Please Help!

[cleverkobold]

I forgot to prepare annything for tomorrows D&D game, please help!

My players have just finished HS1 The Slaying Stone, a small twist that I added was that, over the course of the adventure they collected seven magical rubies. The players then sold the rubies at the nearest town before heading back to Treeona to return the stone, only to find out that the rubies were needed to destroy the stone all along. Upon returning to the town in which they sold the rubies, they discovered that they were almost immediately purchased by some men in dark robes.

*who are the men in the dark robes?

*what are the motives of the men in the dark robes?

*what use, other than destroying the slaying stone could the rubies possibly have?

Thanks in advance.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

Firstly, you can always put off having to answer those questions by making the Men in Robes hard to find: the PCs take a session or 2 to track them down.

Who are they? Evil cultists in the service of Hell. They are special servants of a powerful Duke tasked with the corruption of the souls of priests. They are not human but can pass as such.

What do they want the Rubies for? To tempt various Church people.

What do the Rubies do? Each ruby represents one of the 7 Deadly Sins. The red lustre of the rubies has a hypnotic pull on people. The cultists let some church hierarch see one of the rubies: set in a necklace worn by a beautiful woman (Lust or Envy), on display at a rich merchant's home (Avarice.) The church person becomes enamoured of the ruby (or the person wearing it!) The cultists then propose a way, a rather immoral way, in which they can get possession of the Ruby. Once the clergyperson is tempted the cultists kill him/her to prevent them repenting. The cultists know which sin to tempt each target with. They've been secretly watching them for a while, sometimes for years.

The Heroes get involved after the first church person is found dead, food stuffed in his/her mouth and, deep in the oesophagus, is the first ruby.(The ruby was part of the deal so the cultists can't take it with them and must leave them behind.) Now of course the heroes can simply follow the trail of dead clergy and recover the rubies that way. If you think this is likely save the last sin, of Sloth, for them. But I assume they're much more active heroes than that.

Need to work out how to introduce each scenario in such a way that the heroes can hear about them and get involved.

anyway, hope this helps.
cheers.

 

[Herobizkit]

... or he could just watch "Seven" and copy the plot.

 

[steeldragons]

Well...if these rubies are needed to destroy the slaying stone...then they could probably just as easily be used to bring something into creation. (The energies of Creation/Destruction have a way of working out that way.

Off the top of my head...make the stones each elemental specific and the 7 of them are needed for a ritual to be combined to bring about the creation of some...ya know, boogey-bad demonlord or evil godamajig...some "Slaying" demigod or something...

For the stones, there's fire, earth, air, water (no brainers) and I would be inclined to round out the 7 with body, mind, and spirit...but you could just as easily get to 7 with other elemental type things like lightning, ice, acid, et. al. (if you go that route, maybe work in some linkage to dragons with approrpiate breath weapons?)

The guys in black robes...are exactly what they are supposed to be. i.e. "guys in black robes." They're evil clerics and/or magic-users after the stones to bring about the opening of their gate or whatever for the evil maaathhter.

Heck...maybe even use it as a segue to fall into a (or THE) "Temple of Elemental Evil" scenario.

And when all else fails, just grab any Monster Manual and pick random pages to keep the players busy.

Have fun with your game, let us know what you decide to do.

--Steel Dragons

 

[Hand of Evil]

Men in dark rodes = cult of slaying stone, each ruby holds a life force of a prior priest of the cult. The plan is to release each one and take over the world. Bodies have yet to be selected or maybe made, golems for the life force to take control of.

 

[aco175]

It is fairly easy to pull a few things together in a pinch. With the pc's back in town, several events can happen from things like a town raid by goblins to beasts in the sewers, to pickpockets coming around. Nothing needs to happen to advance the plot of the rubies and men in black.

On the other hand, if you are wanting to move that plot along and wrap up the module you can have a npc come along with a hook. Somebody saw them leave town or somebody had their horses stolen from them. "They were heading down the East road, probably stopped at the abandoned tower 1/2 day's ride out".

Some bandits hired by the MIB and 2-3 encounters in the tower leave this thread finished along with the hidden note leading to another BBEG for after they finish the 1st module. Steal a map of a tower or random tiles are good enough.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

Herobizkit: "Must spread XP around before giving more to Herobizkit"... But consider this an XP.

 

[ajanders]

1. The poor guys in black were harmless merchants, maybe even pacifists. Unfortunately, two hours out of town they were hijacked by some bandits who just made the BEST SCORE EVER!

Recovering the gems involves tracking the bandits to their lair. Alternately, the bandits just split the booty and left to retire: now you have to track multiple bandits.

2. The men in dark robes are a member of some occult, but not terribly adventurous group of magical do-gooders. They wouldn't strap on backpacks and go find the rubies, but when they came on the market, they were happy to buy them and then use them in a ritual to destroy the stone.

3. Did you kill all the villains in the adventure? Are you SURE? Perhaps someone survived/was resurrected/was reanimated/ escaped from an inescapable explosion. Someone may be talking about the villain's "Great Save! Those adventurers nearly had us there..."

4.Some king or noble just wanted seven matched rubies for a crown or necklace. Their agents never considered the seven matched gems might also have magical powers. Now somebody's getting a new crown with some extra powers they never thought of.
And by the way, who needs a new crown? Is a new king coming? The old king might object...