Greetings GMs and players! First of all, thank you for reading this post, I appreciate the help.

I am currently running a Force and Destiny campaign in which the PCs have been following leads, hints, and clues across the galaxy about a rising dark side user and his minions. Their last lead has sent them to Dathomir, where the rising sith lord has sent his second-in-command to bring the force witches of Dathomir into his collection of acolytes. I am currently running out of innovative ideas to challenge the party with and I am hoping some community members can provide some nifty and different challenges for the PCS.

Some ideas for what I would like to happen:

The PCs will make contact with a "friendly" clan of witches, as well as the opposing Nightsisters Clan. They could help the friendly clan oppose the Nightsisters whom have recently embraced the visiting Sith whom the PCs are after.

Some sort of encounter with Nightsisters and their Rancor.

A force vengence encounter, potentially with the seek power since the witches of Dathomir are proficient huntress es.

A journey in which the PCs make it to the Sith they seek after the Sith have made contact with the Nightsisters. Also an epic fight with innovative mechanics to make it feel special.

In the past, I have thrown bounty hunters at the players, morality encounters to test their fortitude, and an encounter in which they had to flip all the destiny points to either light or dark in order to embrace one aspect of the force (similar to the adventure in the FaD beta adventure). Does anyone have some nifty ideas for such an occasion on Dathomir?

Don't ignore the Nightbrothers .

They are subservient to the Nightsisters, but they don't seem like them much, either. Depending on how the PCs play the situation, they could either be a terrible enemy or a valuable ally.

Congratulations on including an interesting piece of canon beyond merely the Sith. I echo kaosoe's comments about the Nightbrothers. However, the little-known Wild Space planet of Weik (detailed in Nexus of Power ) may offer your party the chance to encounter more familiar, fantasy rpg options of using the Force, but as magic. Just getting to the planet may become an adventure in and of itself, but offers a lot of unique bits that your creativity may crave.

Look through Wookieepedia for the "Chu'unthor" (I'd link it, but hotlinks have trouble with apostrophes), a Jedi praxeum ship that crashed there long before the Battle of Yavin. Also, according to Wookieepedia, the Brotherhood of Darkness had a Sith academy established on Dathomir. The ruins of both might make for interesting set pieces.

The Legends material on Dathomir and the witches of that planet has a fair amount of material you could mine. The true witches are Force-sensitive women who use men mainly as hard labor and procreation (think Amazon culture). They use a combination of words and gestures as foci for using their Force abilities and tame rancors as transportation, pets, and labor. The Nightsisters were witches that turned to the dark side and were exiled from the tribes.

Our campaign recently had a minor detour to Dathomir (a surviving Nightsister had been sending one of our group nightmares so we could team up to kill the Emperor together).

About half the group took up her offer for further training, which culminated with them fighting (well... that was the plan. Our Pathfinder had other ideas) The Sleeper . I could ask my GM for the stats? Because of how Dathomir was shown in The Clone Wars, we had the rule that every Force Roll had one extra dark side pip, though if you want to use Legends stuff it could depend on the area.

The Nightbrothers were fun though. My character spent the time the rest were training to argue about proper medical procedures with them, and we've since helped set them up as mercenaries to raise funds to take on the Empire (also the Nightbrother leader proposed to our Zabrak Ataru Striker/Protector and wants her to be the new Nightmother over the Nightsister because our Shadow had fun driving a wedge between them).

Dathomir is definitely somewhere on the horizon for my group, as the latest member is a young (former) Nightsister who was taken and experimented upon by the Empire. It's left her a bit...damaged. At some point, I'm pretty sure that her story will take her back home. So, I'm mulling over Dathomir elements, as well. I'll be watching the thread with interest, and anything that I come up with in the meantime, I'll toss this way.

For those interested, ask Marcy (Maelora) about Dathomir in her altered canon. Crazy (awesome) stuff...

I like to envision the witches as being similar to the witches from The Golden Compass, culture-wise. I also like the idea that they can use specially-prepared tree-branches from specific types of trees to fly. Not the mass-produced broomsticks of the Harry Potter 'Verse, but a personal and spiritual process that connects them to nature.

