Need idea for an intermission adventure.

[Infernum]

My players just finished the temple section of the Shattered Gates of Slaughterguard. They are not at the level i want them to be at yet, so its time for a side adventure while the paladins and oracles do some divining and learn more about whats going on.

The party consists of a Elven Druid, Elven Ranger, Human Barbarian, and Gnomish Rogue/Illusionist.

As far as the world setting goes, i am running the module pretty much as written, but explaining things like why the drow are there, but they arent calling for reinforcements from the city not to far from the temple sections of Slaughterguard. So far I had them deal with the wererat problem in Sumberton, but now am in need of something else for them to clash against/ go explore.

One of the interesting things I have had happen for this campaign, every time they travel, the random encounter chart has produced bandits for them to fight. So the party has gotten it into their heads that there is obviously a plot line for this bandit epidemic that has beset the valley. I have given this some thought as it would make an interesting challenge and fun story to run about why there are so many bandits.

Other ideas are floating around in my brain, things like investigating an abandoned homestead that now seems to have inhabitants, locating a noble lords missing nephew who went missing in one of the locations on the map(either a forest or mountains/hills) and investigating a cave high up in a cliff face that is rumored to be the location of a long dead thief lords hoard.

Any idea suggestions or comments would be appreciated.

[BG]

I don't actually know the module you're running, so I'll just throw out some generic plot ideas.

One scenario I've had good luck with is essentially running an Invasion of the Body Snatchers by reflavoring the Aranea monster: http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/aranea.htm

It's basically a giant shapeshifting spider. Normally it can only assume one unique humanoid form, but I've allowed the rules where a young aranea can take the form of one humanoid. This allows them to slowly take the place of people, and it basically sets up a situation where they're slowly overtaking a town or village where one-by-one the citizens there start changing. Depending on how dark you want to go, the townsfolk can be alive or dead. The nice thing with Aranea is that they're only CR 4, and can easily be made more powerful if need be.

Another idea is to give them a short sidequest for a very classical horror type game. Have vampires (or vampire spawn depending on their level), ghosts, werewolves, huge old crumbly castles that loom over frightened villages, I mean the works. Go whole hog and work in every single cliche you can, but try to do it in a way that makes things fun.

If you want to go with bandits, I'm always a fan of the character archetype that has a low-born bandit declaring him or herself a makeshift lord, and putting on airs . Maybe they're working in conjunction with an ambitious noble?

I don't know if any of those jump out at you. If you can give me the level your players are, I could probably come up with some more ideas.

[Mikeavelli]

The king has been kidnapped by ninjas. Are the pcs bad enough dudes to save the king?

[mobdrazhar]

The water supply for the town has been poisoned and they have to find out the source of it. The source is a gelatinous cube sitting at the end of the water supply but they have to follow it all the way back and fight all the critters in the aquaduct-esqe system

[Infernum]

The module is the seldom mentioned Shattered Gates of Slaughterguard, a personal favorite of mine as it is well done and gives you a lot of room to play around if you want. I am actually surprised by the number of people who have never heard of it before.

Thanks for the ideas by the way, i shall see what i can do with them.

I need an idea for a recurring villein, as the party has slain the two potential recurring villains and i want them to have someone to rage against from time to time.

[BG]

I recommend Warlocks as good recurring villains, especially over wizards.

Mostly this is because:

a). If you don't like messing around with spell lists (which I don't), invocations are a lot easier to pick than wizard spells, especially at mid-to-high levels.

b). With the right invocation choices, Warlocks can be damned good at escaping.

c). They're also a little more defeatable than Wizards, and ultimately, a recurring villain exists to be overcome.

If you want to keep the villain around for a little bit, you can always try forcing a situation where the PCs have to work with them. Mostly just to see if they'll actually do it, or if they'll, y'know, murder the villain.

[Fitz10019]

The bandits are actually deliberately attempting to destablize the economy of the country -- plotted by a neighboring country. Can a political solution prevent all-out war?

Maybe they can witness a bandit raid from a distance, and suddenly recognize the military-style coordination (specific maneuvers, additional troops in reserves, etc.).

[Quietus]

I'd definitely follow the bandit plotline that's been developing - who's funding the bandits? Why? Look at the roads they're on; Are they well-traveled roads? If not, then why did the bandits pick those roads to randomly be encountered on? Perhaps it's an attempt by <head villain of mini-arc> to slow down the player's progress into the module? This has the nice side effect of giving you the opportunity to make that mini-arc villain be your new recurring villain, someone who has a reason to be a consistent thorn in the PC's sides.

[Telonius]

One interesting thing a DM of mine did when we were running Age of Worms.. we had a session kind of in-between things, where we all rolled up a level 2 mook. We were given some sort of job to do (go into the tomb and see what's there) against an encounter that was pretty much unbeatable (spawn of Kyuss). The mooks were not intended to make it out alive. The idea was to set the tone for the next adventure that the main PCs will have.

You might do something like that. Have them roll up some low-level guards in a caravan, escorting some noble's daughter, or a random MacGuffin, or whatever. They're attacked by bandits who target the thing they're guarding specifically, ignoring the rest of the guards. Set it up so they automatically fail, and have to return back to the lord, but give them some piece of information that the lord doesn't have or doesn't think to ask about. When he gives the PC's the quest to get the person or thing back, you can have one of those guards pipe up with that important piece of information.