Since I used the adventure's description of "greenish herbal liquor", my players have decided there is something special about it. Perhaps I should have called it Absinthe, or Chartreuse, or even Galliano, but it's too late for that now. They have taken a bottle to Bokken to find out if there are any special properties. Is there a way to subtly tie the booze to either Nyissa or does it even make sense to try to tie it to Pitax, since they try something later?
And a related question, which may be answered by the above, where does it come from? I gave my players two bandits to help them out some, and the players have asked how they get the liquor. I'm a little worried they would go haring off after the liquor if I say such and such a merchant delivers it every couple of weeks.
Ooh. Maybe Kressle would go off and get it by herself every couple of weeks and the low-level grunts don't know where. Since she is dead, they may never know where the liquor came from.
Any other ideas? Anybody actually answer it? Did I miss the answer in the module?
AJ
That sounds like a question that doesn't need to be answered in every campaign. :)
I had already established that the Stag Lord was a drunk, and the bandit who told the party about it just said with a sneer that the Stag Lord "heard about some fancy green liqueur being shipped into Brevoy." The players didn't think much more about it, then, other than as something they had that the enemy wanted. After I presented it that way, I guess in my head I had established that it was being shipped from the River Kingdoms.
This may not go over well with your group, but I would be entertained as the GM if I had Bokken get really excited about it, and then started explaining in excruciating detail how this completely mundane liquor is made, and then keep explaining it until the party realizes that there's nothing alchemical or magical about it.
In my setting I had done that one of the less...scary bandit would travel back to Restov with some gold to buy the Stag Lord's booze, always bringing back x amount of bottles, keeping whatever they find (unless it's of good quality, then they would sent it to the Stag Lord, keeping more gold in their pockets to buy less booze for him).
I had the entire little box of bottles be nothing but Absinthe. One of my players is now an alcoholic and tries to make different kinds of spirits, moonshine and whatnot with herbs, moon radishes, maple syrup, fangberries, etc.
In my game, it was made by Bokken - a sort of home made jaegermeister-like digestif whose only magical property is that a shot or two helps settle the stomach after a heavy meal.
*evil grin* He was awfully glad when the party returned the bottles that had been looted from him.
|
Since I used the adventure's description of "greenish herbal liquor", my players have decided there is something special about it. Perhaps I should have called it Absinthe, or Chartreuse, or even Galliano, but it's too late for that now. They have taken a bottle to Bokken to find out if there are any special properties. Is there a way to subtly tie the booze to either Nyissa or does it even make sense to try to tie it to Pitax, since they try something later?
And a related question, which may be answered by the above, where does it come from? I gave my players two bandits to help them out some, and the players have asked how they get the liquor. I'm a little worried they would go haring off after the liquor if I say such and such a merchant delivers it every couple of weeks.
Ooh. Maybe Kressle would go off and get it by herself every couple of weeks and the low-level grunts don't know where. Since she is dead, they may never know where the liquor came from.
Any other ideas? Anybody actually answer it? Did I miss the answer in the module?
AJ
Other then adding to the characterization of the Stag Lord as a drunk, the type of liquor he was drinking really isn't important at all. The author probably just made a point of choosing a "greenish herbal liquor" because Absinthe ("the green fairy") fits nicely with the First World fairy invasion themes of the adventure.
Since your players seem super-interested in it, you could probably have his supplier be the main bad guy from the campaign. That could help set up the otherwise rather sudden involvement of First World critters in the last book. Maybe use it to name-drop the a few characters so when they show up later the characters will already have a connection to them.
My party decided that since it wasn't very fancy and probably used local ingredients, it must have been made by Bokken (or at least that the recipe would be known to him). So as their payment for the Fangberries, they asked him to make a batch that was significantly stronger, and made sure that got to the Staglord in place of the real stuff. Made the fort a significantly easier encounter, but they deserved it.