In my RL D&D game my players are heading down into the last dwarven city (Hig Toduhr) to try to find some military help to overthrow a coup in that's threading their city/state. I'm drawing a blank as what to plot complications to throw at them. Any idea you could give would be most appreciated.
Background of the world; The city Genera (port city inhabiting a naturally fortified fjord) is the last remnant of a collapsed human empire, it's widely viewed as the last civilized outpost. The rest of the world is ruled over by warlords or feuding minor barons. Hig Toduhr is bellow and off to the side of Genera. Genera was also once the open sky portion of Hig Toduhr until it was conquered by the Human empire. Barbarian tribes to the north, wild elves to the south, impassable mountains to the west and pirate kingdoms in the seas to the east.
If the dwarfs are surrounded by elven and barbarian lands, they might think that they need their forces themself, instead or sending them for any pleading foreigner. They might even think that there is no civilization outside of their hold, only hostile savages and treehuggers.
Players have to proof that there is still people, who value art, wisdom and honour. Though how the dwarfs define those values is half the puzzle.
Example, the fighter might show the sword and word gaved by his father, honouring his heritage.
Or perhaps gold and jewels are most valued art and players show their wisdom and honour by act of merchant.
Or perhaps public speech is the right thing to do.
Or each is these requirements is different task. They need to work one day as crafter, second as scribe/sage and as judge for third.
|
Is it possible that the enemy in Genera could have designs on Hig Toduhr? Maybe enemy agents within the dwarven community to either:
- Be used to help overthrow the dwarves (planned on a timeline after Genera falls)
- Be used in key political influential positions to sway the dwarven leadership to stay out of it (and build on some animus between their lost upper city/racial tensions/old wounds)
Maybe someone in the dwarven leadership was promised (falsely) that if they stay out of it, the enemy will turn over Genera back to the dwarves as long as the current human residents are destroyed/forced out. So a trade of "if you stay out we will give you your city back after we are done" type deal (don't know enough about the enemy's motives so I'm just throwing stuff out).
Also more details about the existing relationship between the Hig Toduhr and Genera would help. Was the takeover of the city generations ago and now the Dwarves and Humans are somewhat allied (think early US and England WWII) or was this more recent and is their still plenty of sore feelings (think US war of Independence and England)? Do any dwarves live in Genera?
Here's one. Note that whenever I use/this/format, I am presenting different possible options rather than saying it should be all of those at things at once.
The dwarven city is currently undergoing a crisis: the gods have deserted them! Clerics cannot cast spells. Divinations go unanswered. The dwarven high cleric of the city enlists the party's aid to find out why the gods have suddenly not responded. In the end, it proves to be a vampire/lich/evil-dwarven-cultist-cleric/whatever who has enacted a powerful arcane/divine-but-from-another-god/cthulu-like ritual to cancel any (dwarven only?) divine casting that happens within a bubble that surrounds the city. The big bad is a wizard/cultist-cleric/caster-type who is attempting to promote arcane-magic/his-cult-god/whatever by making the divine magic of the dwarven gods seem impotent.
If you want to go the vampire/lich wizard route, then all divine magic within the city is surpressed. If it's an evil dwarven cleric (or dwarf vampire priest) following a cult god, then it's just the divine magic of the 'mainstream' dwarven pantheon that's surpressed. You can also have the BBEG be a non-magic type kidnapping other casters and using dark rituals to suck the magic out of them to fuel the ritual. In this case, maybe the party is initially asked to investigate a series of disappearances and the divine casting block comes as an ugly shock partway into the investigation. Maybe it's a mix of casters and martials: the head guy (and brains behind the operation) is a martial, but he has one or more caster lackeys that the party must face as well (either in individual confrontations or one encounter).
Depending on the level of the party, you can vary the challenge rating of the BBEG encounter by saying that the ritual either saps magic from the BBEG or grants additional power. This allows you to buff and debuff the BBEG appropriately. If going with a martial BBEG, the ritual saps or grants additional strength and vigor instead, thus explaining why a great warrior is weaker than he should be, or stronger than he was known to be (perhaps with added divine abilities until the ritual is disrupted). If the party is particularly low level, maybe the BBEG is an insane cleric who has sacrificed his own divine casting abilities to fuel the ritual, so the party is faced with a high level cleric fighting in purely martial mode.
For a more evil bent, maybe the current leadership of the dwarven city has an isolationist policy, and the party has to participate in a coup (triggering a city wide rebellion?) to extract a promise of aid. For a goody goody bent, maybe the party is on hand to protect the dwarven leadership from an assassination attempt by wild elves... or evil subterranean dwarves from caverns below the city. This attempt was the first step in an invasion, which may or may not proceed after the failure.
