Competition Among Mages

[mellohero]

Greetings, everyone; first post, so forgive me if I've put this in the wrong place.
I'm running my first campaign here in my hometown, using DnD 3.5. The setting is primarily urban. In this city, we've recently contacted a wizard order in association with The Shining Light of Pelor. Basically an academy for divine wizards as found in Complete Champion. I've decided to have this group be a relatively new branch in the city, causing some friction with the well-established secular wizard academy in town. The PC's are going to be tasked with clearing the air on behalf of the divine academy. Here's my problem: I have no idea what to do with it. I can't really think of a way to expand this beyond a single die roll. Any ideas or suggestions to help me out? We need a good experience again after a bad module adventure which, thankfully, only had two of our regulars there.
My current idea is to have the effort ultimately backfire, though I don't know how increased tension between these two schools would manifest itself.

 

[Exthalion]

This is the right place as far as I know.

I would suggest not starting with a face to face meeting off the bat. Perhaps the party could perform good works in the name of the divine academy so as to build community support. Afterwards they could go on some quests to recover magic items or lost lore to present to the secular wizards as peace offerings.

Perhaps peppered in there they could save one or two secular wizards who were in trouble, say on that ancient lore quest. The wizards they save could start spreading the good word about them and the divine academy.

Finally there could be some major crisis, such as the secular wizards summoning a powerful demon or the like and losing control of it, or an invading army. The two academies would be forced to work together to solve the problem.

Then have them sit down and acknowledge each other and decide to work together.

As an alternative, you could just have them face to face right now if they want but with a severe penalty to their diplomacy roll, but if they go out and do the other things that one dice roll would get increasingly large modifiers.

Just my two cp.