So, one of my players has decided to take an interest in all things thassilonian. Which is good. He has taken the language and made a bee-line for the "Lighthouse". He then went to see Quink and made a good impression on him. He is now spending time researching the subject.
What do I reveal?
Previously Mr Jacobs has said that since finding out about anything Thassilonian is a DC 30 check, it should not be revealed before 4th level. Fair enough, but this guy is going direct to a source - Quink. Now, if he was to use Quink as a sage he would have to pay, but this is just him engaging Quink in discussion over a cup of herbal tea in the shadow of the Lighthouse.
I figured I should let him see the first page of the article on Thassilon - nothing too controversial there and nothing I can see that breaks the story.
Or is there?
I think you want to encourage this sort of behaviour. This is information you'll want to reveal before the end of the plot. The only downside to revealing a lot of stuff early is that you might not have much left for the big treasure trove of information in Volume Four.
I would limit the information to what Quirk would have. While he is a lvl 7 expert he has only been studying Thassilon ruins for a few years. His biggest discovery (tower = flaming war machine) is being laughed at by his fellow academics.
So maybe the general structure of the Empire (1 supreme leader w/ 7 warlords'). But I would probably focus on the architecture of the Empire - after all that is where Quirk's expertise lies.
I ran for an entire party of Thassilon-obsessed scholars, and they knew a *lot* very early on. The hazards I found:
(1) If the PCs understand what is happening in Burnt Offerings, they may conclude that the campaign is about preventing the rise of Alaznist. My player did, and was a bit disappointed.
(2) The modules are inconsistent on how Runewells work, and if the PCs find out a lot about Runewells early, it'll put stress on this inconsistency. I recommend coming to a decision early and sticking to it. In particular you'll want to know if a soul going to a Runewell means the person can't be raised or animated. (The authors' answer appears to be "no." We went with "yes" as it was much more dramatic for us.)
On the flip side, I felt that having the PCs figure out what the Sihedron ritual does (which mine did, sometime in Skinsaw) increased the tension and made Skinsaw and Hook Mountain significantly more interesting.
(3) There is a risk, if the PCs figure out how important the Catacombs of Wrath are, that they'll try to excavate them early; you'll need to block this somehow. There is a big risk that if they figure out where Xin-Shalast is they will try to go there; that must also be prevented. (This will be an issue for many parties at #4, I think, but it had started to worry me by #3.)
Except for these issues, I found that my party of scholars was a pleasure to run for, and in fact I think a PC party which can't speak Thassilonian and isn't knowledgable about the past would lead to a significantly less interesting game. Many of the most dramatic pieces of dialog should naturally be in Thassilonian; it would be a pity to lose these, or fudge to make them Common.
I really enjoyed the PCs' reaction the first time they heard courtly Thassilonian spoken correctly! And their knowledge and language skills have also contributed to the growing sense that they're turning into the image of their enemies. The party speaks only Thassilonian among itself now....
If they defeat the final enemy, I intend to have the enemy's surviving servants hail them as his successor, and see how they react. They are pretty well suited for the job now--if they want it.
Mary
Creative Director
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So, one of my players has decided to take an interest in all things thassilonian. Which is good. He has taken the language and made a bee-line for the "Lighthouse". He then went to see Quink and made a good impression on him. He is now spending time researching the subject.
What do I reveal?
Since you've got access to all 6 parts of Runelords and over a year's worth of messageboards and blogs and all that... you don't have to exactly follow the AP's tentative method of revealing info about the world. With the release of Runelords, new players were equally in the dark about modern Varisia as they were about Thassilon. We made Thassilon difficult to learn about so that they'd learn more about the modern world and then the ancient world feels like a deeper, hidden layer to it all.
Now that there's more and more info out there about Golarion and Varisia and all that... it's less of a problem if you reveal more info about Thassilon than the adventure implies.
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I've been struggling with this myself, and I've posed a few questions which James Jacobs has been kind to address.
I've come up with what I think is an elegant solution. The Thassilonian rossetta stone is the spell focus tattoo. It's proof that some native Varisians have passed down a functional knowledge of written Thassilonian, enough to infuse it with rune magic. As magical writing it must be understood by the tattoo artist to function properly.
So, each Varisian tattoo artist of this tradition understands at least a portion of Thassilonian. If enough artists are consulted and enough tattoos examined (which would be a difficult undertaking for a rare tradition), then a lexicon can be assembled. Since Thassilonian is pictographic and complex, it would an incomplete lexicon, but a strong context.
I think of each tattoo as a poem espousing a particular virtue as practiced by the common man, since the Varisians are lyrical and were the serf class of Thassilon.
So… modern academic Thassilonian is based on a collection of tattoo poems and a few subsequent translations of the more accessible monuments.
This creates a host of unusual scenarios:
- Wizards seeking out sorcerers to translate the ‘ink’ that the sorcerers themselves probably can’t read.
- Varisian tattoo artists making vows never to divulge their family secrets to Chelaxian academics.
- Disturbing books of tattoo art, made of the original skin.
I plan to create a shortlist of poems my Thassilonian speaking player can reference for historical clues. One or two for each virtue.