Here's a more comedic idea: The dwarves send them on some mission or other, perhaps an "I hope this kills you" type of thing. In truth, the dwarves have no intention of helping the party under any conditions. Instead, while the party is running their errand for the dwarves (or maybe just walking about the city) they meet some members of an oddball race who immediately point at one of the characters and jabber amongst themselves excitedly. It turns out that (party member) is spoken of in prophecy as the Chosen One who will lift the members of this race out of durance vile. The smaller, stranger, and sillier you can make these creatures, the better. I'm thinking along the lines of the aliens from Toy Story 2.
The party is then given the opportunity to quest for the freedom of this species, and (party member) gets a character specific storyline and some moments of awesome (and/or moments of funny). At the end of it, the race is 'freed' from the dwarves (who are either villainous and say "curses, foiled again" or never wanted the race of creatures in their city anyway because the tribes of this race Wrecks Havoc everywhere they go...) and the party now has a new set of 'allies.' As it happens, these new allies are actually quite formidable little warriors when they set their minds to it, and they happily agree to to the tasks of their new 'savior' (thus providing the backup the party needs to defend against the coup). Alternately, the silly little weakling race was under a curse which the party broke as part of the quest, and now they're monstrous warriors. Think of Star Wars, where the planet full of Ewoks suddenly turns into a planet full of Wookies.
(OPTIONAL) For a possible comedic capstone to the whole thing, the race of little warriors settles into Genera and goes back to behaving just like they did with the Dwarves. This probably involves a great deal of mahem and chaos at random moments. As the party leaves their new allies to settle in, they see a few of the little creatures pointing to some random person on the street and talking excitedly about The Chosen One. Later on, an offhand comment from an NPC reveals that the little race is notorious for using the Chosen One as a con game to dupe passers-by into questing for items that they want.
(OPTIONAL) You can also mix and match this in with other ideas, whether you take more serious road of a generally oppressed species (possibly turning into badass soldiers in the end) or the more comedic road of a tribe of gremlin troublemakers. Either way, nothing is preventing the group from meeting these guys while also on some mission for the dwarves. Maybe this species proves vital to defending the Dwarven city, if you go with a "Dwarves under siege" plot. That way you could either have the race of little warriors NOT help the party (by staying to defend Hig Toduher while the Dwarves send aid instead) or have only a small band of them aid the party while the rest stay with the Dwarves.
Similarly, the race could prove vital to the party if the party has to launch a coup against the current Dwarven leadership. I doubt you'll use that idea, but I love the irony and the shades of morality involved with a party having to launch a coup in one city to defend another city from the same threat...
(OPTIONAL) This also has great potential for future plotlines. If the party ends up with a storyline where the small race of warriors stays to defend the Dwarves, the party could come back some time later to find that the Dwarves have become the slaves of this warrior race. (After all, there had to be a REASON for them to be oppressed in the first place, eh? This would particularly suit the storyline where the race magically transforms from cute little creatures (Ewoks) to badass warriors (Wookies) when a curse is broken.)
A man hires the adventurers to protect his daughter from the machinations of an evil necromancer. The father IS the necromancer, he just doesn't know it because he suffers from multiple personality disorder.
@Auxmaulous - the Human take over of Genera happened about 200 years in the past and involved a lot of backstabbing on the part of what are now surface dwarves. The leaders were given noble titles and special but limited privileges.
Brief history of Genera; founded by the slaves of powerful dragon 3000 years ago. 1000 years latter the slaves, dwarves, orcs, goblins and elves, rebelled drove out the dragon. the elfs being the most powerful group took over an expelled the orcs and goblins to the north and kept the dwarves locked up underground. over the next 1500 years Genera was conquered in turn by the dwarves then Tiflings then the Dragonborn then the Tiflings then the humans. When the human empire collapsed the majority of nobles, merchants and artisans fled to Genera.
Dwarf and elf animosity along with retributive slavery resulted in the creation of the drow and drugar subraces.
|
I'm assuming when you say down, you mean underground.
Some ideas:
-The city's slums are being raided by drow, who are fleshwarping the people they abduct.
-The core-forges (forges heated by magma which allow them to work adamantine) are going out. The PCs need to figure out what's going on.
-An army of minotaurs is planning to invade, and the dwarve's hands are tied fighting the main contingent. If the PCs can disable the engineers tunneling under the city while the battle is fought, they'll have earned their respect.