Hi all,

This is a request for help with designing an adventure for an ongoing play-by-message-board WFRP campaign, so if you're one of my players (the username I GM under is LCP and the campaign in question has had instalments called 'The Hour After Midnight' and 'The Lord of Lost Heart'), shoo!

------------------------------------------

I'm currently trying to come up for a third adventure in a long-running WFRP 2E campaign. We've just finished the second adventure, and I find myself without a concrete plan. What I do have is a list of suggestions/requests from my players.

• One of them wants to go back to his character's home town – a fishing port on the Empire's northern coast.
• One of them is an initiate of Ranald, and wants an opportunity to go Ranald-er and enter the Priest career.
• I think most of them are keenly expecting Dark Elves.

This last point is the one I'm having trouble with – I just can't figure out a good Dark Elf plot to hinge the game around. Which is not to say I don't have plenty of material to work with:

• One of the PCs is a Dark Elf herself. She was a sorceress with the raiding fleets, but a traumatic miscast during a raid that went wrong led to her being left for dead by her chums, with amnesia and a permanent caster-level downgrade (starting the first game as a bog-standard Elf Apprentice Wizard).
• Said PC has become entangled in a romance with the PC who wants to go back to his home village. I'd like to throw a spanner or two in the works there, (A) because I don't think this world should be too tolerant of cross-species couplings and (B) because they are getting too mushy and sentimental about it.

I've always had the elf earmarked for her backstory to come back and bite her, and having some Druchii rock up to remind her that she's a sworn bride of Malekith seems a good way to pour a bucket of cold water over the PC romance. Her boyfriend's home town being on the coast also provides an excellent opportunity to have the Dark Elves enslave or kill some family members and show the guy exactly what kind of company his girlfriend used to keep.

Trouble is, I can't seem to get past this point in my planning. For WFRP's power scale, a Dark Elf slaving raid seems more like “elves fall, everybody dies” than an actual plot that the PCs can get involved with. I need something a bit more complex and involving.

So, suggestions please! Any Dark Elf plot hooks you can come up with, I'd be grateful to hear. I'm going to expand a bit on my own ideas below the break, but you can stop reading here if you want to.

---------------------------------------------------

OK, so, further ramblings:

Personally, I'm wondering if I'm drawing a blank because the Dark Elves just aren't to my taste. Gav Thorpe's on the record as saying that he knows their society shouldn't really work, but he doesn't care because it's more about the atmosphere and themes behind them. I don't begrudge him that point of view, but at the same time I feel like that makes them poor WFRP villains. In a campaign that's been mostly about sewers and rats and corrupt watchmen and contaminated meat pies, sea-serpent-riding elves with magic floating castles seem a little bit out of place. The only bit of inspiration I've managed to glean from the tabletop materials is the Cauldron of Blood... I feel like there's a WFRP angle to be got out of that (and Death Night in particular) somewhere.

To that end, I'm thinking I'll hold the Dark Elves back to the very end, and mix them in with a much heavier helping of humans. I'm thinking a human cult of Khaine might be a natural fit there, or some nobles who have need of a really good assassin. I'm finding this fairly tricky as well, though – people who live on the coast ought to know about these elven slavers that are always raiding and pillaging, so having the Dark Elves dupe them risks making them look like they're holding the idiot ball.

I'm also thinking that I could possibly do a bait-and-switch with the Dark Elves – either use the fact that the players have OOC expectations of Dark Elves to fool them when a different enemy is at work, or genuinely use Dark Elves, but as second-string villains to a bigger, hidden enemy. The campaign's first adventure featured Skaven, and I have a hankering to bring them back...

^{I hear you about the feel of Dark Elves, they are a "high fantasy" sctick and most of the fun of WFRP is low fantasy.}

^{If the PC has amnesia she could already have a husband or a sister among the Dark Elves.}

^{The Witch's Song in 3rd edition is an example of "use dark elves singly or in small infiltration groups until a big reveal at the end when the expectation is Flight not Fight for the PC's.}

I wrote a scenario called "false pretenses" that you may find interesting: http://gallery.rptools.net/d/53070-14/WFRP3+-+False+Pretenses+-+Scenario.pdf

I agree with you on the whole Dark-Elf society can’t really work bit. I would stay away from that and concentrate on the reasons why they are in the Empire and what they have to do to stay hidden/infiltrate human society. And I agree with you in that it is probably best to surround the Druchii with human allies and have the PCs come in to a direct contact with them much later on.

I think there are many ways how you can use the Druchii within the Empire without having to lean on a coastal raid. Regarding future raids, the state of the Empire Navy etc. the Druchii would probably be quite keen to have solid intelligence on these things. There are several ways of doing this. There could be a small contingent of Druchii disguised as High-Elves, or Sea-Elves, as men would not be able to tell the difference between different Elves. Then, they could secretly run a whole network of spies and informants via running a criminal organization.

There is smuggling, informants, and whispers of highly skilled assassins. By using a criminal organization you could use the Ranaldite in your party to get them to investigate a ring of human traffickers who smuggle young Kislevite women via the PC’s home village to Marienburg etc. They will them come into contact with the criminals and, later, the Druchii.

