Out of my house we run 3 other campaigns. However most DMs rarely get to play, so I have decided to do a "DMing for the DMs" group. It will be my first time running and the least experienced DM at my table has been running fo 2 years. So no pressure. 

The characters start out as rowing slaves on a ship. There is a warforged cleric at the rear of the ship healing slaves to keep them alive and productive. He is a player. One is a dwarf fighter, a changeling druid and just a teifling guy. The teifling pledges his soul to a dark deity and becomes a warlock in the process. He has visions of stars being pulled into a hungering void. As this happens almost all the slaves drop dead, except the PCs. Roll initiative for first encounter, 5 slavers vrs 4 PC. 

Once they get to town, a city called Batae which is in the dessert and fed water from a fist sized hole to the elemental plain of water, they are found by an NPC named Inara. Batae is populated by a race of red teiflings called the Saar, who braid their hair in front of their faces to keep sand out. She explains that she is a wizard and some what of a mad scientist and would like the party to collect magical items for her. She is also covered in piercings that work like the cloak of many things. Each is a magical item. 

The players dont know but her patron is the same dark being that the warlock just pledged himself to. Sakarsis, consumer of stars. She is a blackhole dragon bent on destroying the material plain. Inaras list of items represents one item for each plain of existence, all outer plains, elemental plains, and the feywild and shadowfel. By collecting these things for her they will bring about the destruction of their realm. If things go well, and the material plain is destroyed I'd like to scatter its remains across the outer plains and spend the last few levels of this long story restoring it. The problem I'm having is all the little stories and quests to find the items on her list. There are 22 and its alot. 

I would love some ideas of what to do to make collecting these fun for them. If you guys want I can post what kind of item I picked for each plain.

I like the idea for the adventure story and setting, but I do think it would help to have some more details on the specific items to have an idea of what to suggest

Shadowfel- black prismatic crystal

Feywild- white prismatic crystal

Water- A pearl of water breathing

Fire- a flame you cannot put out

Earth- an unusually heavy stone

Air- a griffon feather

Arcadia- a diamond tesseract

Mount celestia- a snow globe of a mountain

Bytopia- a dagger, light on one edge, dark on the other

Elysium- a glowing flower, grants charm and light

Beadtlands- the claw of an unknown beast

Arborea- a cup of white sand

Ysgard- a branch that drips blood when shaken

Limbo- transmutation putty. Becomes differnt elements and states depending on how its handled. 

Pandemonium- a whistle made of bone

Abyss- right hand of a demon

Carceri- manacles that grant acid splash

Hades- heart of a nightmare

Gehenna - cooled magma, grants cloud of ash

Archeron- A worn sheild with a culture motif

The nine hells- wing of a devil

Mechanus- a gearwork clock with 22 hours. This clock will count down each time they deliver an item. They will need to roll perception to see if they notice it change time.

Obviously alot of these will be much too hard for level one players. This is meant to last until level 10-15. The NPC will have suggestions on where to start to help them decide. They shouldn't have to do any planar hopping to collect these. For some of the harder items they might go to sigil and the outlands

The first thing that came to mind after reading the list is I think it would be good to start with some of the items that seem more mundane at first glance. I'd say start with three items in one location... The Mechanus Clock is an obvious one to have them find early on so they get more opportunities to notice what it's doing. I think the Celestia Snowglobe is a good "trick" item to send them looking for, since its interesting but also a little bit silly, so your team might start underestimating what they're up against with it. And a good third item would probably be the Archeron Shield... something that appears to have more obvious practical purpose... maybe the team might conclude that the other two items are just red herrings to keep them from taking the obviously much more useful shield.

I think a good first quest would be for them to be sent to bargain for these items from a collector, only to find that the collector has already been robbed before they get there. Depending on whether you can come up with an interesting personality for the collector, you could either have them still be alive and offer a monetary reward to the party for recovering his artifacts, or he could just be dead from the first robbery and they can find reward with the robbers. From there, taking on a small camp of bandits is a fairly standard first adventure, but maybe you could hint that the bandits were working for someone else who is also trying to collect these same items.

I love this! Thank you so much for the awesome ideas!

I like bait and switches for long collections like this. 

Have one or two items just be hanging out somewhere. A curio shop or being played with by a child. 

I would also recommend someway to track the items if they are entirely unique. 

Ooh. Yes similar to the compass in pirates of the Caribbean. 

Maybe the clock could fulfill that function? Like the hour hand counts down the remaining pieces, and the minute hand points in the rough direction of other pieces. Maybe to keep the players on just using it to directly home in on its location once they're within a mile or two it just starts spinning.

Amazing. Love it

I would suggest having a rival character/party also questing for these same items for their own reasons. That way, whenever you need to, you can put the PCs into a “race against time” scenario, or even have the other character/group steal an item (or items) from the PCs that they will have to re-acquire. 

That other faction might be “heroes” trying to thwart the Blackhole Dragon or villains in their own right operating under more mysterious motivations.

i would try and have powerful-ish enemies guarding these items and have the enemies be somehow linked to these items