Short eh? Well, no Rappan Athuk then. I don't buy many published adventures, so the best I can do is tell you about my campaign, which is sorta superhero-lite. Stylistically, the closest I can compare it to would be anime, akin to Rururoni Kenshin or The Slayers. And a little bit of Dragon Ball Z.
The setting is a early-Renaissance fantasy world where Orcs have their own kingdom or two (one like Japan-meets-Czechoslovakia, the other like Nazi Germany). The PCs are guardians of a young sorceress who is on pilgrimage, trying to master magical powers that are necessary to the survival of the world.
PCs include:
Half-Minotaur barbarian/cleric with a mild antimagic superpower letting her dispel things with a touch. Her human blood and minotaur blood mix in such a way that magic doesn't suit her well. Her cleric level is more for flavor than power, since she chose to use a very baneful variant of the Wild Spellcaster Template from
Wild Spellcraft.
Gnome druid. Pretty standard guy until you get to know him well.
Elf bard who swapped out most of his bardic music abilities for intimidation abilities so he can stare down or scare off badguys just by presence. He has a few mild superpowers, including the ability to lash out his kusari-gama to a range of 25 ft. He can also combine his magic with the druid to create unusual effects, like an entangle spell made of slashing kusari-gama. If it means anything to anyone, he often chuckles the phrase "quake with fear" whenever he uses that particular ability.
Kobold sorcerer who is slowly transforming into a black Dragon, using the Hero class instead of the Dragon Disciple. He already has wings, though his breath weapon damages him whenever he uses it, thanks to him not yet being immune to acid.
And the NPC sorceress they're guarding is an air mage. Instead of using permanency to give her magical abilities, I just used superpowers. She has permanent flight (which fits nicely for an air mage), and is slowly gaining control of various aspects of air elementalism.
The basic plot has them going from magical site to magical site, usually discovering a slightly different form of air magic that the sorceress will learn, while the rest of the party deals with other local problems, though I make sure to shuffle things so the players don't get bored with the formula.
In the last plot arc we played, the group was at a huge port city to make arrangements to travel by ship. In the city, the owner of the company who was going to charter the ship for them was attacked just as they were supposed to meet him to discuss business. When they get to him, he's still alive, but is completely unable to speak, as if his voice had been magically stolen. The attackers tried to sneak away in a boat, but the kobold flew overhead and spat acid to sear the hull of the boat, and thus they got some preliminary information from the attackers.
There is a group of assassins, known as the Squalls because of how quickly they come and go, who are working with some strange cult that want to destroy the city. They attacked the ship-owner with a semi-legendary magical dagger that can steal voices (the dagger was enchanted to return to the assassins' home base, just in case the attack was botched), and at first they claim that their masters just intend to ransom back the voices of all the various noblemen in the city who have been attacked.
With a little research, the party learns that apparently the last man who owned the dagger (an assassin of great fame himself) died in an underground prison that flooded over a century ago. They also get some clues as to where the Squalls' base of operations is. The PCs, preferring not to give into the attackers' demands for money, and also preferring not to walk into a den of assassins, get permission to enter the flooded prison and find the remains of the assassin, thinking that they might provide a clue somehow, or could even be magically commanded to provide answers.
When they get into the prison (completely flooded, with no natural lighting and a bizarre aquatic lizard stalking them), they manage to find the skeleton of the assassin, and a large diamond that had fused into his sternum, which apparently was concealed under his flesh until he died. The air mage senses strong air magic in the gem, and the bard recognizes etchings along the gem. Apparently the voice-stealing dagger trapped all its voices in this gem, which had been on the pommel of the blade. Somehow, the now-dead assassin had removed the diamond and merged it with himself.
They start to leave, when they notice someone following them, a Squall breathing with a large air bladder, swimming after them. Before they have much time to prepare, they're ambushed, the Squalls apparently knowing they'd be there. They flee through the flooded tunnels of the prison, and take a moment to recover before turning back to fight their foes. The gnome manages to befriend the aquatic lizard, and it distracts the Squalls long enough for them to get close enough to attack.
The Squalls have both snipers with crossbows (breathing with air bladders) and a couple mages apparently using water-breathing spells. The half-Minotaur swims for the mages and grapples them long enough to dispel their water-breathing spells, and a fine fight ensues, culminating with the Squalls trying to drop a grate in the way of the exit so that the party's water-breathing spell would run out before they could escape. But with a mixture of tugging with strength, spitting with acid, wildshaping into an eel, and turning into gaseous form, they manage to get through the various grates and get outside, discovering that the Squalls have fled.
