D&D 5E Gothic Fantasy Snow White Brainstorming

[I'm A Banana]

So I've been throwing together a Dark Souls-inspired gothic fantasy Snow White campaign. I've got some good initial legs, but I'd love to get some more brainfood. So help me riff on the idea!

Big ideas I've got so far include

• In this version of the story, the Queen won. Though the Huntsman didn't kill Snow White (and was cursed for it), she found someone who eventually did the deed. This brought a curse down on the kingdom - a curse of eternal winter, that traps souls within the kingdom.
• Snow White survives in zombie mode somewhere in the kingdom. Killing her shambling corpse and either breaking the curse or not is kind of the Big Climax.
• Ending her existence doesn't end the curse. What ends the curse is fulfilling her wish, sung into an old well - a wish for her true love.
• Florian, her True Love, is also dead, but persists as a ghost. It's probably possible to reunite them, but we're not going to assume the players do - it'll help that souls-y Big Final Choice moment gel. And maybe there's no real Good option. Even if you end the curse, maybe it just makes room for the ascent of some other jerk.
• The players arrive through the use of the tunnels of Mickey, the Rat-King. He leads an organization called the Thieves of Stories who codify stories in magical documents that then steal them from the multiverse and lock them within the document - only someone with the document will be able to tell the story. Mickey's goal is to use the princess's crown to write down her story, and thus steal it for his own enrichment. This is the hook, though, of course, the PC's might not want to reward the Rat-King in the end. The setup is that the Rat-King lets them into the curse-locked kingdom, and is the only person who can let them out (though maybe if they end the curse, they won't NEED to use him...)

I've got plenty of other ideas bouncing around (like mask-makers who hide the Fairest from the Queen's Huntsmen assassins, and of course witches in the Queen's coven who grow poisonous apple trees), but I'm more interested in adding to my inspiration nest with YOUR ideas.

So, whatcha got for me?

 

[jayoungr]

Are you planning on doing anything with the dwarves?

Off the top of my head, I'm thinking of a band of seven dwarf assassins who have sworn to hunt down Snow White and put her out of her misery, in memory of the kindness she showed toward them when she was alive. Maybe she's already killed one or more of them--does she have the power to infect them with zombie-ism? If so, then the surviving dwarves might want to also grant their former companions the release of death. Snow White could have a couple of zombie dwarf bodyguards, or they could be minibosses guarding locations with important items or information.

(Disclaimer: I've never played Dark Souls and don't know the tropes, just riffing on what I've gleaned by osmosis from pop culture.)

 

[I'm A Banana]

Off the top of my head, I'm thinking of a band of seven dwarf assassins who have sworn to hunt down Snow White and put her out of her misery, in memory of the kindness she showed toward them when she was alive. Maybe she's already killed one or more of them--does she have the power to infect them with zombie-ism? If so, then the surviving dwarves might want to also grant their former companions the release of death. Snow White could have a couple of zombie dwarf bodyguards, or they could be minibosses guarding locations with important items or information.

I really like this!

My dwarves are basically guardians of the tomb, but they were coming off as a bit boring, and to have some conflict between them - some of them wanting release, some of them still clinging to hope that the curse can be ended - really could add some interesting dynamics there. Thanks!