[Pathfinder] Need inspiration/ideas for adventure

[violence in the media]

HELP.

I'm running mostly-pathfinder game for friends of mine and I've run into a writer's block type lack of inspiration. I need your help coming up with the next adventure in an ongoing campaign.

The set up for the adventure is that the party is tasked with retrieving "a document" from "a secret demi-plane" and they have to "travel through the Astral to reach the portal pool" in order to get there. There are 7 PCs, all 7th level: a Human Fighter, an Aasimar Paladin, a Halfling Rogue, a Gnome Cleric, a Elf Sorcerer, a Half-Elf Ranger, and a Lizardman Magus.

That is unfortunately all I have at the moment.

I need to know:

1. What is "the document" and why does the Empress need it?

I'm leaning towards it being the Anathema Archive that she needs because she's a high-level spellcaster fighting an inter-dimensional war, but none of that is set in stone. Her existence is based on the assumption that kingdoms and empires in D&D land are centered around 1 or more individual badasses. The inter-dimensional war angle is just something I've kept in the back of my mind to keep her largely absentee and running the lands via her bureaucracy. Also, so the PCs will actually adventure. They don't know any of that, so that can all change if someone has a better idea.

2. Why does the party need to go get it/why can't she get it herself?

This will inevitably get asked, and I don't really have a reason. Is there a rules-legit way to lock a high-level person out of a demi-plane while still allowing a party of 7th level characters to enter?

3. What is the demi-plane like? What threats or creatures might be found within?

Free reign here, I have nothing. I imagine the plane being tiny, like 30-50 square miles at the most.

4. The Astral. How should they get there and should there be any interesting encounters while there? If so, what?

Basically, what method of getting to the Astral would be the most-functional or coolest? Plane Shift? Astral Projection? Permanent Portal? Something else?

Any ideas y'all could provide would be very much appreciated; I've been at a total blank for days.

[Orca]

Maybe the Empress will get jumped as soon as she leaves her safe area; her enemies aren't watching for the PCs who have been informed in some roundabout way.

Transport to the Astral via riding Nightmares is very cool.

[Laertes]

Make the demi-plane be an improbably large clockwork setup, with gears and wheels and springs and bars large enough for people to stand on. Moving platforms and three dimensions make for interesting fight scenes.

[Sam]

Maybe the Empress will get jumped as soon as she leaves her safe area; her enemies aren't watching for the PCs who have been informed in some roundabout way.

That kind of ambush would be a better trap for PCs. For an NPC, it's a little unsatisfying.

If she's powerful enough, you could borrow a bit of the fisher king story, and have the kingdom be healthy and prosperous because she's the one on the throne. If she leaves the palace/kingdom/dimension, even for a moment, that gives her enemies a chance to ensconce themselves on the throne, and have the kingdom change to suit them. And once someone is on the throne, it's nearly impossible to take it by force--that way, even a weaker enemy can keep her in check, or she can be holding off a much stronger foe, as the plot requires. And you can change who she's holding off as adventures progress, without things being weird.

Plus you get to do awesome plots later, like "guard my throne room, and hold out against the demons for ten minutes, while I'm gone" or "take care of this invasion force so that I can keep sitting here". That can bring the PCs into the (interplanar) conflict more gradually, without them being a tremendous target (the enemy's focus remains on the Empress as long as the PCs are not a personal threat, since all they can do is cover for her).

[MisterDee]

1-I think I saw a cartoon/anime like 30 years ago where they had this book with drawings of various catastrophes (each one worse than the last, and culminating with pure blackness.) You could only page forward through the book, and whatever was depicted would happen to the world.

(Incidentally, if anyone knows of that thing, let me know - it's bugged me literally for decades)

Anyway, I figured a variation of that book, one where some pages are good and some pages are bad (most would be bad, but there would be a rational incentive to keep going through the book, unlike the ever-worse-stuff version). The Empress needs it because her kingdom has had a run of bad luck and she's getting desperate.

(Obviously, you'd need a mechanism for enforcing the bad side: I'd say that whatever page you open has to happen (so if the page is "a plague of locusts", then it'll last as long as a plague of locusts would normally, even if you immediately change to another page.

The book itself is dangerous but not capital-E evil, and it does have some uses for someone desperate, which is why it was stored in a place where it could reasonably be found again, and not destroyed.

2-That's easy: she's too busy/doesn't want to risk herself, and there's really no downside to just sending the PCs. Basically, the same reason why people pay kids to mow their lawn.

