Within an hour of arriving in town, each party member is approached separately and handed a sealed scroll by a hooded figure who disappears into the crowd before any questions can be asked. The scrolls are identical in appearance but not in content. Each one is addressed personally, demonstrates knowledge the sender shouldn’t have, and delivers a message that lands somewhere between an invitation and a threat. The meeting place is the same in every scroll. So is the time.
When the party arrives at the meeting place, they find each other there, which tells them something immediately: whoever arranged this has been watching all of them. The mysterious figure arrives shortly after and makes the situation plain. Each character has something at stake, spelled out in their scroll. A secret that would ruin them. A family member in harm’s way. A debt called in at the worst possible time. The figure isn’t interested in negotiation. Do the job and the problem goes away, along with a generous payment in gold.
The job is straightforward on its face. A remote temple sits deep inside a dangerous stretch of forest, and inside that temple is a rare magic item. Find it and bring it back. The figure won’t say what the item does, only that it needs to be retrieved intact. The party is given a rough map, a two-week deadline, and nothing else.
The forest earns its reputation. Getting to the temple is a genuine challenge, and the temple itself is no empty ruin. But the most interesting discoveries aren’t the monsters. They’re the carvings on the walls, the scraps of text left behind by whoever built the place, and the growing picture they assemble of what the magic item actually does. By the time the party reaches it, they have a reasonably clear idea that whoever wields it gains a significant and dangerous degree of power.
That’s when the question changes. The figure who hired them has unclear motives, and the more the party learns about the political situation in the region, the less comfortable they are handing something this powerful to someone they don’t trust. There’s a reasonable case to be made for keeping it, destroying it, or finding a more trustworthy recipient. The problem is that the bad thing in each character’s scroll is still out there, and the figure holding those strings hasn’t been dealt with yet.
The hook works best as the opening of a longer campaign because none of the obvious choices are clean. Delivering the item resolves the immediate threat but hands power to someone who may not deserve it. Keeping or destroying it removes that problem but leaves each character’s personal vulnerability exposed. The mysterious patron, the magic item, and whatever the party decides to do with it all have legs that can carry a campaign for many sessions.
Party Level: 7-10. This campaign assumes the players are somewhat experienced, not just their characters. There is lots of opportunity for tactical game play of all stripes, and there is ample ambiguity in the motives underlying this campaign to take it in any number of different directions.
World: I ran this in Forgotten Realms initially, but any world will suffice. Pick a decent-sized city near a decent-sized forest.
Rules-set: Originally ran in 5e, but could easily be adapted to any rules-set.
Note: I ran this for a group of experienced players who had never met each other prior to joining the group. The individual scrolls were printed ahead of time and referenced ‘motivators’ that were unique to each individual. This was a way in-game to have their characters come together without ever having met before, which mirrored the real-world players coming together without ever having met before. It worked beautifully. – SW
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