Hi guys,

I love the friendly atmosphere of these forums and enjoy reading everyone's feedback and take on individual story ideas.

My idea for an adventure is based around the natural assumptions that players make about groups of people in the Warhammer and roleplaying world. I wanted to write a story in which there are three societal groups, that are neither good nor evil but have their strengths, flaws and sympathetic traits. The idea is that the players have to uncover the truths about each groups whilst dealing with their own prejudices and those of the other groups. The adventure culminates with the arrival of a threat so huge that there is no hope of defending all three groups and the players are forced to make a moral decision as to which group they will lend their strengths to.

The context of my take on the adventure is in my player's current campaign which has moved to Lustria, but it could easily be set anywhere. The back story is that the players have become separated from the main body of the expedition and are journeying through the vast jungle trying to find a human settlement.

The Three Groups

Human Settlers

The players encounter a group of Human settlers that have broken away from the main human settlements on the coasts of Lustria. The Humans have an uncharacteristic relationship with gold and wealth for their race and so have been unmolested by the Lizardmen and allowed to live deep within the dangerous wilds. They are however afforded no such protection from the natural dangers of the jungle, they are hunted by predators and stricken with unfamiliar diseases.

The group has been forced to flee persucution in the Empire and been exiled by the Lustrian expeditions for their deviant religious beliefs. The group does not recognise Sigmar as their patron god. Instead they worship the Elven race as living gods. They believe that Elves are the children of the gods and that Humans are descended from them and more importantly that the Human gods are in truth the same pantheon that the Elves worship. These beliefs have seen them hounded and treated like pariahs. The group is still not as altruistic as the Elves and do not live amongst nature but attempt to use it like all Humans do.

Native Primitives

The fertile lands that the Humans have chosen to colonise in truth is the hunting grounds of a race of native Halfings (Pygmies). The tribe revere the Lizard as their gods and all reptiles are sacred to them. They harrass and attack the Humans relentlessly and are trying to force them off of their ancestral lands. The tribe live at piece amongst the rain forest and do not disturb its natural patterns in any way, they hate Humans for their destructive nature and their stripping of the forest's resources. The religion of the tribe is primitive and borderline heretical. They practice sacrificial rituals and have cruel and torturous solutions to disease.

The Undead

Both other groups are fearful of a vile necromancer that lives in the area. He launches raids on any fleets of ships that pass by the coast and attacks the settlers with forces of Zombies. The natives have positioned protective wards that force the Undead from their lands and they are tested from time to time, the Necromancer seemingly waiting patiently.

In truth, their is no Necromancer. The lands of the coast were cursed by an ancient Skaven ritual that went astray during their war with the serpent god Sotek. The foul magics that have permeated the lands cause the remains of any Humans to reanimate, coming back to life as Zombies. These Undead are not true Necromantic Zombies and retain some of their previous intelligence. They wander the forest vaguely remembering their former existences and mourn their inability to regain a normal life. Some strike out in anger against the living and some scream out in warning to them. With each "death" that they suffer more of their humanity is stripped away and more of their bodies decay. They are tormented and driven insane, unable to live or die.

There is a shadowy figure that pulls the strings behind the activities of the Undead, but his motives are for more sincere than is expected. Centuries ago when Man had just learned the secrets of shipcraft, a fleet of raiding war ships patrolled the northern seas around the Empire. Amongst the crew in the fleet was a young priest of Morr. He held a senior advisory position with the commanders and watched over the dead seamen. However the priest saw Manaan as a cruel and capricious god and forbade the captain of his vessel from offering tributes of catch and coin to the god. To further anger the god, the priiest prevented any that died at sea from becoming one with Manaan's kingdom, recovering their bodies from the water and waiting to bury them back on dry land. The sea god sent a mighty storm to have his vengeance on the fleet of which the only survivor was the priest. As punishment for his prideful ways, Manaan cursed the priest with immortality so that he would never enter the realm of his patron and never achieve his destiny. Unable to die the priest wandered the lands of the living following armies and plagues and tending to the dead. On his travels, the priest discovered the cursed coast of Lustria and vowed to watch over the undying, those that like him could not enter Morr's realm. Now that the living have arrived he is determined to drive them away from these lands and suffering his fate.

The Threat

Once the players have discovered the truth about the three groups, a war fleet of norsii ships breaks through the Undead blockade and lands on the coast of Lustria hell bent on war and destruction.

