Hi,

this might sound strange but yesterday i got an idea for a campaign. Either have them start on Level 1 or (my preference) i will start with a Lv 0 adventure ...

Dark deeds in Last hope (no changes). (level 1 after this adventure). After several months, some people get murdered and partly eaten, Heroes venture out in the woods and find a larger quantity of some undead. After killing them they discover that they are not "usual undead" but some kind of "undead mixed with mechanical additons" (like steampunk arm and stuff) also they look more "stitched together". Heroes kill the monsters and go back to town. Unfortunately they didn't get all undead so the village gets ransacked by some frog like monster (look at Hunters but also with some steampunk limbs) as well as these undead steampunk zombies. Village get totally destroyed and PCs escape with some villages to next biggest town (maybe Crossings or so) (level 2 after this adventure) Here they try to get help but no one belives their story about "enhanced undead" and "steampunk monsters".

from here on i would add several other adventures totally unrelated to the incident. After a while again several murders occur which look similar (partly eaten, some of them got their head clear cut off and have cuts everywhere) PCs can investigate in the nearby villages (several adventures by clearing out these monsters. Finally after the second time either the Inquisition or any other "higher ups" get suspicious and the PC can hand over all infos they have (or not) either way the discover that all incidents happen around a larger forest area and after gathering information they find out that a really rich guy has build a large mansion there... lived for a few month there and now it's abandoned. At least that is what the people keep saying (either this or they look into the woods and stumple upon the mansion). From here on i would use a smaller version of the Resident Evil 1 mention with a secret lab underground. Basically it's not a necromancer or cultist (which is basically in every adventure) i think more of a group of (don't know which path would fit) people which wanted to build an army of monsters / enhanced soldiers and it seems they had agreements with other cities as well. Therefore they put dead bodies, used some steampunk mechanical stuff and BOOM new monsters. Since something like a Virus which infects people is not really possible (mean: i don't thinkt hat any sage could use this to infect humans / beasts to make them bigger baddies)

on second thought: maybe instead of a virus it's a small... parasitic monster/Demon which transform Humans into monsters