D&D General Adventure Idea help

[Gilladian]

In my current campaign, PCs came upon a ruined town (about 3-500 years old). In the course of riding through the ruins, they met a small party of goblins/ogres. In another spot in the ruins, not too far away, they heard something "digging". At the time, I had a randomish monster (antlions) in mind as the diggers, and the goblin/ogre group were intended to be a rival adventuring party. The PCs chatted with them, and left the ruins, but later indicated they want to go back and find out "what the goblins were digging up".

So, what is it? Given that the PCs are 6th level, or MIGHT be 7th, depending on how long they dally on their current adventure before getting back, what could be the goblins' goal? Things to think about; I'm rather heavily leaning on dragons as a theme for this campaign, and also on humanoid enemies rather than human/demihumans. However, at this time the PCs are actually seeking a magic weapon specifically to go on their first dragon hunt, so I would rather whatever the goblins are doing is not directly dragon-related.

 

[MarkB]

The goblins and ogres are setting up the ruins as a home base, and the sounds the party heard were some of them digging the latrines. By the time the PCs return, those facilities will have been extensively used.

 

[Shiroiken]

It depends on how much you want the players to interact with this. You could make it a full adventure by having the dungeons of the ruins be semi-intact, giving a dungeon crawl to find the treasure vault. You could have it be an interesting side-quest by having the ogres digging for a magic item they were hired to find for an ogre-magi (that might have sinister plans for it). A really cruel plan would be to hint that the ruins are the final resting place of an ancient dragon slaying warrior, but have the body already be looted long ago.

 

[aco175]

I may create an underground crypt. I could have been the basement of one of the old buildings or an underground mine or actually a tomb. Maybe the goblins entered and are all found dead in the initial rooms, having one outside having just closed the door before succumbing to his wounds. Maybe there is just bones scattered about since animals would have gotten to his body, unless they could smell the poison/mummy rot/curse upon him and left him to decay. Smart players may question this.

Inside the tomb could be several rooms to explore with an item or clue to finding the item they are looking for. Undead are good for wanting to keep inside an old tomb.