I need a DM-sounding board... to bounce ideas in case someone has a good spin for something that I'm not seeing or if I'm just on a really bad track. So what follows is a brief ramble on the campaign plot followed by a couple points I'm feeling are weak.
My players, stay out of this thread -- really, you'll learn all this eventually so why ruin your fun along the way?
(That means you, players of Talus, Brennan, Theurge, Melenna, and Basil)
Campaign: Legacy of the Red King
Basic campaign background
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A tyrant known only as the Red King waged swept his army across the continent conquoring all lands in his way. However, upon reaching the Elara Mountain Pass, he and his army vanished. It has only been a short time since, and the PCs are dealing with the after effects and the legacy left behind by the Red King. All the while the mystery lingers what happened to the Red King and is he really gone?
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Basic campaign premise (my players, really, don't read... please)
[sblock]
The Red King basically made a devil's pact for power (essentially multiclassed into a warlock). The RK essentially agreed to sacrifice all those he conquored in exchange for the power. But now the RK is gone (I have two ideas as to what happened to him... one real idea, but one fall back for an interesting twist if "things go that way").
The RK had the following key allies:
* His consort/wife, a power hungry eladrin that hates elves.
* His three triplet sons (more on them in a moment)
* An imp, sent to him by the devils to help the RK find items of power to aide him
* Devil soldiers, sent by his pacted patron, and the soliders all maintained an illusion of being human. But with the absense of the RK, the devil soldiers are also gone
* A few people convinced to help him (such as powerful wizards and captains to lead his soldiers)
[/sblock]
Enter the PCs - and I added to the mythology of the setting based on backgrounds provided by the players
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Talus - an elvish soldier that came with other soldiers from the elven forest to the human kingdom (the next kingdom that would have been attacked) to help fight off the Red King. Because of the RK's consort's hatred of elves, her kids have grown up with a hatred of elves and their inferiority to eladrin (allowing some retorts to be said by the triplet sons during encounters)
Brennan - a dwarf warlock that was in the human kingdom since he left his own home. Because of his warlock training and non-strong alignment, the RK's remaining allies are trying to convinice Brennan to help them.
Theurge - a warforged who awoke with no memory of his past. It's been determined that at some point the RK's allies started making warforged as foot soldiers to help in his fight. However the other warforged are either hidden or something happened because when the Red King vanished so did the warforged, except Theurge... But that also means he has trouble when seen since everyone will recognize him as a creation/tool of the Red King.
Melenna - an eladrin wizard who is a friend to Basil, comes to help fight the red king too.
Basil - an eladrin soldier whose grandfather vanished in the prime material world so he leaves the feywild to the prime world and joins the elves. The dissapearance of the eladrin grandfather and consort to the RK seemed to fit too well, so the consort is Basil's aunt (though no one knows it) and the grandfather disappeared to the prime world trying to find her since he knew she is a trouble maker.
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The Quests
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With the help of the imp, the RK had acquired several of the most powerful relics from the lands that would help him. But when he vanished, the relics were found in a pile (as if the Red King vanished while wearing them but they remained in a pile). The human kingdom's council took these items. Not sure of their power and not wanting to create public panic (that something of the Red King is still around) each member of the council took an item and hid it.
But the complication -- every night, the RK's sons get these dreams as if messages from the RK himself as to where these items are. All three of the sons see the same dreams/visions and they don't all get along (or at least have different ideas on how they should be used) so it's basically a power stuggle as they each race to get these items, and to do it secretly since no one knows that they are who they are.
Since they are all getting dreams about where these items are, they each know where the other brothers are if they have the items. So one of the sons has tricked the PCs to get involved and get one of the relics (in his mind, this would spread around the attention from the other brothers).
The kingdom wants to keep all topics related to the red king quiet since they want the public to accept his dissapearance so that the rebuilding can begin.
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The relics
[sblock]
Each of the 12 relics is hidden by the kingdom. Each is unique in magical effect (basically, for each, I took a couple keywords and went with it... for one I picked the fire keyword and used a necklace, coming up with the Necklace of the Ruby Flame (a ruby pendant that has a flickering flame inside). It mentally talks to whomever holds it and it raises dead creatures to fight for it according to its motives (in the hands of good people, it usually wants to kill them in order to go in to the hands of people more willing to cause death chaos and destruction).
I give each of the triplet sons an increasing percentage chance to find and get other relics... so the PCs don't know it (yet), but they're racing against the sons to get the items. And on the flip side, the kingdom is starting to notice these items being stolen so they are hunting them down now too. And then there is a group I'm tentativly calling the Crimson Circle that is an ancient arcane order dedicated to protecting or destroying magic items too powerful to be in any one persons' hands....
so that's five groups, plus the PCs actively going for the 12 items at the moment.
