Post/Author/DateTime	Post
GoriceXII 03-31-07, 03:25 PM	With the siege lifted my players want to reconnoiter the enemy to find weaknesses they can exploit. I'm borrowing heavily from adventures I bought which by wonderful serendipity work for my campaign. I'm trying to bring some elements together here and I'd like to see if people might brainstorm some ideas to help me work them out. For instance the following are involved: 1. Discovery that an enemy wizard is really a lich who is making undead. The reason for this is simple: formerly they had lots of barbarian and goblinoid allies which gave them superior numbers. Now however a good number of the barbarians have stated that it is no longer the season for war and they are going home--they have not gained the loot they wanted anyway and are disappointed in those who asked them to come. The goblinoids took heavy casualties from two major actions of the pcs and many are demoralized--most have either gone home or taken to the roads as bandits. So the undead are needed to keep the forces of the Republic unbalanced. In addition to this it must be secret. Few civilized nations in my game openly tolerate undead. It must seem as though it is just something that happened. The Lich is also being coerced. Agents of the enemy king discovered his phylactery and have it hidden in a remote fortress. The lich meanwhile is making undead out of a captured fort, partly guarded by enemy units, which he resents. 2. The remote fortress is in a ruined city that lies to the north in a great swamp. This is a strange place full of weird creatures, including lizardfolk. One such tribe is allied to the Republic (through the players' actions) but some of the other tribes are not so friendly in spite of overtures. I had planned to have two of these tribes betray the Republic and be elements the players will have to deal with to get past to the remote fortress. One part of this is that a village the players helped save from an evil cult infiltrating it before will be directly threatened by the lizardfolk uprising. 3. The phylactery is held by a dragon cult. The dragon cultists are agents of the king. They are using a young black dragon as means to enthrall the lizardfolk, and are implying that they will rise to be a great nation if they align with the king.
taradusis 03-31-07, 05:04 PM	If the lich uses undead who can spawn that will speed things up.Have the yuan-ti be behind the phylactry holding group.The sarrukh who created theyuan-ti,lizard folk and various other races had a secret for creating lizardkings.Perhaps a group of lizardkings could spread out and unify the lizardfolk with yuan-ti to act as advisors.This would feel like the chinese or russians usuing the vietnamese or koreans as catspaws?RANDOM THOUGHTS