The Norsii are from the Nargoth tribe whom worship Neragal, the god of death and disease. Their god promises them invulnerability and immortality and whispers to them of a kingdom where they will be undying able to reap destruction and misery in his name for eternity.

The army is too vast for the players or any one of the groups alone to repel and all three groups lie in the path of devastation.

I hope that this will raise questions for the players. Who will they ally with? Could they split themselves up? Could they make alliances between the groups. Do any of them deserve saving?

Please let me know what you guys think. I'm hoping for ideas on how to flesh this idea out and any key events that could happen.

Are you planning on writing this up for fan publication? If so, you may want a more structured adventure. If it's for the home group, it comes down to what your PC careers and races are.

My habit is to write up a "probable adventure flow" in a 10 step railroad and go from there.

What do you "expect" to happen so far?

Are your PC's already there, or do they arrive as outsiders? Where are they staying and who do they know? Is it like the old D&D "Keep on the Borderlands" where the PC's begin in the Keep and explorer outwards.

jh

Also, it is worthy of note that vampires have settled the northeast lustrian coast. (Night's dark masters and other official sources speak of this)

jh

You have some fantastic ideas. I think your two compelling groups are the "protestant" heretics and the undead lead by the priest of morr. Cut out the pygmies and focus on the conflicts and interactions between these two groups. Then, as things escalate, nail them with the nords. Cut out the nature stuff and focus. The living and the dead are two groups that have real and usually absolute conflict. That the priest of morr has given up hope for death for himself is fantastic. Nail the theme. Heretics are great, but make them heretics because they don't believe in the afterlife or something related to death rites, and then when you throw them in the same room with the undead the resolution also becomes a crisis of faith for their new beliefs. Wouldn't that be great, travel all the way to lustria to flee religious persecution only to be confronted with evidence that the sigmarites were right all along as soon as you get off the boat. That is a great story. Maybe the heretics will lose their **** and go all lord of the flies on each other before the nords even roll in. Conflict, conflict, conflict. Get the details of the beginning of your adventure together, like emirkol says, and use the three act system from the tome of adventures to set up one fairly linear adventure: like, PC' s discover heretics and help them fight off a wave of undead. See how it goes and plan from there. Don't do too much in advance. The pc' s might not be interested at all, and then you've done all that work for nothing. By the way, Elias Canetti wrote a great book called Crowds and Power that has an interesting and relevant section about the invisble crowds of the dead and their relationship with the living. very cool stuff.

Cheers for the ideas guys.

The players will already be in Lustria when they encounter the settlement and I think they should encounter them first.

I didn't want to go the the Vampire route as the players party sheet is Intrepid Explorers so we will probably have a campaign set in Sylvania at some point. One of the guys back story is based around Mordheim.

I like the suggestion to cut out the natives as they seem like the weakest part of the story idea.

I was toying with the idea that the settlers beliefs would have something to do with funeral rites or death so i will edit that for sure. Think I will look into the Elven beliefs about death.

I always use the three act model or make the story more of an open investigation a bit like Eye for an Eye.
This is the rough sketch of the acts.

Act 1: First Contact
Investigating the settlers and any confrontations about their beliefs, one of the players is a priest of Sigmar so this should be fun.
The settlers insist that it is not safe for the players to leave the settlement and will try to convince them to convert.
The settlement is attacked by the Undead.

Act 2: Retribution
The players set out to vanquish the evil Necromancer but are easily overwhelmed.
The priest of Morr holds them captive and the players investigate his origins and motives.

Act 3: The decision

The Norsii invade and who should the players save?

I would like to have some minor events in there too before the combat encounters, any ideas?

this is where i start having questions too. i think that Act One: First Contact, should actually be Episode One, according to suggestions in Tome of Adventure. Then you break First Contact into three distinct acts with rally steps between them. these acts can be as linear or as non-linear as you like, but you have to decide at what point one act moves into the next, can't remember how it all works. it is a hook if you are getting something started, a trigger if it transitions? in any case, lets talk about first contact specifically w/o the terms i can't remember.

