So here's what I'm thinking about so far.
0. Overriding theme. This is the aftermath of a war, and the characters feel alone and purposeless. They take out their frustrations by having adventures, but eventually they encounter a situation they can't simply brush off, and they must grow and find a place in the world. Their problems are like your problems, and mine, except they get to work theirs out while teleporting around the countryside.
1. Three primary characters.
- Hawkins d'Orien, a human sorcerer who served as a scout during the Last War, and who now uses his dragonmark ability (teleportation) to live as a common thief. He accrued a fair number of enemies during the war, and since they could never catch him, those enemies instead took his wife and son as hostages. He was unable to save them, and so he tries to avoid friendships now. He's a funny guy in a bitter, sarcastic, cocky way.
- Labeth Porter, a kalashtar rogue who lost the man she loved while working as a mercenary in Thrane. Possessing mild psionic traits, she has been stuck in a self-imposed depression since losing the man she loved, and her goal is to steal enough money to hire a priest to raise him from the dead. She has a lot of superstitions, and believes in lots of conspiracies.
- Alloy, a warforged druid, no longer following the path he had chosen during the war - the path of a paladin. Unable to abide the destruction he saw, he fled Cyre and joined a tribe of halflings on the Talenta plains, eventually learning their ways. He's the worst kind of hypocrite - he says there's no sense in being kind to others, but he has a guilt complex that forces him to do good. Other hypocrites, at least, are able to look good but act bad.
2. We begin with three vignets introducing the characters. Hawkins jokes with his only regular acquaintance that no one can ever catch him. Labeth hires a mage in Wroat, Breland to divine where she could easily make money, and then she mugs him to get back the money she paid him. And Alloy pursues a monster from Talenta into the Mournland to destroy it; after he slays it, he has a vision of a young boy emerging from the great Glowing Chasm.
3. The characters' paths cross. Labeth sees in Hawkins a way to make a lot of money. Alloy joins so that they can investigate what he saw in the Mournland, but first they need a bankroll, so the group goes about trying to collect the bounty on the Jungle Boys, a group of brigands in the King's Forest of Breland. In Sharn to collect the bounty, Hawkins runs across his father, Ghen d'Orien. Whereas Hawkins has consciously left the house, his father is still a prominent member of the house. In the encounter, Ghen mentions something that jogs Hawkins memory, which is when we get to the meat of the story.
4. The plot is that Ghen was behind an operation at the end of the war. He commanded all members of House d'Orien with strong enough dragonmarks basically to loot, stealing precious art objects, dragonshards, and magic items, then teleporting to a specifically-described location. Hawkins assumed it was just a one-time thing and that he was the only one to be sent on such a mission, but in truth there were hundreds of treasures stolen this way, all deposited in a rather unique-looking house that overlooked a huge canyon. Hawkins isn't sure where it was geographically, since he teleported there, but he suspects it might be where the 'Glowing Chasm' Alloy saw is now. First, though, they try out a few other possible locations, checking other canyons, having a few misadventures, running into another disillusioned member of House d'Orien who is looking for the same treasure, and working to stop Hawkins' father from recovering a few last treasures that belong to small villages.
5. Ghen's trying to get certain key components for some eldritch machine - not sure of exactly what he's up to yet, but it should involve Dal Quor somehow, to tie in Labeth's kalashtar heritage. And it needs to be something nasty. The opposing group of treasure hunters ally with Ghen, and hints come out that, though he probably wasn't involved in causing it, Ghen knew in advance about the great destruction that laid waste to Cyre, creating the Mournland.
6. Three key scenes.
- Teleporting into the Mournland is suicide, since you have no idea where you'll end up, so they have to take the lightning rail. As a member of House Orien, Hawkins can activate one of the lightning rail trains, but first they'll have to steal one.
- Unleashing unspeakable evil from the Glowing Chasm in the Mournland. The key to unlock it is a kalashtar spirit, and they're rather hard to come by on Khorvaire, but oh look, we have one right here. In classic unspeakable evil fashion, once released it kills all the bad guys except the main villain. The main villain is working with a member of the dreaming dark, and while he is immune to the power of the unspeakable evil, no one else is. What it does is somehow tied with unfulfilled desires.
- Sharn being far too cool of a city to pass up in the grand tour of Eberron, the climax will take place among its towers.
So, it's not a complete idea, and I'd love some help in fleshing it out a bit. I need a bit more for Alloy to do. I like him as a character concept - this friendly metal warrior marked with beads and etchings so that his face resembles the raptors the Talenta halfings ride, who, despite all his niceness, just doesn't know what to do with his life.
I know vaguely what Ghen is up to, and why, but it feels a little weak to me. I also wonder if I have too much for a potentially 90,000 word story. Any comments would be immensely appreciated.
