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I haven't developed a full on overarching theme yet, but here's what has happened so far in my campaign. After Eyes In the Forest as kind of an introduction I had the party  hired by Citirrian (The Saruun Guild wizard) to recover the Staff of  Earthen Might (Stick In the Mud). Upon leaving the dungeon they were  jumped by bandits from the Brother Gray who had been hired by an unknown  person who wants the staff. After defeating the bandits they got back  to the keep to find that Citirrian's servant boy, the only other witness  to the meeting where they were hired, had been murdered. This was the  hint that Citirrian has a competitor in trying to recover items from the  Scar. Their only clue being the involvement of a member of the Brothers  Gray in the ambush (Corporal Fallek recognized him from the party's  description) they next headed to The Crossroads where Millen Silvereye,  the owner of the trading post there is rumored to have contact with the  Brothers Gray. They had to fight the hobgoblins at the gibbet tree to  rescue an npc they knew and were immediately attacked by dwarves who had  been inside the trading post purchasing furs. The dwarves turned out to  be members of the Bronzeknuckle Clan (Dungeon # 173) who recognized the  armor of the party's halfling rogue (which she took off a dwarf corpse  in Stick In the Mud) as belonging to a cousin who disappeared while  adventuring in the Scar (He had actually been part of a previous group  hired by Citirrian). So now the party has a feud with the  Bronzeknuckles. Millen Silvereye was willing to tell the party where the  Brothers Gray were hiding out in return for them recovering a gem for  him that is rumored to be in an abandoned temple in the woods to the  north (Dead By Dawn). After getting trapped in the temple and holding  off the zombie horde the party returns to the Crossroads and Millen  gives them the location they desire, which is of course the abandoned  mine in The Brothers Gray. After defeating the bandits there they find  out that the person who hired them is a mysterious Scarlet Witch (A  reworked version of Morgana from Den of the Slavetakers) who showed up last night with some duergar from the clan in The Hammer Falls, and they headed into the mine to recover the Chaos Shard that she had detected through divination was there. The mine is going to be enough of the Tainted Spiral to get the party to 3rd level and the last encounter will be a combination of that adventures final encounter and the final encounter of The Brothers Gray. Morgana will escape on the second round by having just finished a Linked Portal scroll while the duergar and Moseley cover her retreat, and they are all attacked by fell taints. Hopefully none of the players will do something stupid like try to jump through the portal, but if they do they'll get what they deserve. I'm running this in Greyhawk so Morgana is going to turn out to be a Pyermius worshipping agent of the Scarlet Brotherhood working with the duergar, who are also Pyremius worshipper. That's all I've got so far. There will probably be an interlude involving the priest Benwick who will turn out to be a snaketongue cultist of Merrshaulk (Zehir). I've left a couple of clues about him and the party is definitely suspicious. After that they'll finally be summoned for an audience with Lord Drysdale and begin working at his behest. There's a Knight in the party now so I'm thinking of dangling command of a small nearby village under her and the party's nose as a motivation. There should be plenty of trouble that comes with that responsibility and at some point they'll get around to The Hammer Falls.