Each of the relics has a side-trek or twist of its own that leads to encounters in their own right (such as the necklace that raises undead causing more combats; another one causes short term time travel where they go for an hour to a past event tied to the soul/spirit of someone... such as going to see a dead grandfather and so on. I took the backgrounds for the PCs and milked out a couple of these sidetrek ideas out of there).
The more relics any one group has, the more that group is getting watched (by the nightly visions that the triplets are having). So it seems natural that there should be a little back and forth as the relics are stolen from one group by another.
[/sblock]
The triplets
[sblock]
Some of the details are a little vague, partially to leave myself wiggle room.
One of the triplets is more the brutish type who has mustered together goblinoids to serve as his thugs. He always believed himself to be his father's favorite and disliked the 'smarter' brothers for thinking too much when the kick down the door approach was faster.
Another is a more intellectual puppet-master type manipulator who wields arcane powers. He is the one that really was his father's favorite.
The third was the blacksheep always trying to make his father proud but usually failing. At one point his father sent out a notice to have this son assassinated because his failures were making him a liability. He is now the most alignment-neutral of the three.. he doesn't want the relics to do good, but wants to at least keep them out of his brothers' hands.
So the brutish triplet and his goblinoid forces are most likely the first one the PCs will come across face-to-face. They've already had one meeting.
[/sblock]
Admittedly, there are a lot more notes than I put on here
[sblock]
such as, I know what Theurge has been up to and what caused his memory loss and why he's still here when the other warforged have all disappeared, and what really became of the red king, I have a vague idea for several of the relics and types of varied encounters on how they're hidden; and there are ghosts following the relics from kingdom soldiers that were killed by the relics when the relics were first found and their deaths kept a secret by the council.
[/sblock]
But this is the basic framework that I started with. I thought I'd toss it up here in case it springboarded any ideas from other people....
So what's the point of this post?
Really, I don't know...
anyone have an interesting idea based on this framework that I should consider? (perhaps another power group that seeks the relics... and what would their backstory be?)
or just general thoughts.. is there some aspect here that i should really be careful about since it usually leads to some 'plot trap' that i need to account for, and so on... ?
My players, stay out of this thread -- really, you'll learn all this eventually so why ruin your fun along the way?
(That means you, players of Talus, Brennan, Theurge, Melenna, and Basil)
Campaign: Legacy of the Red King
Basic campaign background
[sblock]
A tyrant known only as the Red King waged swept his army across the continent conquoring all lands in his way. However, upon reaching the Elara Mountain Pass, he and his army vanished. It has only been a short time since, and the PCs are dealing with the after effects and the legacy left behind by the Red King. All the while the mystery lingers what happened to the Red King and is he really gone?
[/sblock]
Basic campaign premise (my players, really, don't read... please)
[sblock]
The Red King basically made a devil's pact for power (essentially multiclassed into a warlock). The RK essentially agreed to sacrifice all those he conquored in exchange for the power. But now the RK is gone (I have two ideas as to what happened to him... one real idea, but one fall back for an interesting twist if "things go that way").
The RK had the following key allies:
* His consort/wife, a power hungry eladrin that hates elves.
* His three triplet sons (more on them in a moment)
* An imp, sent to him by the devils to help the RK find items of power to aide him
* Devil soldiers, sent by his pacted patron, and the soliders all maintained an illusion of being human. But with the absense of the RK, the devil soldiers are also gone
* A few people convinced to help him (such as powerful wizards and captains to lead his soldiers)
[/sblock]
Enter the PCs - and I added to the mythology of the setting based on backgrounds provided by the players
[sblock]
Talus - an elvish soldier that came with other soldiers from the elven forest to the human kingdom (the next kingdom that would have been attacked) to help fight off the Red King. Because of the RK's consort's hatred of elves, her kids have grown up with a hatred of elves and their inferiority to eladrin (allowing some retorts to be said by the triplet sons during encounters)
Brennan - a dwarf warlock that was in the human kingdom since he left his own home. Because of his warlock training and non-strong alignment, the RK's remaining allies are trying to convinice Brennan to help them.
Theurge - a warforged who awoke with no memory of his past. It's been determined that at some point the RK's allies started making warforged as foot soldiers to help in his fight. However the other warforged are either hidden or something happened because when the Red King vanished so did the warforged, except Theurge... But that also means he has trouble when seen since everyone will recognize him as a creation/tool of the Red King.
Melenna - an eladrin wizard who is a friend to Basil, comes to help fight the red king too.
