Help me with this plot

[d12]

In an adventure I am working on, the PCs will be exploring a ruined city filled with orcs, vermin, and other assorted nasty critters. They may be able to find some of the wealth that the original inhabitants left behind. I've had no problem filling up the city with challenges but here's where I need your help:

The city was abandoned 60 years ago when a visiting sorcerer put a curse on the king that monsters would overrun his realm until ______________.

So, my question is, why did the sorcerer curse the king and what will end the curse?

Oh, and we're looking at the PCs being level 3 through 6 or so.

 

[Crothian]

The Sorcerer was from one of the monster races and the King's daughter was in fact a great racist and insulted the Sorcerer's race. THe daughter is in a staus field and when she can accept monster races as equal the curese will be lifted.

So, the party has to fight off some moinsters, locate where she's being "stored" dispel the magic on her so she wakes and then role play it with her ansomehow convince here monstyer races are equal to other humaniods.

 

[Nifft]

The Sorcerer was from one of the monster races and the King's daughter was in fact a great racist and insulted the Sorcerer's race. THe daughter is in a staus field and when she can accept monster races as equal the curese will be lifted.

So, the party has to fight off some moinsters, locate where she's being "stored" dispel the magic on her so she wakes and then role play it with her ansomehow convince here monstyer races are equal to other humaniods.

But they're not. They're evil, and they have ugly fangs, and they're basically disposable.

Unless of course you want the conversation to run something like this...

PC (wiping off sword): Princess, you must accept monsters as your social and moral equal.
Princess: You mean, monsters like the twenty that you four killed to get into this room?
PC: Uh, right. Just like them. Don't kick their corpses on the way out.
Princess: But they're evil! They obviously didn't listen to your righteous demand for peaceful surrender.
PC: Uh, yeah, request for peaceful surrender. Yeah. They sure didn't listen to that.
Princess: Are you going to bury them yourselves or something? What kind of funeral rites do these allegedly human-quality creatures observe?
PC: Right, chaps. Let's get out of here and find an adventure where we can kill stuff standing in red circles without getting nagged for it.


How about... the Sorcerer was a high-level human, disguised as an elf, who is trying to stir up trouble between the humans and the elves. He has no reason other than being a jerk and trying to stir up trouble. (Who wants a war? Better to ask: who's your favorite arch-fiend? )

-- N

 

[Crothian]

But they're not. They're evil, and they have ugly fangs, and they're basically disposable.

It's thoughts and people like you that got thjs poor kongdom curesed in the first place!!

These races don't have to be evil, or anything you've said; DM's have lots of control.

 

[Herobizkit]

The Sorcerer was a victim of a "witch-hunt". He was drawn and quartered, his ashes burnt, and said ashes were put in five jars; four were taken and discarded in an extreme of each element (ice, lava, stone, never-ending windstorm) while the fifth was kept in the king's vault.

The curse will persist until the Sorcerer is made whole, somehow.

It seems cliche, I know, but cliches work because they're cliche.

 

[LostSoul]

The city was abandoned 60 years ago when a visiting sorcerer put a curse on the king that monsters would overrun his realm until ______________.

Until the PCs do something that their players want them to.

The obvious thing is to tie in this prophecy to some goal of the PC's. Maybe it's something that the PCs are fighting against - the city is overrun while Good King Joe is on the throne.

Tie this to something that doesn't directly impact the PCs - and the choices that the players want to make - and expect the players to be bored.

 

[Ze]

So, my question is, why did the sorcerer curse the king and what will end the curse?

