Post by StoryTeller on Apr 10, 2006 21:53:45 GMT
The NET.PLOTS.BOOK
Volume I
Compiled by Aaron Sher
Formatted with Word for Windows by
Blue Troll : Mario Thibault
One-Liners
- Help the local good, but dying, wizard to attain lichdom.
- Prevent evil nasties from overcoming the local good lich.
- Find the lost good lich and get help to cure a generic plague.
- Go to kill the lich only to find it's actually good.
- Save the Dragon from the Evil Princess.
Short Summaries
An alchemist hires the party to recover a shipment of supplies that was hijacked enroute. If he doesn't get them back, he faces bankruptcy.
Caught while stealing from a mage, the thief in the party is sent on a geas to steal an artifact from a colleague as punishment.
You are assigned to protect a person, but don't let them know you're protecting them. Defer to them in all things, but don't let them know you're deferring to them.
An obscure sect of a dark church is seeking the eight necessary parts/items used in summoning a sleeping demon. Just so happens that one of the PCs inherited one of the items (it should be something innocuous like a simple pendant with inscriptions) from a dead relative.
The party uncovers a plot to replace high-ranking officials with exact lookalikes (shapechangers). Nice little conspiracy theory action. Which one of your trusted patrons is really an evil doppleganger? Who can you trust? Who will believe you? Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean someone ISN'T out to get you.
The party is hired by the local Mage Guild to find and capture (and/or kill) a renegade wizard who is breaking Guild laws (selling magic items to criminals, assassinating the previous Guildmaster, attempting to assassinate the current Guildmaster, etc.). Local law enforcement is not involved because the Guild likes to solve its problems internally.
There's a battle going on between a good lich and one or more evil liches. The players have to protect a town that's caught in the crossfire. The lich need not even appear in the campaign; you could just have dark noxious clouds blotting out the sun, undead armies marching back and forth, dragons eating the livestock, and other bits of large-scale magical fallout. Or, if you want to bring the lich in personally, you could send the party on a quest to plead with the lich to stop the war, or to fight elsewhere.
PCs get caught in hole (old castle, cave?) with overwhelming numbers against them. They have some warning and a time period when they will be relieved if they can hold on. Idea is that PC improvise with what is
around and hold out for siege. Turns the GMing on its head. They have a plan of defenses, not the GM, and GM leads his baddies against it. Players spring their surprises in traps etc. Must have a map agreement on what can be done in time available. Players tend to cheat outrageously but great fun for all concerned with a change of pace for both GM and players.
Here's a bunch of REAL short descriptions of adventure ideas that work well in a city:
Second-story jobs, picking a pocket and finding a map, searching the tunnels under the city for a tomb or catacombs, competing with the Thieves' Guild, smuggling arms into the city, spying on foreign officials, helping an orphan fight against cruel thugs, racing another party in a city-wide search for a magical artifact, investigating a
corrupt church, wooing a noble lady, searching for your weapons instructor who has been abducted by a rival, trying to get apprenticed to a truly weird mage, etc.
Invert the "bad-lich-turns-out-to-be-good" idea: A really sinister lich would probably love to have people convinced that he's just a kindly, helpful old gent. Suppose one such lich has been working hard on his image for a century or two...he saves people from natural disasters (which he created himself), gives out magical gifts (which are cursed in some nonobvious way), kisses babies, the whole shebang. The players come to suspect him of actually being evil ("Hey...two centuries old? That's before Second Edition came out! He must be evil!") and have to stop him.
But first, they have to convince the locals, who love the old guy, that they've been wrong about him all this time. ("Gandalf? The old coot with the fireworks? Evil? Get outta here.")
Go to kill the evil lich, get captured and put at his/its mercy only to have it ask "Why are you bothering me?" Apparently it was/is a good wizard who got kind of absent minded as he died and sort of drifted off into lichdom without noticing. Since he's quite powerful, none of the various local monsters that he's geased into serving him have given him any trouble, nor have they pointed out the problem of his lichdom... Play the lich as an absent minded old british gentleman, sort of surprised that anybody would want to kill him and having considerable trouble grasping the idea that he's a lich. A few accidental pats on the back while the players are held by some sort of spell should be amusing. P.S. If you can't figure out how to set things up so a lich can capture and hold helpless a bunch of PCs, SHAME on you! Liches are something like 30th level M-U/Clerics, not to mention the hordes of followers, servants, summoned monsters and demons and elementals and the like...
