Not like it's hard to kidnap him, all the same, since they can scry on Terrem any time they want and grab him when no one is around.
That said, the way I'm thinking about doing it for my recent campaign is to have the Stormblades show up having rescued Terrem, but for it to just be a double and the Cagewrights took the actual one already.
And what the players will think, who knows? Should be interesting.
Terrem being a double is an interesting development....
The rumors in cauldron section of the HC has one rumor that says that Terrem has gone missing again. I would say this happens while the PCs are in Occipitus. The cagewrights should be ready to perform the ritual of planar junction when the PCs return to Cauldron. They chose not to because they want to finalise some other plans in cauldron and on carceri. Plans that will make taking over the plane much easier.
It has allways struck me as strange that the cagewrights would return Terrem to the lantern street orphanage where he is not under their direct control. I think a more logical conclusion to Life's Bazaar would be that Vhalantru takes Terrem directly to the cagewrights. It would also go a way into explaining why he doesn't kill the PCs right there. Doing so could put Terrem at risk. Chances are a stray arrow, spell or misdirected eye ray might kill him.
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I read somewhere on either the boards or the hard-cover itself, that Vhalantru takes Terrem back to the orphanage because he & the cagewrights would know where he is and have ready access to him. If he was still missing or the disappearances weren't resolved it might arouse more suspicion. When it comes time for the ritual, villains at the level of Thirifane or the other Cagewrights would have no problem quietly popping into the orphanage to take him away. As for saying Zenith is the last, I don't have my copy of SCAP in front of me but I think the wording was that they had located all but one. Not necessarily that they had them in their possession.
Ok I do see this now. It says that the Last Laugh takes him again. Perhaps describes this somewhere past Chapter 5. I have only read up to chapter 5. Does the book go into further detail about the 2nd abduction?
beyond the rumor in the beginning and a short note in Thirteen Cages, there is little else on Terrem.
I read somewhere on either the boards or the hard-cover itself, that Vhalantru takes Terrem back to the orphanage because he & the cagewrights would know where he is and have ready access to him. If he was still missing or the disappearances weren't resolved it might arouse more suspicion.
I know, but from Big V and the cagewright's point of view, one more missing kid isn't that big a deal. Sure it might arrouse suspicion, but a beholder that pops in, takes Terrem and returns him to the orphanage is just as suspicious, if not more so. The cagewrights need a better justification that 'well, at least we can keep an eye on him here'. They could do the same if he was locked in a cell somewhere in the fiery sanctum.
And even if they did have that justification, there are better ways to get terrem back to the orphanage than the heavy handed method used here. For example, disintegrating Kazmojen and his lackeys (just) before the PCs arrive. Or mopping up behind them, or simply taking Terrem and returning him. If you want to showcase the 'beholder amongst us' you can have Terrem or one of the other orphans describe the scene to the PCs. I think this would scare most PCs even more than the way the scene is written in the HC.
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Ok I do see this now. It says that the Last Laugh takes him again. Perhaps describes this somewhere past Chapter 5. I have only read up to chapter 5. Does the book go into further detail about the 2nd abduction?beyond the rumor in the beginning and a short note in Thirteen Cages, there is little else on Terrem.
Do they really even need to kidnap Terrem again? Isn't Zenith the 13th that they need? or only the 12th?
Robert
Ok I do see this now. It says that the Last Laugh takes him again. Perhaps describes this somewhere past Chapter 5. I have only read up to chapter 5. Does the book go into further detail about the 2nd abduction?beyond the rumor in the beginning and a short note in Thirteen Cages, there is little else on Terrem.
Do they really even need to kidnap Terrem again? Isn't Zenith the 13th that they need? or only the 12th?
Robert
Zenith is number 12 and soon after the Cagewrights have received the dwarf from Vhalantru, they order the Last Laugh to get Terrem, the no. 13. They won't be heard of until the PC's see them dead and locked in the soulcages. In my campaign he is kidnapped from the orphanage a week after the return of Zenith.
If Zenith is somehow not available (the PC's killed him in Bhal-Hamatugn, they refused to hand him over to Vhalantru and that mean Derro dwarf does not succeed in getting Zenith out of their hands), the Cagewrights might try to abduct a PC with the Carceri Sign.
Or they just find some other poor bastard with the sign, there must be a lot of them. Those demodands...
