DeXodus said:

You could tie in that Priestess wants this power so she can open a portal to Lolths Demonweb pits and as time goes on the portal gets bigger letting bigger creatures come forth. Might be nice way to introduce some interesting monsters.
You could make so that some high ranking person (even maybe the one that got "doppelganged") was investigating and writing about the situation beforehand and while he got killed his notebook got partly destroyed and pages scattered. Some lost, some partly burned, some fine. You could then make heroes find them in various places or from various people who found them, slowly introducing the story. You could make it so it is not linear introduction but "spotty": pages found in non linear manner. This could be additional tool when PC get stuck somewhere. And you could make the pages your own as props, burning the sides of the pages and some words away. That would be nice way to increase the immersion.
Another idea would be some kind of new objects that are placed around the city with weird symbols. These objects are basically security cameras just giving ability for drow to see what is happening in the city. In general you could go in direction of this drow takeover similarly to the film "they live" (if you haven't watched it, do it!). Basically drow try to hide their involvment as much as possible. There are some amount of people that were replaced with drow doppelgangers who always watching and eliminating anyone who recovers any truth about it. It could be actually quite cool if your party slowly recovers the truth without finding out that drow are at fault. You could make encounters with assassination attempts on the party. Make the doppelgangers true polymorphed to be folk living in the city. Then if assassins are slain there is no way to tell that they are drow. You can draw out the mistery longer.
You could go even further finding out that drow wants to slowly replace all the people in the city making it the first drow city in the surface in very very long time. The Priestess could be trying to replace the dragon in its functions being this new beast that amplifies the magical power. They might want this amplification so they can cast very very powerful spells and rituals so they can black out the sun making the surface world nice for them and in long term take over all the world and most importantly destroying all elf as ultimate revenge!!!
Damn... I might want to run this adventure myself too actually, if you don't mind me borrowing the initial idea of yours. Would be interesting to later compare how both parties acted.

Click to expand...

Go for it! I'm loving these ideas. I think my party is pretty tired of punching at shadows (just wrapped up a chapter of political intrigue and unmasking the true villain behind it all) so I may not draw out the reveal quite as long as I'd normally like, but this has certainly gotten my wheels turning! Thank you.
I'm particularly excited about making an assassination attempt or two on the heroes while they figure out what's going on. Nothing like returning home to people mysteriously trying to kill you!

My plan now looks like the following: Party arrives at the city, has to manage to find entrance (as the city is on lockdown). Have to find some contacts to help them understand what's going on - perhaps old friends, or making new allies. At least one of these allies will secretly be a Drow in disguise After that, to uncover the truth about the new ritual they will have to a) Find the entrance to the Underdark b) Journey into the Underdark to a nearby Drow city and c) Uncover the truth (including the fact that one priestess is siphoning off the dragon's power, unbeknownst to her fellow Drow!) either through force, guile, or politics.

Leaving a good amount of this open for my players to find other ways around, I feel like I have a pretty decent starting point (just in time for tonight's session!)

Thanks all!

Trit

Glad to be of help. Let us know how everything works out and have fun sessions

Hey everyone,

Just wanted to say thanks again for help plotting out my Drow occupation. Ran this session just before the holidays, and my players definitely had a good time.

After quickly determining who the threat was (I gave them some easy information, since they're pretty irritated with foes acting from the shadows at the moment), they set to work contacting some old friends in the city who had formed a loose resistance movement. After long discussion over how best to address the drow threat (can we block the tunnels into the city? What if we kill the dragon they have charmed?) they decided to find more information before acting on any larger plan.
Contacting some blackmarket traders in the city, they found old maps of the city from it's building, which clearly mark tunnels they believe lead to the Underdark. Meanwhile, the party's Bard helped secure a meeting with the matriarch of a Drow family at odds with the heading the occupation. He managed to convince her to aid the heroes, as if her rival family should fall, her family might rise. The Bard perhaps played his part too well, however, managing to earn the fascination of this Drow matriarch. Perhaps such a romance might lead to complications down the line...

After raiding the vaults of the city's main keep for magic items, the heroes are now poised to explore the Underdark with help of their assigned drow guard. Very very excited for what comes next (I'm thinking a series of small adventures including Drow cities, abandoned temples and drow pirates).

Thanks again for everyone for helping me get this story rolling!

Trit

Sounds awesome, dude, keep us posted. It is interesting to hear how it develops and might help our own campaigns.