Waldsby Portal Exodus

[Richard Pitt]

So I'm running this for a second group and they have come up with a plan to try and convince the residents of Waldsby to retreat through the portal to Heldren. This comes after an epic battle in the white weasal where all the guards, and an inquisitor of Zon Kuthon who was questioning villagers about the black rider, were put down.

Now their plan is to hold a meeting in the tavern and talk the village folk around. Sounds like fun. My question is how to stage it. I plan on having the main people in Waldsby attend, along with some other normals. The tavern owners are still alive but cowed after they tried to join in the fight with the guards against the players, but were defeated and surrended. So they will stay quiet throughout.

How about a diplomacy checks first to change the crowd from unfriendly to at least indifferent and then they have to win over individual members of town with diplomacy checks\intimidation with bonuses for good arguments? Other villagefolk follow depending on who is won over. I'm toying with having Birgit attend and try to sabotage it, and secretly flip open her attentive mirror (perception check to notice) to alert Radosek. Any thoughts greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[Stone Dog]

This was a while ago, but if I remember right...

The exodus in my game came after the tower was cleared out, then filled with oiled pine trees so it would melt to the ground. After that it was clear that hanging around would be a bad idea.

The exodus was separated into those who went all diaspora and migrated to other villages and those who knew that the village was going to die whether the Witches did anything about it or not. There were just too few left. Like you suggested, the PCs won over the named NPCs which started a snowball effect and the rest of the village packed up.

To help out on the Heldren side, my group dumped most of the silver trade bars found in the adventure (or other treasure, it has been a while) in exchange for land/travel considerations, which helped smooth things over a great deal. Not everybody from Waldsby stayed in Heldren, but the noble woman was still in residence and helped arrange for everything. Heldren is now a town.

I'd check my adventure logs somewhere in this forum, but lunch is over and back to work with me.