Playtesting homebrew system; need help w/ campaign

[System Ufera]

Hello, everyone! As some of you may be aware, I'm making my own system from the ground up. As of right now, I am three sessions into GMing a campaign to test that system, and I'm not sure how to continue. I have the premise for the campaign designed, of course but I'm not sure exactly how to build upon that premise to engage and involve the player characters.

The premise is as follows: About a thousand years prior to the campaign, there was a cosmic incursion of a dark radiation that turned many of the people of the world of Ufera into devils, which are basically twisted, evil abominations. A group of deity-like beings, trying to control the damage caused by the devils, split the world into regions sealed off from each other by barriers of force. The barriers are not perfect, however, and devils slip through now and then, but for the most part, the people in unaffected regions are relatively safe. Still, this change brought an age of ruin to the world, and out of the ruin rose various civilizations, too far along in time to remember exactly what caused the age of ruin or when the force barriers came into being.

One of these civilizations, Baalicos, was, unfortunately, founded by intelligent devils, disguised as ordinary people, which had bypassed the barriers in order to gain a foothold in, and eventually conquer, one of the protected regions. Several decades prior to the campaign, however, the Baalican Empire was overthrown during a populist revolution, thus founding the Kingdom of Milandria. The true nature of the Baalican leaders had never been discovered, however, and today there remains a secret effort by the devils to reconquer the land held by Milandria and reestablish Baalicos.

Fast forward to the campaign itself, and we have the player characters having recently partially stopped a bioterrorism plot from occurring in the Milandrian city of Libar. The villain, a rogue doctor, took samples of a disease from the Cauldron of Death, a caldera on the border of the nearby nations of Gondrogar and Parodesh (which have had rather bad relations with each other and with Milandria), and spread the samples throughout the water supply in Libar. The player characters killed the doctor before he could do more damage, and the doctor's journal has led them to believe that his goal was to simply cause the disease, and show up to play hero by curing the infected. The journal, however, is merely a ruse to throw people off; the doctor is actually one of several agents of the devils on a mission to weaken the people of Milandria in preparation for a devil invasion.

And... I'm not sure how to continue. Any help in coming up with plot hooks and other elements would be greatly appreciated.

 

[GMMichael]

Fast forward to the campaign itself, and we have the player characters having recently partially stopped a bioterrorism plot from occurring in the Milandrian city of Libar. The villain, a rogue doctor, took samples of a disease from the Cauldron of Death, a caldera on the border of the nearby nations of Gondrogar and Parodesh (which have had rather bad relations with each other and with Milandria), and spread the samples throughout the water supply in Libar. The player characters killed the doctor before he could do more damage, and the doctor's journal has led them to believe that his goal was to simply cause the disease, and show up to play hero by curing the infected. The journal, however, is merely a ruse to throw people off; the doctor is actually one of several agents of the devils on a mission to weaken the people of Milandria in preparation for a devil invasion.

- The journal contains references to a fellow scientist, who lives and works in an out-of-the-way compound, in "harmony" with his unchained genetic experiments.

- The authorities want to jail the PCs for killing people.

- Someone's sweet little daughter died from the poisoning. Someone very powerful, who thinks that the PCs didn't solve the problem fast enough.

 

[System Ufera]

- The journal contains references to a fellow scientist, who lives and works in an out-of-the-way compound, in "harmony" with his unchained genetic experiments.

- The authorities want to jail the PCs for killing people.

- Someone's sweet little daughter died from the poisoning. Someone very powerful, who thinks that the PCs didn't solve the problem fast enough.

The first idea seems like it could become a session or two to help buy me time. The second idea is out, since the authorities were alerted to the rogue doctor's involvement with the disease before he was killed, and even if that wasn't the case, any time the PC's get in trouble in my games, it never ends well.

The third one, however, reminds me of an NPC villain I've used in other campaigns with this setting: Vonmack es'Voraine, a wealthy entrepreneur and secret sociopath who is prone to backstabbing and will do anything to sate his greed. In other campaigns I've run, Vonmack had been doing deals with agents of the devils, using fake quests to lure would-be heroes to their deaths in exchange for gifts and a guaranteed position of power among the devils. When the first heroes to survive (the player characters) actually succeeded in the quest he gave them, he would try to discredit them; this would usually end in Vonmack's death, setting in motion a chain of events that would eventually lead to an invasion of Milandria by the devils.

Perhaps I could have Vonmack be that NPC...

Anyway, thanks for your help.

 

[System Ufera]

So, an update: In the one session we've had since this thread's creation (we missed a couple due to sicknesses and other absences), I basically had the PC's try to track down any sort of accomplices and generally bring closure to the case of the rogue doctor's attack. The magistrate who gave the mission informed the PC's that there were rumors that the rogue doctor frequented a warehouse in the town of Suisse, in the Milandrian vassal state of Baravera (see below for details on that area). The magistrate even paid for carriage services to speed up the PC's travel. However, on the way to Suisse, the PC's were attacked by a small group of Devils; the carriage driver died in the ambush, and the PC's were able to figure out that the creatures that attacked them were not normal creatures. That's where we left off, and now I'm again open to suggestions as to how to proceed.

Regarding Baravera: Baravera is a semi-autonomous vassal state in the Milandrian Northeast, populated mostly by immigrants who fled from the militaristic and brutish culture of Gondrogar in search of better lives. Despite the generally bad relations between Milandria and Gondrogar, the Milandrians welcomed the immigrants, themselves understanding the immigrants' plight, given the circumstances of Milandria's founding. For the most part, the immigrants have caused very little trouble, not only out of gratitude, but also because they didn't want their new lives as Milandrians to go to waste.

Anyway, as for my own ideas, I'm thinking, but have yet to decide conclusively, that the warehouse in Suisse should be owned by Vonmack es'Voraine. I'm still trying to flesh out the campaign, and I'm still not sure exactly what the end-goal of the story should be. I know I want it to have something to do with the devils' plot to reconquer Milandria, but I'm not entirely sure of how. I've already decided that a full-scale invasion will eventually occur at a set point in the timeline of my setting (fifty years after the conclusion of the Milandrian Revolution), but I haven't really even established the exact year of the campaign, so I haven't decided how far off that will be.

Again, any help is appreciated.

 

[GMMichael]

A little advice from an old tome (Book of Villains or Villains' Handbook for you sages):

Start your campaign with a villain. If you draw him up correctly, he does all the work for you. So you're never wondering "um, what should I do next?" Instead you ask "what would my villain do next?" And the answers often write themselves.

The short (!) version of the handbook is this:

Give your villain a weird trait.
Make it weirder.
Give him henchmen.
Put him in a villain network.
Add some contrasting personality characteristics.

and...then there are a bunch of helpful tables. Pick the book up at your friendly local used gaming store (FLUGS)!