GladiusNP: I've only been to Te Papa once, years ago, so I couldn't possibly comment. Heck, it's eight minutes walk from the comic shop! I don't have that kind of time!
As for bad guys... that all depends on what you define as 'bad', now, doesn't it? Do you want my pitch for a scenario? Well, here it is, but be warned: this is where history and our scenarios diverge. It's just something that has to happen in any D&D world.
Remember the emphasis that the Jongan conflict placed on summoned creatures? Or the Jinn ousting the demonic rulers of the Heaven River three hundred years ago? Or the Auselen creating undead and elemental armies? Well, humans have been poking around in the outer planes for a while now. What happens when the planes poke back?
(I've always wanted to do this...)
It's two hundred years later. The Ta'jinn and the Cresians have kept, more or less, to a cold sort of peace, but their frontiers are occasionally wracked by unsanctioned raiders, commonly employing Auselen technology (creatures, devices, spells) (which, incidentally, prompts yet another purchase from the attacked party to counter the new threat).
The Auselen like this scenario. It doesn't impoverish their source of funds by killing them all, but it keeps them in the forefront of military contracting. They've created huge vessels that can endure any sea, intended for shipping live cargo. They've explored other lands, and come back with elephants, rhinos, and other weird creatures that nobody's seen yet.
The annual Memorial Games are to be held in a month's time, with teams from Cresia and Ta'jinn competing; a number of naturalised jinn centaurs compete for Cresia, so nobody complains about the sprinting events. At the Memorial Games, Cresia intends to give a stirring (or frightening) demonstration of its new roc-borne troop assault force, a closely-kept secret developed over the past few years, as a counter to the Ta'jinn Thousand Golem Brigade demonstrated four years beforehand (and purchased at great price from Auselen). Mobility versus invulnerability, really.
Auselen, however, has different plans. A rift has developed between the biomancers and the metalomancers; the biomancers have costly initial investments, but their produce is then self-sustaining. The metalomancers, on the other hand, have to pay XP for every unit they manufacture, and they fear they'll fall behind. The solution? A total war.
Right now, the metalomancers have the edge with flesh and clay golems being cutting-edge. The biomancers don't have the numbers of bio creations to rival them yet, and won't for another decade. And, fearing the awesome fallout from a war on Ausel itself, the logical scheme is to ignite a massive war on the mainland, going back to the origins of the Accords of Helg - but not letting the conflict stop this time. This time, both Cresia and Ta'jinn will smash each other to bits, and when they're both gone, the metalomancers will have the most cash, thus winning.
This makes sense once you realise that the Auselen elders have experimented on themselves so far that they're now full dragons. Their minds are warped, and their bodies are more powerful than anything else on the planet.
The scheme? Launch unprovoked attacks from both sides simultaneously, destroying the Memorial Games. First, on the night before the Games, a Dominated minion will slaughter the Ta'jinn athletes while they sleep. The Auselen have their own werewolf to do this for them.
Second, when this is discovered in the morning, a griffin patrol swoops over the city and blasts it with fireballs. Again, the Auselen have both spell-slingers and griffins (they did, after all, manufacture them in the first place, right?).
Now all they have to do is sneak these forces into the Memorial City before the games begin. The ships are launched, the illusions practiced, and they'll be there within the month.
But...
Shortly after the ships reach the shore of Cresia, and unload their carts filled with 'straw. Nothing but straw. Move along', something nasty happens.
Ausel itself is invaded from an unknown vector. The Summoners, a third and minor faction amongst the lords, wake up one morning to find their city in the shadow of a titanic fortress. It wasn't there the night before, yet today it reaches to the clouds - it's nearly a mile high, featureless, a great iron cube slowly settling into the ground. Strange lights flare occasionally between the plates of its walls. The staccatto march of inhuman feet can be heard echoing through its halls.
You see, the Summoners had recently discovered this great creature. It was nearly mindless, it wasn't particularly tough, and a triplet of them could fix damaged objects in an instant with magical synergy. Hundreds of the creatures were bound to Ausel, servitors doing menial work. That was all right by them; after all, formian workers are used to that.
But the Queens didn't like it. Their workers were vanishing; in small numbers, true, for their empire had 'enlightened' hundreds of worlds to the path of pure law in their million-year history, and their population was measured in the trillions. Nevertheless, they reasoned, this could be a new gambit on the part of some other force - the slaad, perhaps, or those busy-body eladrins trying to promote some cause of 'freedom'. So they set up a trace and sent a battle fortress to analyse the problem.
The fortress is unlike anything the world has dealt with so far. Its walls are a steel alloy, one foot thick; its interior is filled with bizarre engines and magical chambers; and it has five hundred stories. In all, there are maybe twelve million inhabitants in this fortress, although only five hundred thousand of them are warriors; the rest are workers or slaves from other planes - animals, humanoids, celestials and infernals alike, largely useless in combat. There are fifty thousand taskmasters and five thousand myrmachs on board. About the only thing humans don't have to worry about is the fortress moving; it's only capable of shifting across the planes, not space itself, being built on another plane by billions of workers in a matter of days and then transported fully-laden by powerful mages (formian queens with class levels).
The formian mission: Find out what happened to the missing workers. Resolve this situation. Secondary objectives: Increase the Rule of Law across the multiverse. Reinforcements are unlikely once the situation is reported as 'just another case of humanoids'.
The Auselen problem: They have a formian nest in their heartland, they're outnumbered, and their most powerful units are tempting targets for the formian taskmasters.
The complication: They just set their only potential allies leaping into a mutually destructive war. (While it hasn't happened yet, it's in motion.)
Spell levels up to 8, mainland population grown to double its previous size. Rare monster units available to all sides, including the formians. The Auselen have just had a crash course in the existance of other planes, and the Powers that rule them. How will the world be saved? Or won't it?
How's this sound?
But I do we agree with Drakmar that we need to ensure it doesn't get too Sci-Fi and totally whackout the whole progress of the thread. Personally speaking I think the movie 'Krull' mixed this concept of the Sci-Fi Megafortress and a Fantasy world effectively (and the Premise of Stargate could work to). So if we keep this more Krull than Borg we should be okay...
