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Starting out, the villain is very happy. This, of course, implies that Graham is very unhappy.

The wizard's foe begins hostile machinations which require, for maximum effect, Graham's death. We don't know why, but we can assume they're hostile because he/she is trying to kill him. His initial survival is immediately obvious (we can't assume his foe would be foolish enough to use a fire-and-forget attack, so therefore we should assume the foe knows he's survived) which means he has to next dodge contingency plans.

All this effort shows that Graham's death is important, and all this redundancy means his enemy is clever. So we're learning things already.

With all that in mind, I started rolling dice and asking questions, like the witch off "Stardust".

"Is Graham's death meant to mask an impersonation?" -- "Partly."

Interesting.

"Will his continued survival make the impersonation impossible?" -- "No."

"Once the antagonist's plans are in motion, will they require maintenance?" -- "No."

...and suchlike.

I determined that the antagonist has a great Objective of some sort, which requires Graham dead or disabled for maximum effect but is still doable if Graham is otherwise occupied trying to stay alive. The scheme involves a brief impersonation of Graham (which is still possible if he is elsewhere and prevented from contacting whoever it concerns). Additionally, the plot must be worth the risk of antagonizing a powerful wizard.


Additional questions regarding the manner of mischief which would be done to Graham revealed that the baddie is going to make deals with Powers-in-the-world in exchange for favors (which Graham will be liable for). For maximum horribleness, one of these is starting a war.

Additionally I determined that arcane archers, malignant spirits, and remote curses will be the sort of things Graham has to defend himself against.

That seems like progress to me.

Further, I figured out how we're going to handle combat. Some time ago, a friend of mine wrote a combat generator that takes some characters with various stats and pits them against one another randomly, giving detailed results including damage type (for example, did you get pierced in the vitals or pierced through the hand?).

I've also been a DM for several years. So I'm going to make an unholy hybrid and use that when I don't have any idea what to do in terms of interesting combat. (For those of you who are interested, he's a 10th level mixed class Focused Divination 5/ Sorcerer 3/ Wizard 2. I know it's weird, but it's going to be okay.)

And I sketched up a map, which I will recreate digitally and post at a later point, when I know something about the world.