Plot Reveal Help

[Insapateh]

So...

I'm just in the early days of a new campaign in my homebrew world and I'll be playing with two new to the game players (they've played some Cthulu but not much), one player with a some small experience (about a year, maybe two) and two players who have been gaming for decades, but aren't too familiar with Pathfinder.

Everyone is starting at level 5.

Part of the story that will eventually affect the players is that the leader of the country they are currently in, and whom they currently work for through their mercenary company, has essentially been on the throne for millenia thanks to certain magical properties he imbued in the crown. It has a pseudo-magic-jar effect, which only works on members of his bloodline, and instantly allows him to take over their bodies once they put on the crown.

Long story short, the party now have a reason to soon visit the cemetery in which the royal tomb resides and I want to leak some details of his cunning plan without turning this into priority one for the players. They have other things they're trying to do for now, and that's ok, they don't have the raw strength to deal with this yet anyway.

The royal crypt keeper is a necromancer of some note and is, by necessity, in on the ruse. The PCs shouldn't have to engage him in combat on this encounter and he would be an epic level encounter if they did. He is also deathgagged, so if they do decide to ice the fool, they can't compel his shade to assist.

I was toying with the idea of haunts to indicate that all is not right in the royal crypt but wanted to see if the genius hivemind could suggest how they would go about it.

I haven't fully decided if the ruler's body needs to still exist for the crown to work or other smaller details like that.

[VRMH]

Exposition on graveyards is almost always done by the creepy groundskeepers. If not him, it falls to the mysterious grieving widow who hides her face behind a black veil.

That's tradition, don't mess with it. ;-)

[LoudKid]

There should be a multitude of common rumors/conspiracies from townsfolk about how and why the whole family line acts the same once they take the throne.
Unless the guy is smart and doesn't act like himself every time he switches bodies.

[The Nite Owl]

I think a haunt at the crypt is a great atmospheric way of giving a clue. The haunt should just reveal enough to tantalise the players before fading away...

After this other clues could include:

Relatives of the new King/Queen noticing an abrupt personality change in the new ruler. Older members of the Royal family or courtiers will know this always seems to happen shortly after the coronation.

A visiting mage sensing some evil magic about the crown. He consults the party mage for advice. Shortly afterwards, the mage is found murdered.

Notes in an ancient historical tome that an evil artifact (the magic jar gem) had been seized in a war between two kingdoms. it was now kept in the possession of your big baddie for 'safekeeping'. Make it an unusual-looking gem, which can now be seen in the Royal Crown. This gem allows the magic jar duration to last for days or weeks meaning that the possession can occur at the coronation.

Your big baddie (and all of the rulers after him) could have a hobby - riding, hunting, falconry or be interested in magical tomes. Shortly after the coronation, the new King/Queen seems to show the same interests/skills, despite never having been interested in these things before.

Recently, many Kings/Queens have died when their next-in-line reaches about 20 years old. They are found dead, without a mark on them. The death is usually ascribed to a weak heart(Your big baddie has come to like the feel of youth, and hate the feel of aging, even to middle age). An elderly court physician has started to wonder about this however...

According to a book about your big baddie(or any of the subsequent rulers), he had a nervous tic or twitch, mannerism or saying that all of his predecessors seem to have shared. (It's a bit cheesy, but it really gets that bodyswap thing over to the players).

[The DM of]

What's bad about this guy? Is he a good ruler? He must be pretty skilled at it if he's stayed on the throne for millenia. Why would anyone be interested in stopping him? Those who support him might not care provided he's doing this well. Why would your players care? The only person I could see with a possible motivation to do something is the next heir to the throne.

If this is the first time he's done it, and he's about to switch bodies a second time, and the heir is suspicious, and he's been an evil king... that's a different story. Trying to prevent centuries of corrupt, evil rule is worthy.

Deciding what to do about a millenia-successful ruler who only possesses his heir? Not so sure.

[The Nite Owl]

What's bad about this guy you ask?

Welllll he's sorta been taking over people's bodies for millennia. Not giving any of them a chance to live their lives in order to extend his. I think it's safe to say that's an evil dude right there.

