Xanesha wins! Um...now what?

[klofft]

A while ago, my players were TPK'd by Aldern Foxglove. They made a new party, analyzed problems with their player tactics, and I continued the story with a new party in Magnimar.

Last night, they faced Xanesha. They were pretty healthy HP-wise, still had a few decent spells left on their lists, and are a party of 5 6th level characters with a 4th level cohort.

She trounced them. After the cohort was stabbed to death in a single round, they chose the better part of valor and fled. I saw no particular reason that Xanesha would pursue them, and I thought it would be a pretty RBDM thing to do anyway.

But now I'm stuck. What would Xanesha do at this point?
Foxglove is dead.
All the Skinsaw Cultists in the sawmill are dead.
Justice Ironbriar (father of one of the characters in my game) has been quietly brought to justice.
Xanesha's faceless stalkers are all dead.

Would Xanesha leave Magnimar behind? Start hunting the PCs herself? Sit and wait for adventurers to kill her? :)

I'm eager to finish Skinsaw Murders and move on, but my party needs the reward from the mayor to improve their gear and a viable hook to get them to Fort Rannick.

Any suggestions or ideas for what to do with Xanesha and/or how to move the party forward? Help!

Thanks in advance,
C

[tbug]

I suspect that she'll move on, possibly out of Varisia entirely though possibly just up-river a bit. She'll want new minions, if nothing else. Before she leaves though she's going to want to take out Lord Mayor Grobaras. He's been her big project for a while now, and she's got to be pretty close to figuring out how to get to him.

The first thing she'll do, I expect, is abandon the Shadow Clock. She has various lovers around the city who pine for her when she's away, so she won't have any trouble finding a place to stay. Maybe one of these people can even help her lure in the Lord Mayor.

In my game the same thing happened as in yours, and the PCs fled all the way back to Sandpoint. They just let bad stuff happen, so Lord Mayor Grobaras died and Deputy Mayor Arkona took over. Xanesha wasn't in as bad shape as in your game (since more of her minions survived), so she's staying with various rich men and masterminding the deaths of more greedy people (including a lot of Scarnettis).

Good luck!

[klofft]

tbug wrote:

I suspect that she'll move on, possibly out of Varisia entirely though possibly just up-river a bit. She'll want new minions, if nothing else. Before she leaves though she's going to want to take out Lord Mayor Grobaras. He's been her big project for a while now, and she's got to be pretty close to figuring out how to get to him.

The first thing she'll do, I expect, is abandon the Shadow Clock. She has various lovers around the city who pine for her when she's away, so she won't have any trouble finding a place to stay. Maybe one of these people can even help her lure in the Lord Mayor.

In my game the same thing happened as in yours, and the PCs fled all the way back to Sandpoint. They just let bad stuff happen, so Lord Mayor Grobaras died and Deputy Mayor Arkona took over. Xanesha wasn't in as bad shape as in your game (since more of her minions survived), so she's staying with various rich men and masterminding the deaths of more greedy people (including a lot of Scarnettis).

Good luck!

So how did you get them to Hook Hill?

[FatR]

Basically, at this point Xanesha's cover is gone, and she is not strong enough to handle the entire Magnimar, so I don't even see any reason for her to wait PCs at the Shadow Clock, unless they attack her before she learns that the Skinsaw Cult is no more. She can just relocate (PCs don't really know anything about her, unless they made Ironbriar talk). She is strong (and stealthy) enough to kill Lord Mayor right now, but the problem is, she needs to spend some uninterrupted time with him to prepare him for sacrifice, so immediately charging his mansion is probably out of the question. If the things deteriorated so far that she is actually found and attacked, her only choice is to flee and hope that Lord Mayor won't get sufficient proof of her intentions to outwiegth his greed and won't pay the golemworks wizard, whatever his name, for locating and killing her.

As about the plot hook - just make the news that the Black Arrows were wiped out reach Magnimar, then make ogres massacre whatever force the city sends after them (and eat some towns, Turtleback Ferry, for example, is plot-unimportant in the long run, so you can wipe it from the map, and the dam's destruction can threaten wider areas), so that the authorities will be more willing to pay a hefty sum to any locally famous adventurers (PCs ought to have pretty good reputation after saving Sandpoint and nailing a murder cult), who are brave enough to challenge rampaging Kreegs, but not hefty enough to seriously interest the above-mentioned wizard or other big shots. This will require some adjustments to HMM, of course.

[Reckless]

If you can have the players discover her plot to

Spoiler:

take out the mayor,

and they can save him from her attempt, then that gives them the "You saved my life and seem like a competant bunch" plot hook back.

It doesn't even necessarily have to be her they stop, could be other minions. Nothing says that the

Spoiler:

sawmill

was the only Skinsaw Man Cult hideout, so there could be other members elsewhere in Magnimar. You could clue the party into another hideout, let them spot some cultists in a dark alley one night, follow them back to their lair, overhear them talking about

Spoiler:

the mayor,

etc.

[klofft]

Reckless wrote:

If you can have the players discover her plot to ** spoiler omitted ** and they can save him from her attempt, then that gives them the "You saved my life and seem like a competant bunch" plot hook back.

It doesn't even necessarily have to be her they stop, could be other minions. Nothing says that the ** spoiler omitted ** was the only Skinsaw Man Cult hideout, so there could be other members elsewhere in Magnimar. You could clue the party into another hideout, let them spot some cultists in a dark alley one night, follow them back to their lair, overhear them talking about ** spoiler omitted **etc.

This may be the way to go; thanks. I'm not sure I want them to fight Xanesha again until much later on - I'm not convinced they can take her.

[Lord Tarrant]

The outcome of our adventure was very much like yours, they defeated the Skinsaw Culy and allowed Justice Ironbriar to leave Magnimar (in exchange for revealing where Xanesha was located), they slew all the minions in the the clock tower but they were unable to defeat Xanesha. They did however escape from her and blow her cover to the mayor. Her cover blown her minions dead and her various lovers dwindling to zero as the news about her leading the Skinsaw Cult spreads I decided that she would pull up stakes and join her sister at Turtleback ferry. I've thought about having a letter discovered from Xanesha's sister that vaguely discusses how well things have gone for her there as a possible adventure hook for Book 3. I look forward to the looks on my groups faces when they run into the two of them later on.

[Ernest Mueller]

After we had to flee Xanesha, our DM had her go after the Lord Mayor to assassinate him and we thwarted it - making it a better lead-in to being given Fort Rannick. (We still didn't kill her that time; I hate dimension door!)

[tbug]

klofft wrote:

So how did you get them to Hook Hill?

Eventually I had some guards from Magnimar show up in Sandpoint to arrest the PCs for the murder of Lord Mayor Grobaras. They went to trial under Justice Ironbriar and were convicted of murder. Someone approached them and gave them a chance to live if they joined the Black Arrows of Fort Rannick. They declined, and managed to escape.

One of the NPCs with them had a relative in Turtleback Ferry, so they went there to hide out. From there I just ran the path, except I added some hellknights showing up to try to haul them back to Magnimar.

Birdcrunchers!