Basil - an eladrin soldier whose grandfather vanished in the prime material world so he leaves the feywild to the prime world and joins the elves. The dissapearance of the eladrin grandfather and consort to the RK seemed to fit too well, so the consort is Basil's aunt (though no one knows it) and the grandfather disappeared to the prime world trying to find her since he knew she is a trouble maker.
[/sblock]
The Quests
[sblock]
With the help of the imp, the RK had acquired several of the most powerful relics from the lands that would help him. But when he vanished, the relics were found in a pile (as if the Red King vanished while wearing them but they remained in a pile). The human kingdom's council took these items. Not sure of their power and not wanting to create public panic (that something of the Red King is still around) each member of the council took an item and hid it.
But the complication -- every night, the RK's sons get these dreams as if messages from the RK himself as to where these items are. All three of the sons see the same dreams/visions and they don't all get along (or at least have different ideas on how they should be used) so it's basically a power stuggle as they each race to get these items, and to do it secretly since no one knows that they are who they are.
Since they are all getting dreams about where these items are, they each know where the other brothers are if they have the items. So one of the sons has tricked the PCs to get involved and get one of the relics (in his mind, this would spread around the attention from the other brothers).
The kingdom wants to keep all topics related to the red king quiet since they want the public to accept his dissapearance so that the rebuilding can begin.
[/sblock]
The relics
[sblock]
Each of the 12 relics is hidden by the kingdom. Each is unique in magical effect (basically, for each, I took a couple keywords and went with it... for one I picked the fire keyword and used a necklace, coming up with the Necklace of the Ruby Flame (a ruby pendant that has a flickering flame inside). It mentally talks to whomever holds it and it raises dead creatures to fight for it according to its motives (in the hands of good people, it usually wants to kill them in order to go in to the hands of people more willing to cause death chaos and destruction).
I give each of the triplet sons an increasing percentage chance to find and get other relics... so the PCs don't know it (yet), but they're racing against the sons to get the items. And on the flip side, the kingdom is starting to notice these items being stolen so they are hunting them down now too. And then there is a group I'm tentativly calling the Crimson Circle that is an ancient arcane order dedicated to protecting or destroying magic items too powerful to be in any one persons' hands....
so that's five groups, plus the PCs actively going for the 12 items at the moment.
Each of the relics has a side-trek or twist of its own that leads to encounters in their own right (such as the necklace that raises undead causing more combats; another one causes short term time travel where they go for an hour to a past event tied to the soul/spirit of someone... such as going to see a dead grandfather and so on. I took the backgrounds for the PCs and milked out a couple of these sidetrek ideas out of there).
The more relics any one group has, the more that group is getting watched (by the nightly visions that the triplets are having). So it seems natural that there should be a little back and forth as the relics are stolen from one group by another.
[/sblock]
The triplets
[sblock]
Some of the details are a little vague, partially to leave myself wiggle room.
One of the triplets is more the brutish type who has mustered together goblinoids to serve as his thugs. He always believed himself to be his father's favorite and disliked the 'smarter' brothers for thinking too much when the kick down the door approach was faster.
Another is a more intellectual puppet-master type manipulator who wields arcane powers. He is the one that really was his father's favorite.
The third was the blacksheep always trying to make his father proud but usually failing. At one point his father sent out a notice to have this son assassinated because his failures were making him a liability. He is now the most alignment-neutral of the three.. he doesn't want the relics to do good, but wants to at least keep them out of his brothers' hands.
So the brutish triplet and his goblinoid forces are most likely the first one the PCs will come across face-to-face. They've already had one meeting.
[/sblock]
Admittedly, there are a lot more notes than I put on here
[sblock]
such as, I know what Theurge has been up to and what caused his memory loss and why he's still here when the other warforged have all disappeared, and what really became of the red king, I have a vague idea for several of the relics and types of varied encounters on how they're hidden; and there are ghosts following the relics from kingdom soldiers that were killed by the relics when the relics were first found and their deaths kept a secret by the council.
[/sblock]
But this is the basic framework that I started with. I thought I'd toss it up here in case it springboarded any ideas from other people....
So what's the point of this post?
Really, I don't know...
anyone have an interesting idea based on this framework that I should consider? (perhaps another power group that seeks the relics... and what would their backstory be?)
or just general thoughts.. is there some aspect here that i should really be careful about since it usually leads to some 'plot trap' that i need to account for, and so on... ?
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) was venerated\feared so much at his passing are there factions working to recover\resurrect him? Could he be brought back as a shade and would that short circuit other plans. Is he well known enough that illusions of his presence would cause trouble? Simalcra might be planted in areas where his authority lingers. 
