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I'm starting up a campaign that I'm debating on leading into the Slumbering Tsar Saga (this will mostly depend on if I can read enough of it by then). I was looking to see if anyone had any experience or ideas for laying lots of hints or perhaps even a potential reoccurring NPC to help foreshadow/build anticipation for getting to TSTS?
I've currently only skimmed/browsed the gigantic book, but didn't see any potential hooks for doing this. The first 6/7 levels will be on Golarion, so I guess I'm also looking for a good location to wedge Tsar into on Golarion.
Well, I did the following: I made A "secret" Mendevian Crusade - one that has been purged from the Pathfinder Chronicles, from history and common knowledge. (There are spells by Rite Publishing to do this - the one caveat being that there needs to be one account of the information - as soon as that account is destroyed, the knowledge returns...)
The knowledge about Tsar has been purged since it was an abject failure - worse even than the crusades versus the Worldwound. Now if you have the PCs find documents soon - documents referring to a crusade that happens 200 years after the ancient document was found. Make sure that your PCs realize that this is no DM-error. It will spark their interest. Use footnotes, hints here and there, modify low-level adversaries to look like they have ties to...something. Stone-wall the PCs when they ask good sages/clerics/ do research - either they are part of the conspiracy or subject to the spell.
And then, when the level is right, have them inadvertently destroy the focus of the spell/witness its destruction - and there we go: A kind of "gold rush" for the remains of the old army and the dark magics of the wastes and the city is subsequently started. Pcs thus have a personal as well as a monetary and morally-relevant reason to get there first - Desolation may have existed throughout "being lost" or just be a new gate-town to the wastes.
Hope that helps!
Cheers!