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Some ideas I read here:
*Give the Stag Lord and Hargulka similar magic items weaved with Nyrissa distinctive green hair. It should help the players understand that there was a link between the two villains.
*Use all the fey encounters in books 1 and 2 to drop hints about a "Fey Queen" being the mistress of that region. When they meet the Dacing Lady in book 2 and the PCs obviously think she is that queen, make it clear that she swears fealty to someone else.
*The Old Beldame should warn them early on that they should pack their things and go home, because a power greater than Brevoy claims these lands as theirs.
Pretty much what Chuck said. Make some more direct connections between Nyrissa and the visible villains - Staggy, Hargulka, maybe even Drelev and/or Armag - and have a lot of fey around who know of her, even if it's very little direct info. Definitely want to try to give the impression that almost every intelligent opposition they've faced has been at least in part due to her meddling and puppet strings; Vordakai's really the one exception, and with a little tweaking there can be reason that she's for one reason or another behind him waking up.
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A few months ago I was talking with another Kingmaker DM about this problem. There are a few places where there are hints in retrospect, but it's unlikely that the players will pick up on them. What I've been thinking about doing is the following.
Book 1: I was chatting with a fellow GM about this idea and she hit on the Stag Lord and a hint in himself. He was seduced by Nyrissa, and it gave him the strength to deal with his abusive father. However, it also gave him an obsession, which (this is the added stuff) takes the form of crudely-drawn pornography of a beautiful green-skinned woman. You could have the art tacked all over his room or hidden in journals for the players to find.
I'm also using the Stag Lord's amulets as the first clue of Nyrissa's presence. The silver stag's heads have a green glass between the horns, which N can use to scry on the Stolen Lands. This is a theme that'll repeat in book 2, and possibly further.
Book 2: The ring on the psycho owlbear provides another clue as to the presence of N., and by playing that up and using Hargulka's necklace in the same manner, it's possible to show a theme between those two and Staggy.
Book 3: This book doesn't need a tie-in, because Vordakai is such an active villain that he doesn't need N to manipulate him. I would actually consider a tie-in to Skywatch, assuming you're planning on running some of the Beyond Kingmaker stuff.
Book 4: I'm rebuilding a large chunk of book 4 to support The Realm of the Fellnight Queen. Drelev will still be around, but Rhoswen will take the place of Armag. I intend to change Rhoswen as well, to have her be the child of N and Staggy
I'm still much too far away to plan for book five, since a lot can change in that time.
All Books: I also intend to use Zuddiger's Picnic as a recurring theme through the books. I think it could be spoiled relatively early (sometime in book two), and then sit until it's needed.
I haven't thought too much about events yet, sorry. One option would be to pre-roll the kingdom events and make them into mini-adventures in their own right.
EDIT: I think James Jacobs said that N is supposed to be a bit hidden and shadowy, especially after enemies like Queen Ileosa from CotCT. I would certainly be careful about over-spoiling her.
I also plan on running Realm of the Fellnight Queen. I plan on just making Rhoswen and Nyrissia the same person. The end of the adventure even has some GM notes on how to make the villain return at some point in the future. That way, I don't have to wait for Book 6 for the payoff of all the foreshadowing I've been dropping.
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Our group played Kingmaker with three GMs - I ran Books 3, 5 and 6. This meant there wasn’t as much opportunity for foreshadowing, but I made some changes to Book 5.
- Zuddiger’s Picnic turned up at the end of Book 4 (the owner was a woman from Fort Drelev whose husband and son had been killed in the recent troubles, and she wanted a memorial to them created in exchange for “the most valuable book” in her husband’s library).
- Irovetti had asked Nyrissa for help against the PCs’ kingdom. Nyrissa agreed because she hoped that both kingdoms would be weakened by the war. I removed Irovetti’s troll armies and created stats for several smaller armies of fey and forest creatures from Thousand Voices (there were spriggans, centaurs, elven archers with the ‘fey creature’ template, and some tendriculoses led by an evil treant). The PCs’ kingdom was friendly to fey, and there wasn’t any obvious connection between Pitax and the fey. So the PCs wondered why these armies seemed to be fighting for Irovetti. The PCs captured two of the elven archers and questioned them. The fey elves said they had received a message from an emissary of the “Queen of Forgotten Time”, ordering them to serve Irovetti’s general. The elves didn’t know much about the Queen except that terrible things tended to happen to anyone who disobeyed her emissary. The Queen’s title was enough for the PCs to track down some legends about Nyrissa, and Evindra knew a few stories about Nyrissa’s early life.
- I also revealed Nyrissa’s ability to see possible futures. During one of the confrontations between Irovetti and the PCs, Irovetti claimed that his muse had shown him a vision of the Stolen Lands transformed into a wasteland of black sand, ruins and ghosts (apparently brought about by the PCs’ future actions). As supporting evidence (of a sort) for this vision, he repeated some other warnings he had been given about the PCs, including one piece of information they had only just learned about themselves, and one that they were yet to discover.
Seerow, I believe it's called "those waskawwy fey" or something similar
We're in book 2 right now. The players don't know know Nyrissa's real name, but they know there's a powerful faerie with a strong interest in the region.
1. Nyrissa is a nymph, and nymphs can choose to a "muse" for a mortal, which gives a +4 to Will saves (potentially very useful for your end-of-chapter bad guys!). The mortal has some token of the nymph. In my campaign, I made the token a magic ring woven from Nyrissa's hair. They got one off the Stag Lord - his ring of protection +1 - and they'll get another from Hargulka. And eventually, one from Irovetti. Not sure about anyone else yet.
When a PC puts on the ring, after a time they start having dreams of the most beautiful woman (or man, I suppose? or maybe it just doesn't work on those not attracted to women) they can imagine. Highly erotic dreams. Dreams of power. Dreams of conquest. In the later dreams, power and conquest is achieved through possessing a thorn-wrapped sword that the woman urges the dreamer to find. It's all about lust - for sex, for personal power, for political power. Eventually they start seeing the woman when they're awake, out of the corner of their eye moving through the crowd or what have you.
Maybe for those not attracted to women, the erotic dreams are skipped over and it goes straight to power fantasies involving the sword. Not an issue in my group, though.
2. When the players encounter other faeries, name-drop Nyrissa, but not by name. The AP says she's knows as the Queen of Forgotten Time, and she probably has some other titles, too. My PCs know that the Green Lady has laid claim to the Stolen Lands and that some of the fey in the area serve her (or claim to).