I decided that since she was/is so incrediably beautiful she would stick in an artist's mind for a long time. Therefore, the statue of Desna in the Cathedral looks just like her. That way, when the PCs find the journal they're like WTF? Desna is a succubus?
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The module recommends that one of the starting areas for the PCs be Sandpoint. If you could get some or all of the PCs to be from this time then a quick adventure during the "late unpleasantness" would be a great way to have them familiarized as locals with the town.
The beginning of the adventure could feature the your lass walking down the street as all the young lads stop and a spot light hits her, she flips her golden locks in the wind and a heavenly chorus seems to be playing in her mind... they aren't sure but it seems to be singing "There She Goes Again" by the Boo Radleys. She would have been the childhood crush of nearly every adolescent boy in town.
The girls in town may have had the above scenario tempered by there jealousy and the body dismorphic disorder they acquired from comparing themselves to her might still be affecting them to this day.
Of course, life would barely be worth living after the church burns down with her in it... but, they get by... one day at a time...
If you really want to forshadow things a little more have one of the girls who is hiding under a porch digging for a lost jar of coppers overhear Nualia's lover bragging to some disbelieving friends that he "tapped that." At the time the girl would simply want to spread this rumor to discredit this beautiful slut / rival for her adolescent companions attention... but it would actually be relevant later on in the real adventure.
Sean Mahoney
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I decided that since she was/is so incrediably beautiful she would stick in an artist's mind for a long time. Therefore, the statue of Desna in the Cathedral looks just like her. That way, when the PCs find the journal they're like WTF? Desna is a succubus?
I like this - I like this a lot. I was wondering the same thing about Nualia. It also hooks up nicely with a bit of added fun I was going to throw in. I have decided that the cathedral is complete in the usual way builders say something is finished - i.e. there have a month or so of further work to do tidying up and removing scaffolding. This way the fight sequences at the head of the scenario can have the added excitement of scrambling up scaffolding to catch a couple of goblins. Maybe the goblins try to squish the PCs by pushing the new statue of Desna / Nualia onto them. Or maybe the opening ceremony includes the revealing of the temple portico with attendant statuary.
Either way - nice red herring
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If my players start telling people that it appears Nualia is behind the goblin attack Hannah (45) will come forward with what she knows. She was the midwife that pulled the monstrous creature from Nualia's womb. Once Hannah hears that Nualia is alive and connected to the goblin attack it becomes apparent to her that she must have set the fire in the church.
At the time of the fire she told the then new sheriff Hemlock that Nualia had to be dead because she was too sick to move. (I'm unsure if she would use the term 'coma') She didn't mention the pregnancy at the time because it just wasn't useful. Hannah may even tell them that Nualia seemed very angry and hateful.
Of course its also possible that the sheriff will remember what Hannah told him and seek her out.
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If I'm ever going to run RotRL, I'll definitely add some kind of prequel, in which the PCs are younger and experience some of the past tragedies of Sandpoint firsthand. Nualia would certainly get a place in that as well.
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I am running it at the moment (online, PBP), and I am at the glassworks. If/when my party put an end to Tsuto, I plan on having the old cleric in the party, who has spent his life in Sandpoint and was a close family friend to Father Tobyn, recognise Nulia from the pictures in Tsuto's journal. It is up to him whether he shares this, but I expect it to open a floodgate of remembrances ... her pregnancy, her spiritual force, her strange beauty, and latterly, her anger and dislocation.
When I first read the adventure through I felt that she was too disconnected from the PCs and needed to be made more real, especially in light of how fantastic a big bad evil gal she is.
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I had a similar problem.
Since my players will be running into Nualia in the next two sessions, I'm going to reveal her story in the form of a flashback.
For the sake of my game, I created a magic item called a 'memory sphere,' which is a small crystalline ball with the ability to record one's emotions and thoughts.
Anyways, here's what I'm going to present to my players:
When you open your eyes again, you find yourselves standing suspended weightless in the air overlooking Sandpoint and what appears to be the old church that got burnt down in place of the new cathedral.