That doesn't necessarily make him an unsuccessful ruler. It would be interesting if a group of people supported him, even when the truth is discovered, either for financial reasons or because they liked his style of rulership.

[The DM of]

He's been taking over a few scores of people's lives. So?

You said he's been doing it for millennia. That's 2000 years+. Rulers have to make sacrifices. If 100 people had to give their life for this guy to successfully rule a land for that insane length of time, that's an insignificant price to pay from the stand point of a ruler who in the course of a single war must send thousands to die for him. These are his own children and family as well. That's hardly "an evil dude." It's questionable, but...

In all of human history, no country has lasted over 2000 years. Not even close. Now concentrate resources into a single person's hands for millennia and they would be the smartest, most resourceful, most powerful person there's ever been. I'd question whether or not that power corrupted them, but if they're sitting on the throne successfully that long, they would have to have developed a much-loved style or they would have been overthrown at some point. This would be the most prosperous, most developed country the world has ever seen.

Why would any noble or supporter of that king be motivated to tear all that down now after 2000+ years of success?

[The DM of]

Heck, I'd go so far as to say if people found out the king was doing this, they would be lining up around the castle to offer their lives for king and country to be possessed next.

There would be so many volunteers, each of the most beautiful and healthy people in the country would only have to offer a year of their life to the king before switching to the next.

[Mark Hoover 330]

So, let's start with: the same family has been ruling for millennia. Especially w/high level magic in the world, I'd think there would've been plenty of other nobles looking to take over. Perhaps cloaking the ruling family in several layers of mystery and spellcraft will foreshadow your endgame?

Said ruling family should then be the subject of all manner of conspiracy theories, rumors, and conjecture. Have these come to the party in all manner of ways: clandestine meetings, tavern rumors, ancient journals, etc.

In fact, you might even consider going "Monster of the Week" with it. Each game session the party is investigating some clue or rumor on the royals: "... supposedly the nobles are all werewolves what hunt the peasants for sport!" So the PCs go to Lycan Forest and investigate the werewolves there who turn out to be liars; they're making up stories about their nobility to keep people away.

However during their investigation the PCs find out from the werewolves that the REASON they chose this lie was because of some curse on the noble line. Now the party has another course of research and sets up next week's "monster."

Lastly, why not involve some old rival of the king's? Elves live a long time, as do dwarves. If you want to go older, think dragons or undead. For a really interesting twist how about the fey or an outsider?

The party meets the mysterious stranger like a patron. This ancient one sends them on all kinds of missions - some are to get them ready for the ultimate truth, some suit the needs of their benefactor. All along their patron teases them with information on the nobles, the crown and the dark magic binding them all. Perhaps some of their later missions actually involve attacks on minor nobles.

[Mark Hoover 330]

The DM of wrote:

Heck, I'd go so far as to say if people found out the king was doing this, they would be lining up around the castle to offer their lives for king and country to be possessed next.

There would be so many volunteers, each of the most beautiful and healthy people in the country would only have to offer a year of their life to the king before switching to the next.

"I volunteer as Tribute!"

This raises a great point: after 2000 + years of one royal family, said nobles have gotta be scattered far and wide. What if there's some weird, secret lottery among all the extended noble lines? They WANT to be the next one for coronation. The succession doesn't follow some obvious branching tree.

Clues to the PCs then could be that certain odd, physical traits are used when selecting the next noble such as bone structure or length of fingers or something. There might be elaborate charts and lineages. Heck, you might even have one of the PCs be one of the offshoot lines.

[The Nite Owl]

The DM of - These are great arguments for the pro-ruler faction to espouse. This stops it becoming a simple good vs evil struggle and it becomes much more layered and complicated than that.

I would still be against this king though, and my 11th level Paladin of Iomedae (oath of vengeance) would definitely have a thing or two to say about it.

Imagine my victorious Paladin at the end of the resulting bitter civil war, as he looks around at the battlefield of corpses, the divided kingdom, the king-to-be who is still a child, and the neighbouring countries who have sensed weakness and are preparing to invade. He wanted to leave the Kingdom a better place and, in many ways, he has failed.

