The PCs (level 6) departed from the city in which they had met and performed acts of valor in pursuit of a kobold army, thinking they may be led by a dragon. Eventually, they reached the dragon, but were joined on the way by a team of dwarves who had been told of the players' intentions and set out to aid them. Together, they defeated the dragon.
The leader of the dwarven band is Prince Qhildir, son of the king of the neighboring dwarven kingdon, leader of an elite combat squad. He's a paladin, and is a member of a religious sub-sect devoted to repelling evil, generally, and undead specifically, that one of my PCs also belongs to. He also is wearing the armor made from the father of the dragon they all just killed, and wielding the weapon that slayed him hundreds of years ago.
Several of the members of the dwarven strike force perished in the confrontation with the dragon and his kobold minions.
What I'd like is an adventure that does the following:
-gives the players a chance (and some reasons) to grow attached to the prince, to get to know him, and form a bond
-gives the players a chance to explore some of the dwarven kingdom
-involves some social encounters, and some combat encounters that the prince will join them for
The ultimate goal are for the players to spend some time (a couple of weeks to a month) living and adventuring with the dwarves, and to develop an affinity for them, so that, later, when some problems begin to arise in the dwarven capital, the players will have a genuine interest in wishing to aid their friend.
This can include meeting some interesting NPCs, getting into some tough scrapes (combat, traps, environmental hazards, weather, political intrigue) with the prince and a number of dwarven NPCs (the latter won't be traveling with them).
Regional details:
The dwarven kingdom of Ferrumgaard lies within and around a maintain range to the north of the land the PCs have adventured within. The two kingdoms are on friendly terms after declaring a truce to a war between them waged a few hundred years ago. Dwarves have established settlements of various sizes in the high plains and foothills before the mountains, consisting mostly of low stone buildings with multiple basement levels, while the region's major cities are carved out within the mountains themselves.
There is a trade center at the head of a river that eventually runs by the capital of the southern kingdom, and the major trading port city the players are familiar with. The place exists as a market to sell and trade the goods the dwarves fashion (jewelry, metal- and stonecraft, including both mithral and adamantine items, all of both mundane and magical varieties) and to purchase wares of the varieties that they do not produce (wood, cloth, fur, parchment, etc...). Dwarven farmers also use this as a place to distribute their crops and meats. The entrance lies two days from a small seaport.
Traveling to the seat of the king involves going by foot, or something between a mine cart and a locomotive, from the market city to the capital. Both cities are multi-leveled.
The kingdom is lawfully inclined, and just on the good sign of neutral. The king is a lawful neutral cleric and the society is based largely upon merit, but has a touch of socialism--there are no beggars or homeless, but there are definite gradients in wealth and influence.
On the other side of the mountains are nigh-endless frozen plains...a dangerous place, but somewhere that some dwarves have settled in small numbers. Somewhat to the west, there is a small trollish nation that has largely remained aloof from the goings-on of the dwarves, but has started to expand recently. There may be any number of savage races in or around the mountains (mostly either high up among the peaks, or off to the west) away from the major settlements of the area. Drow may exist somewhere underground nearby.
I'd appreciate any suggestions you may have. Thanks in advance!
I recently ran a level that tested the morality of my player's, which went rather well.
The premise was this: go to a town, find a copper-smith, bring him back to repair their flying ship. Easy peasy. They leave, get to the town via horse, and find he'll be back in a few days. They settle in. This is the intro.
The level starts with a song, song about a dragon that was greedy, wanted to play with humans, but of course ended up enslaving them. It is sung by an EXTREMELY handsome elvish bard. The town is immediately enraptured.
As the day progresses, the town is better described as enspelled.
By day two, the town is giving itself over to the bard. They give them the mayor's house, key to the city, by evening there is a mass wedding of ALL the town's women.
Morning of day three, the town's men are hunting down those that won't worship the bard. By noon, they sacrifice anyone they capture. By evening, the town is burned down in a riotous orgy of madness, and nearly all are killed.
So, the player's figure out early the bard is actually the dragon. Nobody will believe them though. So the goal for player's is to drive him out before madness ensues. The longer they take, the harder it gets. You could use your dwarf prince either as someone enspelled by the dragon they need to save, or maybe he is their moral compass. Either way, it definitely presented a moral challenge: how do you remove someone bad from people's lives, when all they want is that person around.
PS My party failed, abandoned the town day two, and every towns person died. All player's were good aligned, and lost a lot of street cred over this one.
Jhaosmire, I love the implementation, but for me...I'm ALREADY planning to do basically that!
