I'm confused about how to synthesize the Arkona entry in the Guide to Korvosa with their description in Pathfinder 9. In the former, Bahor "desperately loves" his sister, while in the latter he hopes that the PCs will kill her. In the former the Vault is one of the family's most important enterprises, and the family accepts payment to keep prisoners alive and well under the care of Vaultmaster Bahasaran; in the latter, the Vault has only one prisoner and it's considered a big pain that he has to be kept alive, causing Senshiir (who's in charge) dissatisfaction. Maybe Bahasaran is the "vile man" who worked for Mapras and slept in E22?
What's the intent here? If this is just a mistake then I can make stuff up, but if I'm just confused or missing something then please help me out.
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I'm confused about how to synthesize the Arkona entry in the Guide to Korvosa with their description in Pathfinder 9. In the former, Bahor "desperately loves" his sister, while in the latter he hopes that the PCs will kill her. In the former the Vault is one of the family's most important enterprises, and the family accepts payment to keep prisoners alive and well under the care of Vaultmaster Bahasaran; in the latter, the Vault has only one prisoner and it's considered a big pain that he has to be kept alive, causing Senshiir (who's in charge) dissatisfaction. Maybe Bahasaran is the "vile man" who worked for Mapras and slept in E22?
What's the intent here? If this is just a mistake then I can make stuff up, but if I'm just confused or missing something then please help me out.
To a certain extent, the fact that we were writing "Escape from Old Korvosa" and "Guide to Korvosa" all at the same time is the reason there's a few inconsistencies here and there. For the most part, things work out okay, but there are, unfortunately, still a few rough edges.
Basically... the situation in Guide to Korvosa is a static "snapshot" of the way the city functions before the events in "Curse of the Crimson Throne" take place. Once these events get under way, things start changing fast.
The situation with the Vault's a bit more complex. The problem is that the original version of the vault under Palace Arkona as it existed in "Escape from Old Korvosa's" first draft was VERY overcomplex and almost impossible to map. By the time revisions went in, the text for Guide to Korvosa had already been sent to the printer.
In any event, the "Vault" referred to in "Guide to Korvosa" is the same as the prison in area E21 under Palace Arkona. In fact, the word Vault more or less encompasses all of the Arkona Dungeons, including the Vivified Labyrinth. We decided to abandon the naming convention of "Vault" for it since that was causing me a little confusion between it and the more generalized "vaults" under Korvosa (see page 55 of Guide to Korvosa).
Vaultmaster Bahasaran was indeed the "vile man" who used to run the Vivified Labyrinth. He was killed not long after Bahor took over and replaced him with the more loyal Senshiir and Sivit. There's a bit of weird timeline error going on there, alas, between the two books, since "Guide to Korvosa" seems to imply that Bahasaran is still alive and taking care of the Vivified Labyrinth; that's not the case (although to the vast majority of folk who know about the Arkona Dungeon... they probably don't know that Bahasaran's been replaced since he was sort of a shut-in).
As for all the prisoners... well, when things started going bad in Korvosa, Bahor had them all transported out. He suspected things were going to get bad in the city fast, and wanted to "hunker down" to ride out the storm. Having a bunch of commissioned prisoners in the vault during this time would have been an unwanted extra thing to take care of, so he either executed the prisoners or returned them to their "owners." I suspect the vast majority ended up in prison cells in the Cerulean Society's guildhall.
Everything makes sense to me now. Thanks! You guys have the most amazing level of responsiveness I've ever seen in a game company!