Quick Campaign Ideas

[Aldarin]

Hello all!
So, right to business, I have a D&D meeting for the start of a new campaign in an hour and am looking for quick story hooks I can build on.
Thanks!

[CantigThimble]

A couple that I've got lying around:

The PCs are in a city when a building catches on fire and people start screaming. Monsterous invaders (of one flavor or another) have attacked an important elven noble. If the PCs take the opportunity to help some people, perhaps endearing themselves to the noble's family, then they will find that the noble is dead but the attackers seem to be armed with dwarven weapons...
(Ideas from there might be tracking down where the attackers came from, looking into weapon merchants in the city or being offered employment by the remaining family of the noble)

A ship has drifted into harbor, no one has seen anyone on deck, people sent aboard to investigate have not returned. The owner of the ship (not the captain, but the wealthy merchant who paid for it) pays the PCs to investigate. Onboard, they discover that undead Shadows haunt the ship and many of the dead crew are restless. (Zombies or skeletons) The only survivor is a half mad cook who sealed nearly every airhole in his kitchen with grease so the shadows couldn't get in through the cracks. Between his ravings, the captains log and the notes of the ship's mage they piece together that the ship was attacked by Sahuagin pirates. The pirates were driven off, but among the loot was an arifact that made the dead restless when away from seawater for too long which is still in the hold. The Sahuagin might want this artifact back, but due to its nature it's dangeous to store it too far from shore least it start to raise the dead again.

[Naanomi]

Hrm... the last three campaigns I started...

1) a strange but largely harmless cult has descended on a mining town and are buying up unusual red crystals discovered at the mine. The locals love the money, but why the sudden interest? And why are the miners digging up this crystal finding it so hard to fall asleep anymore?

2) unexpected snowfall has trapped many merchants and mercenaries in Halbreig valley; but the local Baron is not being hospitable to the travelers. The rumors stir that there isn't enough food in the valley for all these people... and that the blocking of the pass was no accident.

3) The succession war in Bliznusia had finally ended, and the nation will long have to lick it's wounds to recover and reintegrate... but it seems that factions still exist that want to prolong the conflict; factions from outside the nation that may have started the war to begin with.

[CaptainSarathai]

Multiple hooks, one adventure:

The players are in a moderately sized village, surrounded with a low but formidable stone wall, and dominated by a large hilltop manor where the baron and his treasury reside.

Hook 1. Stolen Goods
A blacksmith in the city has had a shipment of mining tools go missing, just outside of town. They aren't too sure of who exactly they sold the shipment to, the buyer handled all their business via correspondence and seemed a little suspicious. But money's money, and "miners never was too smart anyhow" so the Smith sent his assistant to deliver the order and collect the payment. Now he's gone missing. The Smith suspects that the apprentice ran off with the money, and has put a bounty out to find the man and return the stolen tools.

Hook 2. The Noise in the Well
Despite a good winter and rainy spring, the town well seems much lower than usual. Panic hasn't set in yet, but if the water continues to drop, there will be.
Moreover, a few of the local women who fetch water from the well (and remember - ladies of "ill repute" often hung out by wells) have heard strange tapping and clanging noises coming from the depths of the well.

Hook 3. The Missing Love-Birds
Two young people have gone missing in town. A somewhat sordid love affair between a noble and peasant. The noble's family is fairly certain that the miserable lowborn peasant has tempted the misguided youth into eloping, and they're not doing anything to stop the shenanigans. The peasant's family insists that this is not at all in the character of their child, and instead suspect foul play.
A little digging reveals that the two had frequent trysts by moonlight, at the town well.

Hook 4. Hank the Hobo
Hank is a vagrant, and the town drunk. He's could he as humorous or as tragic as you like to make him, but he's known for being a little "unhinged" and frequently makes up tall tales and outlandish stories. Or at least, the town thinks his stories are outlandish.
Lately, he's been raving about "wee folk down innee well"
He claims that sometimes, at night they come and give him some booze, and ask him what he knows about the town (which is a lot he's lived there all his life). He's sure they don't mean any harm, "they're awful nice folk an' all, handin' out Goblin Fire-Brandy all easy-like. Why, he ain't had any o' that since back in the war. Why, this whole town was built on looted goblin gold from the war. Treasury's more'n full t'burstin' with it."

The Story - Goblin Sappers
So now we have a pretty good idea of what's going on.
The goblins are out to reclaim the gold that was stolen from them during a past war. Gold that currently languishes in the treasure vaults beneath the baron's mansion.
To get into the treasury, the goblins have set up a mining operation outside of town. They falsified an order for mining equipment from the town blacksmith, then ambushed the delivery wagon and stole the tools without paying. The apprentice has been killed or captured, based on the tone of your campaign.
With tools in hand, the goblins have begun digging into the town. Once they dug far enough, they started following underground aquifers to make for easier going. They diverted water where they could, but the tunnels still have some water flowing through. This accounts for the drop in water level in the town well. Their mining is what is causing the sounds heard near the well during late hours.
Eventually, the goblins reached the well, and were finally able to get their bearings on the town. To do so, they had to climb up and out of the well. This is where they've run into Hank, but also the missing lovebirds. The two youths were by the well when the goblins appeared, and as a result have been either captured or killed, before they could warn the town. Hank, however, seemed harmless in his drunken senility, and the goblins have been pumping him for information about the treasury, town layout, construction methods, guard habits, etc.

What players might do:
Your players might either head out of town to locate the lost mining gear, or they could head straight down into the well. Set up your dungeon fairly linearly, representing the goblin tunnel which runs from the ambush site to the well and perhaps slightly further into town.
Small branches could go off, accounting for the branching, twisting nature of the aquifers. The goblins could have simply avoided some of these paths, giving the party a chance to circle around and ambush them a bit, but at the expense of having to fight some wild creatures or deal with a few natural hazards such as cave-ins, gas pockets, or flash floods.

This gives your party more to do than just a simple dungeon crawl or fight. There's social interaction, some fighting and exploring, mysteries to solve - add some locks (maybe at the vault) and you can really spotlight every class here.
Intelligent players or "completionists" who investigate all the leads might be able to piece together the story before facing a single goblin, but even if your players are dumber than a sack of bricks (most are) they'll still get from Point-A to Point-B eventually.

There's a chance that the players might even side with the goblins, if they feel bad about the stolen gold. In that case, you may want to prepare some kind of tunnel fighting or heist type raid on the treasury.

[Specter]

A man shambles into a tavern, orders ale and sits down with the PC. He takes a few savory gulps, lays a map on the table and says, "avenge me and my comrades". He succumbs to the poison in his veins shortly after.

The map, if followed to the letter, leads to a drow palace, conveniently located... under the kingdom's castle.