The door to the church furtively opens as a beautiful little girl with silver hair and violet eyes pokes her head furtively outside before timidly walking outside. As she daintily walks down the steps, a stone flies out of nowhere and hits her head. Boyish giggling can be heard in the distance as someone yells: “Freak! Go back inside!” Clutching the bloody welt on her forehead, she runs back inside crying.
You are transported to what looks to be a quaint, old-fashioned schoolhouse. The same sad, quiet girl sits alone in the corner, reading a book. Cruel whispering and giggling can be heard all around her, before she gets up and excuses herself to go use the restroom. Three other giggling girls follow behind her and wait for her to walk into the outhouse before piling tables and chairs outside her door. Several hours later, a little girl’s frightened screams of anguish pierce the dusk.
A teenage girl walks back home to the church from the school house. Immediately, the air is filled with lewd catcalls and hooting from the adolescent boys in the area. Extremely uncomfortable with the inappropriate attention placed upon her, she quickly runs back to the church, with her head hung low.
A young woman holding a basket is browsing through vegetables at the market, when suddenly, she feels someone yank at her hair followed closely by a loud “snip” sound. Whirling around, she sees an old woman gleefully hobble off with a handful of hair the color of the stars.
A mob of petitioners approach her. Many of them have rashes and boils, others have warts. Some others claim to hear spirits in their head. They ask her to bless them. They ask her if she could cure their maladies with her touch. One of them calls her “the Blessed of Desna.” Another asks her to drive the evil spirits out of his head by singing to him. Too much for her, she runs back to the church. They give chase.
A stern voice of an older man can be heard: “On your seventeenth birthday, I am taking you to the highly prestigious Windsong Abbey to become a nun. The Abbess expects all young applicants to be perfectly versed in their catechisms. You may not leave this room until you have memorized all of your scriptures.” Hours later, a young woman looks out the window gloomily as the sun sets and another warm summer day spent cloistered in her chambers.
A handsome Varisian boy, who recently arrived at Sandpoint from Magnimar, takes her on a picnic for a date. It is her first picninc. They sit on a grassy knoll and watch the sun set. She falls in love.
Weeks pass. The boy throws a stone at the church window. The window opens and the girl looks outside. She smiles happily at him before clambering over and climbing down on a cloth rope. He takes her hand and takes her to the moonlit beach. They walk for awhile in the sand until they come upon a strange cave nestled within the cliffs underneath the newly built Glassworks. Giggling softly, they both go inside.
Months pass. The two young lovers sit shoulder to shoulder at the mouth of the cave overlooking the waves at night. The girl turns to the boy and says that she has something important to tell him. “What’s the matter?” the boy asks tenderly.
“I’m pregnant.” The girl says.
“You’re lying!”
“No, I swear it’s true.”
“How could this happen! I thought your kind was infertile.”
“But…what are we going to do now?”
“What do you mean we? I will be going to Magnimar with my caravan next week.”
“I thought you said you were going to stay here with me.”
“I lied. I knew I should never have gone out with a sad little fool like you.” With that, he turns on his heel and walks away with barely a glance backwards. Mouth agape, too stunned to speak, and hurt beyond measure, the girl quietly watches her so-called “lover” disappear into the darkness.
Kneeling before the altar, she prays for repentance that she does not feel. Her foster father yelled at her harshly and had called her a “harlot” when he found out about her condition. He forbids her from leaving the church in fear public ridicule. Bitterness and rage clouds her heart like a thick poison and festers…
Eight months later, she undergoes a painful miscarriage. Through the haze of pain suffusing her entire body, she catches a glimpse of her baby – a horrific and deformed monstrosity, which the blanching midwife immediately swaddles up and takes away. In one awful moment of clarity, she realized that she had been carrying a fiend in her belly all this time. She falls into a deep coma.
