Story Suggestions Sought

[wolff96]

Last night, one of my players did something impulsive, foolish, and completely in-character.  It also created a new plot thread entirely out of thin air...  which is just a beautiful thing when it happens.   

The short version is that the Scion of Morpheus (Dream, based loosely on Gaiman's Sandman comics) has been charged to set up a "family meeting" for the other Endless on behalf of his boss.  To this end, they needed an Accorded Neutral Ground site blocked and "reserved" for the night.  They found a local ANG site willing to help, with the catch that if they offended any guests or damaged the place, it was on their heads -- and they needed a second signer of the Unseelie Accords to vouch for them (kind of like a second in a duel).

They decided to approach the Winter Court Fae.  Maeve appeared and whisked away the character that had invoked her name three times -- NOT a social character.  Trying to avoid any conflict (or a standard "3-favors" arrangement), he promised her an unspecified favor from MORPHEUS.  Since he was acting on behalf of Morpheus' Scion, who was himself acting on Morpheus' request, the Lady of Winter was *more* than happy to accept this as a binding arrangement. 

Needless to say, Morpheus is less than thrilled about this arrangement.

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A few facts: 

• We are loosely following book chronology, currently somewhere between Grave Peril and Summer Knight
• The city is Dallas.  Major players are the White Court (two factions), a community of Ghouls, both Sidhe courts (minor influence), and an AmerInd Trickster deity by the name of Coyote and his cult
• Morpheus and the Summer Court don't get along -- there is an affair in the past that ended poorly between the Lord of Dreams and Queen Titannia
• The character JUST repelled a Red Court attack on Dallas, which was trying to 'embrace' the local wizard (party member) and her mentor Bill Dyers (the regional warden)
• Dresden does exist, but they've never met him and I want to keep him up in Chicago   
• The biggest campaign theme is "A New City built on Old Bones" about how D/FW is changing with the times but still has a LOT of old history and ancient rivalries underpinning the current situation

So far I've thought about having them escort Lloyd Slate through the Never-Never to Ronald Rhuel's apartment, to kick off Summer Knight's plot.

I've also considered some kind of power-harnessing plot -- using the Lord of Dreams to increase Winter's power in the mortal world through dreams (not very concrete yet).

Finally, Morpheus is kind of at war with himself at the moment in story (Not that the players know this).  His power is currently split between his "normal" self and Phobos, which is the part of him that controls nightmares/fear.  At some point, that reconciliation will be a plot point, but I'm not sure that it's really in Winter's best interests to unify his power again. 

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I'm hoping to get some cool ideas from the community here that I have yet to consider.  If you've made it through all that, please feel free to drop me any ideas you can come up with!

[Lanir]

I'm only loosely familiar with the Sandman stories but here are a couple of ideas.

- Go the White Wolf route: Your mention of "embrace" makes me think of WW vamps, so possibly Morpheus could be coerced into granting a dream weapon to the side of winter. It can be part phantasm and quirky if you like (kind of how the WW changeling weapons are), but if the players have to deal with the after effects, make sure enough clues are left to piece things together.
- Borrowing minions: Resolve the debt with the loan of an underling. Maeve is more than clever enough to choose an underling that would also cause Morpheus no end of trouble at home, too. Perhaps requesting something like a hit on the summer knight by the Corinthian for example. Suddenly Morpheus is involved in a factional fae dispute as well as having to deal with having to let a powerful antagonist loose.

Not sure if these are useful, I don't really know the Sandman stuff well enough to be sure I'm not barking up the wrong tree. I've likely got some specifics wrong but maybe there's something there you can adapt.