I just got a chance to really read through Burnt Offerings and I love the story these guys are weaving. Okay sometimes you get a main villain who's cool, but it is a rare rare thing to run into a villain that you really fall in love with--someone you can understand and empathize with, and feel genuine tragic sorrow for. Likewise it's rare for their cadre to be anything more than a bunch of statted up thugs. Each of them, from her lieutenant right down to the featured goblins, is a jewel. Really a great read.
And the villain, wow that main villain. She's got the same kind of wonderful tragedy as great characters like Samara from the Ring or Alessa from Silent Hill.
Just a great story. Glad to be sharing a part of this setting. There are some settings where when you run a game in them you feel like you're redeeming the setting--with this one I think for the first time in a long time I'm worried I'll have to kick it up a notch to do justice to it. Wow.
Yeah, Nualia is one of my favorite low level villains. That is why I want to do her justice by making her encounter as memorable as possible. Anyone have any suggestions for making this happen?
Also, for those of you who have run Burnt Offerings already, how were you able to get her story out to the PCs? I kind of think reading about it in a journal is kind of lame and hardly does her backstory any justice.
Since Nualia did live in Sandpoint, there's a couple of things you could do. A bunch of gossipy women could be sitting on a porch, tellin' stories about "That poor girl Nualia and that ruffian from the city." Theoretically, Nualia would have made at least a couple friends with other people her age growing up. "She was always a little...different I guess." With Nualia's uncommonly good looks, no doubt there would be some jealousy issues, maybe even a little hero worship.
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I had one of the PCs be an Aasimar. His parents and sister were lost to him when he was young and he was raised in Nybor. Just recently, he heard his sister was alive in Sandpoint but when he arrived in Sandpoint for the festival (as a representative of the church of Erastil) he was crushed to find out she had died in the fire. After the private consecration ceremony, the village priest consoled him and assured him his sister had suffered nothing, she had been in a coma at the time. This led to why and the story of her being pregnant emerged. Of course, then they found Tsuto's journal and now know she is alive and ashamed of her 'celestial' taint.
It's easier if they're natives. They can recall much of the stories that spread about her, and that she had been sequestered shortly before the tragic fire that claimed her life. You could then perhaps insert background details like, you remember her as the one this character had a crush on, but thought she was too beautiful so you used to throw horse apples in her hair. Your character remember that when you were deathly ill growing up, your parents had snuck up behind her one day and ripped out some of her hair. You remember drinking the tea because the hair was covered in blood. Your character recalls the rumors that she was indestructable when growing up, so you joined in the common game to see if you could draw blood first by throwing shards of glass at her.
When they see Naulia, they recall that they have been a part of her painful past. They had all thought she was dead, but they see her now among the living. As she attacks, she perhaps mentions payback from various episodes or just projects such moments in general.
I stole a page from one of the fine folk that post here. He put a statue of a celestial in the temple, a sculpture made after her "tragic death" by a local artist who had admired her beauty. This cued the party to ask at the temple after they found the journal.
Heh...I must have very accommodating players. After the raid and the discovery of the grave-robbing they immediately went around town asking about the priest, and those questions lead to questions about Nualia. They even asked at the Tunderock Academy and got the back story on Tsuto and have already warned Amiko that her brother is probably the one that was leading the raid.
At first I felt like I was giving too much away, but then I realized that it was working out great, as now the players will get to know much of the background that they might have otherwise missed out on.