Plot help for a Star Wars campaign wanted

[AK81]

Hi, I am currently running a Star Wars campaign set in the Old Republic era (SWTOR) and would love some help with a plot point.

The set-up so far is that they have stolen a map from a Sith Lord that will take them to some ancient and powerful secret. They will need to travel to different planets of my choosing to gather keys, coordinates or clues to find the final destination of the secret. (Yes I got that idea from kotor )

Now the only question is; what should that ancient secret be?

I would love to hear ideas to spark my imagination

 

[Arakhor]

I can think of three obvious ideas:

An ancient ruin housing mystical inscriptions or a long-hidden holocron, teaching a Force-user a lost Force power
A secret super-weapon, perhaps in disrepair (or in need of destruction)
A lost world, either a bountiful paradise for colonisation or maybe a former paradise that used to be the home world of a given species

 

[Longspeak]

The Sith Lord's Home.

Not a secret base. Not where he relaxes from a hard day of bursting hearts.

It's the place where little Jimmy grew up, some out of what way settlement getting by on farming or something, happy memory of childhood the Sith Lord tells himself he's keeping it just to go back and destroy is someday. But the truth is, it's a last vestige of Jimmy, and maybe the key to bringing him back.

 

[Darth Solo]

You're running a campaign that you haven't completed prior to starting? Why? Here's a link to information that can help you.

 

[delericho]

The Sith Lord is Palpatine. It's clones all the way down.

More seriously, I'm inclined to suggest that the secret needs to be something that they'll want to keep and use themselves, but that has a horrible price - perhaps it is the classic Sith secret to preventing someone from dying (at the cost of them becoming a horrible monster), or immortality without the accompanying lack of aging, or a terraforming technique that brings abundance but kills 10% of settlers randomly, or...

 

[aco175]

If the sith lord has a map to something, it does not need to be tied to him. He could have gotten the map from another lord as payment or in the art shop and will some day follow up on it. I would not have a secret map lead to my mother's house where I grew up. I would likely just know where that is and be able to get there without a map.

Steal an idea from old pirate books. Secret treasure guarded by whatever. All the old pirates have been killed or whatever. Maybe it is a map to an 'Atlantis' type ruins. The mythical lost library of whatever, or the forge of making super-sabers.

 

[MarkB]

There was an ancient Force-wielding religion that spread across many worlds in its time, that venerated both the Light and the Dark. Light-siders were their evangelists and miracle workers, while dark-siders were their assassins and military police. This balance could not be maintained indefinitely, and the religion collapsed into a variety of bitterly-opposed factions.

All that's left is a single temple, the centre of their faith, which was sealed away and lost. It's a treasure trove of ancient Force techniques and weapons, long predating Jedi, Sith and lightsabers, and due to the nature of the religion there are powerful items and secrets for both Sith and Jedi.

 

[Yora]

I have a pile of notes for a KotOR campaign that I might one day want to run, and the main conflict is about the Dark Lord of the Sith trying to find out what power the ancient Dark Lords like Marka Ragnos and his predecessors used to keep the other sith lords loyal and obedient. Which seems to have been lost since then, as Sith history since Naga Sadow and Ludo Kreesh has been nothing but constant backstabbing and betrayal.
If they finally get their Sith back together, things would be really bad for the Republic.

 

[BookTenTiger]

One thing you could do is not choose a secret and instead just listen as the players brainstorm what it could be. Secretly choose one of their better ideas, or build it on how their characters develop.

 

[AK81]

You're running a campaign that you haven't completed prior to starting? Why? Here's a link to information that can help you.

To be honest the map is just a pacing mechanism I will use to have some control of where my players will go. When they have a ship and the universe in front of them it's good to have a way to point them in the right direction.

So my plan is that they will have to go to different planets of my choosing to find the next clue of the map. Then I can build up scenarios and plot hooks that they can solve while they are there.

And in the end the map will take them to a big secret or powerful artifact of some sort. I just haven't decided what that secret will be. But I have a lot of time. It is probably a year before they find it.

Oh, and the Sith Lord, I plan to use as one of the main antagonists. That will always be on their tail, trying to hunt them down.