Help me with a pirate campaign?

[Jolly Giant]

I've been DM-ing a pirate campaign for some time, and it's been good fun so far. But the party is now on level 13 and feel it's time to move on to greater things, i.e. the planes.

They've met up with a high-level githyanki warlock that's hiding out from Gith. As you may know, the lich-queen Gith slays any githyanki that progress past level 15, making sure they never become powerful enough to challenge her. Or even close!

This warlock (wizard) has made himself a nice little hideout (on the material plane) where Gith can't find him, but he can't leave it either. So he's been sending the PC's out on errands for him. Which brings me to my question:

Does anybody have any good ideas for quests this warlock could send the players out on?

Please???

 

[Teflon Billy]

Do you still want this to resemble a Pirate Campaign?

 

[Jolly Giant]

Do you still want this to resemble a Pirate Campaign?


No, its gone beyond that. It should still continue on lines fitting for a bunch of greedy, no-quarter-giving bad-asses, though.

The last thing they did was attack an astral carrack (githyanki warship sailing the astral plane) to gain an artifact it was carrying. I can't imagine anything else even remotely pirate-like they could get into while travelling the planes, which is what they want to do. I don't mind a chance to put the Manual of the Planes to good use, either. (Finally!)

That attack had a really cool side-track, by the way... The captain of the astral carrack had one of the legendary +5 vorpal silver greatswords awarded to great githyanki heroes. The players were naturally both astounded and proud to have secured such a magnificent item (espescially since they often accuse me often being stingy with the magic treasure!), but the warlock they are working for got furious with them.

As the only githyanki powerful enough to create such a weapon is of course Gith herself, the theft of one was bound to draw her attention! Which obviously is the last thing the warlock wants. One of the players -a barbarian blackguard-wanna-be with a strong devotion to Erythnul- came up with a most brilliant idea of how to dispose of the sword: With a little help from the warlock the whole party travelled to Pandemonium and the wanna-be blackguard personally presented it to Erythnul as a sacrifice! In return, he was granted permission to enter the ranks of the blackguards.

Don't suppose Gith will be going after her sword in Erythnul's Citadell of Slaughter...

 

[Jolly Giant]

Teflon Billy

BTW, love your photo, Billy!

 

[Teflon Billy]

Well, thanks..but that's not me. That's a picture of professional wrestler Al Snow.

Anyway, your campaign sounded great there I'm really taken with the idea that you (unlike most DM's whose paths I cross) aren't moving toward the high level guys becoming some kind of "Good Deed Doers" in place of their usual ruthless cutthroat behaviour. It sounds like it's been a great campaign up until now.

Now, as to it's continuation...

How about the PC's get dis[patched to the City of Brass for some reason or another. It might make a decent "transitional" adventure between their Pirate Careers and their Plane Hopper careers (Djinns tend to remind me of Sinbad, who reminds me of Shipboard adventures...how's that for stream of consciousness?)

Anyway...try this on for size: Some antagonist has figured out the location of the party's Githyanki patron and is putting out word that the information is for sale.

The Antagonist has connections within the City of Brass, and has holed up their until it's time to meet with interested parties.

The PC's are going to want to eliminate this person, but have to deal with the Djinns of the city (to locate where exactly the ANagonist is holed up), other parties interested in buying the information, and the Antagonist himself (who has maybe hired a group of Djinns to protect he and his golem (heh!) from just this kind of attack.

Now that I look at that, it's not very nautical, but there you are

 

[Numion]

Pirates are BULL CRAP compared to Ninjas, who are totally sweeet.

 

[Churchill]

Planeshipped

One of the things I'd be tempted to do is to give them a ship that they can use to travel between the planes. It really doesn't do anything more than maintain the trappings of the pirate genre, but it is a physical connection/reminder of the way things were.

You could take the tack (nautical pun intended) of the astral (or ethereal) being akin to the ocean, and the other planes are the continents (or islands) that they travel to.

Again, though, that really doesn't do much as far as scenarios go.

The idea someone mentioned about the gith patron's location being discovered is a good one. You can continue along in that vein and run some adventures revolving around what has to be done to maintain the hideout (i.e., what are the physical requirements; are any special materials needed, and how are they obtained).

You could set the players up with some sort of interplanar letter of marque giving them the opportunity to raid on another planar kingdom.

Opportunities abound with the situation you've layed out. To begin with I think I'd handle it by devising a "standard" adventure idea, and then look at it and apply some planar niftiness.

 

[Darkness]

Pirates are BULL CRAP compared to Ninjas, who are totally sweeet.

Agreed! And here's proof: Proof.



BTW, I don't think that the lich-queen is Gith.

 

[Lela]

Agreed! And here's proof: Proof.

Okay, that kid needs help. Like, guys carrying a special jacket help.


Anyway, what's wrong with having a ghost ship show up and begin haunting the PCs? The captain could be called Le 'Chuck and would insist on trading insults during a sword dual that would only involve one member of the group. Rolls would become useless, to hit and damage would be determined by how impressive an innsult was compared to the comeback presented in response to said insult.

And watch out for the monkeys, "THOSE HORRABLE MONKEYS!"

 

[Enkhidu]

In my experience, no D&D setting had a more piratical flavor than Spelljammer.

Why not pick up the recent Polyhedren (was it with Dungeon 92?) with the Spelljamming minigame to grab some ideas?

By the way, the same Dungeon/Polyhedren has a pretty good adventure involving Gith, too!