A caravan is travelling through the desert. The party is hired to capture a man who is in the caravan, and it must be done quietly, so that nobody else knows. They are given the man's name, and the fact that he is a mage, but no other information about him. The catch is that the caravan consists of ten wagons, with at least thirty or forty guards (when I used this adventure, the caravan was travelling through Brin Pass, a VERY dangerous area), and everyone's wearing the standard desert gear: a white robe, with a hood and a veil. This makes it very difficult
to tell who's who. The party should investigate the wagons. If they do, they will find that only one wagon doesn't have an obvious reason for existance (i.e. belongs to the caravan master, carries supplies, or carries cargo). A man is living in that wagon, and only comes out to get food. Raiding the wagon will obviously cause noise and commotion, two things to be strenuously avoided. This is a very difficult scenario; I've run it twice, and both times the party failed. Once the guy got killed and the party was arrested and held in custody by the caravan master, and once the guy ran away and the party lost him.
REWARD
(very large sum mentioned - for your world)
BRAVE Adventurers Needed!
To Kill the DRAGON of Eastmark, Kingdom of Arcadia.
(fill in location and kingdom name as necessary).
Apply at the Royal Palace.
All that made that adventure interesting (aside from the nearly 1000 mile overland journey, differing cultures, side-adventures, et al) was the fact that the "DRAGON of Eastmark" was a golden dragon, and the party was mostly Good characters. The Gold had become insane when humans had attacked and slain his mate, and spent his time laying waste to the local kingdom, which finally began posting notes (after the first three expeditions failed) to hire outsiders to come in and try to destroy the genius-intelligence, magic-using and physically awe-inspiring dragon.
Since the tattered posting does not mention that the "DRAGON" is a Gold, the party had already travelled the very long way, and then had a lot of discussion before finally deciding that grief did not excuse the dragon's excesses, and that he must be destroyed.
Most campaigns have a player who loves to play politics, involve her in this. Assume for the sake of argument that the goal is the office of district attorney. Enigma has ambitions to be the DA, the chief force for
justice in Gotham. He is opposed by Buck Stevens, son of the founder of Stevens Brick Co., which is the second largest employer in Gotham. Darla Stevens is in love with the Enigma's alter ego, Bing Strawberry, and keeps telling him he ought to get in politics and make sure her slimy brother doesn't achieve political office ... etc etc etc you get the idea.
Some complications that suggest themselves are:
a) Enigma discovers that candidates must turn in petitions with 1000 names in order to register for the election, and he blew it off so long that he needs to get them all *tonight*, to be turned in at 8 am tomorrow morning (where do you get 1000 valid signatures at this time of the night?)
b) the primaries are a good time for enemies to show up with embarassing photos in hand
c) election season can be complicated by reporters who circle, vulture-like, over the troubled campaign HQ, and by a televised public debate between the candidates
d) the election and the aftermath -- did the PC win? What will happen to the party now? What if the press finds out about the vampires the party staked a few years ago in the abandoned buildings in the ghetto? what about the crook who recognizes Enigma's voice and threatens to publicise his secret identity?
The lich is a good wizard who was forced to become a lich in order to remain around to counteract some powerful evil force. He/it spent the last years of his life directly restraining some powerful evil demon (make it something not quite physical, for example a demon of madness that manifests by making victims psychotically insane...evil human sacrifice cults start springing up all over the place and random people on the road start attacking out of the blue with no provocation, sort of like...gasp! PCs!)
So the Lich is at the bottom of some dungeon complex using spells and powers that are so far beyond the party's understanding that they can't perceive them, to hold the evil imprisoned. He/it is also keeping random strangers from wandering in and interfering. After so long a time, the lich just sort of drifted into undeath without really noticing (keeping a set of spells up constantly for years will do that to ya). The PCs manage to get the drop on the Lich when he's weakened and...
a) the evil gets loose.
b) the good lich's wizardly spirit manifests before it moves on to another, higher plane, and commends them for their actions in releasing him from his unwitting servitude to to undeath. He also says, "Well, I'm off to my retirement in elysium, the job's all yours, boys!"
c) If you're feeling charitable, give the players an inkling of what's going to happen, or some magic to help them to combat the madness demon (personal protection against the madness would be nice, although you could have lots of fun with blackouts and sleepwalking and the like if the PCs were as susceptible as anyone else). If you're not feeling charitable, have them find out the HARD way what the ol' spook's mysterious comments were in reference to. Maybe stick a scroll (that must be laboriously deciphered) in with the treasure, describing the madness demon and perhaps some ways that it can be fought.
