West Marches - NPC: Gorbalek Lipadip

I'm holding off on posting the results of the How Do I Kill It And Why Does It Work, until some more people have had a chance to post their theories, but I think Ashton's will probably win.

Anyway, this is about some guy named Gorbalek Lipadip as you know, so I should probably get on with it :).

Well, I wanted to get the players to the Octagon Dungeon early on. Still though, how to do it? Then I started thinking about the fact that there's a gnome I rolled up sitting on his butt on the first level of the place. It seems a bit railroad-y but I think I'm going to have his 'grieving wife' have a "Help Wanted" ad in Accorles (Ack-ore-lays) Landing (the local bar, influenced by Icarus Descending from Shadowrun.)

IMPORTANT NOTE!!!!! IF YOU WISH TO GET THE STORY AS THE PLAYERS EXPLORE IT STOP READING NOW!!!!

She provides a way to contact her, as well as a generous reward. I figure that 100 gold is pretty fair, considering that A. They have to fight some pretty rough stuff to get to him, and B. They get no other loot from the first level, other than the few coins and such the toughest encounter has.

If they go meet her, rather than simply saying "Well, then let's go to this old ruin, and see what we find.", which they probably will, as they're highly experienced players, she will be, for all intents and purposes, his grieving wife, who thinks he's probably dead, as she posted this about a week ago, three day after he was supposed to be back. She's not actually his grieving wife, but more on that later.

When they go down into the dungeon to try and find him, they will - he's on the first floor trapped by... Let's see... 9 - 1d6 Orcs. Those Orc aren't actually gone, they're simply wandering about, but close enough. Anyway, as you can probably tell, the Gnomish woman above, isn't actually his wife. She's been charmed by a servant of the vampire residing on level three. The reason Gorbalek was down there in the first place was that he was helping the thing grow a new body after the last group of adventurers cut its head off. (Thanks Ashton!). Of course the party won't find this out until they make it past the ogre on level two, plus whatever foul creatures reside down there with the vampire... Duh. I forgot that one of the main tenets of the West Marches campaign is that they start with a partially filled in map. Just labeling it "Strange ruins" should do.