4. HQ25 - Story Arc discussion

[Gold Bearer]

Right now, depending on which force the BIG INVASION is made of (Really? What are the last two chapters? Have anyone talked about that?), each new monster gets around 4 quests.

How about greenskins, swamp monsters and beastmen for chapter five and chaos, chaos dwarves, ogres and undead for chapter six.

[gootchute]

The big invasion can be a coalition force of all the new and old monsters. I just threw out the idea of a siege because the heroes are rarely on the defensive and it sounds epic to have them sally forth to disrupt the attackers. Does anyone have any other ideas? The last quests can be trimmed down if earlier chapters are expanded.

So far we have established there will be an artifact that unlocks the power of the other 4 found previously, which is needed to defeat Zargon/Morcar's champion (at least I think we all agreed on this, hard to follow all the threads). Many different stories can be told with this plot device, not only my suggestion.

[Goblin-King]

I pretty much insist we keep the 3-quest intro.
Mostly to teach the players the rule about only being able to shop between chapters, and to be able to at least get a little equipment before the next "big" chapter.
Going through more than 3 quests with naked heroes is gonna be un-fun.

*******************'

Reading back I realized both the Kobold/Fimir and the Chaos Dwarf Arc involves a ritual. While quite different I think it's still too similar plots.
How about I rewrite the chaos dwarf arc to revolve around the dwarfs planning a huge invasion.
The arc will be about foiling the dwarfs' war plans. Killing a warlord/destroying weapon forge/destroy magic source. Something like that.

That will also tie in nicely with the chaos dwarfs being behind the invasion later in the story.
(because the Dark Castle was just one of several secret bastions)

Thoughts?

[knightkrawler]

Go ahead.
Take into consideration Steam Golems and/or Blunderbusses as horrible secret weapons to invade the Empire.
Keep in mind that a Steam Golem miniature could be proxied by any Warmachine Warjack. I'm not saying that it should be a monster the heroes have to face. just an idea.

[MrBigB]

I pretty much insist we keep the 3-quest intro.
Mostly to teach the players the rule about only being able to shop between chapters, and to be able to at least get a little equipment before the next "big" chapter.
Going through more than 3 quests with naked heroes is gonna be un-fun.

*******************'

Reading back I realized both the Kobold/Fimir and the Chaos Dwarf Arc involves a ritual. While quite different I think it's still too similar plots.
How about I rewrite the chaos dwarf arc to revolve around the dwarfs planning a huge invasion.
The arc will be about foiling the dwarfs' war plans. Killing a warlord/destroying weapon forge/destroy magic source. Something like that.

That will also tie in nicely with the chaos dwarfs being behind the invasion later in the story.
(because the Dark Castle was just one of several secret bastions)

Thoughts?

Keep the 3 into quests? Yay! TMU and I have been working on those and making some decent progress

[Gold Bearer]

I pretty much insist we keep the 3-quest intro.

I didn't know we could do that. I hereby pretty much insist that everything I say from this point on regarding this quest pack is gospel and shall be so and is not up for dabate.

Take into consideration Steam Golems and/or Blunderbusses as horrible secret weapons to invade the Empire.

Please, no guns.

[knightkrawler]

I read you.
But I merely mean that the threat of the invention should be thwarted by the heroes. Like killing the daemonsmith.

[Gold Bearer]

The basic idea is to have a chaos lord in possession of the fifth master artefact. It will be an ice themed dungeon (ish) in the mountains somewhere, but without the ice monsters. I want to use our slannesh rules for this quest. They're my favourite and they'll probably be the least used because they'll be in a quest that's mostly undead in the other chapter. I'll put in a slannesh sorcerer because we haven't got one in the other chapter. He can have the AtHO tokens to make him distinct from the other two types. I plan on using ogres and beatsmen again. There's a big enough gap after the ogre/khorne quest to bring them back.

The two ideas I've just had are to have an ice mage npc join them for this quest. There's quite a few ice chaos spells so this will be easy to do. If fact he could simply have the six from the barbarian quest pack. The other idea is to reverse the normal quest narrative. They find the chaos lord/sorcerer/ogre chieftain in the central room so they have the main battle and get the artefact straight away but there's a cave in so the have to find another way out.

If there's no objections I might start on Q21 soon, the rescue of the ice mage. I thinking this quest could be using the kobolds and fimir holding him captive. I've also got an idea for Q20. They have to look for information about the fifth artefact by finding an ancient library. The city is burried deep under ground, lost since some really long ago age Atlantis style. This would be with undead. I've used them here and there but it would be nice if there was one quest in pack that's nothing but undead. I could write into the story that the city was ruled by a powerful warrior king and mage queen, who will obviously be the quest bosses.

[Sjeng]

I pretty much insist we keep the 3-quest intro.

I didn't know we could do that. I hereby pretty much insist that everything I say from this point on regarding this quest pack is gospel and shall be so and is not up for dabate.

No, all the way from the start we had a chapter with starting quests for new heroes. Be that a 3-quest intro or whatever. TMU and BigB have been working on it since then. We're not striking them now.
And the idea of having small chapters without shopping is also something we agreed upon early.
The quests themselves ARE up for debate of course. Like all quests posted here should be. But the story is pretty much decided on, it just needs to be fine tuned.

[Gold Bearer]

Crap, I stepped over into the other part of the story with the siege that Count Mohawk wants to do. I was thinking there were three quests between the chaos chapter and the three I just described but there's no gap. Forget about the ice mage quest. Weak idea anyway considering there's a whole chapter about rescuing battle wizards.

Chapter 6: City Under Siege
Q20 - fight off the invading forces
Q21 - Kill the lieutenant to end the siege. Learn about 5th artifact to defeate big bad
Q22 - Quest for 5th artifact

22: Get info on big bad's weakness, discover it was the 4 McGuffins you found in the various chapters earlier.
23: Quest to get the 5th artifact to unlock the power of the first 4

I meant this...

They have to look for information about the fifth artefact by finding an ancient library. The city is burried deep under ground, lost since some really long ago age Atlantis style. This would be with undead. I've used them here and there but it would be nice if there was one quest in pack that's nothing but undead. I could write into the story that the city was ruled by a powerful warrior king and mage queen, who will obviously be the quest bosses.

...for this...

Get info on big bad's weakness, discover it was the 4 McGuffins you found in the various chapters earlier./Learn about 5th artifact to defeate big bad.

CM were you planning on using two quests or just one fore the siege?

I pretty much insist we keep the 3-quest intro.

I didn't know we could do that. I hereby pretty much insist that everything I say from this point on regarding this quest pack is gospel and shall be so and is not up for dabate.
No, all the way from the start we had a chapter with starting quests for new heroes. Be that a 3-quest intro or whatever. TMU and BigB have been working on it since then. We're not striking them now.
And the idea of having small chapters without shopping is also something we agreed upon early.
The quests themselves ARE up for debate of course. Like all quests posted here should be. But the story is pretty much decided on, it just needs to be fine tuned.

I'm confused.