[The DM of]

Yup, I love stuff like that where what's right gets complicated. It's hard to pull off but so much more satisfying than "the king is evil duh, that's how I wrote him, now go kill him and loot his vault."

PS Don't watch Tom Cruise's The Mummy unless you want to traumatize yourself so badly you never watch another movie again.

[Insapateh]

Thanks for some amazing input so far.

Without going into way too much of the backstory and current politics of my setting...

There are many nearby rulers who were contemporaries of this guy. For clarity, I'll call him the Caliph because that's a good loose model for how that country operates. The Caliph and these other guys/gals from the same time period have all been extending their rule artificially, just in different ways. They all banded together way back when to conspire against another ruler who they felt was becoming too powerful. Ominously, this other country/empire was called the Dominion of Nirandir (the name of the guy in charge) so it sure sounds like a bad place. Essentially, they were a neutral/evil party who got countries to run as a campaign wrap up.

There are obviously other countries nearby that had nothing to do with any of this. Those countries are for the most part unaware of the relationship between our group of eternal friends above.

The Caliph and his buddies betrayed Nirandir, murdered his wife and destroyed his empire before finally killing him. But now he's back and he wasn't a nice man before he wanted to go on a roaring rampage of revenge.

The setting is a bit Animal Farm: 'All rulers are evil but some are more evil than others' is a bit of an over simplification but not too far off.

The Caliph is planning to betray the party soon anyway but he will be doing it in such a way that it will be very difficult, not impossible, to trace it back to him. One or two other rulers have already approached the mercenary company the party are a part of to ask them to betray the Caliph, but the company declined - mostly for business/reputation reasons. All of those offers of employment will still stand after events eventuate.

The Calpih and these other folks might be evil, but for the most part, they're sensible evil. They don't unnecessarily grind the faces of the poor or eat puppies. So The DM Of's idea that some of the nobility are aware might work...

[Mark Hoover]

So... ALL of the leaders are evil to some degree? Is this kind of a dark world? Is the intention that, down the road, the PCs will get embroiled in these politics? I'm asking because if ALL rulers are some level of evil and the players want to be heroes, they might find it a bit overwhelming when literally everyone is a villain.

That being said, it sounds like you have a LOT of villainy to work with. Even though they're all "sensible" evil I'm guessing that some might have schemes to usurp one another. An easy out in this situation would be to have one of the Caliph's "party members" reach out to the PCs as a mysterious benefactor in order to manipulate them into dealing with the Caliph for them.

[Insapateh]

Mark Hoover wrote:

So... ALL of the leaders are evil to some degree? Is this kind of a dark world? Is the intention that, down the road, the PCs will get embroiled in these politics? I'm asking because if ALL rulers are some level of evil and the players want to be heroes, they might find it a bit overwhelming when literally everyone is a villain.

That being said, it sounds like you have a LOT of villainy to work with. Even though they're all "sensible" evil I'm guessing that some might have schemes to usurp one another. An easy out in this situation would be to have one of the Caliph's "party members" reach out to the PCs as a mysterious benefactor in order to manipulate them into dealing with the Caliph for them.

Overall, I would say the average party alignment would work out to be true neutral.

There is maybe one Good PC, who is pretty flighty and distracted at the best of times. And even she is probably closer to 'little-g' good than 'big-G'.

From what I know of the players, if they're betrayed, they'll go with Nirandir. He has the most resource to allow them to adopt a scorched-earth revenge policy.

To be honest, he also approached them first, and is the most active outside of his own country. That means they hear his name more, which is a strong contributing factor. I can see the conversation now:

'That b@st@rd Caliph betrayed us?! We can't let him get away with that.'
'I dunno, he's pretty tough on his own and has a lot of soldiers to back him up...'
'Wait, didn't, like, a bunch of people try to buy us off and turn us against him way back?'
'Yeah, maybe they can help.'
*GM confirms offers all still stand*
'What's that dude with the evil empire. Nirmathas or something?'
'Anyone remeber any other names?'
'Who was that German sounding one?'
'I don't remember. I only remember that Ned guy.'
'Yeah! Ned will help. Let's call him!'

The world is quite dark but it's compensated for by my players' attitude and humour.