How is this plot?

[Ancalagon]

Hello

I have been working on something lately and I want to see if this is any good.

The adventure happens in the large trading city of Zeugma, in a pseudo-historical seting. Zeugma crosses the euphrates and is at the eastern egdge of the byzantine empire (the time period is about 1050 AD). Being on part of the silk road and other important trading route, the place is cosmopolitan. Idealy the party will be made of a mixt of foreigners and locals. Zeugma is friendly to mercenaries, (caravan guards are in high demand) but only those who are employed (ie, no free-swords runing around). This provides an insentive for the PCs to find a patron.

A merchant, Jafar Al AkMassah, does the run between Badgad and Zeugma. He is mostly honest, but has decided that his guards are not very suitable to resolve certain problems quietly. He therefore hires a group of adventures and in steps the PCs. (I'll be giving rough guidelines to the players as to what kind of PCs will fit in the campain, players who blalantly disregard this may find their PCs not hired by the merchant...). The party is given a modest salary and the proper papers.

A few days passes...

During this time, Jafar has had his cargo, a load of bolts of second-rate (at best) silk, stored in a warehouse. He is having a hard time closing a deal for their sale, or so he he will tell the PCs. In fact, hidden in the middle of each bolt is a small packet of pepper, easily worth 3-4 times the silk, and aranging the discrete sale of these is what is taking time. Jafar doesn't want anyone to know about the spice, since he's A: sort of smugling and B: it makes his cargo more tempting to thieves.

What Jafar doesn't know is that the owner of the warehouse has fallen upon hard times (gambling maybe?). He's fired most of the gards and replaced some of them with underqualified people, and while the money he has just goten from Jafar has allowed him to play his gambling debt (and not have his legs broken), he still can't make the protection payment he owes the local thieves guild. The guild has therefore tasked a few of its' members to go steal a bit of his wares to make a point, selecting relatively inexperienced men.

To make matters even worse for the warehouse owner is the fact that one of the newly hired replacement guard is in fact a low ranking member of a small group of renegate thieves. They are having some goods (dried figs) stored in the warehouse and have hidden their loot within the sacks of figs.

Jafar, who's been around for a while, realises that the warehouse is being cased out, and asks the PCs to interveen. Their directives are to take whatever action necessairy to stop the silk from being stolen, as long as it's QUIET. Of course, a subtantial bonus will be given to them if they succeed.

The PCs must therefore foil a robbery attempt by the thieve's guild (luckily for the PCs, the thieves do not report to their superiors the suden increase in activity). To make things more complicated, the renegate thief posing as a guard also notices the guild's surveilance, and reports this to his accolites. Thinking they have been found out by the guild, they make plans to grap their loot during the night and flee the city.

Coments?

Ancalagon

 

[Piratecat]

I think it's great. I love plots and settings like this. Multiple plots and bad guys, midnight intrigue? Good stuff.

 

[Chupacabra]

Very nice idea. And a good way to get the PC's entangled against at least two neat and "scalable" enemies in a short amount of time. I say scalable b/c both the Thieve's guild and the Renegade guild can throw opposition at the PC's no matter what the party's power level is. If you want to hold the revenge of the Thieve's guild off until the PC's have a few (or many) levels under their belts, you can credibily do that: the guild will have both novice members (who can be a challenge at low levels) all the way up to Master and Grandmaster status (who can be foil the plans of an even more experienced party) and members in between as well. Same goes for the renegades.

Plus, especially with the Thieve's Guild, you also have an unlimited source of adversaries. No matter how many guildies they kill off, there will always be more where that came from. Recruitment goes on.

Plus, if you like, both guilds could create some additional pressure on the PC's in the future other than simply throwing knife-wielding baddies at them. For example: some merchants may refuse to deal with the PC's after they have been given a "friendly" visit from their local Theive's Guild representative. Either or both guilds could also bribe officials in the town to harass or arrest the party. You could use this official persecution as an excuse to get the PC's out of town -- a long trip to a wilderness dungeon may be just the cure to allow time to pass back in the home city, enough time for the heat to die down.

Cool setup!

 

[random user]

Sounds neat. Some questions, just in case they matter because your PC's might do something unexpected:

1. how does the legal system work? If they kill would-be robbers, are they going to have a bunch of red tape?

2. Similarly, what would happen if they just went to the equivalent of the police?

3. Is there a rogue in the party? Would that rogue be part of the thieves' guild? If so, would he know about the plot? Would he be able to find out about it? Would he be able to stop the theft using that angle?

4. How is the campaign going to progress if the party fails? What if they only partially succeed (like if they lose the silk but gain the figs)? (Or is this a one-shot adventure?)

