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I have some plans for my current campaign but I'm not sure how to execute them properly. A couple of my players check the forums here from time to time, so I'm gonna skip a few lines.
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The info dump: So my players' characters are all relatively young. Mid-late teens, early twenties and such. They've taken on their parents' jobs in a fading organization whose job was once to protect "the land" but generations of prosperity and wealth (they're all nobles) have dimmed their interest and knowledge of their purpose. The Deadfall Society protected the world from the Slenderman basically, but as far as they know right now, all they did was run him off.
In this setting, the planes are thought to exist in spheres that share borders. The spheres shift around and move but otherwise don't affect much by virtue of their positioning. Except the plane of water. The Slenderman, the PCs recently discovered has his own "plane" that exists in the infinitesimally space between all the other planes (which of course distorts space, time, and does other weird things). Because the Slenderman and those under his influence feel extreme pain when exposed to water, they flee into other nooks and crannies when the plane of water moves about.
The party wizard found a loophole into the slender-realm where he could see the planar spheres moving about; the party asked about the plane of water's proximity from someone more knowledgeable (at the time) about planar movements, and the NPC told them it would be in the system for about 3 years now that it is there. A massive rain storm signaled the plane's arrival, and that drove out the slender-creature infestation that was set up. Now, theoretically I've given the party three years to up their game before the Slenderman returns...
The problem: I want to catch them off guard by having the plane of water move out of alignment prematurely. So far, my only idea is to make up a cult dedicated to the slender-realm that parallels the Deadfall Society and have them perform some rituals or something so that some pseudo-Lovecraftian craziness happens and existence gets flopped around willy nilly.
I just want to crowdsource as many cool ideas as I can though; horror isn't my strong suit, and may have let my mouth write a check my skills can't cash on this one.
The Stars Came Right. Cosmic bodies are in proper alignment for some major mojo to get moved around by those who know what they're doing, and the Society didn't see it coming because they were too busy looking at the alignments of all the individual planes rather than the system as a whole. Missed the forest for the trees, so to say.
As vague as that was... I got something quite profound out of it.
Keep 'em coming though.
Given what you said here, perhaps their parents weren't what drove the Slenderman off, but the alignment of the Plane of Water was. If this is the case, it could be the Plane of Water could cause heavy rainfalls at the beginning and end of its arrival (which drives the Slenderman and its minions away). They're told that the heavy rains mark the beginning of the cycle when they really mark the end. The person that told them the info about three years remaining was lying for some reason - perhaps because he/she is in league with the Slenderman (though not under his(?) influence and so not affected by the Plane of Water).
If this is the case, once the heavy rains end some sort of fog could arise and with it the Slenderman and his minions who are out to conquer the world or whatever.
The slenderman worshipers don't want the PCs to know about The Rainmaker. A rainmaker is a rare mutant human who brings the rain when they are sad. They are usually with a bard who collects money from drought stricken communities, then plays them sad songs to get rain. If you can get the rainmaker to the plane viewing place, the plane of water will be drawn to them.