Saagael
First Post
NOTE: New member of the forum to please forgive my newb-ish-ness.
I've been DMing a 4th edition group for about a year now and so far all of the adventures have been your bread-and-butter dungeon delve style dungeons. There is a little intrigue, but by no means is it part of the plot device.
The players will be venturing into a metropolitan city for a change, and I'd like to throw in a bit more intrigue as well as play on some of their backstories. One plot hook in particular has me stumped and I'd appreciate some input on what I could do.
Backstory:
Player (sorcerer) was taught magic by a wizard. This wizard had two daughters: one who was also learning magic, and another who had no magical talent. The second child eventually left and soon after the wizard's house caught fire and burned to the ground. The player never saw his teacher or his fellow student again. The fire was assumed to be arson, but no culprit was ever found.
That's the backstory I have to build off of, but I've hit DM's block and can't think of much substantial adventure material. So I've come up with:
-Someone was burning down the houses of arcane practitioners.
-I don't want the second child to be responsible. That's too expected. Maybe some distint connection, but not directly responsible.
-The teacher and his first daughter are presumed dead, but are actually living under false names. The daughter is teaching at the city's university, whle the teacher is in hiding. Even the daughter doesn't know where he is; they communicate very rarely.
I'm pretty sure that's everything. If I remember or develop more I can add more here. The big thing to remember is that this is a sub-quest and is meant to flesh out the game, not drive some over-arching campaign (I've got different stuff for that). If anyone could offer ideas, advice or links to useful material I'd really apprecaite it!
I've been DMing a 4th edition group for about a year now and so far all of the adventures have been your bread-and-butter dungeon delve style dungeons. There is a little intrigue, but by no means is it part of the plot device.
The players will be venturing into a metropolitan city for a change, and I'd like to throw in a bit more intrigue as well as play on some of their backstories. One plot hook in particular has me stumped and I'd appreciate some input on what I could do.
Backstory:
Player (sorcerer) was taught magic by a wizard. This wizard had two daughters: one who was also learning magic, and another who had no magical talent. The second child eventually left and soon after the wizard's house caught fire and burned to the ground. The player never saw his teacher or his fellow student again. The fire was assumed to be arson, but no culprit was ever found.
That's the backstory I have to build off of, but I've hit DM's block and can't think of much substantial adventure material. So I've come up with:
-Someone was burning down the houses of arcane practitioners.
-I don't want the second child to be responsible. That's too expected. Maybe some distint connection, but not directly responsible.
-The teacher and his first daughter are presumed dead, but are actually living under false names. The daughter is teaching at the city's university, whle the teacher is in hiding. Even the daughter doesn't know where he is; they communicate very rarely.
I'm pretty sure that's everything. If I remember or develop more I can add more here. The big thing to remember is that this is a sub-quest and is meant to flesh out the game, not drive some over-arching campaign (I've got different stuff for that). If anyone could offer ideas, advice or links to useful material I'd really apprecaite it!