The party is on some sort of extended vacation, staying in an inn/bar. A frequent visitor is a tall, dark, suave, charming man dressed in formal evening wear, accompanied by a different woman every time. He comes in every 2nd or 3d night. He always orders bloody marys and doesn't drink them. He is quite wealthy and very pleasant. There is something almost magnetic about him. He has fascinating eyes. (DM should do everything he can to make it believable that he could be a vampire, despite the unusual setting (city)). Either he charms (charm gaze) a female party member and takes her away, or a beautiful dancer comes in looking for her missing sister, who was last seen coming to this bar with the tall,dark gentleman. She tries to convince a party member to help her look for her sister being seductive about it. Both are eventually charmed by the Gentleman. In any case, make a party member disappear into this Gentleman's lair.
He has a gothic style house in a nice part of town. There is nothing obviously amiss here. If the party asks around, this guy is a pillar of society, a kind, philanthropic fellow, well respected by his peers. He runs a magic shoppe. He is a mid-level wizard with a head for business, who gave up adventuring to start a business. His house looks just like a vampires house might look (black velvet curtains, etc). He has a private sanctuary inn his basement, the only entrance to which is a rune-encrusted door (trapped or enchanted in any way appropriate to the party). He supposedly has a chapel down there, but really has a large complex, where various vampiric rituals, and all-night parties take place. All of the missing people have been charmed into believing that they have been turned into slave vampires. They will aid their master if at all possible.
The party must break in and forcibly take their companion away from this place. Again, make the evidence somewhat contradictory whether the Gentleman is a vampire or not. Most evidence should say yes, but make some things contradict this.
The gentleman has a cursed ring of the vampire, a powerful evil artifact which makes him believe he is a vampire and gives him many of the powers of a vampire, as well as some of the drawbacks. Make him dislike things that cause a vampire harm, but don't make it obvious whether is works. Make him have a reflection, but have a dead vampire victim show up. Etc. At the end, have the party realize that he is not a vampire at all but rather is a cursed fellow with an intrinsically good nature.
The magic energies (derived from outer space :-)) are dwindling, slowly but surely. At this time only the most advanced magicians have noticed that their most powerful spells are beginning to fail more and more frequently.
My explanation is that there is three kinds of magic in the world:
1) White magic: creative magic, healing, alteration. The white-magicians are generally the good guys, mostly elves, priests (Gods of Light) and fairies.
2) Black Magic: Necromatics, destructive magic, summoning. The black-magicians are generally the bad guys, mostly humans, black-elves, trolls and the demons & devils.
3) The Old Magic: The magic that rules it all; but now almost a forgotten art, only used by the extinct race of Wizards (yes, wizards are a distinct race in my world) and the dragons.
Unfortunately the magic energies are only dwindling for the white-magicians, since the black-magicians derive their power from the negative dimension and have opened the gate, so that negative energies flow freely
into this dimension blocking the white-magic.
The objective is to close the gate, before even the simplest white-magic is rendered useless and impotent. This cannot be done with the use of white-magic, but only with the use of the Old-Magic (use of black-magic will only worsen the situation).
The problem is to find someone or something that have access to the Old-Magic and is sufficiently skilled in this art, to reverse the situation. (this is what the players must think is the objective for them or initially be let to believe).
The real problem is that the division between black- and white-magic is artificial, and will always lead to this problem sooner or later, and only the Old-magic can prevail (since the white- and black-magic is derived from the Old-magic, but the separation will corrupt both branches). So the players are to be the prophets of the new world order of magic (or front-runners), after being taught the basics of this by the only Wizard left on the planet (unless they destroy him in their folly!!!). But to find the information that there is such a creature alive should be very difficult and only referenced by vague hints in old legends etc.
My suggestion for the Wizard is that the group can find (after lengthy research) the place he is rumored to live (e.g. inside a volcano). And when they arrive he is there, but frozen inside a huge iceblock, by a pair of Ice-Dragons that he once forced to humiliate themselves to assist him, and this is their revenge. Once every 100 year they let him free for a day to scorn him, and then deep-freeze him again. And they will not take it lightly if the players are to take away their sweet revenge.
