Need some help on a plot (my players stay out)

[[MKF]Kapten]

OBS: English is not my main language. If you find the text tedious and hard to read, please tell me and I will try to rewrite so it will be easier.

---

Im making an adventure for a bunch of new characters and I need some help to comment and critisize on what I have so far.

The adventure is taking place in medieval fantasy Europe with a twist. The PCs are through loyalty, friendship and profit tied to a grand duke who is ruling a big province from a large harbor town. The town is a really big trading city on that coast. To the west of the country the PCs are starting in is a federation of small kingdoms placed (think medieval Germany) and to the east is a barbaric country that noone of the big powers have taken control of yet.
The grand duke is making a lot of profits on selling grain to the Federation.

The main church of the continent has sanctioned an order of templars to make crusades to the barbaric lands in the east. Much of the food and horses for the templars are bought in the town and new recruits are often conscripted in the town. This makes for a constant presence of templars in the town, who doesnt fight but protect the interrests of the Order.

Federational merchants are selling a lot of weapons and armor to the templars and are also selling other products to the town that are then transported from the town out to the rest of the country. The grand duke, though, has placed heavy customs on products to and from the town. The grand duke also owns his own trading fleet.

This is where the adventure takes place. A bunch of powerful lords of the Federation are tired of the heavy customs and also wants to take over the transportation of grain from the grand duke (for a fee, of course). To achieve this they plan to hit the grand duke's ships. Their first move towards this was to hire some "barbarian" pirates; they are only to attack the grand duke's ships and in exchange the pirates are allowed to have a base camp on Federational ground. The problem for the Federational lords, though, is that pirates are nothing new to the area. To protect himself from pirates his ships travels in convoys and he gives order for the ships to leave at short notice (meaning with a couple of days notice). If the Federational lords could get their pirates to know when a grain fleet was launched they would be in a much better position to find it and attack it in strength.

What the federational lords need now is someone on the inside that knows when the fleet is launched. They found it in an unconventional place: one of the higher templars is the lover of the grand duke's wife. He also is an ambitious and unscrupulous man. The lords now made their second move in their plan; they contacted the knight templar and made a deal with him; he is to get the information from the grand duke's wife when the fleets are launched and send that information per homing pigeon to the pirates. In exchange he will get a substantial reward in cash AND the merchant lords will let themselves be "convinced" by the templar how important the crusades to the east are and therefore they will give the templar order discounts on their weapons and armors. And they will not expose his relationship with the grand duke's wife.

If this plan works out the pirates will always be able to find and attack the grand duke's ships. After a while the grand duke will be unable to send his grain westward. The only ones with the capacity to do it then will be the federation lords who will do it in exchange for parts of the profit and lifted customs.

The PCs then will be the ones to expose the plan and get rid of the spy.

Here are my questions:

1) Do you think this sounds like a good plot? If not, what can be changed?

2) Does the premises of the plot sound reasonable? For example, is it possible to send away ships with a short notice considering medieval naval technology?

3) Do you have anything additonal to add on to the plot to make it more interresting? I would really appreciate any ideas

---

FWIW, the PCs are:
*One combat monster, not much else. He is the son of a baron who is close to the grand duke. His motivations are: Be the best swordsman in the world (drive) and loyalty to the grand duke (passion).
*One cat burglar, among the best of them (no one but a few knows what he does for a living). He was kicked out of his family (a pretty wealthy merchant family) for spending a fortune of his father's money on wine, women and song. He was robbed by a gang of thugs and is therefore poor. He was helped out by the Combat monsters family and is loyal to them. He also desperatly wants to get his hands on another fortune (drive, pretty temporary) and he is loyal to Combat monsters family (passion).
*One extremely charismatic templar with the ambition of reaching the top of the templar organisation. He is placed in the City to oversee the purchase of equipment for the templars in the East. He is loyal to the grand duke (passion, weak) but his overriding ambition is to gain power (major drive; flaw: Greed with emphasis on power).

[Judd]

Link the plot to the PC's SA's.  Make sure they have things to do within the Spiritual Attributes and take each SA and think of one or two happenings, interactions or NPC's that will get them firing.

Am I missing something or are they a little light on SA's?  They don't appear to have that many, which is fine, just makin' sure.

Have fun.

[[MKF]Kapten]

yeah, they are a bit light on the SAs, and I dont like all of them either. But this is the first TRoS campaign we play so I guess it will take a while for them to warm up.

Good ideas about specific events tied to the SA:s; I hadnt really thought of that (that shows how new I am I guess :) )

[Judd]

yeah, they are a bit light on the SAs, and I dont like all of them either. But this is the first TRoS campaign we play so I guess it will take a while for them to warm up.

Good ideas about specific events tied to the SA:s; I hadnt really thought of that (that shows how new I am I guess :) )

One good way to present SA's to players is to say that these are the player's way to let the DM/Seneschal/GM know where they want the game to go.

Good luck with the game (and don't worry about your English.  I understood every word.).

Welcome to the Forge.