Villain: The Gleebringer Battalions
Gallard Gleebringer only ever wanted to make people happy. By using his skills as a toymaker and inventor he sought to fill the world with devices that would bring wonder, and save people from the drudgery of labour to give them more time for play.
Seeking to save his neighbours from the horrors of war, and under the patronage of the battlehungry local margrave, Gallard has a constructed an autonomous army of toy soldiers that in some weeks time will go berserk and begin rampaging across the land, playing out an inexplicable war-game that will leave villages sacked and the entire region destabilized.
It’s up to the party to notice the looming crisis and do something about it before the toys begin their march, As the powers that be are not only blind to any fault in their shiny new war machines but actively willing to imprison the party for jeopardizing "the defence of the realm" .
Adventure Hooks:
Scraping together enough coin to fund a construct army has left the margrave’s treasury more than a little tight pursed, leading them to skimp on things like repairing infrastructure, public festivals, and resupplying their garrisons. There’s plenty of opportunities for adventurers as bandits and monsters propagate through the wilderness, and the lesser nobles rely on mercenaries to guard their holdings. Its only so long before the cracks begin to show however, as roads wash out and the realms defenders turn to brigandry.
The party end up in a tavern drinking with an old military officer previously employed by the margrave. She’s iresome and illtempered, but she’ll crawl out of her cups long enough to tell the tale of how after twenty years of loyal service she was let go for protesting when some of the troops under her command were killed in a training exercise. If the party press a little she might just let it slip that it wasn’t training so much as a field test of Gleebringer’s machines, which her boss insisted be against real troops. Later on, they’ll find an official bounty posted for the woman, who’s rallied some of her fellow discontented soldiers and started on a campaign of sabotage.
For his part Gleebringer is quite blind to the looming threat, having been carried by his ever shifting attention to yet another new project once the design and manufacture of the armies were complete. The party might get a chance to talk to him however if they manage to sneak into the excursive exposition he's hosting in the province's capital, either by riding in on the coattails of a wealthy patron, or by sneaking in among the serving staff. Actually getting an audience with the toymaker will be even more difficult as the margrave has set his agents to watch and protect Gleebringer, and it's only so long before they notice the uninvited guest have crashed the private function.