Her coma-induced sleep is filled with fevered dreams. In them, a pregnant woman with three jackal heads and a serpentine tail beckons to her. She approaches slowly and falls into the demon goddess’ embrace. In her other dreams, she dreams of burning the old Desnan church – her home and prison – down, with her foster father in it. She dreams of masked men who revel in the act of hunting and killing other men. She dreams of hunting down and murdering the boy who brought her so much pain. She dreams of a hidden shrine underground shrine, where she meets her tiny new mentor. She dreams of a monstrous goblin wolf – a chosen of Lamashtu – that paces restlessly in ravenous hunger in a small chamber. She dreams of Sandpoint being overwhelmed and razed by a ravening horde of monsters, and she vividly sees herself standing amidst the ruins, reveling in the act of offering the souls of the dying to higher, more terrible beings beyond the understanding of mere mortals.
The collective vision ends here and you find that you are once again inside the heart of Thistletop.
“Through that memory sphere, you have seen the entirety of my cursed and wretched life. All, but the final two dreams have come to pass exactly as I dreamt it. Soon, I shall be a true demon and no one will be able to stop me! I have come too far to be stopped by the likes of you. Prepare to die!”
All of a sudden, her black-hilted sword bursts into angry orange flames. Wings outspread and sword trailing fire, she lunges at you with fury in her eyes.
Roll initiative!
Oh, and because the party is a six-man crew, I've taken the liberty of advancing Nualia's transformation to the point where she develops wings (with a fly speed of 20 because of armor) and I've also given her a flaming sword (just because it's cool).
Why bother? Between the paladin wielding an earthbreaker and a beserk dwarven barbarian she only got one action off...
Scorching ray also didnt help her 'rise' to occasion.
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My group's half-orc ranger was raised in Sandpoint and had a crush on Nualia during his teenage years. Although Nualia obviously didn't have such feelings about him, she did fall in love... with the half-orc's best friend, a young Varisian man named Delek.
When the PC discovered that Nualia had become pregnant from that union, he left Sandpoint with his heart full of jealousy and resentment for these two people he had previously loved.
Now, six years later, he just came back to Sandpoint. Through those six years, he had never stopped thinking about Nualia. When he learned from the townsfolk that actually, Nualia has been dead for the past five years, he was flabbergasted and crushed.
Then, when he discovers that Nualia is not only still alive, but the evil mastermind behind the attacks, it will lead to a very interesting and climatic scene in which he reveals to her all his long-felt feelings for her. And she will just answer something like: "Sorry, who are you again?" Clearly, she never so much as noticed the poor, ugly half-orc.
And I love how this half-orc PC and Nualia have intertwined, almost mirror-image destinies: one miserable and shunned by people due to his racial ugliness and rumored evil nature, the other by her racial beauty and rumored purity of soul. And yet, it's the half-orc who gets shaped into being Good by those life events, and the Aasimar gets shaped into a twisted, Evil person. I like the irony. :)
My group's half-orc ranger was raised in Sandpoint and had a crush on Nualia during his teenage years.
Moonbeam - you are warped, twisted and evil
Now that I can admire in a DM...
I like what you did Moonbeam. Big kudos to you mate!
Anyone who is running RotRL and is not to Nualia yet should definitely up her levels or something. I did not change her any and she died very quickly when the PCs came against her. Also she should definitely have a bigger role in the campaign. It seemed like she just made a very small appearance and then died.
I just got Green Ronin's Unholy Warrior's handbook. I'm thinking about making Nualia an Unholy Warrior. What do you guys think?
I had a similar problem.
Since my players will be running into Nualia in the next two sessions, I'm going to reveal her story in the form of a flashback.
For the sake of my game, I created a magic item called a 'memory sphere,' which is a small crystalline ball with the ability to record one's emotions and thoughts.
Among the other advice given in this thread, I'm gonna incorporate everything you've written in your spoiler section for my players. Thanks you guys. I can't wait for my group to discover the sad story behind Nualia.
Among the other advice given in this thread, I'm gonna incorporate everything you've written in your spoiler section for my players. Thanks you guys. I can't wait for my group to discover the sad story behind Nualia.
