Charles Rampant
Explorer
Dear all,
TL;DR: looking for ideas for an ‘Abyssal Mining’ expedition. Backstory in first two paragraphs, questions for how to run it in the third.
As part of a downtime session for my group, I've been thinking of ways to let them appear awesome (as 15th level characters) while also building off of past storylines to create new ones. One in particular that I've developed is that of a "lost tribe" of Hobgoblins; the story here is that, while time travelling, the party discovered that the ancient (3,500 years ago) Hobgoblins in their area were both civilised and devotees of the Aesir like themselves. In the ‘modern day’, the Hobgoblins are the standard savages and followers of Maglubiyet. The ancient Hobgoblins, upon a civilisation-shattering cataclysm, fled into the Astral plane aboard (essentially) spelljammer ships; the players were very taken with this, and on the observation that time doesn’t pass in the Astral, theorise that they might be able to find them and return them to basically turn the Hobgoblins of their time into useful allies.
So it’s the sort of crazy nonsense that emerges from high level play. Fine. Now, my plan is that the players will have to jump through some hoops to pull this off: I’ve numbered them for your convenience. [1] The hobbos are now prisoners of the Githyanki, held in their city of Tu’Narath (I’m using some information from Dragon #377). [2] To get there, the players will need a token to gain admittance to the (very carefully protected city) as accepted traders. [3] This token is held by a Morkoth (wandering planar collector thing from Volo’s Guide to Monsters) who will trade it for the bedclothes of Zadara, the Titan who lives in Sigil (from Uncaged: Faces of Sigil, one of my all-time favourite RPG books). The bedclothes thing is to suggest that even plane-hopping aberrations can be creepy perverts. [4] Anyway, Zadara in turn will ask the characters to go on an expedition to the Abyss, where a battle between the Devils and Demons has cut the entire top off of a mountain range. Lying right there, in plain sight, is a huge lode of Mithril; and she’s funding a group of miners to go in, when the fighting clears, and grab as much as possible. The party will then get a 5% cut of the total profits, or whatever.
So I’ve got this hopelessly convoluted series of steps, which I think will run fairly smoothly, with sufficient NPC prompting and whatnot; it also gives me plenty of fun roleplaying opportunities to inflict on the players, and will hopefully make their entry into Tu’Narath feel like a major achievement. What I’m looking for help with, however, is ideas for the actual mining operation. Say that a window of 3 days opens, and that a party of five 15th/16th level characters (including a Cleric with Planeshift and a bag full of planar tuning fork things) are tasked with protecting about a hundred Duergar miners. What would you do for this? How would you run it? Is there anywhere in the Abyss that I should use as the location for this? I’d like for a Demon Lord (from Out of the Abyss) to be the final boss - ideas? And is there something more fancy than Mithril that I should use instead?
Any suggestions gratefully received!
TL;DR: looking for ideas for an ‘Abyssal Mining’ expedition. Backstory in first two paragraphs, questions for how to run it in the third.
As part of a downtime session for my group, I've been thinking of ways to let them appear awesome (as 15th level characters) while also building off of past storylines to create new ones. One in particular that I've developed is that of a "lost tribe" of Hobgoblins; the story here is that, while time travelling, the party discovered that the ancient (3,500 years ago) Hobgoblins in their area were both civilised and devotees of the Aesir like themselves. In the ‘modern day’, the Hobgoblins are the standard savages and followers of Maglubiyet. The ancient Hobgoblins, upon a civilisation-shattering cataclysm, fled into the Astral plane aboard (essentially) spelljammer ships; the players were very taken with this, and on the observation that time doesn’t pass in the Astral, theorise that they might be able to find them and return them to basically turn the Hobgoblins of their time into useful allies.
So it’s the sort of crazy nonsense that emerges from high level play. Fine. Now, my plan is that the players will have to jump through some hoops to pull this off: I’ve numbered them for your convenience. [1] The hobbos are now prisoners of the Githyanki, held in their city of Tu’Narath (I’m using some information from Dragon #377). [2] To get there, the players will need a token to gain admittance to the (very carefully protected city) as accepted traders. [3] This token is held by a Morkoth (wandering planar collector thing from Volo’s Guide to Monsters) who will trade it for the bedclothes of Zadara, the Titan who lives in Sigil (from Uncaged: Faces of Sigil, one of my all-time favourite RPG books). The bedclothes thing is to suggest that even plane-hopping aberrations can be creepy perverts. [4] Anyway, Zadara in turn will ask the characters to go on an expedition to the Abyss, where a battle between the Devils and Demons has cut the entire top off of a mountain range. Lying right there, in plain sight, is a huge lode of Mithril; and she’s funding a group of miners to go in, when the fighting clears, and grab as much as possible. The party will then get a 5% cut of the total profits, or whatever.
So I’ve got this hopelessly convoluted series of steps, which I think will run fairly smoothly, with sufficient NPC prompting and whatnot; it also gives me plenty of fun roleplaying opportunities to inflict on the players, and will hopefully make their entry into Tu’Narath feel like a major achievement. What I’m looking for help with, however, is ideas for the actual mining operation. Say that a window of 3 days opens, and that a party of five 15th/16th level characters (including a Cleric with Planeshift and a bag full of planar tuning fork things) are tasked with protecting about a hundred Duergar miners. What would you do for this? How would you run it? Is there anywhere in the Abyss that I should use as the location for this? I’d like for a Demon Lord (from Out of the Abyss) to be the final boss - ideas? And is there something more fancy than Mithril that I should use instead?
Any suggestions gratefully received!
