henders's page

Actually I think I'll be going with the "super charge" idea.

As for a rough sketch:

- The Crimson Fleet intends to super charge the pearls in their possesion on Farshore.

- Not sure on where the intended charging is supposed to take place though. Maybe this'll offer a new function (for my campaign) for the Demogorgon shrine - could work in some foreshadowing during HTBM. Maybe the PCs even destroy the shrine then unbeknownst its "actual" purpose (err, if this doesn't make any sense i must admit to only skimming HTBM so far)

- The existence of pearls other than those currently in posession of the Crimson Fleet will be completely written out of the campaign as for not leaving any open threads....they are "just" artifacts the fleet got hold of. Maybe I can drop a hint on how that happened somewhere but that'll be a minor issue.

- Ultimately, that leaves two story arcs for the conclusion. Vanthus maybe being the major one. The PCs finally track him down and put a stop to his madness. The Crimson Fleet only used Vanthus though as much as Vanthus thought to use the Crimson Fleet on his personal quest. For the Fleet he was just useful enough for the attack on Farshore. Slightly unrelated to that, the major conspiracy theme (gotta have one in every campaign..) is the Fleet intending to super charge the pearls and trigger them on Sasserine in order to undermine the city's influence on trade in general plus the combat of piracy (far fetched I know but I kinda want a link back to Sasserine, see next paragraph)
As a side effect on their attack, Farshore would be made a base of operations for them regarding this specific endeavour.

- I'll probably introduce a heavy Crimson Fleet - Scarlett Brotherhood tie or even make them (part of) the same organisation. So I can reveal that the Scarlett embassy introduced at the very beginning was indeed not so noble after all and place/part of their preparation to trigger the pearls in Sasserine. This way I can place a final link back to Sasserine and my players saved the city (again)

Yeah, this is what I'll do....great advice, thanks!

Cheers for that!

What I meant (as well) though was that I kinda fear one of my players going "And why did the Crimson Fleet attack Farshore again?", i.e. without the reveal they have some interest further up north on the IoD it's not convincing enough.

I could reduce their importance/power maybe and just make them a vessel for Vanthus' ambitions and give the campaign the classic stop-the-bad-guy spin but I'm not 100% sure on that.

Amazing! That's incredibly useful...thank you so much!

The thing is, I'm wondering if the confrontation with Vanthus alone will give the conclusion enough of an epic feel for the PCs. It'll probably be hard, but if I can still add some sort of "big reveal" regarding the real interest of the Crimson Fleet in the Isle of Dread (or sth. else) I think the campaign would benefit.

Do they just not want to tolerate a blossoming Sasserine colony ? Add some small bit of epilogue concerning the origins of the black pearls on the IoD? Introduce a whole different conspiracy to the campaign and weave in little hints inbetween ? Hmm...

This was discussed in another thread not to long ago.

Sorry for that then...can't seem to find that thread though. Could anybody give me a a link ?

Due to a number of reasons i was planning on ending our campaign after the PCs secure victory over the Crimson Fleet at Farshore. Now what i still need to do is work out how to tie all the loose ends in the story together, e.g. the motives of both Vanthus himself and the Crimson Fleet on attacking Farshore, the threat and background of the shadow pearls etc.

I really want to try and come up with a cohesive ending that doesn't leave any open questions but I am a bit stuck on ideas at the moment.

Any help would be greatly appreciated! We've just started with TINH btw, so I'm comparatively free in altering specifics such as making the Crimson Fleet a little more of an ordinary pirate group....