Trying to connect story parts...

[Archmic]

So here's my issue:
I have a campaign that's going really well, but the players are about to hit a major road block if they don't start doing some research or asking questions.
Premise:
The campaign is an undead based one with no Paladins or Clerics allowed as the area they are in is hostile towards anyone of those two classes; this involves the background of the world which I won't get into here. They have reached level 6 and are in the middle of defending one of the biggest human towns in the area; the mountains; which I think they are wanting to make into their base of operations. They think that it's just a necromancer that's raising the dead to attempt to make an army which is WAY off track. The actual BBEG is a Cavalier Grave Knight that's waking up; think Lich King from WoW but different. There is a Historian that they can get the information from and a few more clues and what not they can gain from talking to the other two factions in the area; Dwarves and Half-Orcs; but without them doing any research into the past at all I fear they will be severely underprepared to fight a melee combatant without gaining this information.
I want them to talk to the Historian or at least get interested into researching but I don't want to just drop the Historian on them or railroad them into getting the information.
Any suggestions on how to do this while making it still feel organic to the story and not railroading them?

[Scavion]

Follow the rule of 3. There should be at least 3 hooks leading to the information you want your players to have. The information simply being available is not really good enough to warrant your players having an interest in it. The hooks need to present themselves in some way otherwise they may as well not exist.

The party finds an ancient text written in an old cipher requiring a historian[or a skilled enough PC] would be a decent hook. Perhaps the armor of the BBEG's undead mooks they encounter wear the heraldry of the Grave Knight's order triggering a Knowledge Nobility check. Perhaps a descendant of the order is still alive for them to follow up with in the nearby towns. Perhaps the descendant is being haunted by the spirit of his grandfather trying to warn him of the upcoming peril and the party investigates due to rumors of a haunted mansion.

[Quixote]

The rule of three is good for telegraphing, but what about...just letting them blunder? What's so wrong about being unprepared? Sorry this fight will be harder, maybe pay more attention next time.

[Archmic]

The armor thing I haven't done directly. I have informed them that a couple of the undead had on symbols that they had seen in a previous village... they didn't feel like going back to check it out. I'm hoping that this defense encounter sparks some interest in looking into the past as they are going to encounter intelligent undead that are leading the others. Much less a horde attack and more like a siege.

The issue with letting them blunder isn't that the fight is impossible; it's literally a 1v4 scenario. It's that it's impossible to KEEP him dead without it.
I've tweaked the magic item creation system a little bit. A Grave Knight is linked to his armor. Due to his deeds while alive his armor became a minor artifact giving it only one way to be destroyed which involves his lover; think Mr Freezes wife. Making it kind of a big deal in the story. While I could trash this part of the story it kind of seals the whole thing as the end of the campaign.

If they ignore the armor thing; I'll try the haunted ancestor thing, but I don't have very high hopes for them worrying about one little ghost when they are fighting a lot of undead.

Thanks for the suggestions.

[Meirril]

Telegraph things a bit to the players. Have some peddlers traveling through the area flee to the town the PCs are in with news of a group of undead pushing a catapult along the road.

The group of undead are a decent encounter for the group. A bunch of small fry zombies and skeletons that could be ignored, and an intelligent undead with some useful subordinates. The group not only has a freshly constructed catapult, but also several banners with a somewhat familiar symbol painted on them (bedsheets painted in blood). Have the leader chastise the PCs when they show up, and before he perishes threaten them with his Lord's Army gathering to destroy them. Have him talk a bit about reclaiming the territory that rightfully belongs to his lord. Or avenging the deeds against him. Whatever the main plot really is.

Behind the scenes, the army is slowly forming and moving on the town. Most of them are traveling through rough terrain and won't reach the town for weeks. This idiot finished early and took the road.

[Scavion]

Archmic wrote:

The armor thing I haven't done directly. I have informed them that a couple of the undead had on symbols that they had seen in a previous village... they didn't feel like going back to check it out. I'm hoping that this defense encounter sparks some interest in looking into the past as they are going to encounter intelligent undead that are leading the others. Much less a horde attack and more like a siege.

The issue with letting them blunder isn't that the fight is impossible; it's literally a 1v4 scenario. It's that it's impossible to KEEP him dead without it.
I've tweaked the magic item creation system a little bit. A Grave Knight is linked to his armor. Due to his deeds while alive his armor became a minor artifact giving it only one way to be destroyed which involves his lover; think Mr Freezes wife. Making it kind of a big deal in the story. While I could trash this part of the story it kind of seals the whole thing as the end of the campaign.

If they ignore the armor thing; I'll try the haunted ancestor thing, but I don't have very high hopes for them worrying about one little ghost when they are fighting a lot of undead.

Thanks for the suggestions.

If it's just a matter of "killing" the Graveknight, you can just bury the Graveknight as deep as humanly possible. You can keep destroying the body as it attempts to rejuvenate until the hole is deep enough.

[gnoams]

Then they kill the knight and he comes back 1d10 days later and tries again, and again, until they figure it out.

[Archmic]

The deeper they go the more powerful the undead his repeated reawakening would bring back. Kind of a mines of Moria thing.

In case you're wondering the whole campaign was designed around the BBEG and he was inspired by the song "Silent Tears of Frozen Princess" by Glory Hammer. Was listening to them while playing around with campaign ideas when this scene popped into my head.

