For Queenie, pulled from the OOC thread:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...ands)/page50&p=4848790&viewfull=1#post4848790
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The overall plot:
I figured at this point the characters would have been tired of the City-State and its corruption and decadence. The characters would most likely have decided to leave the city, which would have been possible since they had a new patron with connections with nearby towns: Vernik. As a weapon's master Vernik would also have taught each character how to be an expert with a weapon of their choice (a 1,500gp value, so 1,500xp for each character trained).
If the characters were not willing to leave the city, then they would have run into several factions that were hunting them and would likely have been driven from the city or the Overlord's minions might have convinced them to escape (more on that in a minute).
So who was involved in what?
The headless witch seemed to be alive and well in people's dreams. She visited in dreamland and pushed Ben and his minions (on page 6) to attack Rovan and his friends. This was because she knew Rovan had been affected by the chemical vapors in the first adventure with the evil wizard. It was better that Rovan seek a cure after dealing with a lout like Ben instead of Rovan finding out he was magically diseased during a critical fight. This was also my way to bind Hilmdyn and Rovan together. Rovan would have continued to learn spells from the witch in the dream world when away from civilization, but whether or not she was real, a shade of herself, or a figment of various dreamers' imagination would have not been revealed.
The priest that had knocked Lola unconscious, dressed her up in tasteless clothes, then tried to sacrifice her was a priest of a secret cult to Set and an ex-priest of Harmakhis the death-god whose followers took over Hilmdyn's town. This allowed me to pick and choose a religious faction the characters would run into later. The priests of Harmakhis and Thieves' Guild operate openly and are so closely allied that they are actually intertwined. This is because the power of Harmakhis helps the undead guild leaders of ages past maintain their existence on the world and provide aid to the Guild, and the Guild helps fund their church in return. The final straw came when the party had went to the Pleasure Dome and completely laid out into the open the illegal local slaver operation that the Thieves' Guild had been profiting from. This caused priests of Harmakhis start using divining spells to track the party down. The characters revealed their identity further when they went to the Mermaid's Rest. The inn there was run by low-level thieves who acted as serving girls and were the eyes and ears of the Guild in that quarter of the city.
The party had killed the members of the Beggar's Guild and Assassin's Guild when they conducted the cart ambush, also antagonizing these groups. The party had also upset the Assassin's Guild when they were held responsible for the theft of the Serpent's Eye, a gem valued by the Cult of Set who were now allied with the Assassins. A friend of Edvan's had taken the eye in the end, and all three Guild's wanted it for various reasons. Each of the Guilds now suspected the party of working for another.
So back to the party and the slaughter in the city. The characters' actions against the Pleasure Dome was such a set-back for the Thieves' Guild that they responded violently and without a thought out plan. The characters would not be welcome in their old spots like the Tripping Trident for the owner feared Guild retaliation. So the characters would have had to decide whether or not to leave the city or strike at the Guilds first.
By now the decadence of the city would have made the characters want to set out and escape the corruption, painted dandy noblemen, and unvirtuous women. This would have been similar to Conan setting forth into the wild or a Lieber character doing the same. Also, since the characters were about 4th level, this would mean that it was a perfect time for them to set forth and explore the wild as the expert set of BECMI starts at 4th level and focuses on wilderness adventures. The party would have explored ancient ruins, met strange species, and fought barbaric tribes. This portion of the game would have been as violent and mysterious as the city portion was decadent and corrupt.
Eventually the characters would have returned to Hilmdyn's home, if I could steer them that way, and would have run into a too-powerful Harmakhis faction that had taken over the area. They would have decided that the city might have forgotten them enough and returned to the City-State at level 10 or so, where they would have found that the thieves and assassins at the brink of war. At that point, Edvan's old friend (Erin) would have reappeared. Erin worked his way into the Thieves' Guild as a clerk and knows all of their intelligence when it comes to suspected Assassin Guild operations and planned Thieves Guild operations. He actually does care about Edvan's well being and wasn't trying to set him up, but he did need the gem as it controls the serpents that the Cult of Set has been slowly collecting underneath the city sewer systems. Using the power of the gem, he releases and sets them off prematurely, specifically targeting the Thieves' Guild who he blames for the death of his sister, but he is unable to control the artifact's power. Edvan and the party has to put him down, which saves much of the city from the infestation, but the Thieves' Guild ends up awakening their past undead masters to save their own hide. The undead Guild masters of times before declare martial law on the city and become a menace of their own. They capture the party and put them through a death trap, but only Lola and Edvan are caught in the flooding chambers. The rest of the party fights off some Thieves, then works to find the way to reset the trap. This is a chance for Lola and Edvan to develop a rapport as the death trap is worked through and eventually escaped. The characters eventually would have had a chance to destroy the Harmakhis' artifact keeping the undead Guild Masters tethered to the world.
If the characters did not leave the city earlier, they would have went through a lower level version of the above events, then explored the surrounding wilderness. Through it all they would have developed a dangerous relationship with another patron they were never to directly meet: the Overlord himself.
The Overlord was concerned with the Thieves' Guilds slavery operations, the Harmakhis priests and their control of key players in the city, the actions of the Assassin's Guild, and the return of the Cult of Set. But he could not act without hurting his own political power as they had powerful allies among the nobility. Then the characters began to make those factions' lives a living hell. As the characters broke the power centers of each of these factions, the Overlord's trusted men took note and provided small tokens of support, to include banishment as a 'punishment' (and escape) rather than executing the party members when the nobility began to cry for their heads. The last adventure I had planned was that the characters caused such a ruckus that the Overlord was very pleased, but the powerful men in the city were infuriated. The Overlord 'punishes' the characters once more by banishing them to Hilmdyn's hometown at the head of a small army of liberation and a charter to rule over that town as minor nobility if they were to succeed, which would have put the characters at the Companion ruleset of BECMI.
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