I would like some help aligning a backstory to the AP
What he has written doesn’t sit quite right with my understanding of Kintargo
I think a few of my players have forgotten how recent the martial law thing is
So the character is a Cleric (Cardinal) of Milani
Key points :
1 - Came from a successful merchant family who aspired for greater things
2 - Father realised accumulation of wealth would never be enough to see them elevated to noble status and grew bitter an resentful
3 - Father tried to use money to force political change through the pre-existing legal structures
4 - Father upset the wrong people resulting in the murder of his whole family
5 - Character could not inherit (presumably for fear of being murdered as well)
6 - Fell into depression but drawn out of it by love of girl who was a Robin Hood style Milani worshipper by night (converted)
7 - She was caught stealing from the church of Asmodeus and publicly executed
8 - Character now seeks revenge and to bring down Thrune and replace Asmodeus worship with that of Milani
So I have issues tying this to Kintargo and would like some help
The player is happy for tweaks and adjustments to be made to help this fit better
Steps 1-4 seem like they would fit much better in Egorian or Corentyn rather than Kintargo
Would the Chelish government murder someone who was making too much noise trying to elevate themselves? And why would the person looking for advancement not try to enlist a Devil? Or would doing that be what upsets the authorities ?
A search of the Cheliax sourcebooks suggest the sort of quick, quiet murder is only for enemies of the state
I definitely struggle to see the CG Kintargo authorities doing this
Step 7 - would someone be publicly executed for stealing? Or would they be excrutiated and sent away somewhere? Again I struggle to see it being a public execution in Kintargo for this. Or does the theft being from the church tip it over into a capital crime?
Again as above it seems they prefer excrutiations rather than execution.
The only obvious capital crime I have read about (in a Dan Gross story) is Forgery - an anathema to a society so focused on Devils and Contracts. I believe that book also mentioned another capital crime so I will have to dig it out
Step 8 - This seems overly bold and lofty as a revenge goal. And also not quite so fitting for Kintargo.
Milani would clearly be a strong presence in Kintargo as it is the closest place to her ideologically and most likely place for a revolution to start. Kind of like a university city (Communist Bologna in Italy?). But would any worshiper really want the ultimate goal be for it to become the main faith? Surely revolution and overthrow is mission accomplished and the faith is not suited to being the main one...
My player seems to have gone for the very typical tale of woe backstory where everyone close to them is brutally disposed of by the state. I am just not convinced this would have happened in the same way in Cheliax. Indeed it seems more likely that others would murder his family (Aspis?).
As for his character's love - he has conceded that she could be missing rather than executed.
Any guidance would be appreciated
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If the aim is minimal tweaking, relocate the character's early life to Vyre, and have him follow his lover to Kintargo in his youth.
As for execution, sedition and subversion is a capital crime, surely? It needn't have been what she actually did either. Trumped-up charges are a thing, especially when the Navy is in port.
There's a section in Cheliax, Empire of Devils on how crime and punishment work. Larceny would be a 5 sp to a 100 gp bribe to get out of. Here's my campaign notes on some of the topics raised by your post.
Bribes, if done right, are legal:
o It’s never a bribe, it’s a donation to charity or paying fine on spot
o Too little can be insulting but reduce penalty
o Too much can be grave insult of an obvious bribe
o Never bribe a Hellknight: it’s a beating
o Some magistrates and officers find bribes insult to integrity
o Bribes to speed up government business is akin to blasphemy: implies that the state is lax and inefficient
Merchants, guildsmen, lawyers: 1st level Egorian is solicitous of
• Service industry, community leaders, military officers (or higher)
Wealthy: financially stable
• Private militias, travel extensively, multiple estates, invest
• Ambition to become Houses of the Empire
• Source of most employment of adventurers
Old Nobility: most prominent in Westcrown
• Crumbling into dissolution, eccentricity
• Play politics and betray each other to curry Thrune favor
New Nobility: aided the Thrune Ascendency 60 years ago
• Serve through politics, espionage, assassination, strength
• Take land from old nobility
• Some said to hold estates in Hell itself
• Lesser houses fill government and Church bureaucracies
Church of Asmodeus: controls access to the Queen
• Staff government bureaucracy, control courts, make laws for royal approval
• Exorcisms, bindings, summoning
House Thrune: various clans within maneuver for power
• Six have led the nation, all died in uninvestigated accidents
• Pit Fiend Gen. Gorthoklek advised both Abrogails
• Nation believes that Gorthoklek reins in Abrogail II
I think you could make this a touch more horrible. Remember that the Thrunes dislike executions, preferring public torture as a form of punishment and social education. Barzillai bridges the Asmodeans and the Thrunes. You could introduce some of his backstory by having him be the inquisitor in charge of the woman's punishment. His public tortures leave her alive, but broken, recanting her belief in Milani, and utterly destroying their relationship. Think the narrator in 1984.
I also want to say, however, that both my adjustment and the original back story are pretty classic "Woman in Refrigerator" trope. Unsurprisingly, this trope plays very strongly to men immersed in chivalric understandings of their traditional gender roles, but may play very differently to any women at the table.