The BBEG still alive. Placing his hand on a giant ice crystal, tears rolling down his cheeks as he looks at his beloved. Swearing to take revenge on those that killed her. Turning away from her his expression changing from pure sorrow to a raging tear streaked fury.
Fast forward to the day that the PCs reach him in a citadel carved out of the ancient ice. He sits on a frozen throne. Necromantic energy leaking from his empty sockets like perminant tears. He stands, pulling his blade from the frozen floor and pointing it at them.
His voice ringing out hollow with eternal sadness and fury, "You have NO RIGHT to stand between me and my JUSTICE! Your dying screams shall be the heralds of their END!"

It was too perfect not to make a campaign around and so i did.
I always leave more than one way for the PCs to defeat or weaken the BBEG. One way is a little... evil; the bad end if you will. To break the armor they would have to recover his lovers body and put it on her; in this scenario his own spirit would destroy the armor as he would never desecrate her. Not the best ending as his reason for coming back is more of a tragic love story; it's his own rage and grief that made him a GK not some dark entity. The second way would be for the players to either resurrect his lover or at least contact her spirit to have her talk to him; this is the good but harder ending as it affords the players to make a decision: let his soul rest with his beloved in the after life, create an eternal guardian for the free cantons, or create another faction in my world. It also turns it into an escort quest; her tomb being hollowed ground and once she leaves you now have to protect a very low level cleric in a much higher level area.

[Mudfoot]

I'm not sure I see the problem. Why does the first fight against the BBEG have to be the only one?

If this guy fails to stay dead, the players should want to find out why. If they don't look for the historian, they might find some evidence on his body or in his citadel or whatever.

[Mark Hoover 330]

If you have a BBEG and said BBEG has a backstory... make the characters learn it. Not just hint at how they COULD learn it. Make it apparent. Make it relevant.

Make it personal.

The BBEG lost his love long ago and now cries silent tears for her? Put a statue of her in a town square and routinely have bards singing about her, a children's story about her life, images of her on pennants and banners, etc.

Eventually you'll repeat this woman's name and likeness enough times that the players will have to reckon with the fact that she's somehow important to the game happening around them.

Use the same repetition to hint at the graveknight. Some of the stories speak of a man who loved this woman. His epitaph or dying words were something like "that which is dead may not eternal lie; yet, with dear love even Death may die." Make visiting the battlefield he died on a sort of rite of passage for the region so the PCs have to go there and see the same symbols as the village and the armor.

Then... and here's how you really hook 'em, make the symbol APPEAR.

Recently an NPC the characters have known died of perfectly natural causes. The man is interred in accordance with local customs and since there's no clerics/paladins, there's really no spells cast to keep him from reanimating so people just get buried and the townsfolk hope for the best.

It is known that if the person in life was particularly willful this helps them STAY dead, but sometimes the corpse animates within 3 days. Because of this, the town usually posts guards on the mausoleum for those days before burial. The PCs, having known the man in life, are assigned the duty (or they volunteer).

Now, of course the NPC animates and of course it's easy enough for the PCs to put him back down. Thing is... that weird symbol that the characters have seen associated with the GK is freshly burned into his rotting flesh.

The players likely don't understand the symbol; they don't know what KIND of undead the BBEG is; they don't yet have the details, but by repeating the woman's story, linking it to a guy that died in her service who loved her and vowed a return from the grave, and now symbols clearly linking the man who died to the undead rising all over the place they can guess that all of it is related.

NOW you have the first real threat to the characters, something that foreshadows the undying nature of the BBEG. You put in a sub-GK; some underling that is itself deathless like he is. Take a skeleton, give it the Bloody template, then give it the Skeletal Champion template and levels in a melee type build. The deathless skeleton leads The Red Legion in an effort not to wipe out the city but to find some McGuffin in the mountains. The PCs have to face him and the Red Legion only to find the skeletons don't STAY dead unless a certain condition is met and the champion leading them has some really unique, powerful armor.

His "bloody" template is bound not to his bones but to his armor. The characters might not know this at first and either 1. try to take the armor as treasure or 2. bury/destroy the armor. Whatever the case, if they don't use Positive energy on the armor the champion regenerates and comes after them. If they have the armor in their midst even better; they can WITNESS the regeneration of the skeleton.

This lieutenant NEEDS to talk, to exposit. The champion needs to crow about how, thanks to his unyielding loyalty to his commander, the heraldry of which he bears proudly on his breastplate (the same symbol as the GK), he will never truly die, nor will the Red Legion. His armor has borne him through every battle, it will see him through to the end, yadda yadda. You have to MAKE the players understand that the ARMOR, not his bones, are what's keeping him coming back.

NOW you drop the historian, or some other means of starting to link all of this together with details. The PCs get that the woman is important, they get that this is all linked together somehow, and they have a vague notion of some undead commander making all of this happen in the background, with the technology through his arms or armor to keep himself rising from any grave he's placed in.

NOW, you make it personal.

Pick one PC and reveal an ancestor with links to the story. Perhaps one of the PCs is related to the woman. Even more macabre; what if one of the PCs gets doused in fire or acid, losing some hair, and realizes that their scalp has the weird symbol of the GK on it under their hairline?

These characters likely won't investigate unless they either have to do it to survive or they are forced into it. Give them plenty of sandbox opportunities, but use as many of them as you can to repeat the central themes and history of the BBEG's backstory. Weave the characters INTO that backstory.