3-The document has been put in the demi-plane for safekeeping, which implies a guardian of some kind. I'd go with an encounter with a plausible peaceful outcome (maybe a sphinx of some kind?) as the "boss guardian". If the PCs can show that they're not planning to use the thing for evil they get to take it home (in their case, they'd have to argue that the Empress is not evil - which may or may not be true, and in any case it'll be a more interesting challenge than "well, cast Zone of Truth and find out if we're lying")

The rest of the place is stuff to make the guardian's job comfortable (perhaps the demiplane is mostly cliffs and spires, so that the sphinx can enjoy a flight now and then, and some monsters for him to eat/exercise against) and defenses/tests to allow the guardian to gauge the visitors it gets and to soften them up a bit.


4-Ideally, it'd be cool if the party could get there on their own power, but at seventh level that's kind of hard to pull. Calling in favors, or going through some sort of quest to get there is a close second.

As an alternate solution (especially if you're pressed for gameplay time) the court wizard gives them a scroll or two of whatever spell works to get them there, with an apologetic speech "sorry, I forgot you guys aren't quite up for that yourself. You'll be there soon but in the meantime here's a leg-up." Basically, you want a "welcome to the Big Boys table, kids", not a "you wimps need us to do the important work" vibe.

[name_here]

1. The document can be basically anything, though ideally you probably want something that the PCs can do something interesting with while they're carrying it.

2. You could give the demiplane a trait that screws with the passage of time, so even with transport magic it would require the empress to be away an unreasonably long time for the kingdom's star badass to be out of contact. Say, maybe it'd take a month of prime material time to go get it, so the party won't pull a Rip Van Wrinkle but it's still too long for the empress to be gone.

3. Two ways to go with this, I think. Either it's a fortress demiplane to specfically protect the artifact, or it's a sealed library. Honestly, the combat should probably happen en route to the demiplane; someone who can set up a demiplane can assign it guardians that can splatter a 7th-level party. If you do want fighting in the demiplane, it's probably best to have it be overrun by some astral dudes squatting in the ruins, with the artifact in a magic box the party has the key to.

For the library option, that has the advantage of letting you give the players access to an arbitrary selection of documents they're interested in, as well as a place to go back to if they want some incredibly valuable mystic secrets in the future. The "staff" can limit them to only taking like a dozen other books, and the party can clash with other visitors.

4. I like portals myself, and you can have the portal be the only way into the area so the demiplane can control access.

[Laertes]

If the Empress is the only high-level badass in the Empire then it's not unreasonable to suppose that her enemies have researched spells which are specifically designed to kill her. As such she'd be right to be cautious about walking into danger herself, because there will be lots of traps there that have the rules text "do 1D6 damage, plus an additional 9D6 if the target is the Empress." Acting through lower-level catspaws would let her work around that.

[hyzmarca]

Or, you know, if she's fighting an interdimensional war then she might actually be busy doing other stuff. Arm Wrestlin Cthulhu at eight. Tea with Yog-Sothoth at ten. No time left in the busy schedule of to retrieve the book and get a mandatory eight hours rest.

[violence in the media]

Hmmm, you guys are being pretty inspirational. I like the screwy passage of time aspect of the demiplane. That also provides an acceptable reason for the Empress not to go herself. Maybe a day in the demiplane is roughly a month in "standard time"? Does that sound like too much, or too little? Should it be variable?

I also like the idea of having the guardian be a Sphinx of some sort. Though, thinking along mythological lines like that, maybe a Medusa? What if there were two classes of planar denizens: general residents and dedicated guardians? Maybe have a set up where the PCs can recruit allies to help overcome the guardians?

For the terrain of the demiplane, what if it's constructed like a large, stony, natural ampitheatre?
Sort of like a cross between Bryce Canyon

and Tsingy Stone Forest in Madagascar

There's no day/night cycle--just an eternal starlit twilight.

Maybe there's a crumbling structure at the bottom of the vale that was the library or fortress?

This still leaves the question of why the document is here specifically. Was it set here for deliberate protection, or was this place lost in antiquity and the main protection was obscurity?

[K]

Make the Astral trip a chance for Astral ship shennanigans. Toss in mind flayer voidships and ship-to-ship combat with githyanki pirates to flavor.

[name_here]

I'd say that you probably want the total time they spend there to be at least a week and not much more than a month. That way it's long enough that the Empress reasonably couldn't afford to go without the kingdom being under constant assault (her absence could be hidden for a few days and it's unlikely someone would just happen to attack during that period) but short enough that the PCs don't have to worry about global events progressing significantly during their absence. Nothing wrong with it being variable; the Empress wouldn't want to risk the worst-case time frame if the PCs can do the job.

Also, if the document is an artifact that's powerful in and of itself, then the vault should probably be for deliberate protection, maybe mostly relying on powerful anti-scrying spells and the time shift, but if it's, say, the True Name of a particular archfiend the Empress happens to be fighting then it's fine if it's protected by obscurity because it doesn't have too much value to most of the people with the resources to track it down.

[erik]

1-I think I saw a cartoon/anime like 30 years ago where they had this book with drawings of various catastrophes (each one worse than the last, and culminating with pure blackness.) You could only page forward through the book, and whatever was depicted would happen to the world.

