I'm going to be starting a new home campaign with new players to Pathfinder. I'm really jazzed. I love doing stuff like this. I could pull out any of my other home campaigns and just start one of those up, but I am feeling inspired to start something completely new, but I need brainstorming help to connect some of the dots.
Location: Lastwall, near the Fangwood Forest.
Hook: The 1st level characters just start out as local ne'er-do-wells who just never left the farm. They are wandering aimlessly through the forest when they come across a small group of kobolds who are discussing something amongst themselves very intently. Enter a scene where they have to announce themselves to the kobolds, and figure out how to communicate with them.
Come to find out that the kobolds are very upset because their precious jewel is missing, and those goshdarned goblins stole it!
"Where are they?"
"Over there."
Short dungeon crawl through a small goblin warren to find the missing jewel. They take it back to the kobolds. The kobolds are very thankful, only to ask them, "What about the other two jewels?"
"There were two more? We only found one."
Well, the kobolds tell the characters that the other two were in the care of the local kobold champion who found all three in the first place. Where did he find them? Only he knows, and he's keeping it a secret.
"Where is he?
"Over there."
They go there only to find the kobold champion's home has been broken into, ransacked, and the kobold champion is missing. Goblin footprints lead away.
The characters follow the tracks into another slightly larger and more challenging goblin warren, and rescue the kobold champion. He does not have the jewels anymore. The goblins took them from him, and he does not know where to. But, he can show the characters where he is getting these jewels.
"Where is that?"
"Over there."
The kobold champion takes them to a hole that he has dug in the ground. The characters follow him, crawling into the hole. It goes down a few feet and then breaks through the ceiling of an underground tomb. The characters find in the tomb an opened sarcophagus. Inside the sarcophagus is the body of a dead female half-elf sorcerer.
The sorcerer is wearing a simple iron crown on her head. The crown has seven jewels inlaid into it - shaped not unlike the starstone - but three of the jewels are missing. The kobold points at the crown. "That is where I got them."
Inside the tomb, the characters try to read the old script that is carved into the wall. They gather the name of the dead sorcerer and the date of the death. This tells them the following:
- The sorcerer has been dead about a hundred years.
- The sorcerer's family name is a well-known name. They were nobles in this area for a long time, but the last of them died-off two hundred years ago.
- Her specific name is not recognized or remembered in text or memory.
- She was buried in the middle of the forest, in an unmarked one-room tomb that was covered over so that there is no entrance.
When the characters finally come back out, they hear some movement nearby, so they hide. They spy through the trees to see a small group of Aspis Consortium agents heading their way. Leading them is a goblin.
So, my questions are:
- Who is the sorcerer?
- Why is she not known, even though being from a famous family?
- Why was she hidden in life, and in death?
- Is there any connection to her and the starstone?
- Why are the Aspis Consortium so interested in finding this hidden tomb?
She is a vampire. Back in the days, she was a spy for the Whispering Tyrant and has valuable knowledge that might be interesting to a lot of people. When the Whispering Tyrant was defeated, the shock wave made her fall into stasis. She was buried by her family in shame (who found out about her allegiance to Tar-Baphon, but not about her undead condition). The (now damaged) crown is a magical item that protects her from rising as an undead (standard procedure for noble burials in the proximity of the Whispering Tyrant's prison), which (inadvertently) put her into some kind of semi-permanent sleep. Too bad that the crown was damaged.
Once the conflict with the Aspis Consortium starts, she awakens and flees in the ensuing turmoil. She probably has plans that the PCs won't like...
That's good. That's really good.
But, record of her birth would be recorded somewhere. Unless, the characters unearth evidence that records of her existence were erased by someone, if not her herself.
Perhaps, she willingly left her family when she was seduced by the Whispering Tyrant, leading to the shame, embarrassment, and records being destroyed. And, maybe she had time to build her own crypt within the ground, sealing herself within.
What kind of valuable knowledge, or uncompleted quest would she rise to complete?
I was thinking of making her half-elf, as to maybe bring to light an unapproved union between a human and an elf.
Nobleborn often don't appear in public (church) records, though there will likely be some genealogical records in the noble family's house archive. Maybe the old estate still exists? This could lead to the next part of the adventure. The PCs find out that the Aspis are trying to buy the estate from its current owner, forcing the PCs to acquire the necessary funds for a bidding war. Only to find out that an unknown third party outbid them both... So they may have to perform a daring break-in to figure out what's going on.
As for the villain's motivation, it really depends on what kind of story you want to tell. Just make sure that the PCs have a strong motivation to get involved. (You likely know best what piques your players' interest.)
Mostly, I have questions for you...
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Yes, you know your players... so maybe this lovely intro story you wrote will fly. But an awful lot of players would respond to a group of intent kobolds in the forest by killing them first and asking questions later!
It might be safer to simply have someone with the first jewel show up at the local hamlet fair, after some fun contests to give the PCs a bit of intro XP and let them get to know each other. (Yes, I'm stealing from We Be Goblins here, shamelessly.) The jewel would cause quite a bit of consternation. How much is it worth? Does anyone there have enough in total goods to sell to equal its value? That kind of thing. A fist-fight might ensue over it. The mayor might appropriate it, or a cleric insist it be donated. Obviously, the hamlet's alignment & stat-block will have an influence on what happens, but for my idea to work, we've got to be talking hamlet, not village or bigger.
