Difference between revisions of "Ideas for Future Quests"

Latest revision as of 01:33, 29 March 2012

Ideas which have received comments so far:

1. The Curse: A weapon surfaces which is quite potent (avg dam >= 28, bonuses). Players content to acquire this weapon as the result of a quest, only to discover it has a nasty curse associated with it. The curse has dire effects, and another quest is needed to eliminate or neutralize the weapon. Reminiscent of the Totem of Xiginath, but with a little more curb appeal for the item, tighter ties to lore, and more ubiquity. b: the mass of distilled power is pretty sweet. Might need to be adjusted a bit since it's a pretty old prog, but the concept itself is pretty generally applicable to pretty much everyone. [J again] Another spin on this is to cook up thirteen really interesting items -- all with very florid backstories. A tinker rolls into town, selling all these objects. Once they're sold (to the unwitting), they each have a powerful boon & bane -- atmospheric and neat. Maybe each of the weapons is possessed by a demon, or is a catspaw for various demon lords. The 'quest' is actually a more passive one, with less immteractivity required, but crazy things start getting triggered if the objects all get together. Possibly quest hooks for goodies: destroying the items (a unique destruction type for each one), or uniting them and summoning their master (for baddies), or maybe some other wealthy person who wants to collect the whole set.
2. A race around Avendar, with a prize given by Zilba Gralci. The race might be to visit a special location in N areas, or to bring back a seemingly trivial object (but hard to find/guess) from same. The benefit of such a quest is that it might even be an automated one. Kestrel: I have one of these cooked up. See me for details.
3. Banks: I think this is a good idea (though a little tricky since you might need to do more with the economy first). Medieval bankers are effectively loan sharks, which makes them really good foils for CG/CN characters. Driving them to a place where they're dangerous for players could be tricky though. How do we force players to interact with them? One thought is for their to be some big crisis threatening a city, and fixing it requires building some macguffin -- but building is *incredibly* expensive. So, the kindly bankers show up, ready to make a loan.... and maybe they're secretly behind the danger. Or just ready for some medieval shock capitalism, with a side of indentured servitude for fun. - Jolinn
   1. One of the current primary financiers is a priestess of Serachel... -neon
   2. I believe at least one person has an outstanding home bid from Corolon Lanthis. If this was sufficiently awesome and already available, with some nice amenities such as location, accoutrement, or any other reason, and most importantly cost significantly more than the character has in the bank, a small suggestion of the visiting the banking house could trigger this scenario. Brazen 12:15, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
   3. Or, a loosely affiliated group of bandits has begun routinely robbing only cash from adventurers. Why are they suddenly so active, and only targeting adventurers? Are they collecting all of this cash to buy out all the farms (lol), or are they in the employ of some other entity who is funding their own project? The bandits could be dropping all of this money into one place which is aptly named enough to cause some frantic searching, whether to stop the bandits or to just get their hands on all the platinum. Brazen 12:15, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

More Ideas:

