Coming up with encounters has always been easy for me, but tying them all together to create a meaningful and intriguing plot is a completely different story. I'll happily throw together an encounter lickety-split and then sit around for hours just trying to think of WHY the PC's are battling a paratrooping army of supergoblins on the deck of their giant airship while piloting it into an abyssal portal at the bottom of a valley.
Here's the idea I'm working on but I'm missing a few pieces.
-The PC's are trying to defeat The Collector, a guy who likes collecting things. Sound harmless? Well, he's also a recently awakened lich and lets just say that after 5000 years his taste in collectibles got kind of exotic. Other than mystic artifacts and relics of unimaginable power, he likes to imprison people's souls and trap them within tiny 'action figures' he uses to simulate entire communities as some twisted version of The Sims or Simcity.
-The PC's are currently trying to discover his lair and while he is aware of them through scrying, he does not take them seriously yet. Eventually they come across a historian or bard or something who tells them about his collecting addiction, where he lives, and also recommends they find some way to weaken him before fighting the powerful lich.
-I want the players to use his obsession with collecting things against him and somehow trick him into taking a cursed item or something super holy and celestial that will weaken him enough to fight him.
Any ideas on what kind of MacGuffin or Magical Artifact they should go retrieve and use as bait? It's gotta be something that seems enticing on the exterior but really is bad juju for a lich (like a +5 Holy Jack-in-the-box of Iomedae) or really just bad for anyone (Taco Bell Volcano Nachos or a Nickelback Greatest Hits CD)
This call for help may make me seem lazy, but there are some pretty creative minds on these boards and I'm interested to see what kind of suggestions you guys may have :).