Volume I
Compiled by Aaron Sher
Formatted with Word for Windows by
Blue Troll : Mario Thibault
One-Liners
- Help the local good, but dying, wizard to attain lichdom.
- Prevent evil nasties from overcoming the local good lich.
- Find the lost good lich and get help to cure a generic plague.
- Go to kill the lich only to find it's actually good.
- Save the Dragon from the Evil Princess.
Short Summaries
An alchemist hires the party to recover a shipment of supplies that was hijacked enroute. If he doesn't get them back, he faces bankruptcy.
Caught while stealing from a mage, the thief in the party is sent on a geas to steal an artifact from a colleague as punishment.
You are assigned to protect a person, but don't let them know you're protecting them. Defer to them in all things, but don't let them know you're deferring to them.
An obscure sect of a dark church is seeking the eight necessary parts/items used in summoning a sleeping demon. Just so happens that one of the PCs inherited one of the items (it should be something innocuous like a simple pendant with inscriptions) from a dead relative.
The party uncovers a plot to replace high-ranking officials with exact lookalikes (shapechangers). Nice little conspiracy theory action. Which one of your trusted patrons is really an evil doppleganger? Who can you trust? Who will believe you? Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean someone ISN'T out to get you.
The party is hired by the local Mage Guild to find and capture (and/or kill) a renegade wizard who is breaking Guild laws (selling magic items to criminals, assassinating the previous Guildmaster, attempting to assassinate the current Guildmaster, etc.). Local law enforcement is not involved because the Guild likes to solve its problems internally.
There's a battle going on between a good lich and one or more evil liches. The players have to protect a town that's caught in the crossfire. The lich need not even appear in the campaign; you could just have dark noxious clouds blotting out the sun, undead armies marching back and forth, dragons eating the livestock, and other bits of large-scale magical fallout. Or, if you want to bring the lich in personally, you could send the party on a quest to plead with the lich to stop the war, or to fight elsewhere.
PCs get caught in hole (old castle, cave?) with overwhelming numbers against them. They have some warning and a time period when they will be relieved if they can hold on. Idea is that PC improvise with what is
around and hold out for siege. Turns the GMing on its head. They have a plan of defenses, not the GM, and GM leads his baddies against it. Players spring their surprises in traps etc. Must have a map agreement on what can be done in time available. Players tend to cheat outrageously but great fun for all concerned with a change of pace for both GM and players.
Here's a bunch of REAL short descriptions of adventure ideas that work well in a city:
Second-story jobs, picking a pocket and finding a map, searching the tunnels under the city for a tomb or catacombs, competing with the Thieves' Guild, smuggling arms into the city, spying on foreign officials, helping an orphan fight against cruel thugs, racing another party in a city-wide search for a magical artifact, investigating a
corrupt church, wooing a noble lady, searching for your weapons instructor who has been abducted by a rival, trying to get apprenticed to a truly weird mage, etc.
Invert the "bad-lich-turns-out-to-be-good" idea: A really sinister lich would probably love to have people convinced that he's just a kindly, helpful old gent. Suppose one such lich has been working hard on his image for a century or two...he saves people from natural disasters (which he created himself), gives out magical gifts (which are cursed in some nonobvious way), kisses babies, the whole shebang. The players come to suspect him of actually being evil ("Hey...two centuries old? That's before Second Edition came out! He must be evil!") and have to stop him.
But first, they have to convince the locals, who love the old guy, that they've been wrong about him all this time. ("Gandalf? The old coot with the fireworks? Evil? Get outta here.")
Go to kill the evil lich, get captured and put at his/its mercy only to have it ask "Why are you bothering me?" Apparently it was/is a good wizard who got kind of absent minded as he died and sort of drifted off into lichdom without noticing. Since he's quite powerful, none of the various local monsters that he's geased into serving him have given him any trouble, nor have they pointed out the problem of his lichdom... Play the lich as an absent minded old british gentleman, sort of surprised that anybody would want to kill him and having considerable trouble grasping the idea that he's a lich. A few accidental pats on the back while the players are held by some sort of spell should be amusing. P.S. If you can't figure out how to set things up so a lich can capture and hold helpless a bunch of PCs, SHAME on you! Liches are something like 30th level M-U/Clerics, not to mention the hordes of followers, servants, summoned monsters and demons and elementals and the like...
