Canonfire! Forums-viewtopic-Need suggestions; What's in the back of that wagon?

Thu Nov 20, 2008 5:56 am Need suggestions; What's in the back of that wagon?

Hey all, I was hoping I could trouble you for some suggestions. Here's the background: I'm DMing a group of players in the Bandit Kingdoms. They're currently headed towards Riftcrag. They were camped for the night and nursing their wounds after a run in with one of Iuz's patrols & I decided to throw a non-combat encounter out there just to spice things up. I decided to tell them that during the night a caravan passed by their campsite. I suggested that a caravan travelling by night seemed kind of fishy. I figured some of them would want to investigate, but would hold off because they were wounded and I was right.
Now I'm getting ready to bait them with a little sidetrek into the Goodman Games adventure The Transmuter's Last Touch. (If anyone has run this before I'd love to hear what you thought of it.) One of the suggested plot hooks is the party runs across a wagon that has been looted. This fits in nicely with my fishy caravan hook, but I'm at a loss as to what the carvan is hauling. The first thing I came up with was an idea about Iuz trying to replenish the strength he lost after the Flight of Fiends, maybe some kind of items for animating dead or summoning fiends, or corpses to be animated as zombies. That idea didn't really thrill me though. I would also love to tie it to Blackmoor somehow, because I'd eventually like to lead the party there, but I couldn't come up with any ideas for it that I liked. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance.

Thu Nov 20, 2008 8:09 am

Well, presuming you will be running some of the old Blackmoor adventures, I think there were some sort of robots in there. Also, presuming your characters were headed SOUTH to the Riftcrag, the caravan could have been headed south from Blackmoor, toward whomever the Boneheart guy is that is in charge of the Bandit Kingdoms, and passed them up. Iuz could have commanded his Boneheart minion to figure out how the (now defunct) robots work and to construct an army of them to assist in the war against the Shield Landers & Furyondians.

Don

Thu Nov 20, 2008 10:16 am

How about Black Ice. Wrapped in straw, and kept cold by a low level adept with some cantrip or another. Not super magical, and you dont have to worry about them "taking the loot," and running so to speak. However it is darn strange; maybe it is necessary from some dark magic.

Thu Nov 20, 2008 12:48 pm

I like both of those ideas. Now I just have to decide which to use . . . .

Thanks for your suggestions!

Thu Nov 20, 2008 1:23 pm

Like the Black Ice idea Smile

Here I was thinking something more mundane like poor peasants delivering ore or wounded troops; I love giving players moral problems.

Each his own but I stay away from tech; before too long you have your players wanting to build their own robots.

Thu Nov 20, 2008 2:00 pm

Thu Nov 20, 2008 4:29 pm

rob44---if you decide to play around with the Black Ice idea, there are a number of other ways you could expand upon that hook in the Far North Design Project forum @ http://www.canonfire.com/cf/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewforum&f=43
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Allan Grohe (grodog@gmail.com)
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Fri Nov 21, 2008 9:31 am

** SPOILER ALERT **

I like the robots idea, though instead of playing the old Blackmoor modules you could lead into The Clockwork Fortress in Dungeon # 126 by having the players find the Nimblewright prince, Oskari Lodestar in the back of the wagon. Don't know if you have that issue and adventure but you can get it pretty cheap by download from Paizo. He is found in Raiders of the Black Ice (Dungeon # 115) at the end, frozen into a block of ice and is used as one of the possible hooks into Clockwork Fortress. Of course if you don't want to have to worry about running an npc you could just have them find Oskari's head and say that it can talk, so it can lead them into Blackmoor. Or if you're playing 3rd or 4th edition and have a player who is really into a role-playing challenge, allow them to run Oskari. You could stat him up yourself using what's given in the adventure, or by using the rules for (I'm gonna burn in hell for this one) a warforged.

Fri Nov 21, 2008 1:39 pm