I've got DM's writer's block and could use some feedback on the next adventure of my Eberron campaign.
So we're about to have our second D&D session in this Eberron campaign and I'm a bit stuck on what to write for the next adventure. They are getting close to the climax on the first adventure that I made up and I want whatever The second adventure is to be able to tie into the end. I've placed seeds that there is a larger villain involved in the overarching story of the game, I'm just struggling to find that missing piece that will connect the previous adventure to the next, to the player's personal stories, and will account for all the possible endings of this first adventure.
Here's what I wrote for the first adventure and then I'll follow that with what actually happened in the actual game. During session zero where we created our characters, the players as a group decided that their characters were working for a small newspaper in sharn called The Sharn lamplighter. They liked the idea of being "conspiracy busters."
In my notes for the first game, there were two villains, one of the villains was for this particular adventure, the other villain was for a larger overarching plot that only teased them. The adventure began with a dream where they met this larger villain, the dream took place in a dark and twisted version of a seaside town in Cyre. A dark carnival made up of aberrant monsters from the plane of madness was being led as a parade through the twisted landscape. I use this as an opportunity for a combat tutorial for the new players which was most of the party. This was also a chance for them to roll dice and see the game mechanics without any actual risk.
The carnival will be the main villain of the campaign. Carnival has a double meaning here in that it also means farewell to the flesh, and the carnival is a creation of an ascended cultist of the dragon below, named Harleton ir'Card to reopen Xoriat the realm of madness to destroy time and by extension, the limitations of death. He has a human avatar that still moves in the elite circles of sharn but that's now just a puppet.
This particular vision has been appearing in the minds of various people in Sharn. It's not everybody, it's just a few specific chosen people. Two of the player characters are refugees from Cyre hence why I set the vision there. since they also said that they were interested in finding out what happened to Cyre on the day of mourning, I decided that the carnival had seized the real Siri and the mournland is what is left.
Now for the other villain, the other villain is a group called The Hunt Club. They are a group of four wealthy fail sons who have taken to hunting down in murdering refugees. One of them lures the refugees into being a guard or some other job like that for an excursion into the undercity. It's all a ruse though and they wind up luring them into a dungeon where they murder them for sport. The dungeon I designed has two levels, one is an upper balcony that's protected by grading and has view of the level below. From above the villains let loose dangerous aberrant monsters and watch the monsters kill or maim their targets.
The aberrant monsters were summoned there by the other villain, the lair was once used by Harleton Ir'Card for his practice summoning rituals earlier in his career. And before that it was a library of dark knowledge dating back to a goblin empire that once lived where Sharn is.
The adventurers day began with them in their news office discovering that they were low on cash and they needed the story of the century to really take off as a newspaper. Their office is in the refugee district, and the level above them is a soup kitchen. a volunteer with the soup kitchen came down and asked for help with dealing with the chaos of a much larger crowd than normal.
Where I went wrong here was I didn't expect the players to investigate why there was a larger crowd than normal because I didn't have an actual explanation prepared. It wound up being okay for the most part because I came up with something on the fly. There was a local hate monger named Hatley the dwarf. The other soup kitchen in the district had been vandalized and ransacked by people inspired by his hateful rhetoric. During their time helping out at the soup kitchen they heard about the disappearances of refugees and the lack of work available. There was supposed to be a whole thing where they were going to be looking into various rumors that they could report on and finding rumors about the members of The Hunt Club that were incriminating as well as disappearances in the district but that never wound up happening.
There was a scene where they tracked down Hatley and confronted him. Hatley was just a grifter who sold fake medicine who also got into some profitable hate-mongering and some journalism with the propaganda outlet the voice of Breland. His main issue is that he's an attention seeker and a grifter, and while he did not plan the attack on the other soup kitchen, it was his rhetoric that inspired a crowd to do it themselves.
The story got derailed when one of the players use some overly lethal tactics and dealing with Hatley. She used her dragon breath as a dragonborn and killed some of the commoners in the crowd and barely damaged Hatley himself. This was a new player so, after they got arrested they got released on work release. It was implausible that they could commit murder and still get out of jail but I needed to get the game moving and back on track. It was then they found out that some of the people they help in the kitchen that day had been disappeared themselves.
They shook down some criminal contacts, I had this whole thing where they were going to go to sneak into a party but that didn't happen either. They came up with a better idea of just trying to get disappeared themselves. The killer's M.O. was to solicit people who were unemployed for work, only to lure them into the dungeon. The session ended with them making it into the dungeon. they don't actually know anything about the Hunt Club themselves or the fact that the members of The Hunt Club are sons of wealthy families who will be upset if the players kill them without bringing back proof.
This coming session is going to be them exploring this dungeon, and fighting some aberrations along with the Hunt Club. There will be some complications if the hunt club members are killed without the players knowing who they are and who they just killed. My concern now is if the game runs short and a breeze through this dungeon as to what happens next. What is their next goal? What is their next adventure? I'd like it to tie into the larger plot about Harleton Ir'Card and his goals.
The dungeon itself has some treasure hoards that are mostly books that can be sold to Morgrave University. Where it goes from there depends on what caught the players interest the most. Here are some hooks that I am considering let me know if you can think of any more.
The players may want to continue investigating Hatley the Dwarf and find a way to bring him down.
The players may kill the members of The Hunt Club but not bring sufficient evidence back to justify murdering the sons of wealthy members of Sharn society.
If they breeze through the dungeon, getting out of the dungeon may be complicated and they may have to fight their way through some of the summoned monsters in the sewers leading out. I'm not going to run this unless the session runs short though.
One of the serial killing failsons is the middle child of the Ir'Tains, this may lead the players to want to investigate the Ir'Tain gala where I might have them meet ir'Card's Avatar. all four of the fail sons have also been having the visions if the players take the time to interrogate any of them before killing them. They also leave evidence behind that suggest that they have been having endless nightmares about the carnival and that this influence their turn to killing people.
I came up with an NPC who works at morgrave University who might be interested and talking with them if they bring back the books. This particular professor who, I named Linus Morfallon, know something about the various gates that have sealed away Xoriat and is an agent of The gatekeepers.
I'm trying to think of other possible outcomes that I need to prepare for. Anyway that's where I'm stuck.
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