Now that they have the gem, they let the air sorceress try to figure out how to free the voices from it, while the rest of the party follows a few leads and heads for a bar the Squalls frequent (a combination tavern/gymnasium called the Earthworm), with intentions of busting some heads. This is an ill-chosen move, though, since every person in the bar is a Squall, and since some managed to escape the prison fight, they know what the party looks like. After lulling them into a false sense of security with a few 'clues', the assassins attack. The tavern is eventually set on fire when a pyromaniacal Squall sorcerer decides, "Oh
it," and tries to kill the PCs by dropping a fireball into the middle of the room. The leaders of the Squalls flee, preferring not to take a risk of getting killed, and the PCs lose the scent during a carriage chase through the streets of the city.
But all is not lost. They manage to charm some of the survivors of the fire so that they tell that their leader was meeting the cult leader this evening at midnight, but they don't know where. However, they know that he sometimes talks about a Falcon. The PCs do some quick checking, and discover a ship named Stormwing docked in the city, which they guess is where the Squall leaders are. Also, a strange mist is beginning to fill the port, and they can see a huge storm forming out at sea.
(The assumption that 'Falcon' referred to a ship was an error, but I figured it was a pretty good assumption, so I changed the ship name and a few details on the fly; they'd ignored another clue where another noble--a competitor of their ship-owning friend--also seemed quite suspicious when they tried talking to him. He was strangely interested in their air mage sorceress, and while the PCs were out fighting Squalls, the noble had the sorceress kidnapped. They could've found out that the noble owned a boat that was scheduled to leave at midnight, but instead they made a leap of logic, and I decided not to argue it).
They sneak onto the ship (which is bristling with guards and mages), and spot their air mage friend being dragged to a holding cell. They could just fight the bad guys here and possibly win the day, but they decide to take a risk to see if they can find out where the ship is going and what they're up to, so they lay low in a life boat, and wait for the ship to depart. At midnight, the ship slips out through the mist, which is slowly intensifying into a low-hanging stormcloud. Leaving the harbor, the Stormwing heads straight for the storm at sea. It is now a small hurricane, apparently created in just the past few hours, and the ship glides through a hole in the wall of the storm, finding the calm inside the eye of the storm.
Once there, the PCs see another ship, an Orcish ironclad (from the Nazi-esque Orcs), and the mages on the Stormwing head over to the Orc ship, dragging along the air mage. The PCs follow in various ways, getting to the waterline of the Orcish ship and hearing the nobleman-kidnapper explain that they got the gem when they took the air mage. A strange cawing voice acknowledges the job well done, and then all the mages take their places on the deck, beginning to cast a spell. The PCs wait for about half a second (long enough to realize that the hurricane is responding to the mages) before they attack. The Orcish warriors on the ship act as bodyguards to the human mages, while the leader of the Squalls is an opportunist, attacking whoever he can.
But the leader of the cult is the strangest foe. A humanoid avian with a hawk-face and a set of wings sprouting from his shoulders, this sorcerer is stronger than all the rest, surrounding himself in a barrier of wind and lightning as he flies overhead and directs the battle.
In the middle of the battle, they finally manage to take out the bodyguards and get to the wizards performing the ritual. As they kill off a few, the hurricane that was moments before surging toward the city to destroy it suddenly goes wild, and huge waves begin to toss the ship, pulling it closer to the huge inner wall of the hurricane. The hawk-faced air mage still keeps fighting (he can fly and travel with the storm if he needs to, so why worry), and is nearly invincible in his shield. But the half-Minotaur is able to leap through it and tackle the mage, and it somehow has an effect on the remaining wizards, disrupting all their concentrations. The hawk mage blasts the barbarian back with a lightning bolt and teleports away, and the party is about to mop up the remaining wizards when the boat's stern begins to buckle from the out-of-control storm. They scoop up a few survivors, snatch the dagger from the leader of the Squalls and the gem from the nobleman, and get the hell out of the storm, flying for the quickly closing safe doorway that leads out. Just as they get out, the storm seems to implode, and the ships inside are torn to pieces.
Cue ending, where the party is met as heroes for destroying the storm and dramatically flying to safety, carrying with them the dagger and gem. They are able to cure all the muted noblefolk, and are praised by city leaders.
