As long as we're all back here together, let's catch up on some of what makes our campaigns so great; those moments that can never be forgotten as long as we game. Recent is what I'm looking for… not pining for the days of our campaigns years ago.
For me, it came a few weeks ago in my current campaign. The main villain, a young woman, was created by the PCs. They don't know this of course, nor that she's even a villain. Someone was trying to kill them, as minor NPC bad guys are wont to do, waaaay back at the beginning over a year and a half ago. A crate was dislodged on the docks, intended to crush the PCs while they talked to a minor (and very unimportant) NPC. I sucked at the Listen roll for the NPC to determine where exactly the PCs were and the wrong crate was pushed. It fell towards the NPC and his pregnant wife instead. The PCs failed some rolls to notice this, but the NPC did not (he was very protective of his beautiful and pregnant young wife) and he leapt to push her out of the way. The crate landed on him and killed him. The shove provoked a miscarriage in his wife several days later. She decided fate had turned against her and has since been on a mission to unleash a terribleness on the world that will end all life...period.
Fast forward to a couple sessions ago; the PCs are in another land dealing with an offshoot of her plan. She is there, unbeknownst to them. They foil the evil plan at great expense to themselves (one now has no right hand, another lost an eye, and the third will never be the same though she doesn't know why yet), and find this girl chained to a wall (her dealings with lower planes type things require this for everyone's protection...what she does isn't pretty, as all well done evil shouldn't be). They of course assume she is a captive and rescue her. They take her back with them to a city they operate out of. Most specifically to the library of an ancient order...that she has wanted to access all along to speed her plans along. They brought her to the very meeting where the next stages of their plans were laid out with the major good guy NPCs. When her warlock minions came to rescue her from their ship, the PCs of course thought it was a kidnapping and still have absolutely no idea at all that they've undone most of their success since the beginning of the campaign.
They're even putting their *very important* plan in the hands of others so they can rush off and rescue her again...not that that will matter now that the plan is well known by their enemies, but they won't be there to try and put it right again (nor to maybe realize how the enemies knew about it). Instead, they'll be walking right into the worst place they could possibly go at this point in the campaign in order to "rescue" her again. Along the way, they intend to recover and bring with them something she mentioned that she might need if she's to "help them against this evil" so that they have it right there with them when they "save" her.
I really love my job.