Now all you have to do is to come up with a clue to send the party off to the Kobold Champion's home... {Wrong. A clue-by-four. Or three clues, so they'll catch one.}
The way I understand it, the family's aligning with the Whispering Tyrant is the reason records stopped being kept, at least in public places, 200 years ago. Finding out she died 100 years ago may be in records left in the tomb. Otherwise it's a high DC to research that.
The vamp might be the only one who knows where the family treasure vault is hidden, in their haunted villa.
Well, all those details about family lineage I'm not trying to specify right now. Trying to keep options open, and see how the campaign starts. But, yeah, the century difference is supposed to be one of those little hooks to add a little mystery.
I just looked on the Pathfinder Wiki, but could not find this information. Anyone have a list of noble families from Lastwall?
That's fine. At some point, I hope my questions provide thought hooks.
Although... I'd have thought you'd have wanted to know her connection to the family. Just saying. That could change her name, for instance! Well, and whether or not the noble family is the human parentage.
Was she removed from family records due to being a bastard birth in some way, or did she do something aggregious to dishonor herself?
If a bastard, she may be the illigitimate heir to something, perhaps the crown is the key... (literally or figuratively) and the Aspis want it?
If dishonored, how? Did she became a vampire, or perhaps attempted lich-dom or some other extreme sacrifice for power? If she was a spy she could have any number of untold secrets the Aspis want. What if they were to commune/resurrect her for the hidden knowledge?
Would the players benefit more from uncovering the secrets, or protecting them? How historical/political do you like writing?
I think I got it.
In the beginning:
• A good portion of Varisia’s history and inhabitants originally came from Lastwall, including a lot of the original noble families. I remember reading that somewhere.
• One of the young princesses of the Leroung family, during a family excursion, started a relationship with, not only a peasant, but an orc, while on vacation along the Tourondel River. It was soon discovered that she was pregnant with a daughter.
• The Leroung family, not being a particularly political family, but a scholarly and friendly family of high morals, saw the implications of what an illegitimate half-orc offspring born outside of the Hold of Belkzen to a noble family that has ties in both Vigil and Korvosa might create.
• But, they loved their newborn half-orc daughter. So, they didn’t kill her or hide her. They simply gave her the surname of one of their orc servants, who also filled the role of a bodyguard for the family. Her name was Penelope Hurck. This way, they always had access to her, she was always around the family, and she was protected by her surrogate orc father, and they could easily move her at short notice, or hide her in a university, if necessary.
• She lived a young privileged life of travel, wonder, and education.
• Along the way, her father taught her martial skills, but her innate magical arcane powers surfaced during early adulthood. She practiced as a sorcerer both as formal education, and in private.
• Her powers of scrying increased to the point where she uncovered the truth about her heritage, and her true mother and father and family. She went further with her scrying with both her human and orc heritages, and mentally spied on both Lastwall and The Hold of Belkzen, where she discovered secrets of both sides.
• She was true to her family and human heritage, and passed these secrets along to Lastwall, which helped them bolster their defenses, and win key incursions against the orcs.
• She lived a long and happy life, dying at an old age. To keep her safe in death, a very formal and respectful, but secret burial was performed in the depths of the Fangwood Forest. She was buried with a simple crown of iron which was inlaid with very valuable jewels, denoting her nobility, but not fully acknowledging it. Her tomb was sealed from the outside and buried, to remain hidden.
Recently:
• The Aspis Consortium, through subterfuge and espionage, came across long-buried documents that described a secret half-orc that possessed secrets that held powerful military and political weight. Looking to get into the lucrative market of information trading, the Aspis Consortium is on the hunt for the hidden tomb. They intend to retrieve her body to perform Speak with Dead to get those secrets.
• In the meantime, a spunky group of goblins are in an ongoing skirmish with the local kobolds concerning territory, and the ownership of a very pretty jewel that one of them found…
Cool! I hope it leads to a wonder-filled game!
Btw, how did you arrive at your initial story?
Well, I'm going to be working with mostly novice players that have 1st level characters. They've been emailing me, and it's going to be a pretty cool and varied group of characters.
Anyway, I know that I had to start them off with small things like goblins and kobolds. The mental image of the two races fighting over a jewel in the woods seemed funny to me.
The other details of the plot:
I've never done anything in Lastwall, so I wanted to cut my teeth on that. When I did research on Lastwall, I saw the connections to Varisia, which I'm very familiar with, so that locked that in for me.
So, then I did further research and found the exterior threats of undead and orcs. I initially was going to make the buried sorcerer a half-elf, for the fairness of the image, but when I saw how prevalent orcs are in the area, I didn't have to stretch too far to make it work.
I'm going to use this campaign to expose the new players to different aspects of the game little by little. Goblins, orcs, kobolds, undead, nations, families, sorcerers, Aspis Consortium, politics, tomb raiding. It's all there. :)
Thanks!