The (highish-level) sorcerer and his beautiful sister were visiting this city, curious about how its inhabitants thrived happily although they had little to no knwoledge of magic.
The king is not a good person, though, and when he sees the charming lady, he wants her. She turns his offers down, he gets angry.
One night, the king's guards get the girl in the middle of the night, take her to the king who abuses her and then kills her, throwing her body in some bottomless chasm.
When the sorcerer can't find his sister, the king openly supports the search of the girl, lending his help, but fruitlessly. However, the sorcerer find out the truth about that night, somehow, and unbeknownst to the king, starts working on a project of vengeance: it takes weeks, but he eventually creates a powerful magic item which will constantly attract vermin/monsters/whatever. To keep it active forever, though, he will need to sacrifice his own life and trap his own soul inside the object.
He writes a letter to the king (which the players should easily find), hides the object, summons/calls some monster (with the order to dispose of his corpse after his death) and at last takes his own life. The called monster throws the sorcerer's body in the same chasm where his sister lays and goes home. No traces of the body and the only hints about there being an object and its location are hidden among the obscure magic notes of the sorcerer, which none of the city dwellers can understand.
Thus, the city is deserted and the magic item keeps on attracting monsters.
The PC should easily find the letter (where the sorcerer tells the king that the city is doomed and it will be forever filled with monsters) in the king's halls. The letter should be detailed enough to let the PCs understand that there was a magic-user and he may have done something and that maybe in his chambers there could be some more evidence.
Sorcerer's chamber: there are his notes, and you can easily craft some puzzle within the notes, the solution of which will lead to the place where the magic object (with the sorcerer's soul) is hidden.

Rough and incomplete, but HTH.

Bye,
Ze

 

[Dei]

You can't go wrong with the classic:

"You are banished for your evil magics."

Perhaps the sorcerer was once a member of the King's court, perhaps he was simply visiting and something caught his eye leading to a ritual which the King saw as Evil. The Sorcerer, overcome with anger at having his experiment interrupted/destroyed fought the King but the two were evenly matched and each killed the other. With his last breath he then cursed the Kingdom as you described.

As the monsters began to overrun the city the King's wizard, though he was not strong enough to break the curse himself was able to twist the magic so that if ever the King's crown could be placed upon his throne the curse will end. To explain why no-one could do this at the time perhaps the curse took the form of a rift opening to a vermin plane in the throne-room itself so at the time no-one could get to the throne with the King's crown (possibly locked in the wizard's tower). However since so much time has past the concentraton of monsters has diseminated throughout the city and so now only a few guardians remain in place (read: boss fight).

When the PC's enter perhaps they encounter the weeping spirit of the King's Wizard who is trapped here until his failure is vindicated. He will explain, though cryptically (he's naturally insane at this point, don't want to make it easy) what they must do. This will mean going to his tower which he conveniently forgot to mention was trapped to the hilt, retrieving the crown and then sneaking to and storming the throne-room until they can place the crown (make a special receptical so that the PCs must actually be next to it and have the guardians use trip attacks so they can't simply run to it and bypass them, or have one as some type of spell-caster who spends the whole fight sitting on the throne so that he must be killed and removed before the crown can be placed. Once it is the rift seals and without the unnatural sustenance that it provided the monsters begin dying in a suitably dramatic fashion. Then the wizard's spirit can do the whole "Now I can rest in peace." bit and voila, one broken curse.

 

[Bront]

The city was abandoned 60 years ago when a visiting sorcerer put a curse on the king that monsters would overrun his realm until ______________.

he was allowed to marry a child of the current king! (Not realizing of course that the king only had 3 sons, and unfortunately, the king's line has been "blessed" to not bear a daughter. The sorcerer, a half-elf, has been quite upset by this, and has spent his time looking into breaking that blessing, and is actualy the one who hired the PCs, though they are unaware).

OR...

he was given the Gem of <Insert some cool name>, which will allow him to complete some arcane ritual. However, the gem has been lost in the catacombs of the city for ages well before the curse.

OR...

the King send his assistance to another nation in their war. The sorcerer being either the other nation's King, or royal advisor of some kind.

OR...

the King marry her! The sorceress was a lover scorned, or is just obsessed with the power of being a queen.

OR...

the kingdom's capitolistic system crumbled from the top down (said sorcerer wears red and carries a sickle).

Hope those help

 

[Nifft]

It's thoughts and people like you that got thjs poor kongdom curesed in the first place!!

These races don't have to be evil, or anything you've said; DM's have lots of control.

I'd like to live in a kongdom.

Seriously, though, when it comes to moral ambiguity, I'd much rather have the opponents be a bunch of humans who irrationally hate a bunch of slightly different looking / talking / worshipping humans, since it's clear to the players that they are all human.

Making the opponents orcs or gnolls or kobolds is a clear signal to the players that it's okay to smite them.

Don't abuse meta-game assumptions, especially if it's possible to get the same effect without abusing that assumption. It can make your players feel betrayed.

If you want to overcome racism, make the king an Elf and the sorcerer a Dwarf. It's classic, but with a nifty twist, and the players won't feel confused.

-- N