Help for a Rusty DM Badly in Need of Some Mental WD-40

[conanb]

Glimpse Behind The Curtain

I like what you got going here. I think you've got a great set of villians in these elves, especially if you play up their haughtiness and total disregard for the other races. The idea that their simply cleaning up vermin should be apparant. What I would do is what The Grackle suggested and sneak in some meetings with these elves. Perhaps as a rumor that these are the people that might be able to stop this in one fell swoop. But after meeting them and fighting them apathetic about helping, unknowing that these elves are the reason the whole thing is happening. Keep dropping clues that perhaps the elves know something, slowly building up to the reveleation that not only do they know something, but are actually behind it. Your players if they're smart are going to start suspecting this pretty quickly, but don't give them any reasons to go after the elves. In fact, continue to have the elves at least be somewhat helpful if a bit off putting so your players will learn to go to them for perhaps information or healing etc. Just my two cents.

 

[Stormrunner]

re: the cult. Presumably they have a symbol of some sort. Eyes are always fun. Say one of the elves the PCs slay has a ring set with an eye-like stone: notable because it's the ONLY item the elf is wearing that isn't of elven make. Give it a minor magical ability, such as scare 1/day or ray of enfeeblement 3/day, so the PCs will hang on to it (at least long enough to sell it).
If they do sell the ring, a mysterious stranger shows up a few days later and questions them about it: where did they find it, who did they sell it to, did they feel any "odd sensations" while wearing it? Have this fellow identify himself as an agent of some group the PCs Don't Wanna Mess With: the King's Guard, the Assassin's Guild, whatever, so they don't just kill him or forcibly counter-interrogate him. He refuses to say why he wants the answers to these questions (in fact, he himself doesn't know: he's just following his superiors' orders. He undoubtedly has theories of his own; feel free to make them wildly off-base.)
A few months later, they notice an identical ring on the finger of a powerful nobleman - one known for his hatred of elves. Where did he get it? The nobleman won't say, and if the PCs press the issue he has them arrested for "harassing" him.
Sometime after that, they fight a group of minor evil cultists - and one of the group has one of Those Rings! (He's actually a member of the Elder Elemental Cult, "planted" in this unrelated sect to recruit their most promising members.) By this point the players are wondering "What are these things, where do they come from, who's making them?" and you can start dropping more concrete hints.