Raw Generation:
Theme: Forbidden
Villain goal/reason: Greed
Location: Mountain
Key NPC: Noble teacher (Geography)
Key NPC relation to king: Cousin (direct relation)
Adventure Trigger: Summoned by group
Major goal: Root out spies/minions of evil
Obstacle to goal: Perform ritual
Location Feature: Tapestry
Phenomena: Loss of memory
Artifact: Relic: Horn/Instrument
This one is fun. I like how the main NPC is a noble who is directly related to the king. This means they have connections and power. What kind of problems do nobles have? Probably political ones, and those that endanger their reputations. At first I was annoyed by the mundanity of a geography teacher, but I appreciate how it frames the disparity between classes; the peasants cannot read or write, and yet the nobles’ children are learning things as specialized (and largely useless) as geography.
The theme is forbidden. There are lots of forbidden things; relationships, hobbies, magic… Nobles have a taste for the forbidden fruit. Let’s come back to this.
Our reason is greed, which makes me think that whatever the McGuffin is, nobles are fighting over it. Wealth is my first choice for greed, and let’s not rule it out yet, but I would suggest that wealth alone is not a good enough motivator for the rich; wealth buys you a McMansion in the hills, but power is the stone foundation it’s built upon. There’s a ritual involved, so there’s some dark juju happening here. The tapestry is another interesting wrinkle.
Our mission is to root out spies and/or minions of evil. You don’t have spies unless there’s someone worth spying on. Perhaps our noble teacher has a dark secret? Or perhaps there’s a race to find an even greater secret? And how is memory loss involved?
We still need to tie in our artifact, a magical horn or instrument of some kind.
Here’s a funny idea, since the trigger is summoned by group, what if some nobles are conducting a summoning ritual, and the players emerge? They’re part of a misguided spell, or perhaps they really are the right people for the job. Perhaps the obstacle for the players is undoing the spell put upon them? Some deeply inconvenient thing, such as permanent banishment, also must be resolved before they can get on with their lives. I don’t like restrictive time limits or greatly limiting player power, so the spell might simply prevent them from finishing the quest until they break it.
Let’s not forget the mountain location, which I see as a noble’s summer home, or castle. It might involve dwarves, but I’d rather it didn’t.
The objective is to find the spies, which just screams “intrigue” to me.
Okay, here’s my best take. I pulled the names from an online generator.
Nicoletta Porter is the king’s cousin. She has made her living tutoring the children of nobility in geography and history, but she’s always had a secret interest in dark magic. She finances expeditions to recover rare artifacts, some of which have turned out to be magical. The latest one, the Horn of Zhadzais, has proven most interesting; it was recovered from a rare witch-stone mine. Naturally, all of the witch-stone has already been seized by the local Duke for his own purposes, but Nicoletta was able to secure the horn for herself.
While determining the horn’s magical properties, Nicoletta (or perhaps one of her blithering assistants) activated it by accident, resulting in the loss of nearly all memory of everyone staying in the King’s summer home, far into the mountains (it’s normal to keep minimal staff and perhaps a few relatives in these places when the king’s not using them). Here lies Nicoletta’s problem; she's known for some time that thieves had infiltrated home, and discovered her artifact recovery scheme (which is quite illegal). They were poised to remove her and her cache of artifacts from her vault. Unfortunately for these thieves, they were in the house when the horn was activated, robbing them of their memory and their mission.
Now, there is a house full of servants and spies who aren’t sure who they are, but they have dim recollections of themselves, and they recover more of their memory every day. Nicoletta was lucky, remembering more of the events than anyone (“good breeding, I expect), and is able to communicate the issue to the party, who were delivering groceries and other miscellaneous supplies to the summer house. Now they’re racing against the clock to find the spies before their memories return and they complete their mission.
Performing a ritual with the horn should fix everyone’s memory.
Possible twist: The quest giver is not Nicoletta Porter, but one of the thieves/assassins sent to take her stuff. They mistakenly identify themselves as her, because their memory has been so adversely affected, they remember some details of the mission. When the players see paintings of the real Nicoletta (in the form of an elaborate tapestry) they are able to make the connection.
What’s the stop the players just killing everyone to be safe? Let’s mix in some of the royal family, who were visiting for a holiday when everything went down. They don’t need to be the heirs to the throne necessarily (though that would be funny), but cousins and other relations help prevent abject murder. Hopefully. If murder still happens, the players become full-blown traitors and wanted criminals, which will certainly lead to more interesting and difficult decisions down the line.
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