Adventures in the Armory
Hello all and welcome back to Grave Plots where I bring you new and interesting adventure hooks and plot ideas each and every week. This week I would like to discuss some ideas revolving around items found in our new book, Into the Armory. Below are some new plot hooks for some of the items in our new book.
The Strike Team
In this hook, revolving around the amulet of shrinking, the PCs are hired by a group of rebels to help invade the estate of Lord Guyl Madolise and kidnap his daughter, the lovely Lady Fleur Madolise. To complete their quest the PCs are each given an amulet of shrinking and told to meet the rebel leader Jean Gucis at his home at midnight the following day. Once they arrive they find Gucis who tells them to don their new amulets, shrinking them down to fine size. Once they have their size reduced they find a group of other fine-sized people, a small rebel strike team that will accompany the PCs. All told there should be around 16 people (including the PCs). Then Jean reduces his size, too, and marches everyone onto a stretch of carpet which promptly takes flight and brings the group directly to one of Lord Guyl’s palace windows. He gives the order to enter the palace and find Fleur and bring her back to this carpet. At this point, the rebels remove their amulets and begin storming the palace; presumably, the PCs should do the same. From here how you develop the adventure is up to you – perhaps the PCs enjoy a free-for-all castle-storming type dungeon where they have to deal with all of the Lord’s palace guards, and then the magical traps warding his daughter’s chambers, or perhaps the PCs have their own motivation (provided by you prior to the set-up given here) for wanting to kidnap Fleur. For instance, some other power has hired them out, or one of the PCs could be madly in love with her, or they could just be looking for a little ransom money to pat their adventuring income, or maybe they heard that Jean was going to make his move and decided (perhaps with a little help form you) that she would be safer with them than with the rebels. Additionally, you need to consider what the rebels’ plans are for the girl, and just what kind of hostage she is.
The Door in the Field
This short little hook is a good way to begin virtually any extra-planar adventure and uses our planar gateway shield. The set-up for the adventure is short, simple and to the point: the PCs happen upon a planar gateway shield. Now from here there is a very wide variety of adventures that could take place, including any number of planar site-based adventures; it’s a solid device for starting a campaign full of rapid planar travel or virtually anything else you would want to do on the planes. For this hook, however, when the PCs go through the door (which they happen upon after completing an adventure) they are immediately accosted by a group of angry devils who accuse the PCs of trespassing in their lord’s castle. From here the development is up to you: perhaps the PCs find themselves in a situation where they can fight their way through, and the adventure turns into a brawl followed by the PCs’ being fugitives from fiendish authorities who pursue them relentlessly. Or maybe the PCs are in entirely over their heads and need to be clever to survive the situation, somehow talking their way out of the arrest, or standing trial for their crimes (good luck to them, Infernal trials rarely have a verdict besides “guilty”, or a sentence that isn’t worse than death). Perhaps the PCs escape from their captors by means of some spell or another and find themselves trapped in hell with a whole new list of problems.
Cloak and Dagger
This hook revolves around perhaps my favorite item in Into the Armory, the chameleon’s cloak. For this hook an old enemy of the PCs (or someone who believes the PCs to be his old enemies) decides to hire a new assassins’ guild, called the Cloak and Dagger, to deal with them. The Cloak and Dagger currently boast a 100% success rate for assassinations, due to their employment of several magic cloaks. One night when the PCs rest, they awaken to find the beds in their inn room (or the rocks in their campsite, etc) suddenly shift to reveal deadly assassins who attempt to, well, assassinate the PCs. Once the fight is over it’s up to you to handle the rest of the development for this one: send the PCs to find out more about the Cloak and Dagger, lead them to who they were working for, and finally decide the why of it all.