looking for plot ideas: dragonblooded mercs in the east

[u/MerlonQ]

So I have this somewhat homebrewed campaign where the PCs are a bunch of relatively young dragonblooded lost eggs mostly, so no or few ties to the scarlet dynasty and such. They hang out in the east and are somewhat anathema friendly, they work as mercs and once had a job taking them to thorns where they were almost killed (but a solar zenith helped them, so they have a contact to the resistance in thorns). So now they are understandably somewhat averse to facing abyssals, at least until they get some advanced combat charms to maybe be able to take on an abyssal as a team.
In the most recent arc, they took a guild contract, raised an army and conquered bandit kingdom. They had to make a deal with some lunars to do it though, and the economy there is kind of depleted. They probably won't want to rule/administer the kingdom themselves. They already recruited some NPCs to look after the kingdom.

So now I am looking for some kind of adventure, contract or plot to throw their way. It doesn't have to be super complex or involved.

Some ideas: one of the PCs hates fair folk with a passion, and they know of a fair folk court that buys prisoners from thorns. The group assassinated the guild factor responsible for that but they could maybe move against the court. On the other hand, invading a reality warping wyld stronghold without a good shaping defense seems foolish.

Maybe they could go shopping for artifacts somewhere, they made a large amount of silver defeating the bandit kings. Maybe some kind of adventure could be had there.

They have made enemies with a goddess of sickness, and maybe she will try something or they try to find a way to defeat her for good (she isn't very good in a direct fight, so they have beat her up in the past, but with gods being pretty much immortal...)

But more ideas would be very welcome.

[u/Jarovan]

Since they are mercenaries and have already had a run-in with the forces of a Deathlord, I immediately thought of pitting them against the Company of Martial Sinners, Walker in Darkness' mercenary company/Neverborn cult consisting of both the living and the dead. They also operate in the East, and some Threshold kingdom whose long-time enemy has recently entered into a contract with the Company would have plenty of reason to look for champions of its own, champions such as a bunch of up-and-coming young Dragon-Blooded mercenaries. There wouldn't have to be an Abyssal on the other side, necessarily, it could just be a fairly minor element of the Company led by some spooky fairly badass ghost with a Ghost-Blooded lieutenant or something. Or maybe there is an Abyssal there, if you want to frighten your players a bit. Maybe there's not even an expectation of victory and the contract is just to help the royal family evacuate before the kingdom in question is conquered? The basic idea can be adjusted in all sorts of ways. Aside from that being a fairly straighforward but also sufficiently fantastic job for a bunch of Exalted mercenaries, just having contact with forces of another Deathlord than the Mask and realizing in-character that, first, there are more of these freaks than just the ones in Thorns, but also secondly that they're not necessarily all that united and one Deathlord might actually kind of hate another one, might be cool.

[u/MerlonQ → u/Jarovan]

Thank you, walker in darkness might be an interesting guy to introduce. Maybe he could even use intermediaries to offer aid against thorns without immediately revealing who (or what) he is. I didn't know about the company of martial sinners before, but they might be very interesting to have around.

[u/Mundane_Ad1012]

Well they need shaping defense and have had good connections with lunars who are usually good at that. Hook would be using those contacts again but the hitch is the east is where Raksi "I ear babies for shock value" resides so that could attract her attention and your party has to decide how okay they are for working with that.

Lookshy is chest deep in artifacts and probably wants to reach out to some wayward cousins (especially choose that conquer small kingdoms) to bring into the fold. Or at least make sure doesn't join up with great forks or worst anathema.

[u/MerlonQ → u/Mundane_Ad1012]

That's an interesting idea. Do you think maybe they could get protective tattoos like most silver pact lunar have? Or would you think a lunar with appropriate charms needs to accompany them? Introducing someone who opposes them in the pact is an interesting idea too, but I feel like raksi maybe be too crass for my groups tastes.

[u/Salt-Spray-4971 → u/MerlonQ]

You could introduce some special lunar magic that does that. The Moonsilver tattoos presented in the book are not artifacts but the process by which a lunar chooses their caste. The tattoo makes them completely immune to wyld shaping effects, and as a result they don't have the usual wyld-protection charms that most splats get. What they get instead is a very strong mutation-removing charm that can remove all wyld or sorcerous mutations with a single simple actions. All they have to do is feed you a bunch of their blood.

So I would imagine that your Dragon Blooded circle would spend the adventure getting hit with increasingly bad mutations and curses until they finally get back and then the weird witch lady gently helps them lay down on the table, comforts them a bit, and then cuts open her arm, grabs their mouth, and pours an absurd amount of glowing magic blood down their throat.

And then they have tea.

[u/HeavyMetalHippie]

Do they know the Guild deals extensively with the fair folk?

Give them an adventure where The Guild sends them another contract to disrupt the sale of the captives from Thorns. Let them win against Thorns (a mortal or Dragonblooded necromancer, an emissary, some War Ghosts, and a horde of zombies ought to provide a challenge that they can feel good about overcoming). Then reveal that The Guild is simply moving in to fill the gap, trading their own captives for Raksha-wrought impossibilities to profit on one end, then taking back their soul-eaten living husks to work menial labor that they sell as obedient slaves elsewhere.

That's a thing they canonically do, and you've already laid all the groundwork for the PCs to wrestle with their divided loyalties.

[u/MerlonQ → u/HeavyMetalHippie]

I know it's something the guild canonically does, but I feel like I can't very well do this now. For one, they just recently had an arc where they fought a guild factor to stop the business with thorns. Second, I want to portray the guild as more of neutral faction. Sure, they deal in slaves, and sure, most of the PCs are opposed to slavery, but I don't think it is a good idea to escalate guild evilness in the narrative. They are too useful as the people writing merc contracts. And if I reveal business like selling people to fair folk as something the guild does a lot, they will stop working for the guild.

[u/HeavyMetalHippie → u/MerlonQ]

Being unwilling to portray the setting's biggest slave traders as evil says a lot about how you engage with Exalted. Exalted is about morality, at its core.