Is this Heroic Tier? I'm just going to assume so. If you could provide the Character Themes, I could come up with some specific stuff based off off that.
<snipping out a bunch of useful stuff>
Uncover an Unwanted Truth
Something relevant to one of the PCs' Themes.
Yes, Heroic Tier, currently level 2.
The PCs, builds and goals:
Half-Elf Vestige Warlock of the Raven Queen, Ghost of the Past, Vistani heritage; a lesser grandson of House Markelhay (hereditary rules of Fallcrest in Nentir Vale), former student of Kalarel, who turned out to be a betrayer.
Beliefs:
I am willing to pay any price to obtain the information I seek.
Like my ancestor Vistan, I will learn to travel the pathways between planes.
I will seek out and destroy the rising cults of Orcus.
I will claim the ancestral sword of House Markelhay as my own.
Drow Cleric of Sehanine|Warlord/Assassin, Secret Apostate; cut off from her home of Erelhei-Cinlu with two dozen kinsmen in the surface world, she had a religious experience and conversion to Sehanine; was captured by Kalarel and her kinsman was sacrificed in the ritual to open a rift to the Shadowfell. Slain in a fight with Kalarel's reincarnation as a wight, Sehanine intervened and saved her soul in return for her agreement to stop the slavetaking of Wood Elves by her former Drow kinsmen in the Harken Forest, thus necessitating travel to that locale.
Beliefs:
I will rescue my kinsman from the Shadowfell.
I will not allow that selfish Warlock (above) to distract me from my goals.
I will displace drow culture’s worship of Lolth with that of Sehanine, the Moon goddess.
Religious Orthodoxy:
As the goddess of love, moon, and trickery, Sehanine’s teachings are simple:
Follow your goals and seek your own destiny.
Keep to the shadows, avoiding the blazing light of zealous good and the utter darkness of evil.
Seek new horizons and new experiences, and let nothing tie you down.
Halfling Rogue, Son of Alagondar (refluffed as Lowtown in Fallcrest), a childhood friend of the Warlock, recruited by a mentor figure in rescuing the Warlock from Kalarel.
Beliefs:
If you can’t hold onto your possessions, you don’t deserve them.
My Warlock friend needs a keeper, and I’m the one who can do it best.
No one needs to know I seek a greater purpose in my life.
(This character is less fleshed out than the others.)
Half-Orc Ranger/Cleric of the Twins Erathis-Melora, Sentinel Marshal (refluffed as mercenary company remnant of the fallen Empire of Nerath, the Last Legion), half-brother to the Warlock.
Beliefs:
I seek to restore the heir to Nerath’s throne.
I will brook no injustice.
I will sacrifice myself for the greater good.
Religious Orthodoxy:
As the goddesses of life, justice, and the balance between civilization and wilderness, twins Erathis and Melora’s teachings are simple:
Work with others to achieve your goals. Community and order are always stronger than the disjointed efforts of lone individuals.
Defend the light of civilization against the encroaching darkness.
Protect the wild places of the world from destruction and overuse.
Hunt aberrant monsters and other abominations of nature.
As I've often posted about, I find doing overland travel well a challenge (of my GM skills!), including in 4e.
<snipping a bunch of good and useful stuff to address this larger point>
Ultimately I think that, in the context of 4e, having the fiction change in some adverse/undesired way is generally better than mechanical penalties or hurdles. (In BW it's different because while penalties can produce a death spiral they can also make it easier to get checks at the difficult needed to improve character abilities - whereas there is no analogue to that in 4e.)
I agree wholeheartedly. I suppose this helps me narrow my question further: in what interesting ways might the fiction change as the outcome of failure in a SC representing travel in this way? I was loath to post too many specific detail in the OP because I want to think about this issue more generally rather than just in the context of this one particular impending journey, but I reckon the details I provided in response to Manbearcat's inquiry above do address this particular instance.
If you change the extended rest rules - so that an extended rest only work in a totally safe environment such as an inn where you do not have to have any guard duty - you are going to have a very different game.
Definitely. For this new game, we have implemented the house rule that PCs can only level or take an extended rest in a point of light or sanctum of some sort (the latter deliberately vague to allow this to develop from the fiction).
Thank you, one and all, for the help here already; so much of it will prove useful!