1. Vaeshir sits on the iron throne of Logor, his immortality and power won at the price of binding himself to the position of demon lord. Is he dissatisfied with his lot?
2. Zyal, once a mortal raider, has emerged as a powerful demonic entity. Now known as the warlord of Chaigidon, it is known that there exists substantial enmity between Chaigidon and Logor. It is known that Chaigidon has traffic with Serachel, as it is a city which exists on the border between the Void and Dream. Chagrob, former Grand Vizier of Logor, spoke against Zyal in the past, and tension might still exist between the two.
3. Chagrob, former Grand Vizier of Logor, now serves as advisor to the demilich Vaeshir, new ruler of Logor. Does Chagrob seat to unseat Vaeshir? Or, newly freed from the Iron Throne, does he seek goals completely orthogonal to his former position?
4. With the thwarting of the last of the Spawn of Sothmogga, Converu returned to Avendar as a demigod. He has remained relatively inactive, and his role and intentions as a deity remained unexplored.
5. Gyel-Xan, leader of the Spawn of Sothmogga, and presumably the last of their number, is trapped within the Astral Prison. Surely he seeks release, and revenge against Converu, the Titans, and the Celanim.
6. Some fragment of Gyel-Xan's essence was injected into the scholar Yesa's mind. The device use to impart this knowledge might still exist -- and one who activated it might be similarly infected.
7. The lair used by the Spawn of Sothmogga in their rituals still exists below the northwestern section of Var Bandor. This facility would no doubt be of great interest to the void scholars in Var Bandor, Earendam, or most any major cities. It would also prove useful to the shuddeni, or darker creatures drawn to the sinister aura of the place.
8. The Realm of Dreams exists as an area, but is not yet generally accessible. A major quest might involve a return of Dream's nearness to our own world. Known methods of accessing Dream presently:
   1. Ketsari fungus (available in the gallery)
   2. The Orb of Dreams (either a unique ancient artifact which when shattered opens a gateway to the realm of Dreams)
   3. Ancient magic, available on a one-use scroll
   4. Plane traveling magic, either ancient or unknown in nature (see Belerin's codex)
      An introduction via this method might include a 'menace from Dream', such as the incursion of nightmares into the prime material, or Chaigidon claiming a portion of the Dream dear to Rystaia, or essential to mortal sanity. (Or another manipulation by Serachel...)
9. A plague breaks out in Avendar's major cities, and heroes must race to find a cure (or possibly exacerbating the plague, if evil). Some might be required to fight the plague in towns with temporary remedies, while others would have to seek a cure. An additional twist on this might be that the plague is one which feeds off a person's own internal spiritual power, meaning that the most powerful heroes are the most dreadfully stricken.
10. A variant on the plague of disease is a plague of monsters, threatening attack on Avendar's cities. The plague could be of any kind -- but generally speaking, the quest would involve finding a cure (with CE and NE pc's most likely cutting a deal with the monsters and aiding them.)
11. Bayyal still lies imprisoned above the planes of paradise. While it is doubtful he could ever free himself of his own power, it might be possible for a mortal of sufficient power and of character similar to Bayyal's might *take his place* on the Stone, thereby freeing the deity.
12. A murder mystery: It might be cool to do a murder mystery plot, where players have to interrogate NPC's, and gather evidence in a clever way to find a murderer.
13. The mind of Shasarik, dragon of the void, has been largely unseen since his ascension to draconic form. Obvious ties exist between him, Serachel, Logor, and the demilich Vaeshir. What manipulations the young dragon might attempt, or who he might serve as a tool for, remain to be seen.
14. The srryn of Sythtys remain unusually inactive. The elders might plan any number of actions against the world at large.
15. Any of the other innumerable threads surrounding the Shunned.
16. The gem containing Vaialos's essence is suddenly rediscovered.
17. An evil entity works through PC cutouts and proxies to start a war between the Champions and the Conclave of Arisuth, intending to take advantage of the ensuing chaos to steal or have stolen some item of lore.
18. A Harrudim prince arrives on a tour with his retinue and hosts a gladiatorial tournament: this would be longer than the typical Dolgrael event, leaving room on the periphery for intrigue, betting, and sabotaging the fights.
19. The shuddeni have been raising a dread war-beast. Manipulate (though it probably won't be necessary) some good PC/s into slaying it, which causes its evil spirit nature to take over, allowing the beast to burst forth onto the surface. Chaos ensues, and the PCs must find a special material to kill it.
20. X-hunts: foxes, snipes, ogres, etc. etc. Take pre-existing progs, tart up a custom version, make it global. Good for lowbies and midbies too.
21. Scouting missions: more on this later
22. Avendar-specific riddle games
23. Kill X baddie: again, a light quest, but think Hero Day. It's easy for us to do, and somewhat novel. Can shallowly echo/reinforce the a theme of any given arc.
24. Khamurn Shrine run is all progged up and hot to trot. Was run as a parallel PvE run, with 2 sides racing through the challenges to see who could get to the sweet nougat center first. Needs to be populated with short-term loots (maybe) and needs to have something to keep people busy as they go through the different paths (1-person individual challenges). Make sure you recall which bots were used to set it all up start to finish -- there were several -- and document [ I documented the list of armorybot's loot, but should probably be toned down to match the number of players]
25. A large bounty is offered for items actually stolen from other pc-s (we could implement a flag for this fairly easily). As thieves & bandits begin to profit from this, questions start getting asked. Where is the gold from this coming from? Is it a Harrudin fence trying to ruin the underground economy of the Dantaron river valley region? Or, if we wanted to introduce a god of thieves, this could be part of a wide-ranging plot to bring this god (back) into existence in Avendar. Could lead to an interesting investigation for the Guardians.
26. A contest between N different gods, over who can sacrifice the most valuable items to them in a time window. This could occur as the backdrop to a larger quest, introducing diametrically opposed deities, or simply between warring (evil?) factions of different aspects of a diety.