A caravan is travelling through the desert. The party is hired to capture a man who is in the caravan, and it must be done quietly, so that nobody else knows. They are given the man's name, and the fact that he is a mage, but no other information about him. The catch is that the caravan consists of ten wagons, with at least thirty or forty guards (when I used this adventure, the caravan was travelling through Brin Pass, a VERY dangerous area), and everyone's wearing the standard desert gear: a white robe, with a hood and a veil. This makes it very difficult
to tell who's who. The party should investigate the wagons. If they do, they will find that only one wagon doesn't have an obvious reason for existance (i.e. belongs to the caravan master, carries supplies, or carries cargo). A man is living in that wagon, and only comes out to get food. Raiding the wagon will obviously cause noise and commotion, two things to be strenuously avoided. This is a very difficult scenario; I've run it twice, and both times the party failed. Once the guy got killed and the party was arrested and held in custody by the caravan master, and once the guy ran away and the party lost him.
REWARD
(very large sum mentioned - for your world)
BRAVE Adventurers Needed!
To Kill the DRAGON of Eastmark, Kingdom of Arcadia.
(fill in location and kingdom name as necessary).
Apply at the Royal Palace.
All that made that adventure interesting (aside from the nearly 1000 mile overland journey, differing cultures, side-adventures, et al) was the fact that the "DRAGON of Eastmark" was a golden dragon, and the party was mostly Good characters. The Gold had become insane when humans had attacked and slain his mate, and spent his time laying waste to the local kingdom, which finally began posting notes (after the first three expeditions failed) to hire outsiders to come in and try to destroy the genius-intelligence, magic-using and physically awe-inspiring dragon.
Since the tattered posting does not mention that the "DRAGON" is a Gold, the party had already travelled the very long way, and then had a lot of discussion before finally deciding that grief did not excuse the dragon's excesses, and that he must be destroyed.
Most campaigns have a player who loves to play politics, involve her in this. Assume for the sake of argument that the goal is the office of district attorney. Enigma has ambitions to be the DA, the chief force for
justice in Gotham. He is opposed by Buck Stevens, son of the founder of Stevens Brick Co., which is the second largest employer in Gotham. Darla Stevens is in love with the Enigma's alter ego, Bing Strawberry, and keeps telling him he ought to get in politics and make sure her slimy brother doesn't achieve political office ... etc etc etc you get the idea.
Some complications that suggest themselves are:
a) Enigma discovers that candidates must turn in petitions with 1000 names in order to register for the election, and he blew it off so long that he needs to get them all *tonight*, to be turned in at 8 am tomorrow morning (where do you get 1000 valid signatures at this time of the night?)
b) the primaries are a good time for enemies to show up with embarassing photos in hand
c) election season can be complicated by reporters who circle, vulture-like, over the troubled campaign HQ, and by a televised public debate between the candidates
d) the election and the aftermath -- did the PC win? What will happen to the party now? What if the press finds out about the vampires the party staked a few years ago in the abandoned buildings in the ghetto? what about the crook who recognizes Enigma's voice and threatens to publicise his secret identity?
The lich is a good wizard who was forced to become a lich in order to remain around to counteract some powerful evil force. He/it spent the last years of his life directly restraining some powerful evil demon (make it something not quite physical, for example a demon of madness that manifests by making victims psychotically insane...evil human sacrifice cults start springing up all over the place and random people on the road start attacking out of the blue with no provocation, sort of like...gasp! PCs!)
So the Lich is at the bottom of some dungeon complex using spells and powers that are so far beyond the party's understanding that they can't perceive them, to hold the evil imprisoned. He/it is also keeping random strangers from wandering in and interfering. After so long a time, the lich just sort of drifted into undeath without really noticing (keeping a set of spells up constantly for years will do that to ya). The PCs manage to get the drop on the Lich when he's weakened and...
a) the evil gets loose.
b) the good lich's wizardly spirit manifests before it moves on to another, higher plane, and commends them for their actions in releasing him from his unwitting servitude to to undeath. He also says, "Well, I'm off to my retirement in elysium, the job's all yours, boys!"
c) If you're feeling charitable, give the players an inkling of what's going to happen, or some magic to help them to combat the madness demon (personal protection against the madness would be nice, although you could have lots of fun with blackouts and sleepwalking and the like if the PCs were as susceptible as anyone else). If you're not feeling charitable, have them find out the HARD way what the ol' spook's mysterious comments were in reference to. Maybe stick a scroll (that must be laboriously deciphered) in with the treasure, describing the madness demon and perhaps some ways that it can be fought.
