Missing Expedition
Pinned to The notice board
A poster with blocky titles and slightly messy inked writing reads;
Praesk Expedition Goes Quiet
A team recently sent to explore and study the Ruins of Praesk are now missing. We know they made it to the ruins based on a message confirming their arrival, however, since then we have lost all communications. A scout was sent but they have also since stopped responding and are considered missing with the team.
A call to adventurers: If you are part of a capable group with experience fending off the unknown we would like to hire you in hopes of finding the truth of what has happened to our lost comrades and, if need be, bringing an end to whatever threatens their safety.
For proof of their safety, or proof of what has happened, we offer a 5000 gold pieces.
Please visit Ravenna Leythm at the House of Honors to accept this task, or for more information.
Ways to approach
The perfect start to a dungeon crawl, with the option to add some creepy elements. As the storyteller, the first thing is to figure out what happened to everybody. Have they been kidnapped by a creature that came out from the ruins? Are they all under some strange mind control by something uncovered and try to trick the party into going into the ruins for them to add more people to the collection? If you are hoping to use this as the start of a dungeon-delving experience, make sure there’s a reason for the party to go into the ruins! If they find the whole expedition dead at the entrance, there’s a good chance they’ll just report back without finding why.
The way I used this in my game was in tandem with the main campaign; the party knew the BBEG was in the area searching for something but needed to figure out where to look - cue the suspicious event at a nearby excavation, which allowed me to show the BBEG’s power at the mouth of the dungeon, and allow for them to learn their goals through searching the ruins.
Possible Repercussions
If you’d like to incorporate repercussions for your players not taking on this quest, it would be a simple matter for whatever was in these ruins to slowly start expanding their influence into the surrounding areas. In cases such as the mind-control suggestion, I can imagine this object or creature having its new workers build fresh fortifications, making disabling it an even greater challenge - It was imprisoned once before, and shall not be again!