Glad you liked it! When I ran my players through the encounter, they actually had some remorse about finishing her off, even after she killed the party's paladin. This is somewhat of an unexpected development because they are the type of players who would never take enemies hostage.
In any case, she does make a wonderful tragic villain.
If none of the PCs have a Sandpoint background, it's hard to give Nualia the full treatment she deserves.
And yet, I had a hard time convincing any of my players to take a Sandpoint background. I basically said that it was flat-out REQUIRED that one of them take it, so that at least one PC would know the history of the town.
But it was a tough sell for some reason. Everyone wanted to be from Riddleport, or even better, blank spots on the map that were uninhabited. It's inconceivable!
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Among the other advice given in this thread, I'm gonna incorporate everything you've written in your spoiler section for my players. Thanks you guys. I can't wait for my group to discover the sad story behind Nualia.
Glad you liked it! When I ran my players through the encounter, they actually had some remorse about finishing her off, even after she killed the party's paladin. This is somewhat of an unexpected development because they are the type of players who would never take enemies hostage.
In any case, she does make a wonderful tragic villain.
Thanks Cesare, your spoiler fits perfectly into elements of my campaign.
Desna communicates to her followers through their dreams. The Raptoran player keeps a Dream Journal, recording her dreams so that she may later interpret Desna's messages. Next session, she is to wake up to find her Dream Journal missing (having been stolen by Aldern Foxglove, later to be found in his creepy shrine dedicated to his obsession to this player). The player will not receive any Dreams, nor recover spells or hitpoints, until she recovers or finds a new Dream Journal. She will likely visit Sandpoint's bookstore to find a suitable replacement.
In the bookstore, the salesman will rummage around and hand her a Journal, before realising that it has already been used, and is in fact missing a few pages torn from the back. This was in fact Nualia's own Dream Journal. The intact pages will contain Nualia's early history, the ones she wishes to forget. The missing pages will be found with Nualia on Thistletop, her Dreams from Lamashtu about her future.
The players already strongly suspect a Harpy was behind Sandpoint's previous temple fire and the recent goblin raid, based on:
1) the Jervis Stoot story;
2) a description from a captured goblin; and
3) their own knowledge of Raptorans and Harpies.
Raptorans will usually destroy Harpies on sight, but given Nualia's semi-transformation, I wonder if my players may attempt to redeem her?
I also like your idea Nualia's boyfriend mistakenly believing her kind were infertile. I have determined in my campaign that Raptorans can breed with Elves, producing Elven offspring; or with Humans, producing Half-elven offspring. It requires two Raptorans to produce Raptoran offspring. However, Raptorans are fairly rare in my world, so common folk probably wouldn't realise Raptorans are capable of breeding with humans.
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I ended up using a lot of these ideas in my rendition of Burnt Offerings and it was awesome! Thanks to all the great minds and ideas on this thread.
We're almost through Hook Mountain now, but way back when, my characters really enjoyed the tragic story of Nualia. I'm a big ol' softy at heart and I liked Nualia so much that I didn't want her to get the axe so-to-speak when the PC's encountered her. So, I wrinkled the story line up a little bit to protect my wayward aasimar.
I added a few clues to Tsuto's journal and a couple dropped comments from interogated baddies, as well as a dream sequence for our paladin that indicated that while Nualia willingly started her fall from grace it was her new bad influences that were accelerating things.
The PC's are then presented with reason to defeat Erylium, Consecrate/destroy the altar of Lamashtu and hunt down that beastly Malfeshnekor. Once the party had done away with Erylium and had Father Zantus bless/consecrate/ render useless the shrine of Lamashtu, Malfeshnekor's hold on Nualia at Thistletop was lessened.
Once that was done I actually had some really spirited roleplay in the Nualia encounter that brought our tragic villain back to the brink. She then aided the party in doing away with Malfeshnekor (although she slipped a couple times and attacked the PC's during this fight dropping our druid to negatives). Afterwards, while she wasn't about to sprout a halo and head back to Sandpoint with her head held high and hug the people that caused her so much pain and angst...she did feel remorse for her deeds and left Thistletop to embark on a new journey of self discovery...perhaps to reappear at a later time...