Another organization the Druchii could infiltrate is the Cartographers’ Guild. This would give them access to information on Noble lands, army units, rivers, river locks etc.

Using the Druchii gives you many interesting opportunities. High/Wood Elves could be blamed for the crimes done by the Dark Elfs as an Elf was seen doing something bad and results in the villagers rioting as anti-Elf sentiments start to surface. Also, the difference in Khaine worship between Druchii and humans can be a source of some interesting scenes.

What interest would the Druchii have in that particular village then? Well, a long, long time ago a Dark-Elves fought the High-Elves and one of their black arks crashed into the shores near your PC’s home village. It has been there for a thousand years , overgrown with all kinds of vines etc. and has thus remained hidden. Some have stumbled upon it recently though and someone is selling strange artefacts in the village and/or a hidden cult of Khaine has sprung up. The Druchii have learnt of the ark’s location and have sent human allies to investigate and so that the Druchii can later recover a Very Important Item etc. The presence of the ark also starts to trigger lost memories in your Dark Elf player.

Stealing a page from HP Lovecraft’s Shadows over Innsmouth, the ark could be a little way out to the sea and now run over by some sea creatures (or skaven).

Oooooh, the Shadow over Innsmouth is fun reference, with the PC being the equivalent of its protagonist, "hearing the call".....

I agree, dark elves can be really hard to integrate into a campaign set in the empire, but her background gives me some ideas to throw at you.

Even though she has dark-elf background, I assume she poses or thinks she is a high elf, and thereby avoiding getting arrested and killed.

Anyway, as a previously high level sorceress, it would be quite plausible that she has delved into the more forbidden practice of Slaneesh sorcery, likely even acting as a high priestess of a secret cult with numerous followers and enemies.

Consider that she struck a bargain with a demon of Slaneesh, and her failing to keep her part of the deal was the real reason she was stripped of powers and memories? What was she doing raiding in the Empire? Maybe she was on a quest for a blasphemous artifacts held by someone in the Empire? A chaos cult Maybe?

Maybe some of her followers would come to seek her out at strange times to receive instructions or advice in order the continue for the mission. Maybe the same followers will turn on her later if they realize she is powerless or clueless. But this could hook her up on an overall plot you want the campaign to revolve around. Her "followers" may have clues leading towards a powerful book or item held by a chaos cult, or some other plot you want the party to investigate.

Being involved with the cult of pleasure, surly she may have enemies from the Temple of Khaine. Would they send agents to spy on her or assassins to kill her?

Maybe the cult of Khaine would look obvious dark-elven but trained in stealth and concealment, while members of "her" pleasure cult would have access to cantrips and such allowing them to pose as beautiful High Elves.

@Smogg: her background is fairly clear-cut that she was accompanying slavers up and down the coast. I'm not certain, but I also think the player is not too keen on too much Slaanesh in her dark elves.

The character just poses as an 'elf' really: the humans she meets aren't elf-savvy enough to know or enquire after the difference between Ulthuan elves, Laurelorn elves, etc.

I do think that Cult of Khaine vs. Covenant of Sorceresses is a good angle though.

@d6 Evil Men: The idea of Dark Elf espionage/undercover slave trafficking seems an interesting one. I'm currently thinking about putting a cult of Stromfels/gang of wreckers in the PC's hometown; perhaps they covertly sell young men and women to the Druchii (who'd be posing as representatives of the storm god) in return for juicy wrecks? Anti-elf riots also sound like fun.

I'm not too sure about the cartographer's guild idea – the Druchii should have their own, good charts, and going far inland just seems like a recipe to get jumped on by the humans with their organised military. I see the Druchii as opportunists when it comes to attacks on human holdings: they're not trying any grand military manoeuvres, that's all reserved for Ulthuan.

A wrecked ark that's become a reef/sandbar seems like a fun idea – maybe a bit of a conventional dungeon crawl. I can't quite see how the dark elves would forget where it went down, though – an island is a hard thing to lose track of! Also, I'd worry that if I described it to the players (elven ruins with some traces of Druchii architectural styles) they'd twig OOC a bit too early. The Innsmouth angle is good, though – I think the PC who comes from this place has already mentioned fish-like beastmen.

@Emirikol: Thanks! Wow, talk about coincidence – the exact same town! Hargendorf is where my Nordlander PC comes from. I did see that sidebar about the vanished village in Sigmar's Heirs too. I may try to steer clear of standing stones etc., though – the last adventure was all about barrows and such.

@valvorik: I've had a read of “The Witch's Song” and found it a bit wanting (the Witch Elf needs heroes' blood, but the blood of any Reiklander will do... and the most effective way to get Reiklanders is to go through an elaborate sea-monster-summoning plot over a tunnel in the Wasteland? Hire some human kidnappers, give them a wagon. Job done). The Shades-posing-as-high-elves thing though, I think I may steal (or at least posing as Laurelorn elves).

As a Sorceress she would not have been allowed to marry, but a sister is a fun idea. I do have one pre-made Dark Elf from her background – the arrogant lordling she used to sail with when raiding the coast.