Need a bit of help. My players stay out.

[blackshirt5]

OK, I'm gonna start running a dungeon crawl soon, and I wanted to get a quick thought on this(I'll probably ask more stuff later):

What do you think of a castle who's inhabitants have spread to cover an entire plane? Basically, the castle is an artifact from an ancient battle between a pair of planeswalkers(yes, shades of Magic: the Gathering there; it's influenced by the early story and art of Magic) that, after being laid into this plane, spread and now has the entire plane. The castle would be a draw for adventurers and treasure hunters(artifacts? check. Money? check. Thrilling death? check.).

Now, I'm planning on having a mining town that unearths a gate that can connect this plane with the plane on which the mining town is located and, as word spreads(as it always will), various adventurers coming to the town to rest up and use the gate to travel through to the Plane of Castle Zelyon.

Here's where the question comes in:

Which do you think would be better, to have the PCs be one of the first groups(possibly even the first group, and I have an idea for that as well) to explore this castle, or do you think it'd be better to bring them in when the mining/adventurer support town is more well-established, so that they've got more rivals, allies, mercenaries, but a status quo?

 

[blackshirt5]

Actually, I answered this for myself earlier this afternoon; I'm gonna have the PCs get dropped in by a teleportation mishap from their wizard buddy Tak when they're getting away from their enemies back on their own home plane and get dumped on the Plane of Castle Zelyon and find the gate back to Dominaria(which is most definitely NOT their home plane).