But, as I'm sure everyone knows by now, as a very vocal Mystic fan I love the deep and spiritual aspects of the Force, so YMMV. I do think that Witch is going to be a Mystic spec, so take that for what it's worth when designing your planet and encounters!

Hello again forums, Lagspike here. Once again I had a wild and crazy idea.

This one took a while to draw up but I think it turned out rather nicely.

"The Heart of the First Rancor"

Intro:

PCs are in some way led to the "friendly" witches. Either a witch arrives at their camp or one of the PCs has a forsee vision about how to find the witches. Whatever happens, the PCs are informed that only they can recover a lost artifact and for this favor the witches will fight for them against the Sith. The artifact is locked away in an icy cavern on top of the tallest mountain on Dathomir. The witches are intentionally vague about the contents of the box, saying only that it can help them defeat the Sith.

Part I: A Lost Artifact

PCs must travel to the highest mountain on Dathomir and scale it, to a large and highly dangerous glacier. This trek should include survival checks and potentially the PCs suffer frostbite or hypothermia depending on what they decide to wear.

Then the PCs enter the ice cave and search for a sealed box (of the GM’s design, just make sure it’s locked - PCs should not know what is in the box until later in the adventure). Insert here whatever traps, scary monsters, long falls, etc. In the end the PCs find a mysterious box that radiates pure evil, but is completely sealed with no visible seals - only some creepy old runes that no one can read.

Part II: The Beast is Unleashed

Lauding their success, the witches take the PCs back to their village and have a grand celebration. If asked about the contents of the box the witches reassure the PCs that they’ll handle it from here. During the feast the not-so-friendly night sisters arrive and demand the “friendly” witches hand over the box. As the friendlies are obviously not wiling to give it over, the night sisters summon their pet: The King of the Rancors.

In the distance a tremendous howl is heard (make a hard fear check): The King of the Rancors approaches with tremendous speed and ferocity!! It smashes and crashes through the village, heading straight for the box. The PCs may grab the box and run, try to save the villagers, or just run for it in sheer terror. If they are crazy enough to stay, it fights them. How the PCs react will setup the final battle.

This beast is the paragon of rancors; it should be significantly larger, stronger, scarier, etc. It is considered like terrain - it has no stats, cannot be damaged, and attacks once per round, at the end of each round. It is heavily armored and fueled by Sith magic, making it nearly impervious to all forms of attack.

The King of the Rancors has several abilities (feel free to remove or add more). The King of the Rancors is slow firing 1 (ie, can be used once per 2 rounds). All combat checks are automatically successful.

Trample: All in medium range are knocked down and stunned

Terrifying Howl: Like the force talent Terrifing, at hard difficulty

Sweeping strike: similar to the sarlaac sweep talent; 10 dam, pierce 5

Hurl Object (or person?)

Protect the Night Sister: Makes the night sisters very difficult to attack

Part III: What’s in the Box?

The box contains an ancient and powerful sith artifact: The Heart of the First Rancor. Literally harvested by a Sith lord from the first rancor and imbued with the dark side, it has the power to control all rancors on Dathomir.

This is the part where I couldn't really come up with anything super awesome. I had a few ideas, but nothing really materialized.

Idea 1: The PCs must drink a night sister brew and face force visions or dark side spirits to figure out how to open the box.

Idea 2: Dark Side crystals buried at the bottom of a deep lake hold the clue to opening the box.

Part IV: The Battle for the Heart

Once the box is opened and the heart is awakened, the “friendly” night sisters are consumed by their desires and turn on the PCs. At the same time the not-so-friendly Night Sisters and the Sith descend on the heart, with the King of the Rancors in tow.

A great melee begins for control of the heart. Think of it as a capture the flag mission with three different teams: The Night Sisters + Sith, The “friendly” witches, and the PCs. Depending on how the PCs handled part II will depend on how things are setup in part iv. If they have the heart, both teams will try to take it from them. If they do not, they’ll fight to take it.

The team that controls the heart can, once per round, make an average discipline check, adding force die to do one of the below. The force pips can be converted to success/advantages.

Summon Rancors: Base of 1, +1 for each success. Threat could mean juvenile rancors, advantage might mean bull rancors.

Call a lightning strike. Ouch.

Control the King of the Rancors for a turn, using the abilities listed in part 2.

Should make for an epic combat, with a lot of Rancors rampaging around.