Episode One: First Contact

Act One: Lost or Crazy Thirsty

Your PCs just landed in Lustria. Seemingly non-Linear, Hooks? Do they even know where they are? Are they running out of fresh water? Do they need to find supplies to build shelter? Steal ideas from Lost. Or let them come up with their own ideas of what they want to do. Maybe they will want to explore without any prodding. If not give them one of the problems above to solve or throw a dinosaur at them (if they love combat). Whatever they decide to do eventually you will probably need to railroad them into stumbling on the settlers. You just need to decide when. If they are having tons of fun stumbling around in the jungle, ala Island of Dread, let them do it. Prepare two or three jungle thematic encounters that make them feel like they are in a jungle, dinosaurs, skinks, give them cursed toltec gold from a ruined temple to an unknown god (or cuthulu monster), let them find a hidden waterfall paradise and refresh the fortune pool, pit traps, tigers, they meet swiss family robinson, quicksand, a boy raised by wolves who wants to follow the party around but lacks speech, they meet a peculiar fellow named kurtz. who lives with gorillas and is convinced they worship him as a god (maybe they do). Just jungle it up for as long as everyone is having fun.

Trigger?: while searching for a water source they find a camoflauged human settlement, it is likely, everyone needs water, move into act two. and just keep making triggers that make sense and use them when you feel like it to move the story forward.

Act Two: Heretics for Dinner

Eventually, the PCs run into the settlement. work on the character of the settlement first with a list of adjectives: pious, compassionate, xenophobic, fanatical, open-minded, irrational, friendly, peacable, warlike. then work out the group dynamic = who is in charge, what happens if the pcs kill him? then start by making a list of everything that could go wrong. every possible conflict that could happen between the settlement and the party. if you have a clear vision of the character of the settlement as a whole this should be easier. even the most peacable group of people will still have conflict, they might just not act with physical violence. then prepare a few possible social encounters if you think things can be settled reasonably, and at least one nightmare scenario where the pcs have to defend themselves from the whole village because they went to far. if this happens I would make them feel like murderous *****, make the battle pathetically easy for the pcs by giving all the npcs 1 wound and no weapons, throw women and children at them, and when it is all done make them pay in stress, give them all a 5d WP test and hopefully you will knock one of them out or at least give them all an insanity. Then resurrect the whole village as zombies who capture the pcs and move on to act three. Okay, maybe pushing the pcs into a physical confrontation with the heretics might upset some of your characters so much they will quit the game. especially if you really throw women and children at them. on the other hand, the emotional intensity might make for a great session. a fun peacable conflict might be a religious debate between your party sigmarite and a village elder. prepare three doctrinal questions for the elder to ask and get the whole party to write a short speech in three parts as a response, between each part make some kind of social combat roll, or use an appopriate social action card. let each party member deliver a part of the speech (even if they don't have any social action cards, in which case they are performing an assist that gets bonuses for how clever or how in-game appropriate their argument is). prepare a progress tracker with variable degrees of success. if after three social rolls the total successes reach the end of the progress tracker they achieve complete and total success. reward them big time. if they reach the middle marker maybe the heretics agree to disagree but are pleased with the strength of the parties convictions and welcome them anyway. if they don't reach mid-level success then in act three when the party tries to get the undead and the living to work together, the party has almost no influence over the heretics so you can ramp up the difficulty of that conflict later.

sorry man, not trying to tell you what to do. just a little too excited about all the possibilities. one of the best games I ever played involved some serious party conflict on the island of dread. we encountered some lizardmen and one faction wanted to murder and loot them and the other wanted to befriend them and get help exploring the island from them. well, one party member took away the choice by just running into the cave and attacking them, forcing the rest of the party to defend themsleves against unarmed women and children, the sly gm had all the lizardmen warriors out hunting. when it was all over half the party just stood there horrified while the other half started looting. things went downhill after that and we almost ended up killing each other in real life. so fun:)

Bindlespin said:

The undead lead by a priest of Morr? are you talking about a renegade og rogue priest than? since Morr priests destroy the undead or release them from their torment of being trapped between worlds...Ah I see you changed the leader of the undead to a vampire

Otherwise than that I think you are on to something really good here. Let me know how it goes. I am currently working on an adventure myself that I will post on hammerzeit in a few weeks. its called Carnival of death or the thief & the coin.

good gaming.

vengefulspirit said:

Take a look at the Pendragon system, if you are not familiar with it already. The game has very useful guidelines for handling these sort of adventures. It might give you several ideas. Try to find a copy of the adventure "Savage Mountain". It is built upon a very similar idea as yours.