I think the changes could be relatively substantial.
I assume the general themes of a family who become frustrated and are punished and no longer in the picture. Same for the love interest
Locations probably can be changed and it may not be necessary for executions
I suppose my main area of confusion is just how strict the laws are applied in Kintargo. There is no execution square and malicious hellknight order like in Egorian ...
Did public excrutiations happen before Barzillai?
The best way to think of Kintargo prior to the AP is that it's a CG city, except when they have to placate the Asmodeans or when representatives of the capital are in town. You have to remember as well that you can "donate" your way out of punishments if you handle it right and get the right Asmodean judge or dottari.
What if it was Sarini or Tannassen that murdered his father after he attempted to expand the number of seats on the Court of Coin?
Additionally, what if his love was arrested and excruciated. Lead him to believe she has been imprisoned, when in reality... after months of torture, she developed a case of Stockholm Syndrome and is now a cleric of Asmodeous. This would provide a very complex dilemma for him later on. This also avoids the "Woman in a Refrigerator" trope that rogue rouge was mentioning.
It doesn't need to be the government or Thrune who directly affect the backstory, so long as what does affect it are representative of Cheliax. I would definitely encourage you to do your best to maintain his family's origins within Kintargo. It definitely makes for a more personal campaign.
What if it was Sarini or Tannassen that murdered his father after he attempted to expand the number of seats on the Court of Coin?
Additionally, what if his love was arrested and excruciated. Lead him to believe she has been imprisoned, when in reality... after months of torture, she developed a case of Stockholm Syndrome and is now a cleric of Asmodeous. This would provide a very complex dilemma for him later on. This also avoids the "Woman in a Refrigerator" trope that rogue rouge was mentioning.
It doesn't need to be the government or Thrune who directly affect the backstory, so long as what does affect it are representative of Cheliax. I would definitely encourage you to do your best to maintain his family's origins within Kintargo. It definitely makes for a more personal campaign.
This is a very interesting idea
I have a player from each of those houses as part of the PCsNo current plans to involve tannassen but that could change. I wanted to use some of RogueRogue’s Sarini ideas though . Again i don’t need to decide right away
And I am much more tempted to have the love interest be alive in some way
My first fault was an over zealous vigilante. But Stockholm syndrome cleric also works
I have some time to decide
I was tempted to have Barzllai be involved but that might be a bad plan as it could prompt an overzealous response
Thanks
I think you can actually make this one fit in the current story with fairly minimal tweaking. Here's a big old brain dump. Hopefully some of these ideas might be useful to you. Apologies, this might get a little long...
SOME SPOILERS AHEAD. BE ADVISED (For any non GMs reading this).
RE: Noble Aspirations
The matter of a family being killed for trying to rise up the ranks of nobility isn't an unheard of concept in Kintargo (despite being an outlier, it is still a Chelaxian city). There are certainly implications that it has happened before, so I think as is it can still fit. Death is perhaps a bit more drastic and hard to tie into existing plotlines, but "shamed" or "exiled" could be easier. You don’t necessarily have to fit them into the story’s events, but there’s room to do that as well if you wish. There are a few lesser noble families that have been kicked around throughout each of the books. Some angles I can think of are:
- Any of the characters in area C12 of the Lucky Bones (You could imply that they were abducted and being kept sedated by the Gray Spiders, or just suggest that the Gray Spiders were responsible for their deaths/"disappearances" through some contract found in area C15)
-Yehl, Sabinus, or Hyrmagus (All directly Torrent-related: Lictor Yehl unlawfully planned to loot the Lucky Bones, and Sabinus and Hyrmagus have a long standing feud that has prevented either family from rising up; you can use this if you want to tie in Lictor Octavio and Setrona to the character early)
-Vashnarstil (Yes these guys are full nobility, but they’re nouveau-riche and it is heavily implied that House Thrune is actively trying to destroy them by taking away their trade deals, which sounds not very far off from what your player outlined)
-Urvis (This is one of the noble families from Part 2 of The Kintargo Contract; there is room to tweak the backstory for this family and in turn swap the associated character reveal to instead link to your player’s character. Perhaps their family was setting up to become the heirs to the Urvis name before some “unfortunate accidents” took place. This one would require more reworking on your end, but could be nice if the player wants to finish what his family started in the past)
That’s just a few, but I know there are plenty of other places you could probably slide them in, depending on what sort of story hook you might want to offer them.
RE: The Love Interest
You're right that execution for stealing is harsh, but this one works fine if the player is willing to have these events being fairly recent, and even more if the punishment wasn't necessarily public. I think those are some pretty fair things to concede on for a world of improvement to the plot significance. If the player accepts this, you have a lot of options.
