So, I've been running my own homebrew for about 10 months now, and early on, around session 2, I gave a magical item of my own creation that I wanted to make the main Macguffin of the entire campaign. It's tied to one of my players backstories, and so far has revolved around them discovering what it does, where it belongs, and what using it will reveal about the world

The concern I have is, the PC it's associated with will, I'm afraid, get tired or bored or worse, frustrated that various roadblocks and distractions keep popping up. I want them to know that we will get there eventually, without outright saying, "your backstory is leading my campaign so if we get there too soon, the games gonna end that much quicker"