In a world with enchantment spells, can you trust your neighbor? In a world with illusion spells, can you trust your senses?
Here's a setup for your next campaign setting:
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The more I think about it, the more enamored I am of it. Probably the best selling point is that you can drop this into any campaign setting you please — just layer it over the rest of the stuff that's happening and let it run in the background. (If there are canonical, potent enchanters and illusionists in your setting, they're villains now, protecting their own interests. Otherwise, add a few puppet masters to your campaign setting. Nobody's ever heard of them because they know how to cover their tracks.) Low-level parties might get snapshots of the weirdness, with all the mainstays of conspiracy fiction: mysterious disappearances, unknown benefactors, sudden betrayals, characters whose memories have been altered. It's only in the mid- to high-level range that you're likely to unmask and smash the conspiracy. (Or join it. Or initiate a hostile takeover.)
Of course, clever PCs might expose the conspiracy when they're low-level, and convince disparate allies to do something about it. But that will always raise the question of how successful they truly were, and whether or not there's something greater at work. (If your sinister mind-controlling cabal of immortal wizards started with the lofty and altruistic goal of fortifying human minds against Those Outside, well, maybe now the campaign setting has to deal with the aftermath of Lovecraftian entities from the Far Realm ripping through the world.)