Basically, the PCs, along with the prince, killed a dragon, and when looting his hoard came across a map depicting a treasure room of some kind buried within the mountains near the dwarven capital. When they all bring this to the king, he will set miners to excavating to discover what awaits. However, what's actually there is the resting place of a powerful lich. He built himself a chamber in (at the time) isolated mountains, with his phylactery, and his back-up spellbook, but while he was off across the world waging war, an earthquake rocked the region and caused a collapse, which both sealed his chamber and destroyed his spellbook. During the war, he gets killed, and when he awakens back at his phylactery, discovers that he's trapped: he knows only the spells he had when he was killed.
Over the centuries, he has managed to use the spells he DID have still memorized to extend his influence, and he ended up making contact with the aforementioned dragon, whom he charged with recovering any magical knowledge he could, and then sending the spells via some unique divination magic back to the lich so he can get out. The campaign opened with kobolds raiding the city, stealing spellbooks and scrolls. The dragon created a sort of scrying device that SENDS images, instead of receiving them, and the lich began rebuilding his spellbook, but the PCs prevailed before the lich could acquire the spells he needed to escape.
The dwarves uncover this chamber, with its treasures, and are none the wiser to the lurking threat of the lich, who possesses/otherwise takes control of the king, and things devolve similarly to your bardic example: the king makes some incrementally worse decisions/decrees, but his people follow along because initially they seem unusual but not BAD. Eventually, the population is driven insane, and he turns to changing them into undead. The entire civilization collapses, and one of the great cities of the world becomes essentially a ghost town...inhabited by swarms of undead dwarves.
What I want to happen from the players' side of things, is they visit the dwarves, and have some time among them to grow a little attached, to develop some fondness for the place, and some of the NPCs. Then they're sent on some task that takes a few weeks to a few months.
When they return, things are different: the king isn't so happy to see them, and has been doing some strange stuff. I want things to be JUST off enough that the players start to make some waves, but don't immediately leap to trying to kill the king, or exorcise a possessing spirit. Basically, they end up the enemy of the state, and ideally, are force to leave.
They go on some other adventure that takes a few weeks to a month or so, and then for some reason, are sent back to the dwarves. Maybe the king of the neighboring kingdom is concerned about the complete lack of communication and trade and fears they may be mobilizing for war.
The players return to find a dead city. Horrors abound. And the impact is all the greater, because they KNEW some of the people here.
Hmm, I see. Well, character attachment always works great. Flooding them with a series of NPC's never works, but create one or two good NPC's per level, reoccuring, will help invest them into the city (especially once their favorite dwarven barkeep is now a ghoul). I'm fond of taking my old PC characters and using them as NPC's, unbeknownst to the players. Thye have a ton of history and persona I can use, so they're well flushed out.
As for adventure ideas, how about these then:
-You have a locomotive, maybe there is trouble on the tracks, and player's need to go to the "end of the line" to see what's happening.
-In the same vein, how about a mystery or heist on the train itself. maybe some spies from another kingdom causing mischief?
Good call on using old PCs to flesh out an NPC.
I like the trouble on the tracks idea, but...why send the PCs? They're foreigners and they've just returned with the heroic prince. Why not send the prince and his band? Not to say I don't want to use this, just that I want to come up with a solid reason for the PCs to be the ones doing this other than, "It's a game."
Maybe this is a trial for them, the prince needs to test them to see what choices they'll make. So, this opportunity arises, he insists they go instead of the regular crew. They also may be sort of the "local folk hero" at the moment, and it could sit well with some people seeing these folk in action.
That has me thinking that maybe the king will ask the players to go as a way of demonstrating the valor of non-dwarves to his people who still hold ancient grudges. Could also mollify some of the king's nobles who aren't thrilled with him spending so much time with outsiders.
So, the dwarves have a rail heading off...somewhere...and there's been a problem. No one is coming back. Some have been sent to investigate, but no word has returned. The PCs go to find out what's going on.
Trolls, maybe? Something else?
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You could use this to foreshadow the lich. He can't teleport or turn himself incorporeal, but perhaps there were corpses buried in the cave in that destroyed his spellbook that he rose as shadows, which could leave leave the prison at whim. Now the shadows are way laying everyone who takes a particular train, hoping to disguise their presence as mere banditry until they have a force large enough to begin larger scale reaping.
Ya, shadows hiding on the train would make a great mystery. A whodunnit with a supernatural answer.
Maybe the dwarven prince asks the PCs to help him transport the bodies of the dwarven strike force members who died in the confrontation with the dragon to their ancestral tombs, saying that it would be an honor for those who fought alongside them to see them interred with the other deceased members of their clans.
Said tombs, of course, require an adventure to get to. And of course, if anything were wrong with said ancestral tombs, that might point to something being wrong with the kingdom itself.
Ouch. I'm usually a much more careful typer, but I sent my last post in this thread from my phone . . . without proofreading it . . . and then someone went and favorited it. :[