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My group is led by a cleric of Sarenrae, who offers "the bad guys" a chance to redeem themselves before entering in combat. Even then, he tries not to kill anyone, if he doesn't have to (and he never *has* to). He also sees his mission to redeem as many people as possible, and tries to make as many contacts with the NPCs as the AP goes along.
So when the party met Devargo Barvasi, he made sure to leave with the encounter with a contact, if not a potential ally, regardless of alignment, deeds, etc., believing that further contact would only help redeem Devargo later on.
Of course, as written, Devargo dies shortly after the quarentine of Old Korvosa; Devargo closes his docks and is killed by his ettercap ally. I didn't particularly like that ending for him, and that he wasn't around to put up a fight against Pilts Swastel as he sets up his Empire.
Now, my group just finished searching the Direption and decided to take the dead body to Old Korvosa, specifically to Orisini's place, to question the body. They came on shore unnoticed (using water breathing to bypass the patrols) near Eel's End. They quickly noticed the change of Old Korvosa, empty streets, empty Eel's End, and instead of going towards Orisini's place, they stop by to see Devargo to see what's going on.
So, they enter Devargo's throne room, which now is covered in webs like the hold below, and occupied by ettercaps, large and medium monstrous spiders, and a spider swarm, with five "cocoons" hanging from the ceiling in the back of the room.
They fought off the monsters, and rescued Devargo from one of the cocoons (0 Str, 5 hp). After healing him up, and letting Devargo know about the Queen's Physicians, Devargo now owes the PCs big time.
I'm looking forward to Escape from Old Korvosa, to see what the PCs will request of Devargo to potentially liberate the city from oppression, murder and fear.
My PCs really got interested in Devargo. Well, one in particular, and I thought it would just be a shame to kill him off, so I have him set up as the Arkona's man on Old Korvosa, with a sort of "cold war" gang war going on between he and Pilts Swastel. A war that is bound to get hot when the party starts snooping around.
I do love the idea of Devargo being attacked by the ettercap, though... maybe somehow the ettercap was somehow influenced by Pilts to attack Devargo and turned against him. I think I'm going to have to steal this idea. It might make the interactions with the Arkonas a little different, but I like adding in as much gray as possible.