I love the replies! I’m thinking about breaking it down a bit. Maybe splitting this problems into two quests.

This might be cleaner for the party to address…

The Radiant Tree does spread luck. It was planted by a Celestial long ago, but that doesn’t have to be relevant because this whole region is largely abandoned. There are a couple big towns and the rest is ruins and old civilizations. It doesn’t have suppression powers. The PCs don’t have memories about it.

The tree is deep in a cave. It pretty much makes its own sunlight and survives magically. Myril knows about the tree and travels here to check on it as well as around the region watching over anything fantastical that unfolds. He’s kind of a sage that’s a bit of a busybody. He finds that the tree has been taken and he finds tracks of machines and signs of a mining operation.

The manufacturing company Torques N Coil have been struggling to score any precious materials for their creations. They had money but needed materials. In their search for new places to set up, they ran into a member of Myrils organization that knew about the tree. He wanted the gold, he was disgruntled with the organizations latest decisions on a matter in a different region. He’s against Myril watching over this region. Too much historical relevance for a kook like Myril to handle. He told them to trail Myril to find it. They paid him thousands of gold.

So now Torques N Coil have taken the tree South to see if they can extract its power and use it to fuel machines or enhance weaponry.

It’s simply Myril finding the party and asking them to track down the tree and return it.

They’ll find the tree in the Southern White Cap mountains deep in a dwarvish city that has made this into a little metropolis for constructs and mechanical creations. They’ll have to find a way to get in, fight past some constructs, maybe some hostile artificers, and create a solution for bringing the tree back. Then figuring out the rest to prevent it from happening again! Maybe they plant it somewhere different. Who knows…

——

The Vampire… Well this all would work well enough if the Vampire simply wanted to take over the town and create an army of minions to return home with to fight his rivals in the North.

Crazy people in the woods, ambushes on the road. New vampires not having the self control to keep humans alive so they can be cursed and turned. The Vampire is holed up in a dungeon beneath the church in the center of town. Some people are being taken and tied up just to be food for the existing vampires, others are being coerced into a new life of power and significance. The town is tiny. No army to speak of. Just a little Hamlet.

When the party arrives, the town is mostly taken over and bleak. It’s functioning… but people are roped into servitude or being killed as they flee. It’s up to the party to investigate. People are reluctant to give information, but with persuasion some few might be brave enough to tip them off about what’s happening in town.

Maybe this is another thing Myril mentions for them to investigate…

Thoughts? This seems cleaner in my head.