The Hall of Rock
by SirohI have begun looking at modules and writing notes for background. I'm thinking of trying a Darokin based campaign this time around (I've done Karameikos and Thyatis previously) and I have begun moving things around and taking inspiration mostly. I looked at The Hall of Rock adventure from B1-B9 In Search of Adventure and re-imagined it as a grand campaign rather than a single adventure.
This is what I have so far:
Journey to the Rock - Thousands of years ago a city-state founded by the first Alphatian settlers was overwhelmed by its enemies the Flame Wizards and banished into another plane known as the Shadow Dimension. Two members of this nation's magical leadership escaped and were given tokens which both will identify them to one another, but together serve as both a gateway of communications with the council's current members and a focus for their immense magical powers in an effort to prepare a counterspell to break the banishment.
Each token will work only for one who has the pure blood of the city-state flowing through their veins, and they can keep the person tied to it alive, if the individual so wishes. The Flame Wizards discovered the existence of the tokens from spies and cast a curse on them. Nobody with the bloodline necessary to activate the tokens can approach the locations they were hidden.
One of the two mage council members tried in vein to venture to the location of her talisman, but she was stymied over the course of several hundred years and gave up. She melded into the local settlement and started a family, creating a line of mages that has persisted till today, some two thousand years later. After watching over her family for a thousand years she released her hold on the token and passed away leaving her descendants the information and location of the token. It is now a family legend that if the Hall of Rock may be breached, and the token lifted from its resting place, once returned to the scion of the line, it will mean indescribable reward. The legend clearly describes the location that must be searched, and that a curse keeps family members from approaching beyond a certain point themselves. One such man, Erasmus Arkayz, is a budding nobleman and sorcerer with an eye to find the treasure of the family legend and become the finest name in his family history.
The councilor's counterpart, Pomander, has taken more ruthless actions over the intervening millennia, partially because his frustration compounded by his immortality have led him into a downward spiral of madness. He maintains his goals, because he truly wishes for his people to be free, but he has abandoned more savory methods in his attempts to recover his token. Now he is the taskmaster driving the inefficient hordes of humanoids on the edge of civilization because although they are hard to control with precision, there is a great supply of them, and he has no compunction about using them unto their deaths. His talisman is hidden at the bottom of a grotto that used to be home to a black dragon. Other things have moved in since then, and the humanoids he has sent in the past have all died along the way to the final resting place of the token.
Pros: An entire people may be freed from captivity in another plane.
Cons: An entire population of powerful wizards with Alphatian sensibilities will be returned to a Known World a few years after the rest of their people have suffered great loss and left a power vacuum.
POTENTIAL PLOT TWISTS
Round the Bend: Pomander has gone stark raving mad and he only wants to free his people so he can take revenge on the councilors who decreed his personal hell. He intends to resurrect them and consign them to a living hell of his own making.
Kings of Shadow: The ancient alphatians adapted and have mastered the ways of the Shadow Plane, becoming the undisputed masters of that dimension and its ways of magic (which are inherently different than those of Mystara). They don't want to be rescued and see the communication as cues that there exists another world for them to conquer. This is the Shadow Dimension of the Dark Shire article, and can be tied somewhat to the Nightmare Dimension if necessary.
My Cousin my Rival: One of the PCs is a member of the Arkayz bloodline, so distantly related however that they don't know the connection themselves. When they handle the token it bonds to them, explains its mission and points them towards the other token. This will lead the PC into conflict with Erasmus, who is not as altruistic as the founder of his bloodline.
Any thoughts? Any more optional plot twists?