5. Are these guys starting at 1st level? (If not, there are a variety of spells you may have to worry about.)

6. What exactly is the reward? It needs to be high enough that the party cares, but not high enough that they wonder why the guy doesn't just hire more guards himself. Similarly, what if the players decide that they are going to hire some temp guards, are they going to be able to find them?

Please don't think I'm nitpicking -- I think it's a great plot. I don't actually think most of these questions would come up, but I just put on my "crazy player" hat on and thought of some of the potentially unexpected things that my crazy player might do.

 

[William Ronald]

Ancalagon, this sounds fascinating. You might want to consider some of the following questions as well:

1)If the PCs fail, what is the price to Jafar? Has he already promised the pepper to someone?

2)In addition to the thieves' guild, who else might have an interest in the warehouse? What happens if someone else, completely independent of Jafar, is placing additional guards on his own shipment? (Some other merchants may be running similar smuggling operations, or might be a bit overly protective of their goods?)


3) If the authorities find out about Jafar's smuggling operations, what happens to the PCs? (I assume the PCs do not know about the pepper yet, as I doubt Jafar trusts them with his secrets.)

4) Do the PCs have any existing allies/enemies in the city? They may be interested in learning what the PCs are up to, and become involved one way or another.

 

[Ancalagon]

Thank you all for the thought provoking questions! I will try to answer some of them

1: about the PCs. They will be at 3rd level. Some may have weak ties to the mage's guild (who won't be a factor in this adventure at all). One of the PCs will be an employee of Jafar for some time (probably a rogue-ish fellow, or at the very least someone resourcefull) and Jafar feels that he could use more like him/her.

2: about the authorities: Jafar does NOT want this because he's worried that someone will find out about the pepper. If it is found out he is smugling, he will be dealt a significant blow to both his finances and reputation, but he should be able to recover. What happens to the PCs? I'm not sure exactly, I will have to think on that. If they are bright and get a lawyer, probably a few months of forced labor (ie, a "this sucks!" event, not a campain ending one).

It's important to note that Jafar does not normaly smugle spice. He is trying to do this on the quiet to "test the market" (as his colegue who will carry the spice to constantinople). If it goes well, he will start openly trading spices in large volume, and apear both bold and successful to his peers (and beat them to the punch before they all start copying him). If not, he doesn't loose face. Currently, spice is carried to alexandria and shiped out by boat.

If the PCs go to the authorities and manage to rouse their interest just enough, they will start posting more patrols in the general areas. The thieves guild has ways around that, the renegates does not.

As far as bodies go, if things aren't too crazy Jafar should be able to get the party out of trouble, although this would cost them their bonus. Smugling them out of the city is also possible.

3: About failure. Neither of the thieving group has the lifting capacity to steal Jafar's entire cargo, but it could take a significant dent in his profit. The renegates are likely to take a few bolts (being opportunist), while the guild will probably take about a cartload (roughly 20% of the total amount).

4: Rewards: As soon as Jaffar actualy uses the PCs (they are on "retainer" and normaly only have a modest salary) he triples their salary. They are expected to use this money (payable in advance) to finance their operations. The bonus at the end will be a small, one pound packet of pepper for each player (apparently, peppercorns were used as currency by some). Jafar doesn't state what the bonus will be in advance. The biggest reward though is their continued employement by Jaffar, who will have a much more lucrative job for them next time.

5: hiring temp guards: This is not a bad idea, and about half a dozen guards in good standing could be hired. A dozen more of ... not so reputable guards could be had too. However, more guards will act as a motivators to the guild-thieves (wow, it must be something really good in there!). At the moment, they only want to rob the place to make a point (pay protection or else). This move might also make the renegate thieves go out of near-panic mode, realise that they have NOT been found out by the guild, and shift their objectives.

6: Other merchants/other factions. Only Jafar and the renegate thieves have goods in the wearhouse. I think this is complicated enough without mixing more people in.

7: rogue in the party: A rogue, or someone well conected, may be able to find out by research that the warehouse owner owes protection money. Capturing one of the thieves watching the warehouse and interogating him will also yield this information. It is therefore possible to negociate with the thieves' guild and pay them off (at a stiff price).
It is also possible to avoid conflict with the renegate thieves if their robery is interupted by some quick thinking and smooth talking. If given the option to retrieve their loot and run, they will take it.

I made this scenario with the thought that there would be several ways of "solving" it. The pcs can do this without sheding one drop of blood... or they can lie in wait in the warehouse and ambush would be robbers. Or other alternatives I may not have even though of

Ancalagon

 

[Derulbaskul]

This would be a great start to an Eberron campaign. Very nice, indeed.