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Message: <blockquote data-quote="VoidAdept" data-source="post: 3594508" data-attributes="member: 33950">Hey folks, I'm thinking of starting an adventure arc in my campaign, and I'd like to run it past a few hundred sets of eyes before unleashing it on my players. I've got a plot hole or two that I think needs filling, anyway.Centuries ago, the most largest and most advanced civilization on the campaign world, the Anyari Imperium, was destroyed by an invasion of clockwork horrors that had come through a gate to Acheron (IMC, clockwork horrors are from Acheron, not wildspace). The gate was eventually sealed, but the empire was reduced to a barren wasteland by the horrors in the process. The surviving horrors never expanded beyond the borders of the wasteland. Even today the wasteland has a reputation of being extremely dangerous despite the fact that no one has seen an intact horror in centuries. Indeed, very few even know what a horror looks like; legends usually portray them as colossal, rampaging mechanical killing machines, much like metallic tarrasques - after all, what else could have brought down the Anyari at the height of their glory?The PCs are hired by a merchant who needs them to escort him to a nearby city. He doesn't say why, only that he has something of great importance.The merchant believes that the item he is carrying in his wagon is a valuable Anyari relic, and he wants to get it to someone he knows in the city to have it appraised. What he has, in reality, is a dormant electrum clockwork horror.The merchant's caravan is attacked at one point by an agent from a group that want to keep the secrets of the Anyari hidden lest history repeats itself and the forces that destroyed them are not unleashed again. In essense, they're similar to the Cultilsts of the Shattered Peak from Lost Empires of Faerun. During the battle the horror awakens, probably attacks the PCs or the agent, depenting on how the fight goes, and scampers away.Now the merchant may want his "relic" back, or the agent or the merchant's contact in the city - both of whom know exactly what the horror is - urge the PCs to retrieve it. Either way, the horror must be tracked down and either captured or (most likely) destroyed before it can get back to the wastelands -- because once it makes it there, the rest of the collective will awaken and march upon the rest of the world... just as soon as they finish the permanent portal to Acheron that they have been building in the ruins of the heart of the Anyari capital.So, here are the questions that I think need to be creatively answered:- What awakens the merchant's dormant horror?- Why did the horrors stop with the Anyari? What stopped the horrors from taking over the world in the first place?- If they've been working on a portal all these years, why haven't they finished it, and why have some of the horrors gone dormant? I'm talking about "worker" units like electrum ones here; any gold or platinum horrors would probably be very much awake.- Would it affect things much crunch-wise if I give the horrors the Outsider trait, similar to Inevitables, due to the fact that they come from Acheron?</blockquote>

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