Bouncing ideas for my Dwimmermount campaign.

[imperialus]

So I've been running a Dwimmermount campaign for about a year now. Made the switch to DCC from B/X a couple months ago

One of the things I've been doing is trying to introduce antagonists from outside the dungeon as much as the enemies they encounter inside. The idea is that this will give them something to do focused more around politicking, urban adventure, and break up the combat focus of the dungeon itself. It also gives me a chance to kind of do my own thing since the Dwimmermount setting is fairly sparse outside of the dungeon.

I kicked it off by setting up a rivalry between the party cleric (who worshiped Tyche) and the church of Typhon. It began with rival expeditions, moved to a legal challenge in Adamas to try and claim the dungeon in the name of Typhon, the massacre of a Typonite expedition within the dungeon by the party, and the eventual construction of a fortified Typhonite camp at the entrance to the dungeon. The party used their Orcish allies from within the dungeon to destroy the camp.

This last move has effectively eliminated the Typhonites as a threat. The Typhonite priest in Muntburg had invested heavily in the claim on the dungeon. Three failed expeditions, with the third one resulting in the destruction of the fortified camp they were building at a considerable cost in resources has greatly disgraced Gerald of Had (the Typhonite priest), and cost the church greatly. Basically it'll be next to impossible for the Typonites to establish a toehold in the first level without the Orc summarily kicking their butts, especially since the party has effectively wiped out the gnollish faction on the second level who were the main force keeping the Orcs in check.

So, this leaves me trying to figure out who should replace them. I've got a few ideas and I've laid them out in (roughly) the order I think they would make the most sense. Are there any that stick out to you as being particularly interesting? Ideas that I could use to expand them? The real goal here is to give them something to interact with beyond the dungeon. I want to let them get involved into Adamasian politics, but I tend to nerd out about these sorts of things and way overthink them.

One: The Redcaps. The Redcaps are the goblin gang within Adamas. From a stat standpoint Goblins are effectively DCC halflings. These guys would be interesting since it would keep the focus on Adamas and let the PC's continue to interact with the NPC's they've met there. I like them because they have the potential to influence or undermine the party's Orcish allies who will end up needing to get dealt with at some point anyhow. It might push them to find more reliable allies within Adamas, and perhaps share some power. The challenge here is that the Goblin's don't have a major interest in Dwimmermount. They are more interested in surviving day to day while being persecuted by... well everyone else. Goblins in general suffer crazy levels of persecution. In fact, any goblin caught within city walls after dark is assumed to be a thief and will summarily have a hand cut off before being dumped outside the city gates. They are anarchic by nature, and would be very interested in 'sticking it to the man' as it were but it'd be nice to have something a bit more than that.

Two: The Elven Fortress of Sadarak. This floating castle is one of the last bastions of the Elves. It also commands the last few known sky ships. I've already introduced them... somewhat. Right at the end of the last session the party ended up witnessing the effect of the first elven scouting party entering the dungeon. The Orcs drove them off and captured a prisoner, but nearly a dozen orcs died in the process. Big issue here is that the Elves will significantly outclass the PC's at their current level. Under DCC rules every elf is a spellcaster so they have the potential to really mess up a low level DCC party. Besides, I think it might be more interesting to save them to serve as a complicating factor when the party starts dealing with the Eld (red elves from the planet Aeron).

Three: The Necromancers of Yethlyreom. These guys are a rival city state to Adamas and are quite powerful in their own right. The interesting thing here would be trying to balance gaining control of Dwimmermount without leading to open warfare. I'd probably rework them considerably to make them a far greater menace to Adamas as opposed to the rather affable undead they were described as back in the Grognardia days. I'm thinking a city led by a cabal of necromancers and vampires where the human population cowers in near constant fear of being eaten by packs of ghouls. The concern here would be how to keep it at a slow burn that slowly draws both cities into war. PC's don't tend to do subtle well.

Four: The Cult of Siraxxus. This is a dragon cult. If you are at all familiar with DCC then you know that Dragons are NOT to be trifled with. I statted Siraxxus up and... well he's TPK material, and most interestingly he can polymorph into human form. Honestly I'm mostly just tossing him out to get ideas for ways to set up a cool behind the scenes cult that may or may not infiltrate up into the highest ranks of Adamasian nobility. He won't be showing up in any significant role until they are... well quite a bit more capable than they are now.