Howdy all. I'm starting the process of thinking up some ideas for a short adventure, and I'm all ears if anything has some good notions or knows of any existing adventures that could somehow slot in here.
The Setup: This is kind of an extended side trek from an ongoing adventure path, but doesn't actually have anything to do with the AP in question (Legacy of Fire). The AP includes a lengthy section of downtime, and includes various ideas on what the PCs might do to keep busy during that time.
One of the options is to travel abroad, and that's what one of the PCs did, traveling from Katapesh to the Lands of the Linnorm Kings and back to explore his draconic bloodline. Originally, I just worked out the timing involved to get the PC there and back before the next chapter of the AP began (it ends up being a 9-month round trip, as it happens). The player and I penciled in some basic notions of the various steps of the journey, but for the most part we just left it a blank travel itinerary.
Now, however, the player has an itch for a little play-by-post gaming, so we've decided to turn back the clock and actually play out the sorcerer's big adventure. Most of it I have figured out, either coming up with my own ideas or borrowing liberally from existing adventure scenarios. But there's one section that I haven't quite cracked yet. Tell me what you think!
Here's what's set in stone: The PC is Snowflake, a kobold sorcerer traveling with two human NPCs, one of whom, in the main campaign, is fated to become the PC's cohort; the other one is fated not to return to Katapesh. The women are Asta and Laetitia, and until just recently exotic concubine. Asta is Ulfen by birth, and Laetitia was born in Taldor. However, each of them was nabbed and sold into slavery in their youth, and all three of them are basically stretching their legs as free folk after about a decade spent as expensive property.
Snowflake (LN sorcerer 5, white draconic bloodline) is actually a dignitary back home, and was basically raised by humans. Asta (NG rogue [acrobat] 2/fighter [mobile fighter] 1) is somewhat simple and naive, but a gifted tumbler and acrobat--a physical valkyrie who doesn't know her own strengths. Laetitia (N rogue [spy] 2) is a cynical seducer and Snowflake's right-hand-woman/chief emissary.
Leaving Katapesh in September/Rova, their connections can get them as far as Magnimar, arriving in early December/Kuthona. You might well imagine, as I do, that securing sea passage to the Linnorm Kingdoms in the dead of winter is not going to be a simple matter.
So, those are the unalterable facts I start with. (Another is that traveling overland isn't an option; Snowflake doesn't have enough time to dip into a Jade Regent-style caravan trek.)
In the original bare-bones travel itinerary version of these events, I just jotted down that Snowflake and his companions somehow befriend a longboat full of (stranded) Ulfen raiders, who then carry them home to the Lands of the Linnorm Kings. Why? I penciled in that the captain of the longboat--a big, burly lunkhead named Kjell Thangbrand was instantly smitten with Asta, and that they would eventually go off together rather than return south.
That's all fine when you're handwaving, but now I'm eventually going to have to pull this together into some sort of coherent adventure. Poring though the setting, I did stumble into some luck: an explanation for what the longboat is doing just hanging out there.
So here are the story elements I need (or at least, would like) to slot together:
1. Snowflake, Asta, and Laetitia arrive in Magnimar. Getting even this far was lucky, and everyone says that as far as sea travel farther north goes, they've hit a dead end until spring at least.
2. Coincidentally, earlier this year the Linnorm King Ingimundr the Unruly sent a fleet of longships south to go a-rading and show up White Ingrid, but a freak storm sank half the fleet and grounded the rest along the Varisian coast. Great!
3. Since Snowflake and Laetitia's survival isn't really in question (the main campaign has since moved on, and they're both alive and well), it's fine to take a light touch, even play some elements for laughs. Asta and Kjell are designed for some light comedy, for example. Kjell, who calls Snowflake the "White Wyrmling," believes that the kobold spellcaster has Asta in his thrall, and keeps trying to appease Snowflake or force weregild payments on him in order to win Asta away. (In fact, Snowflake's already set his companions free; they're just working off a year of indentured servitude, which Snowflake eventually waives anyway.)
4. Let's say that Kjell (human fighter 4) wasn't originally the captain of his ship. Let's say that the original captain died in the storm, and that Kjell's crew has been scrabbled together from the survivors of half a dozen ships. I'm thinking that one of those other vikings will eventually reveal himself to be an antagonist who doesn't agree with Kjell's decisions. Let us also say that by the time Snowflake and co. arrive on the scene, Kjell & co. have spent weeks scavenging parts from other wrecks--and maybe even doing some raiding in the Magnimar hinterlands--to repair or rebuild a ship to get them home. But now, just as they're all but ready to cast off, something's gone wrong -- something that a ship full of lunkheaded vikings with axes can't handle, but an ice-slinging kobold sorcerer and his two lovely rogues can. Maybe an incorporeal spirit? Maybe the dead captain's returned to reclaim his beached ship? Are boggards or goblins causing problems?
So--what would you do with these jigsaw pieces? How would you link Snowflake and his entourage to the stranded raiders? What could Snowflake do in a couple of days to win the raiders' support and get them headed north?