DM in need of storyline help

[Kaeso]

Vechel, if you somehow managed to find this thread then please leave. Spoilers to the campaign will follow :smallannoyed:

To anybody else:
I'm currently running a solo campaign for a friend of mine, a firelord dwarven warblade. If I'm not mistaken he's planning to take a level or two in bard to gain white raven inspiration in combination with dragonfire inspiration to give himself (and any eventual allies) a nice bonus to their damage output. I've allowed him to use a warcry as his "instrument".

Anyway, the story as of now is as follows: his character wants to join a group of the most prestigious knights in the known world (the knights of the Hammerhand) and to be deemed worthy he has to complete a few missions for one of the chapterhouses. He's a candidate knight if you will. His first mission was quite simple: guide a group of merchants to the castle of the king in a neighbouring kingdom. The old king, once a strong warrior and brilliant tactician, is seeing his kingdom crumble before his eyes as the dwarves of the Mythral mountain (who are officially still under his rule) are showing signs of rebellion.

My plan for Tarugars next mission is to let the king hire him to go to the Mythral mountains and look for a diplomatic solution to this problem, since they're more likely to trust a fellow dwarf than a human (who they see as their suppressive overlords). I'm however, planning to use this mission as a step up towards a large, scheming villain that will be the BBEG for the entirety of the campaign. I was planning to do something with kobolds occupying the mines of the Mythral mountain, something which would spark the conflict between the dwarves and humans (since the dwarves pay a certain ammount of tribute in mythral to the humans) which would expose a draconic kobold as the leader of the kobolds with some kind of grand scheme, but I'm not sure how to do this. Could any talented writer please help me make sense of this?

[Kol Korran]

i'll give it a shot"

The King demands mostly Mithral, but the dwarves mine other ores, mainly Iron which is their main commodity to trade, and is essential to them
the dwarves know of kobolds in the tunnels below, but so far they have mostly been pests, nothing serious, no real threat and mostly discarded. at times the kobolds came to the mines and stole bits and pieces, but were mostly harmless
a short while ago a new power moved in (some lieutenant of the BBEG) who both educated the kobolds more, and provided them with new powers, equipment and the like.
part of the "benefits" included means of subterfuge (invisibility, a way to bypass the dwarven guards, perhaps even minor magic items to appear as dwarves) and.... some alchemical solution that taints Mithral, make it break after some time.
the kobolds infiltrate the mines, and taint the Mithral, which the dwarves don't catch. later on the king's men find the equipment brittle and useless.
then comes the accusations the dwarves are giving tainted goods. then come the dwarves accusations the king is trying to mess with them. which "prove true" as the king demands a greater tribute in iron to compensate for the Mithral, a fact that hits the dwarves hard. the dwarves now suspect it was the king's inspectors who might tainted the mithral on purpose.
a few things to complicate/ make things more interesting:
your guy is sent with some other councilor/ adviser oif the king's men. as your guy investigates, suddenly the councilor/ adviser and another high ranking dwarf are found dead, having supposedly fought with each other. the kobolds or their aids (see soon) killed both and made them look like they killed each other. tensions rise very, very fast (put a few more humans in the delegation to show the king's side). this puts pressure on the dwarf from both sides, to PROVE the fault of the others.
to really juice things up, make some high ranking dwarf influenced by the same power behind the scenes. it should look as if he staged this just so the dwarves could rebel, but there may be signs of some outside influence. this dwarf /dwarves could really help the kobolds in this, and at first it might lead your guy in the wrong direction. once this is found out, it's up to your guy to prove the rebel acted on his own.
you can let your guy explore various clues. they could lead him to the kobolds, or to the traitor amongst the dwarves. in either case i suggest to leave the fight with the traitor to the last. if he's found out soon, have him vanish with a trail suggesting the kobolds. if the kobolds are killed first, he can still vanish and be found at some "scared ground" of the dwarves, preventing anyone from the same clan to attack him. but since your guy is from another clan...
i think clearing the dwarf clan's name from the traitor and the danger below might prove quite an experience.


hope this works out. i'd love to hear how this turned out.

[Kaeso]

That's... actually really good and creative, thanks! I'll use it.
I don't think I'll be able to tell you how it went any time soon though, we're doing a PbP game so updates are a bit slow :smallfrown: