In my Kingmaker campaign, the nymph-queen Nyrissa was the servant, lover and apprentice of the Eldest named Count Ranalc. So mighty did she become through his teachings that she approached the Eldest in might and knowledge, at last declaring herself to be an Eldest. This long at the dawn of the Age of Creation, when Golarion was new and the First World freshly abandoned by the gods. Any of the Eldest who dared to oppose Count Ranalc found their minds so turned by love and admiration of the nymph-queen that they could not even think of doing him harm. Count Ranalc became the greatest power in the First World for hundreds of thousands of years.
For thousands of uncounted years Nyriss and Ranalc ruled a kingdom of faeries untroubled by the rest of the First World, but the Eldest remembered the presumption of the nymph-queen and bided their time. Nyrissa and Ranalc had a single child, a beautiful daughter named Rhoswen, who when she had come into her adulthood struck out and settled her own realm, becoming known as the Queen of Roses.
And so things went on in the First World as they always had, ever changing and changeless at the same time. There came a time when Count Ranalc was away from his halls, wandering in far realms of shadow. And the Eldest struck. First they sent the tane to track and harry the Count across the multiverse so that he might not interfere on his lover’s behalf. Then the Eldest, led by the Lantern King and Ng the Hooded, came for Nyrissa and punished her for her presumption. Only the Lost Prince and Shyka the Many refused to take part in the vengeance of the Eldest. The Eldest tore from themselves all sense of beauty or love so that Nyrissa was powerless before them. They seized her and bore her to the ground, helpless.
They tore from her the capacity to love and all her positive emotions, leaving her diminished, but undying. The Green Mother forged Nyrissa’s emotions into the mighty blade Briar and cast it into the mortal realm, prophesying that when Nyrissa at last found that blade, it would kill her, thus ensuring she would never seek it out. Nyrissa they left a broken and weakened thing, sobbing in her fortress at Thousandbreaths.
Now the Eldest moved on Count Ranalc, who, weakened by the tane, could do nothing to stop Magdh and Ragadahn as they came for him and imprisoned him in the Shadow plane where he could no longer interfere in the doings of the other Eldest and as punishment for supporting his presumptuous queen.
Broken and missing most of her power, Nyrissa sought in vain for word of Briar, which age after age eluded her perception and the grasp of her agents. But she had another plan, a plan to release her lover, gain vengeance on the Eldest and once again rule the First World as its peerless queen. For ages she worked on a great ritual, one which required only two things - the return of Briar and the sacrifice of her own realm - and the realm of the mortal world that corresponded to it. Nyrissa’s plan to steal part of Golarion seeped into the unconscious knowledge of Man, who would one day name the region she planned to sacrifice “The Stolen Lands”, not because they had been stolen but because of the strange racial foreknowledge that they would one day be stolen (by the nymph-queen).
Nyrissa began the ages-long task of wearing thin the walls between Thousandbreaths in the First World and the Stolen Lands in Golarion. As civilizations rose and fell, she used agents such as the cyclopes sorcerer Vordekai and the human barbarian king Armag to search for Briar, never with any success.
Ages later, Nyrissa (bereft of any sense of parental duty or love) manipulated her powerful daughter Rhoswen to establish a kingdom of her own on the mortal plane. This the Queen of Roses did, creating a powerful fey realm in the far north during the Age of Destiny, further weakening the walls between the worlds.
Rhoswen called her kingdom the Fellnight Realm and used her mother’s fey powers and her father’s mastery of shadow to create a powerful realm of horror and wonder. As she grew in power and majesty as a queen of the mortal realm, Rhoswen became a mighty sorcerer. In her research she discovered the legends of two mighty swords destined to release her mother (the sword Briar) and her father (Vesper’s Rapier). Rhoswen began eagerly to search for these two might blades.
In time, Rhoswen found Vesper’s Rapier and prepared to use it to release her father, Count Ranalc from his prison, but fate was against her. Count Ranalc had been working through an agent on Golarion to free himself, none other than the mighty sorcerer Geb. Geb’s archenemy Nex discovered this and appeared to Rhoswen, defeating her in battle and seizing Vesper’s Rapier for himself.
With Rhoswen weakened, the Eldest struck, removing the Fellnight Realm from Golarion and shunting it into a demiplane without time - imprisoning Nyrissa’s powerful daughter for millennia.
For thousands of years nothing further happened to further the plots of Nyrissa or of Count Ranalc. The Stolen Lands fell first under the sway of the elves, then of Taldor and at last under the power of Choral the Conqueror. Then something new happened - the god Aroden died and prophesy died with him. All the old prophecies stopped carrying meaning, or the meanings they carried changed dramatically. After a million years, Nyrissa dared to hope that the curse of the Green Mother would also go awry, permitting her to find Briar and her love without herself being killed. She began to put her long-planned ritual into action. Now, a century later, she is ready.
Nyrissa plans first to weaken all those mortal powers that claim the Stolen Lands as her own. Through dreams and nightmares she has fomented civil war between the noble houses of Brevoy and spurs on the War of the River Kings. She has even had a hand in spurring the Red Revolution in Galt, all to keep mortal powers away from the Stolen Lands. She has engineered the rise of several powerful agents in the mortal world, including the Stag Lord, Hargulka and King Irovetti.
Next, she must engineer the return of the Fellnight Realm, or at least the land that was (ironically) stolen from the Stolen Lands. Lastly, she must draw Briar to herself. When the Stolen lands lie prostrate before her, she will sacrifice them, Thousandbreaths and the Fellnight Realm, leaving all three as eternal desolations. But she herself will be free.
Ideas not fully formed - the sword of the Lonely Barrow is called “Thorn” and it’s somehow related to Briar. A piece of it?
Vesper’s Rapier and Eranax the Fey-Marked and Shyka the Many should all play roles in this story, but what?
From the Kingmaker Adventure Path: Nyrissa
From the The First World, Land of the Fey: Count Ranalc, Shyka the Many
From Artifacts and Legends: Vesper’s Rapier
From Dragons Unleashed: Eranax the Fey-Marked
So now here’s the situation in my game at present:
My PC’s are at the end of Book Two. They have entered Candlemere Tower and found a portal to the First World realm of Shyka the Many and are even now talking with Shyka. Next I plan to have them go through the module “Realm of the Fellnight Queen” before moving on to Book Three: The Varnhold Vanishing. Previously, our “king”, the bard Alister, was seriously injured and has remained permanently sickened ever since. He’s been told that only at Candlemere can his wound be healed.
As to Nyrissa, I’ve laid a few light pieces of foreshadowing. The PC’s know that some power has been organizing the opposition they’ve faced in the Stag Lord and Hargulka. They’ve heard both of the Queen of Roses (whom some hint is a faerie queen once powerful in the land) and of the Queen of Lost Time, who is incredibly ancient.) They know that some power who was -not- Abadar spoke to their now-departed Abadarian oracle and gave him two visions of these powerful fey queens.
Now that I’ve gotten them there, I don’t know what Shyka should say to them. What should he reveal, and why? I’m thinking that I want to reveal something about Nyrissa and Rhoswen so that neither are complete mysteries in their respective appearances, but also so that the PC’s don’t pivot towards Thousandbreaths too soon and ignore the tale of creating their kingdom.
I was toying around with the idea that a king is part of the land and that Nyrissa can’t easily steal the Stolen Lands while a king rules in them - I guess I’ve got the movie Excalibur on the mind there.
So, anyway.... any ideas about what to reveal?
Thanks!
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Shyka is an interesting Fey, concerned with time but also stories. Shyka being an Eldest would frame Nyrissa as a pretender, and Rhoswyn as a wicked queen rightfully locked away. For Shyka it's in the players best interests to keep these beings locked away, because at the power level they're at they are likely to get themselves killed taking down these powerful beings.
In my game Rhoswyn was a shameful secret for Nyrissa and there was a lot of bad blood between the two powerful fey beings. I also used Zon-Kuthon in Count Ranalc's place, but that's neither here nor there.
Shyka would probably have been instrumental in sealing Nyrissa away in the House at the Edge of Time, since Shyka's powers are chronomantic in nature. Shyka also exists in multiple points in time at once.
I would have Shyka hint at what's come before saying something like:
"All those stolen empires, is yours but another echo of them, or are they the echo of yours?"
"The king is a nail in the map of the world, sometimes the map is the territory."
"When day turns to Fel night a queen might reclaim her throne, can a throne bear the weight of more than one ruler?"
"Oh it's all happening again for the first time."
Interesting.
I also thought of the Ranalc/Zon-Kuthon connection. I was wondering about the Lost Prince as the secret identity of Dou-Bral, and Zon-Kuthon as a pretender. But all that was outside the scope of Kingmaker. :-)
Thanks for your insights.
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First off: Awesome back story!
I too, have often struggled with foreshadowing enough to lead them down the path without doing so much as to have them run straight for the end. As for Shyka, I think that Dudemeister (as always) has some great ideas there. You could also go throw in something along the lines of:
"This is the beginning of the end, or is it the end of the beginning?"
"When that which was lost is found then shall that which was stolen be returned." (or you could replace stolen with taken if you want to leave it a bit more vague with regard to the Stolen Lands).
My party is almost exactly in the same spot as yours by the way. They have finished Book 2 and just started Fellnight this past weekend. They are through the first two parts in the book, though I confess that I have not given the back story nearly as much detail as you have. I did though just drop the N word (no, not that one ;P) for the first time, so they are starting to think that N and Rhoswen are one and the same. They'll learn that Rhoswen is just but one layer in the line of enemies before them.
I have previously hinted at N by having visions of her visit the Baron when he put on the Stag Helm, an artifact that he wears still. She is using the Helm for her own benefit, but getting him to keep wearing it by making it more powerful over time. So far he is not entirely convinced that the beautiful woman with the lovely green hair is entirely bad.
First off: Awesome back story!
Thanks!
I too, have often struggled with foreshadowing enough to lead them down the path without doing so much as to have them run straight for the end. As for Shyka, I think that Dudemeister (as always) has some great ideas there.
He always does! He needs to stop whatever he's doing and go to work for Paizo. "Hargulka's Monster Kingdom" had a big influence on my campaign.
You could also go throw in something along the lines of:
"This is the beginning of the end, or is it the end of the beginning?"
"When that which was lost is found then shall that which was stolen be returned." (or you could replace stolen with taken if you want to leave it a bit more vague with regard to the Stolen Lands).
I like that.
My party is almost exactly in the same spot as yours by the way. They have finished Book 2 and just started Fellnight this past weekend. They are through the first two parts in the book, though I confess that I have not given the back story nearly as much detail as you have. I did though just drop the N word (no, not that one ;P)
Non-Player Character?
Necromancy?Nobility Domain?
for the first time, so they are starting to think that N and Rhoswen are one and the same. They'll learn that Rhoswen is just but one layer in the line of enemies before them.
I have previously hinted at N by having visions of her visit the Baron when he put on the Stag Helm, an artifact that he wears still. She is using the Helm for her own benefit, but getting him to keep wearing it by making it more powerful over time. So far he is not entirely convinced that the beautiful woman with the lovely green hair is entirely bad.
The original king in my game (since departed) was an oracle/paladin and I left him no doubt that the beautiful woman in his dreams was devastatingly dangerous. She was seeking him but he really, really wanted to be sure she never found him.
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I like it!