27. A string of pregnancies across various locales and to various races results in horrific aberrations being whelped (most of which are not viable). Investigation/questing reveals that these births are the result of a cult of demon worshippers. Every such pregnancy is the result of an abduction/seduction of the mothers by someone possessed by a demon. The plot superficially appears to be about creating a demon army -- the actual plot is to provide vessels for demons to gain a permanent foothold beyond the veil. Once 'perfected', the demonic hosts could reproduce of their own accord, and each of them would be freely possessable by demons without the requirement for any rituals or expenditure of power.
28. A race around Avendar, with a prize given by Zilba Gralci. The race might be to visit a special location in N areas, or to bring back a seemingly trivial object (but hard to find/guess) from same. The benefit of such a quest is that it might even be an automated one. Kestrel: I have one of these cooked up. See me for details.
29. A quest centered around a deity|entity|individual who died or was in some other way removed from the world. The condition of their return is that one of their followers must pray for their return -- but owing to the curse/circumstance of their removal, no one may speak their name but a follower of that deity -- but all followers of that deity died as a result of the same terrible calamity. Except for the one, who is imprisoned on some other plane of existence| preserved as a statue | who is trapped as a ghost in Avendar waiting to be given a body to carry out their final duty.
30. Magical plague: Something has gone wrong with the etheric ties between scholars and their elements, resulting in a 20% spell failure rate (failure means a series of random effects a la the wand of wonder). As a bonus, it's an actual plague, spread by plague fobs or whatever, so scholars who spend too much time around infected wizards contract it themselves. The likely perpetrator is a god of chaos, the result of a scroll containing ancient magic being invoked carelessly (sort of the equivalent of some future humans stumbling upon the last smallpox archive), or even something relatively picayune like an alchemist who tried to brew a potion to stifle the competition from the mage guilds.
31. Genocide: Some terrific force wants to eliminate all of a given race. Maybe it's to denude a god of power, maybe it's a personal enmity, whatever the reason -- some force, plague, curse, something is set to destroy members of this race. Very challenging episode, since it turns everyone of a given race into pariahs -- so difficult to pull off, but a lot of ways to go with this.
32. Subversion: Important mobs in various cities and locales begin acting oddly. Are they being possessed? Infected with something horrible (a la the spawn of sothmogga)? Part of a secret conspiracy? Quest begins as a simple fetch quest for this important mob, and the odd behavior is noticed, and escalated from there.
33. The Walking Dead: Ok, zombie plot arcs are overdone. But what if all the dead mobs/players in a given area go 'wrong' -- and given birth to a horrible monster? This sort of 'plague of the dead' could be treated like one of the plague quests, and easily tied into demo lore.
34. Something horrible is happening to Firiel, the tree of life. Like culprits are a group of cultists who have 'tasted the fruits of the tree of Gamaloth', some sort of monstrous plane shifting aberration that's feeding on the tree, or a scholar who's trying to use it to grant himself immortality (wait, that's the plot of Baldur's Gate II). This gets foreshadowed by horrible things happening to nature -- Shargob critters expanding into Qilarn, trees dying, treants going insane, etc.
35. Rescue the maiden: Simple nice one shot, 'my daughter has been kidnapped by X'. Turn the plot around though: the questers find out that the daughter is actually magically gifted, and has orchestrated her own 'kidnapping' in order to collect the ransom from her father and to avoid an arranged marriage.
36. The X plagues of Y: This is an expansion of the various 'fight a plague' quests. This would be a nice leadup to a disaster/danger of Biblical proportions. Each leg of the quest is a dark sign or a plague: Locusts, rivers turning to blood, physical maladies, the sun blotted out, etc. Each one of the plagues has to be fought, and they're all leading up to something terrible.
37. Nightfall: If we wanted to do just one of these biblical-scale plagues, have the sun be blotted out by darkness. It's the plot of some group or entity who benefits greatly from their being no direct sunlight. Or, some group who wants to make some other group like that seem like patsies for what's really going on.
38. Banks. They should do something besides just sit there. Maybe spooky bankers like the Braavosi from George Martin's books.
39. Terrorist water scholars are trying to flood the world by creating magical springs.
40. A certain subset of characters begin seeing horrible things visible only to them. Maybe hideous monsters, maybe a kind of 'they live' style truth about certain important mobs. This insight might come about because they've been blessed by the gods, or encounter some seemingly innocuous item that gives them this insight (or, tell them they've been abducted and subtly magically altered). They then have to convince the rest of the game world this threat is coming, all the while seemingly madmen. Who or what is behind it is an open question, but it'd be an interesting mechanic to play out.
41. The case of the missing.. city. An idea for a large quest: A major Avendarian city vanishes from the face of Avendar. (Krilin is perfect, since it's just a smidge remote, and full of hardy hill giant fighting folk.) At first questions get asked, and this leads to a number of possible suspect groups. You'd play it out so each of the groups has motive (and maybe even means), but then ended up not being responsible. Questions also get raised about why this particular city vanished -- is it because it was remote, and would be less missed? Or was it doing threatening some very powerful forces? Then we play out what happened to the city. The most likely candidate is that it was transferred to somewhere really dangerous -- like a pocket dimension on the edge of the void (or plane of fire), and the hardy Kriliners have been holding out barely. Then we get to redo the area as holding out beyond hope -- with a period of a few weeks where adventurers can go there and help, and a final concluding act where the city gets rescued (and might be a segueway into a Krilin revamp). Motives/explanations: Somehow a demon summoning there went drastically wrong. Miners near there uncovered an artifact of ancient magic, and the artifact took the city away. Or it was so powerful, it lured very powerful forces into acting. Or maybe the void dragon Shasarik masterminded it just because he wanted to see how long it would take the people of Krilin before they would go mad, marooned in the drifts of the void. Lots of potential explanations -- lots of fodder for a huge, lengthy quest.