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Message: <blockquote data-quote="der_kluge" data-source="post: 8112924" data-attributes="member: 945">Hey hivemind, I'm working on a new campaign and I've got a decent handle on the beginning and the end, but it's the middle part I'm trying to fill in. (this is 5e)Summary: Cultists unleash a plague on a town by tainting the food supply. The resulting plague drains strength. Then, they start selling a potion called "the beast" which temporarily adds strength. But it's addictive, and has side-effects - and it's also diluted Tarrasque blood. The cultists then haul away plague victims. At str 0, they are catatonic, but just barely alive (although they are perceived as being dead). Posing as priests of Kelemvor, they haul away the barely alive victims into the jungles, where an imprisoned Tarrasque (impaled on giant stone spikes, and is weakened, and immobile, but not dead) feeds on them. They are trying to rebuild its strength (and also draining its blood, because it's potent AF).Meanwhile, a powerful lich(maybe) who's orchestrating all this, is constructing a giant "Apparatus" (2nd edition book of Artifacts) which is a giant Frankenstein laboratory type machine that can transfer consciousness between creatures. His plan is to move his intellect into the Tarrasque's body using the Apparatus. He obviously needs a big enough version of the device to do it. End game sees the PCs fighting a Tarrasque, and then the lich himself (not necessarily in that order).Beginning sees the PCs trying to survive the plague, and somehow getting involved with trying to find the source of it and following it to its logical conclusion. Still working on that bit. All the middle stuff is pretty sketchy, though. In my mind, I could get a 1st level party to maybe level 3 or 4, and then suddenly they're dealing with a Tarrasque. Presumably, finding the creature might involve tracking some very sketchy clues and trying to infiltrate the cult itself, which would take them into a jungle, and then somewhere else in order to find a facility which intends to house the Apparatus. So, perhaps trying to stifle the lich's supply chains. But that seems rather uninteresting.Anyway, that's the overall plot. Need some help filling in the gaps!One idea could be to just kind of introduce that plot, and then go in a completely different direction (something city-based, from like levels 4 or 5 up to like level 15 or so), and then have them come back to the original plot in order to finish that out. That's certainly an option, but would need recommendations on something to shoehorn into the middle part.</blockquote>

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