Meh, I just wanted to get this off my chest. Here's the background for my encounter planned for the LoB, and I'll take any comments I can get.
My Players Don't Read
[sblock]In my game, I have two encounters with the LoB planned for in a half-dozen sessions or so. My party, after a few more adventures in Sharn (bringing them up to 10th-11th levels) will be using a couple of the hooks from the Dragonshards articles that I've combined. I've been planning for this for a while, and although I could see my players chosing a different direction, they would probably find this particular adventure worth it, and they want to take a trip out of Sharn again soon.
Anyway, the LoB, the Emerald Claw, House Cannith, Morgrave University (partially represented by the PCs), and House Lyrandar (partially represented by the PCs) are working against each other in a fight to find the remnants of a crashed prototype airship called the Redwing.
The Redwing I crashed in Lake Galifar during the Last War, when it was using it's timeskimming/planejumping drive to attempt to race around the world and "complete" the tests for the prototype. There is a horrible flaw though, and the thing (including it's eldritch device) goes down. It's been 8 years since that crash, and just now people are starting to figure things out. House Cannith knew about the accident as soon as it happened, raided the original craft deep underwater, and excavated the eldritch machine. Then they started creating a new Redwing (the Redwing II, for lack of a better name) prototype.
After the adventure where the characters will help a professor out of Morgrave recover the ship via means that would take forever to go over, they will gain a clue as to where the ship originated from. That's the key to finding the way to the facility where the Redwing II was being created. Cannith West and Cannith East both have documents notorized by Sivis that the ship "belongs" to them, but neither has the full charter for the craft. They also have no idea which facility the construction was occuring in.
The destruction of Cyre ended the project 3 days before it's scheduled launch date. The thing could be made operation with a quick retrofit, and by turning on it's "crew." The Crew are 10 bronzewood/bronze warforged named Red One through Red Ten. Two are scout models that act as the engineers. The rest serve other purposes on the ship including everything except piloting (which requires a house Lyrandar heir more than likely, though you could still control the craft normally by beating the fire elementals Charisma check (Fire Elementals Charisma is 18).
The craft is 33% faster than a conventional Lyrandar galleon, has 50% less space for Cargo and Crew (since Warforged work 24-7, and the eldritch machine takes up a large amount of what would be cargo space and the need for cargo is minimal). It's most important feature is the restored eldritch device, which is still missing key components, though it would certainly be a useful conventional airship. This ship was a House Cannith design for Cyre, and does not use a wheel of wind and water which would aid a House Lyrandar heir in controlling the vessel. It's original mission was actually entirely unrelated to the Last War, though I havn't completely developed that hook.
So, the craft is still in it's underground hanger that looks over the lake nearest the Mournlands, built into a small cliffside. It could be brought out, and possibly retrofitted to go. It still has the -not quite functioning- (random events maybe?) eldritch machine, which I think should make for an interesting plot device one way or another. Anyway, my plan is to have the LoB actively persuing this device (but with little idea of where it is because the PCs already took out his information source). So him and two lieutenants are going to track the PCs once they are sighted in the Mournlands, and attack them when they try to activate the airship or afterwards. He wants both the new unnactivated warforged, the airship, and most of all the eldritch device so that he can put it to "good" use.
I'm going to go for the Indiana Jones-ish escape via aircraft at the last second as the warforged servants of the LoB start to overwhelm the secret underground facility, and of course after the LoB has monologued like a classic villain. The Emerald Claw will likely get in the way at the last possible second, and result in a clash between the EC and the LoBsters. I'm hoping the PCs escape with most of their skin, and hopefully the airship.
Anyway, I figure that the LoB needs to be a moderate villain, not necessarily a "bad" guy, just extremely prejudiced agaisnt the flesh races. The second encounter (less developed and not likely to happen for a long while), would be something akin to boarding the ship or trying to take it down from the ground. I'm not completely certain on that.[/sblock]