The situation was a bit different in our campaign as five of the PCs were Shackleborn, and they found at least five more quite quickly. (Much later, a captured enemy sighed and said "Couldn't keep Dyr'ryd's lust under control...there are plenty more where you came from.") I think it's easier to understand the fuss over Terrim as Vhelantru thinking he's important and trying to retain him to use as leverage with the Cagewrights, rather than the Cagewrights thinking he's important. The Cagewrights are too good at what they're doing to leave things like that to chance.
(The other thing the captured enemy said is, "How did you guys get so powerful? Thirifane was supposed to keep an eye on you, and she never said anything about you getting so powerful--" which totally freaked out the PC who was Thirifane's daughter. Led to a really nice confrontation between them later. Apparently Thirifane had been playing both sides. I know this is a big deviation from the plot as written, but it worked great for us.)
Mary
I am intrigued with the ideas you presented Mary. Would you care to elaborate on the whole scenario with one of the PCs being a daughter of Lady Thirifane? The whole idea sounds quite interesting and it sure does attach a great deal of emotional attachment to the NPCs and their plots.
I am intrigued with the ideas you presented Mary. Would you care to elaborate on the whole scenario with one of the PCs being a daughter of Lady Thirifane? The whole idea sounds quite interesting and it sure does attach a great deal of emotional attachment to the NPCs and their plots.
I'm going to revert to what we did in our campaign and call Thirifane "he". The GM didn't realize the character was supposed to be female until after he was already clearly established as male in the game....
We set up the character background that one of the PCs, Julia Rhiavadi, was Thirifane's only daughter (and Shackleborn). The two of them got along fairly badly: Thirifane kept trying to marry Julia off, and had also clearly wanted a wizard heir, not a magic-less swordswoman. At the start of the campaign Julia was in dramatic late-teens rebellion from this upbringing: she was passing herself off as a man ("Jules"), hanging with a bad crowd in Cauldron, fighting duels, and generally acting as irresponsibly as she could. The two were barely on speaking terms.
The PC party leader had figured out a little about the Shackleborn and recruited Jules into his group. This got her away from home, which she didn't mind; and maybe she thought she might finally impress her father. We had a couple of really nice roleplaying scenes between them: an early one where they were fencing over whether she ought to marry, and a later one where the PCs had some hints that Thirifane was involved with some conspiracy, and were trying to sound him out and/or warn him. The PCs ended up scouring Thirifane's staff and home with True Seeing, but they didn't find anything.
Jules eventually confronted Thirifane with her parentage ("I'm not entirely human, am I?") but he managed to explain in a way that temporarily satisfied her without telling her too much.
I think that all through this he was frantically trying to mislead the Cagewrights so that they would not realize how dangerous the PCs were, and trying to mislead the PCs similiarly, fending off a lethal confrontation.
Then the PCs nabbed Grahlia Cairnness, the "captured enemy" of my previous post, and she spilled the beans. Jules resolved to finally get the whole truth from her father, but rather than getting back to Cauldron as they'd hoped, the party ended up on Occipitus. Jules became Lord of Occipitus, which transformed her into a winged outsider.
When the PCs finally got back to Cauldron, they found that it was under recurring attack by demons and that Thirifane was one of the mainstays of the defense, Mayor Vhelantru's right hand. (The PCs knew by this time that Vhelantru was not human, though they had not yet decided if they wanted to try to ally with him anyway.) Jules, in disguise, broke up a piece of intrigue between Fetor Abradius and Thirifane, and managed to confront Thirifane alone. That was one of the most intense conversations I've ever seen in a roleplaying game, a great payoff to the whole thread. They ended up as allies, though the other PCs are being cautious: Thirifane has clearly never been telling the truth to *anyone*, has he really started now?
It hasn't escaped their attention that Thirifane swears he's Jules' father, but the Oracle says that Dyr'ryd is Jules' father, and that's one father too many. (Maybe Thirifane *is* a woman!) Jules plans to ask about this sometime, when the crisis is over.
This was probably my single favorite bit of the whole Adventure Path. For some reason, the Thirifane/Jules relationship just clicked whenever it was onstage, even though we only saw them together half a dozen times.
I will note that my GM is also running for a different group, and again made one of the PCs Thirifane's child--and this has done absolutely nothing for that group, it's just meaningless background for them. But it really clicked for us. (It's amazing how different two runs with the same GM can end up being!)
Mary