(Incidentally, if anyone knows of that thing, let me know - it's bugged me literally for decades)

Anyway, I figured a variation of that book, one where some pages are good and some pages are bad (most would be bad, but there would be a rational incentive to keep going through the book, unlike the ever-worse-stuff version). The Empress needs it because her kingdom has had a run of bad luck and she's getting desperate.

I think the proper solution to this quest is to smack the Empress in the face and explain that if you think you've had a run of bad luck, you don't deal with a fucking deck of many things on the whole empire. To find a dumber course of action I would have to review the GOP platform.

I'm not saying the book idea isn't a neat concept, just that as described, seeking it out to use it on yourself/empire is a horrible, horrible idea.

Here's some stuff to throw at the wall.

Document Ideas:
• Prophetic paper whose contents will come true, and it is blank (use activated wishes?)
• Sheet from a death note book.
• A Marauder's Map of the known world
• A beloved children's story that the Empress cannot completely recall.
• Instructions on how to build friggin huge golems needed to help move the kingdom/push back glaciers/carry the mountain castle away from an imminent volcanic eruption
• Directions on how to reach the Crystal Empire and end its curse

Why cannot the Empress go?:
• Demi-Plane has epic forbiddance against members of said empire. Necessitating need for 3rd party agents
• Super deadly beast is instructed to slay any royal visitors.
• The demiplane goes at a faster time speed. If the Empress were to go she would be gone from the empire for too long.
• It just takes a friggin long time to get there and back. The actual way to get there requires traveling a specific route in this world while activating magical touchstones along the way at landmarks.
• It would be an act of war for the Empress or one of her royal agents to go personally.

What is the Demiplane like?:
• A tiny globe a-la Little Prince (~1.5 mile radius giving about 30 square miles of surface), almost 9.5 miles to walk around the world.
• The globe is a curled up Tarrasqueadillo or whatever
• The plane is a giant ball of water. Aquatic cities with 3D floor plans and no stairs (possibly painful since D&D poorly handles 3D combat)
• MC Escher's House of Stairs.
• Everything is made of spiders (or snakes or something creepy). Ground, buildings, whatever. Usually unmoving, unless you do something against the rules of the demiplane.

How to get there?:
• Portal is inside the gullet of a friggin Colossal purple worm. Portal exit is to a normal sized Purple Worm
• Two single use items recovered from whatever. One takes you there. One takes you home. If they find another way to get home (which you should provide) can basically keep a planar word of recall item.
• Johnny Cab
• If you want the party to take it over as their own demiplane then give reliable means of returning. Appropriate Tuning Fork for Plane Shift

[radthemad4]

1-I think I saw a cartoon/anime like 30 years ago where they had this book with drawings of various catastrophes (each one worse than the last, and culminating with pure blackness.) You could only page forward through the book, and whatever was depicted would happen to the world.

Reminds me of an xkcd strip.

[hyzmarca]

Or just don't say what it is at all. It's a McGuffin. It's like that case from Pulp Fiction. You don't have to answer the question because the answer doesn't matter.

Given the choice I'd go with making it something in an obscure language that the PCs can't read.

[name_here]

While it's a McGuffin, the players should probably still know what it is. They'll likely want to know what's worth going on a highly dangerous trip for, and if the person sending them on the mission doesn't trust them enough to tell them, that raises the question of why they're trusted enough to go. Also, seventh level characters likely have some means of finding out what it is even if they aren't told, so you still need to know what it is.

That said, it doesn't necessarily have to be useful to the characters, though it might be more fun if it is. It's just got to be valuable to the people sending them to get it.

[JigokuBosatsu]

The whole trip is a ruse- the party has been sold to evil outsiders by the Empress but they must go there of their own volition.

[momothefiddler]

The whole trip is a ruse- the party has been sold to evil outsiders by the Empress but they must go there of their own volition.

"This is the last one I'm sending you."

[violence in the media]

The whole trip is a ruse- the party has been sold to evil outsiders by the Empress but they must go there of their own volition.

"This is the last one I'm sending you."

This is evil and horrifying and I love it; but I don't think it'll fit very well.

[JigokuBosatsu]

Nobody ever takes my advice.

[erik]

The whole trip is a ruse- the party has been sold to evil outsiders by the Empress but they must go there of their own volition.

"This is the last one I'm sending you."

This is evil and horrifying and I love it; but I don't think it'll fit very well.

The Empress could also send along a handy haversack with stuff to help them along and a message letting them know she needs them to deal with the evil outsiders. Apologies for the ruse but they couldn't be told beforehand because mind reading and despite her best efforts she and her other agents could not get in on their own, needed sleeper agents. Yadda yadda.

[name_here]

Sealed orders are always good fun, and quite justifiable in-setting.