Dungeon Mastery: Going Stale? How about a reboot?

 

The PCs village sits on the banks of a wide river just below high cliffs. On the opposite side is a wide plane where out of no where one evening two huge armies engage in battle. All night the villagers can only watch as those armies engage in brutal combat, giant monsters shackled and chained are unleashed on hundreds of rival soldiers. The sounds of people over there dying are truely horrible.

At sunrise the smell of death and smoke of burning corpses fills the air but it looks like it is over. The villagers decide to take boat across the river to scavenge the battle field for armour, weapons, and any other valuables.

This is an opportunity to have low level PCs encounter high CR opponents with 1-2 hp remaining. Throw in other scavengers picking over the dead like wild dogs or goblins. They can also find a survivor- some Prince who they can struggle to keep alive as they take him across country to his homeland.

Once there they can be betrayed, but the journey is what its all about. This guy will be someone they grow to like. But the PCs scavvenged a battlefield, looted bodies, they have those impailing poles coming.

Roll up two entire armies with treasure and kill them off. Leave a few greatly wounded survivors. Wounded heroes and nobles with a magic sword or family crests on magic armour that will get the PCs hunted by bounty hunters and assassins on route. A wizard's burned spellbook with a selection of spells and scrolls. 

If they think they can go back to their village, they can only watch as a dragon, its wings severed, covered in shackles and chains,  rises up out of the river and crawls into your village and breathes a fiery breath burning it to the ground before dying on the river bank. All your loved ones are dead.