And we now have a complex and interesting Aasimar NPC with a claw hand wandering the campaign world.
My group is inherently curious about mysteries and conspiracies and getting to the bottom of things. So this might not work in some people's circles but we had a good romp with it.
Just an idea for games where Nualia get's away, there is an awesome opportunity for her to make a reappearance in RoRL #6. Specifically, I'm thinking Chellan, the sword of Virtue.
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Just started running RotR.
I agree that Nualia lacks some presence in the first part of the adventure. I've been thinking about some sort of revenge on Nualia's behalf against the midwife who burned her baby (maybe she didn't miscarry - maybe she doesn't know/believe she miscarried). At the time it was a shock - but by now she hates the midwife who killed her beautiful baby/monster (probably Hannah). Not sure if it will be Nualia personally who kills the midwife though. Just something for the players to be able to discover her past.
I've also been thinking to make the 3 Yeth hounds at Thistletop her babies (it doesn't have to take 9 months when you're carrying monsters). I wonder who their father is...
And thanks for the pointer - I will increase her CR somehow. I have 5 players, including a crazy Earth-breaker-wielding Shoanti Barbarian, and I don't want him to 'splash' her away in 1 round. However, I don't think I want to make her a recurring villain either(although she will of course reappear if she happens to escape). I think she's a cool villain, but I reckon there will be loads of cool villains to come, so I will give my players the pleasure of defeating this one (rain check on the recurring villain :p ). Still, I hope it will be a memorable challenge.
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Just started running RotR.
...so I will give my players the pleasure of defeating this one (rain check on the recurring villain :p ). Still, I hope it will be a memorable challenge.
My players were able to capture her alive (thanks to the monk’s stunning fist). So the last scene of the first adventure was Nullia getting burned as a witch in Sandpoint by a scared/cheerful crowd – a last “Burnt Offering” to close the story.
Nice! :)
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Luckily Nualia has been a known presence in our campaign since we started.
Our local PC Monk has lived in Sandpoint all his life and remembers her AND Tsuto (both trained at the Blue Stone Monastery). Much foreshadowing there too.
But the Cleric of Desna in the party is Nulalia's foster sister. Turns out Nualia is not the only orphan Father Tobyn took in, as a frail, young Varisian girl came under his care. For two years the young Ashlin lived in Sandpoint, but Nualia only looked at her as another reason for people to think her unworthy of attention and was distant and cold towards the young Ashlin.
Both of the girls were cloistered away when Nualia's pregnancy was discovered, and Ashlin Tobyn was only 12 when the Runewell activated under Sandpoint. After being awoken by vivid dreams of images she did not understand, the scared and confused girl then heard/witnessed the miscarriage of her foster sister. As she was afraid but roughly pushed aside by both the midwife and the distrought Father Tobyn, plus seeing her sister seemingly dead, she fled Sandpoint that night.
Five years later, and after a hard life in Riddleport, she returns upon learning that the church had been burnt down and that Father Tobyn and Nualia had died in the fire...and discovers that the town thought her dead as well.
it has been fun.
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In my campaign I added a slight twist in on things for Nualia, changing just enough of her backstory that her monstrous child survived its birth, though not long after when Nualia fled the town with flames at her back.
With this in mind I added a room off of Nualia's chamber in the catacombs of wrath and had it decorated with a crib covered in black cloth and holding the bones of an infant. The room was haunted by an attic whisperer who had gone dormant when Nualia created this shrine to remember her child forgotten about during the late unpleasantness, but which has risen again now that Nualia has once again abandoned it to move on to her current plans.
My players are an all good group and I can really start to see them trying to take more captives alive in the future, after finding Nualia's journal(which I basically gave them a printout of the section about her history, altered to fit with my slight change to the story) and seeing some of the tragedy behind some of the other villians they have struck down they seem genuinely trying to reconsider trying to bring them back towards the light.