The first thing for this subject is the Night of Ashes. This happened about a week or so prior to the campaign, and it involved several "convenient" fires in locations of major political dissension (including one directly associated with the cult of Milani). It also involved the sudden disappearance of several outspoken opponents of Barzillai and the Thrunes. You can look at what happened to the various characters and organisations affected by these events and place the love interest in any of those spots. If she was killed in a fire, he could discover her among the wreckage, or with Rexus' parents, or in some basement (or any one of the locations in Song of Silver if you want it to be a really late reveal). Most of these places already offer some prime examples of what happens to people who have crossed Barzillai or the Church of Asmodeus. There are many different flavours of death, undeath, imprisonment, torture, brainwashing, and other outcomes you can use there, either replacing or adding to the characters that have suffered those fates. And if you're particularly stuck on "stealing" being too light a crime to warrant capital punishment, remember that Barzillai once killed a servant for putting a book in the wrong place. He could easily trump up some charges to warrant such a punishment. However it's not something the previous city officials save perhaps the High Priests of Asmodeus or Zon-Kuthon would do, and a public ordeal isn't really something Barzillai or Grivenner would pursue until Song of Silver (private however, oh yes).
Another option if you want an earlier reveal and to keep her alive or to not directly involve Barzillai or the Church, you can have her be a target for one of the rescue missions in book 1 (Prisoners of Salt or An Unsanctioned Excruciation). I put a unique character of my own for the latter of those and he quickly became a favourite ally of the party.
RE: Milai > Asmodeus
As for replacing Asmodeus with Milani in Kintargo, that one isn't much of a stretch either. Note what happens to the Temple of Asmodeus in the early stages of book 5 (last paragraph of page 2, going over to page 3). That should fit in quite well with what the player seems to have in mind. From there it's entirely plausible to say that Kintargo and Ravounel develop into a major promoter of the Milanite faith. It would likely make them pretty good friends with Andoran.
A few points of dissension with some of the above... (Note most of this is my opinion perhaps suggested by the various sources but someone could easily point out how its not canon.)
Kintargo is not a CG city despite the label in the city write-up. It is a conflicted city. Of the notable NPC's in the same write-up, only 2 are CG and both of them are... non-functional as the AP begins. The rest are all lawful and many are lawful evil. Further, of the 9 Noble Houses in the city only 1 has a leader who is CG (Jarvis.) Of the rest, 5 are lawful (3 being LE), one is N and two are CN. The Temple of Asmodeus (LE) has been the dominant religious power in the city for several decades and has effectively squashed any formal CG deity presence in the city. So while a good chunk of the populace leans chaotic, the official power structures run much more lawful and neutral. And have for some time. With this context you're free to have the city government respond in any way that fits the story as you want it including having it behave more like the Cheliax "mainland" than some in the city would prefer.
One approach to the family background - the father allied with one of the noble houses (Delronge?) in some political/economic plot in pursuit of more wealth and influence and when it went wrong the same noble family sacrificed them as a scapegoat. The family was stripped of wealth and station. The father may have been executed, died of depression, been killed in response to a crazy act of vengeance, etc. But the rest of the family endures, trapped in poverty, etc. This makes it a bit less bloody and sets up the pc with some antagonism to specific elements in the city.
I would not agree that the love interest is a "woman in refrigerator" - as described she isn't a victim or a damsel in distress, she is an active combatant pursuing her own values who may have made the ultimate sacrifice. I'd also suggest her crime be - being a priestess of Milani. If that's not officially a capital offense in Cheliax, it ought to be. Perhaps the previous administration (Bainilus, etc.) intervened in her sentence (much to the frustration of the LE/Asmodean bunch) and had her sent to Deepmar instead of being executed... The pc could find out sometime in Book 2 or 3 and head off to "rescue" her. You could run the "No Response from Deepmar" module close to as-written or if you want to completely throw off the "woman in refrigerator" motif, have her running the place, having led a rebellion of her fellow prisoners, etc. (This would be a substantial departure from the Deepmar module...)
I agree with Trichotome - a priest of Milani should absolutely pursue the displacement of Asmodeus with the worship of Milani.
7 - She was caught stealing from the church of Asmodeus and publicly executedI'd have her be a victim when the Thrashing Badger burned down on the Night of Ashes or, if you didn't want her to be dead, have her be assumed dead but actually captured after/while the Thrashing Badger was burning down. You could then either have her being held prisoner by Natsiel in book 4. (Maybe Natsiel is using the NPC to get to the Rose of Kintargo?) or
...he could discover her...with Rexus' parents.
Yilliv was used to try to figure out who the leader of the Milani cult is. That way the PC can find her soul tome.
(NOTE: She arrived at the Thrashing Badger after it was already burning otherwise you need a reason why she was captured and not others.)
Family history
They pissed off the Gray Spiders instead of someone in government. Hei-Fen discovers who the PC really is, that's why she comes back to Kintargo.
Gives a more solid reason for her motivations.
Instead of publicly executed, the love interest just disappeared without a trace. Call it a portent of the coming disappearances during the Night of Ashes "We've seen this before...")
The backstory for my PC in HR was his whole family disappears during the Night of Ashes and all their holdings are seized by the Asmodean Church for restitution over trumped-up charges.
Use as a possible plot hook later in the AP if needed (maybe word comes around she is held in XXXX, or was moved out of Kintargo to a remote location with others) or a way for the character to gain closure at the end.