The Red Dragon Mask of Tiamat

Post/Author/DateTimePost
#1

KlaudisRex

Mar 17, 2015 11:35:13

I'm currently homebrewing a Forgotten Realms game, which is a sort of prelude to the current Tyranny of Dragons storyline.  The backstory really is about how Severin, the leader of the Cult of the Dragon, rose to prominence in the Cult and how he changed the leadership from following Sammaster's old dracolich theory, to trying to raise Tiamat.  Since a lot isn't offered about this subject, I want to create my own adventure to explain this suddent shift in Cult dogma.  

 

Anyways, does anyone know where Severin might have gotten the Read Dragon Mask from?  Or how he found out about the idea of getting all masks together?  

 

Pif there is offical lore on this, id like to know, otherwise, I'll just make my own up, but then I would have a second question: should the PCs coincidently find it first, and have Severin be an ongoing threat to them? I was thinking it could be a cursed item whereby if one of the players out it on, it could give him bad dreams from Tiamat or something...but then it would feel like Lord of the Rings and Frodo rip-off...also they could alternatively not put it on, and keep it in a "safe place"  with Severin still coming after them.  

 

Or should I have the players ​and Severin both be on a sort of quest to find it concurrently.  First one to get it...wins?  

 

How would you angle this plot hook?

#2

Noctaem

Mar 17, 2015 12:11:31

*** this does contain some spoilers for Hoard of the Dragon Queen and perhaps Rise of Tiamat.  You've been warned ***

 

PREMISE:

I think I would have the story begin with the party being hired by a contact to do a job.  The job involves moving goods from one city to another.  Amongst those goods, tucked away in secret, is the Red Dragon Mask.  Before the party can begin their journey, the warehouse where the goods were kept is broken into and yet, because the Red Dragon Mask wasn't on the manifest, nothing appears to have been stolen.  

 

CHAPTER 1:

a) Then have the person who hired out for the party to transport the goods the mask was hidden in summon them and explain that a great danger looms, maybe share origin of where the mask was found (see below for an idea on that).  Explain some of the information about the Mask, it's abilities.  Give a quest to hunt down the thieves.

 

or

 

b) Have the party go back up the grape vine to who hired them (via an NPC middle-man) only to discover that the person has been killed during the same night that the warehouse was broken into.  Witnesses, give basic description of dragon cultists or kobolds or whoever did the deed.  Town guard or contact NPC gives a new objective to the party, hunt down whoever is responsible and bring them to justice.  

 

Either way, have the party hunt them down and discover secret messages indicating that the murder was for the Red Dragon Mask.  Drop a name to lead the party toward a specific direction or objective.  Places locations, have them resolve it as a murder mystery for now.

 

CHAPTER 2:

information should be making things more clear now, the party should have a goal or a specific target/objective.  The goal of chapter 2 is to give them little bits of information until finally they come to the end and discover a big piece.  Like all along they think there's only 1 mask, but no there's 5 and that's where the link to Tiamat comes in.

 

CHAPTER 3:

Party knows it's up against a cult of tiamat trying to track down these colored dragon masks.  There's 5 of them and they already at least 1.  It's now a race against time to track down the others and figure out how to recover the ones the cult already has or to stop their plans.  Go back to the original town, track down the origin of the Red mask for clues about the others.  Could be as simple as lost temples in various places.  Black Dragon Mask could be in the underdark, Red was from a temple on the edge of a volcano, Green is lost in the deep forests of the wood of Sharp Teeth, Blue could be in a lost floating castle (which links HotDQ) which could explain how the cult gained access to the castle, etc..

 

And so on.  The bottom line though is that the party either fails at stopping them, or remains in the dark enough that they eventually follow a massive army which then attacks Greenest so you can link into HotDQ without issue.  Hope this helps.