Deus ex Machina -- Now What?

[Aeric]

I ran the first session of my new Forgotten Realms campaign last night. The party is composed of all evil types who are being drawn to the north by dreams. These dreams are being sent to them by a BBEG who wants them to be his agents in the world. This same BBEG, who is currently trapped in a block of ice, has a horde of orcs and other nasties ready to unleash on the Silver Marches. The leaders/commanders of this horde are a tribe of snow elves (modelled after the Nyss from the Iron Kingdoms, specifically the Legion of Everblight, for those familiar with the IK).

Anyways, on their long journey to the BBEG, the PCs were attacked by a group of dire wolves. These wolves were way too powerful for my piddly 3rd-level PCs, so the idea was to let one or two of the PCs drop to negatives, and then have the wolves driven off by a mysterious rider (one of the snow elves sent as an escort) once things looked particularly grim.

Well, the wolves were a little too good at dropping PCs, and one of them dropped from positive HP to below -10. Loathe to kill a PC in the first session of the campaign, I had to think quickly. I took him aside and told him that, as he lay on the edge of the abyss, dying, he heard a voice say "serve me and live." I intimated that it might be the BBEG. He accepted, and was brought back to -9 HP and stabilized, but also had a strange mark on his chest which looked like a white hand.

Shortly after I took that player aside, the snow elf showed up and drove away the wolves by firing a single Arrow of Slaying at them (killing their leader). The elf then rode away before anyone could get a good look at him, much less talk to him.

So now I have this PC who was saved from certain death by someone and has a mark on him. Obviously he owes someone something, but who? The BBEG? Someone else? Maybe the god of the snow elves who wants his people's servitude to the BBEG broken? If the BBEG, then what is the catch? I should also mention that the PC in question is a human weretiger (natural lycanthrope) monk using the Savage Progressions from the WotC site.

I need ideas, people!

Thanks in advance.

 

[Ibn Khaldun]

Depending on how you want to work it, how about a a big good guy saves the character to try to defeat the BBEG by using this character as an inside man? Or, a lieutenant of the BBEG did it and the character may have to, at some point, choose allegiances. As for the price, perhaps some sort of quest or something similar? A service the character the must perform at some, important juncture? You could also use it to communicate information creatively to that player and thus the group about things they might not ordinarily know, obviously spun by the angle of whomever ends up saving him.

As a rule, I always try to avoid those type situations. I'll never forget the session I played in which the GM set up the same scenario as you did. Except in our case, we did too well so while his plan was to have these people save us from peril, we didn't need saving. To salvage the scenario, he suddenly powered up his enemies and knock us out - we all called him out for it since it was SO obvious a ploy. It really took everyone out of the scenario. It almost ruined the campaign since this, being the beginning of it all, left everyone with such a bitter taste.