The party is on some sort of extended vacation, staying in an inn/bar. A frequent visitor is a tall, dark, suave, charming man dressed in formal evening wear, accompanied by a different woman every time. He comes in every 2nd or 3d night. He always orders bloody marys and doesn't drink them. He is quite wealthy and very pleasant. There is something almost magnetic about him. He has fascinating eyes. (DM should do everything he can to make it believable that he could be a vampire, despite the unusual setting (city)). Either he charms (charm gaze) a female party member and takes her away, or a beautiful dancer comes in looking for her missing sister, who was last seen coming to this bar with the tall,dark gentleman. She tries to convince a party member to help her look for her sister being seductive about it. Both are eventually charmed by the Gentleman. In any case, make a party member disappear into this Gentleman's lair.
He has a gothic style house in a nice part of town. There is nothing obviously amiss here. If the party asks around, this guy is a pillar of society, a kind, philanthropic fellow, well respected by his peers. He runs a magic shoppe. He is a mid-level wizard with a head for business, who gave up adventuring to start a business. His house looks just like a vampires house might look (black velvet curtains, etc). He has a private sanctuary inn his basement, the only entrance to which is a rune-encrusted door (trapped or enchanted in any way appropriate to the party). He supposedly has a chapel down there, but really has a large complex, where various vampiric rituals, and all-night parties take place. All of the missing people have been charmed into believing that they have been turned into slave vampires. They will aid their master if at all possible.
The party must break in and forcibly take their companion away from this place. Again, make the evidence somewhat contradictory whether the Gentleman is a vampire or not. Most evidence should say yes, but make some things contradict this.
The gentleman has a cursed ring of the vampire, a powerful evil artifact which makes him believe he is a vampire and gives him many of the powers of a vampire, as well as some of the drawbacks. Make him dislike things that cause a vampire harm, but don't make it obvious whether is works. Make him have a reflection, but have a dead vampire victim show up. Etc. At the end, have the party realize that he is not a vampire at all but rather is a cursed fellow with an intrinsically good nature.
The magic energies (derived from outer space :-)) are dwindling, slowly but surely. At this time only the most advanced magicians have noticed that their most powerful spells are beginning to fail more and more frequently.
My explanation is that there is three kinds of magic in the world:
1) White magic: creative magic, healing, alteration. The white-magicians are generally the good guys, mostly elves, priests (Gods of Light) and fairies.
2) Black Magic: Necromatics, destructive magic, summoning. The black-magicians are generally the bad guys, mostly humans, black-elves, trolls and the demons & devils.
3) The Old Magic: The magic that rules it all; but now almost a forgotten art, only used by the extinct race of Wizards (yes, wizards are a distinct race in my world) and the dragons.
Unfortunately the magic energies are only dwindling for the white-magicians, since the black-magicians derive their power from the negative dimension and have opened the gate, so that negative energies flow freely
into this dimension blocking the white-magic.
The objective is to close the gate, before even the simplest white-magic is rendered useless and impotent. This cannot be done with the use of white-magic, but only with the use of the Old-Magic (use of black-magic will only worsen the situation).
The problem is to find someone or something that have access to the Old-Magic and is sufficiently skilled in this art, to reverse the situation. (this is what the players must think is the objective for them or initially be let to believe).
The real problem is that the division between black- and white-magic is artificial, and will always lead to this problem sooner or later, and only the Old-magic can prevail (since the white- and black-magic is derived from the Old-magic, but the separation will corrupt both branches). So the players are to be the prophets of the new world order of magic (or front-runners), after being taught the basics of this by the only Wizard left on the planet (unless they destroy him in their folly!!!). But to find the information that there is such a creature alive should be very difficult and only referenced by vague hints in old legends etc.
My suggestion for the Wizard is that the group can find (after lengthy research) the place he is rumored to live (e.g. inside a volcano). And when they arrive he is there, but frozen inside a huge iceblock, by a pair of Ice-Dragons that he once forced to humiliate themselves to assist him, and this is their revenge. Once every 100 year they let him free for a day to scorn him, and then deep-freeze him again. And they will not take it lightly if the players are to take away their sweet revenge.