The problem comes from the part where they surprised me, and severed her demonic arm before burial. The wizard wanted to study it(to try and figure out how she caused the transformation and if it could be reversed) and the paladin wanted to destroy it. They did both. This means that if Nualia is coming back, she's coming back with just one arm as I can't see tsuto coming up with the funds for a regeneration.
Does that still seem worth doing? I would have to imagine that the loss of her demonic part would only drive her into a rage, even further then the loss of her plans would as it would only seem like a sign that she had fallen out of Lamashtu's favor.
Any thoughts or ideas are welcome.
In my campaign I added a slight twist in on things for Nualia
Response to questions in the spoiler tag:
So, you have to ask yourself, where are the funds coming from? If Tsuto's on his own, he'll have a tough time of it. But if he can tap daddy, then it shouldn't be a problem. And daddy's "girlfriend" likes Nualia, so the Lamia will probably encourage raising Nualia.
So if you assume a high level of resources for the bad guys, you have to ask yourself this: If you cast regenerate on Nualia, what kind of arm would grow back? My money's on the demon arm.
Anyway, in your campaign, you have to decide what would be more entertaining for the players. If they re-encounter Nualia, and her demon arm is grown back, will they feel "cheated" since they destroyed it? If so, you could give Nualia her normal arm and the players might try to use that as a wedge to turn Nualia back to the good side.
Although I'm not sure how receptive Nualia is going to be to talking to the group that killed her! How are they going to "talk her down"? What are they going to say? "Calm down missy, or we'll be forced to kill you a second time!"
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What about a subversion of what might be expected from the symbiont angle?
Like say an incomplete miniature version of herself that's a picture of unmarred aasimar perfection(or possibly something even more idealized) or something else angelic in theme. A cherubic face or such.
It's presence would probably be to exclusively drive Nualia further into Crazy Town, but the fun would be in how. It could be a manifestation of her guilt over what she's abandoned, it could constantly berate her for her evil deeds, taunt her for her marring herself or on the flipside for thinking she can escape her heritage, whispering promises of salvation through self-destructive behavior or other evil acts, or have a personality split(be it good/evil, optimist/pessimist, lawful/chaotic, or something more complex) in Nualia herself with one half in the original body and the other in the symbiont.
Taking it to extremes, you could have them working against each other with one leaving hints or providing some other aid to PCs, leading them into possible Mind **** territory if they don't understand wants going on.
Bonus points if an angelic looking symbiont constantly apologizes and expresses remorse for Nualia's actions to her victims, whether genuine or just to taunt and torment Nualia further.
*bump*
I have a player who wants to be an Assimar I was thinking about having him be Nualia brother.
I was thinking when they were very young like 5 and 6 there parents were killed and they each ran off thinking the other was dead one ended up in Sandpoint and the other in Magnimar as orphans.
Really this is just for some fun roleplaying in the final battle, because she thinks he deserted her like everyone else and wants to sac him to Lamashtu.
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I've just started running a 4th ed group thru RoRTL and was also wondering how to foreshadow Nualia (and also how to deal with the fact that aasimars don't exist in 4E). Luckily, my players presented me with an opportunity...
...when they were informed that Father Tobyn's remains had been stolen during the goblin raid on Sandpoint and tried to investigate why someone would want to steal the remains of the former priest.
During their discussion with Father Zantus, I let one of the players whose character is a Sandpoint local remember that Father Tobyn had adopted a daughter of unearthly beauty (& obvious celestial heritage) who also perished in the fire 5 years ago. I also gave them information about how Nualia had been treated by those of a superstitious bent in Sandpoint.
This led my players to wonder if the corpse thieves had actually been trying to get Nualia's remains and had stolen Father Tobyn's remains by mistake...
I let them rule this out by investigating the graveyard and noting that Father Tobyn's grave was well marked, but they ended up talking to Naffer Vosk, the gravedigger, and he mentioned that they didn't find much left of Nualia after the fire and that it wasn't easy to identify her remains...
I feel I've now given them enough information for the revelation that Nualia is still alive to have some impact...