((This is where I note that if you're one of my players in the Welcome To Singapore campaign, and want the scenarios to be a surprise, leave now.))
Okay. I give up. I have a fridge full of ingredients, but no dish or recipe comes to mind. What could a powerful wizard, skilled in combat, with a somewhat decent information network, possibly be unable to do, that a group of mortals and minor practitioners could offer help with?
The power level of the PCs is currently Up To Your Knees (7 refresh, 25 skill points, skill cap Great), and the plan, assuming we stay together long enough, is to build them up to awesome levels. We have a ferromancer mechanic, a diviner with visions of the future and aikido skills, a human con artist/thief, a human bouncer, a pseudo-werecat marked by the Wild Hunt, and an ex-Warden who's drowned most of his repertoire at the bottom of a bottle.
The only things they have in common are a penchant for visiting nice bars/nightclubs, take-no-shit-from-anyone attitudes, and a lack of direction in life.
Basic Layout, mortal perspective: Singapore is an incredibly small city-state island in Southeast Asia, with a high population density and a lot of high-rise buildings in order to address the problem. There is a surprising amount of greenery and water, a micro-managing government, and the races, religions, cultures and nationalities of the people are incredibly diverse. It is decidedly not a place for strange happenings - if anything that happened in the Dresden canon (even, say,
just the Three-Eye drug bust or porn star deaths) ever took place here, there would be massive outrage.
The supernatural side: A few exiled White Court vampires - the Skavis guy runs a bar and keeps his head down, the Malvora gal is a monster hunter just for the kicks, and the Raith brother-and-sister pair caused the recent sex scandals involving civil servants or something. I'm thinking some of this contributes half my opening scene, where they earn the enmity of the Raiths, offering future opportunities I can use.
A couple of ghouls. A group just moved in from Malaysia, and they are being mostly discreet for now, though a lot of stray cats and dogs have vanished. It's only a matter of time till they graduate to humans.
Water and forest spirits and fae. An old servant of a Chinese rain- and prosperity-bringing capital-D divine dragon looking for a successor. Ghosts dating to WWII. An Indian were-tiger vigilante who recently immigrated.
Probably siting a Jade Court camp, more ghoul clans, pontianaks (the local flavour of vampire), and mundane organised crime in Malaysia, the much bigger jungle-, mountain- and Wretched Hive-filled country just next door, for future exploration.
A hefty handful of minor practitioners. One ambitious sorcerer (who will take a turn for the Dark Side after a few milestones). The nearest Warden is in Australia. One Council-level wizard (who is not Council, like Elaine Mallory) who considers Singapore 'his turf' and actively keeps a lid on any funny business.
He's an 80-year-old ex-Kemmlerite who settled down in Singapore for a new beginning. A high-ranking government official in the know contracted him to protect the country from supernatural threats, and it's a full-time paid job with certain resources available to him. He takes this job very seriously.
I'm planning to use his past and the abundance of ghost stories to throw a necromancer (and visiting Warden complications) at the PCs once they're sufficiently leveled up, but early ripples like the necromancer sneaking about trying to find and train apprentices/minions may be a good idea.
Said Council-level wizard's been out of town. It just figures that everyone and all the trouble would start coming in during the one-to-two months he was gone, instead of the years he's been here.
I know that right now my current potential opening scene includes them encountering the wizard, who needs their help because:
1) Obviously, he can't do modern technology much.
2) Most of the PCs would be better in a fistfight than he would be. (When in a situation where revealing supernatural powers would be inadvisable?)
3) He can't be in two places at once, and he only has a couple of associates who will occasionally reluctantly back him up in a fight. If several incidents crop up islandwide....
4) One of the PCs is a professional thief, and no pure mortal would be hampered by not being invited across a threshold.
I'm having trouble building an actual specific scenario for them to be introduced/thrown into, suitable for the current power level. How do I build lead-ins to explore, meet problems like teenage practitioners gone way off base or a greedy two-bit sorcerer binding spirits into service or whatever?
Suggestions would be very much appreciated, the more the merrier. My most sincerest thanks in advance.
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