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My party just finished What Lies in Dust and, before launching them into the Infernal Syndome, and thought I'd pause the campaign to do some plot sprinkling/setup.
My core issue with IS is that it introduces the Council so quickly; in the first 3 AP entries, we see very little of the Council; in issue 4, suddenly it is raining Council Loyalists and Usurpers. In issue 5 that party learns, mostly randomly and through a dead pesh dealer, who the real power behind the Council usurpers is. It is pretty clear that the party never really has to work to figure out what is going on with the Drovenge's plot - it all just falls into their lap nicely. Thus, it seems like between AP 3 and AP 4 is the perfect time to start injecting some fun plot events that make the party feel like they've earned the Council reveals that occur in APs 4 and 5.
So here are some of my ideas on how to do this. I'd appreciate any others!
Start by having Eirtein Oberigo send the party a private note, to the tune of: "You are about to get raided by Thrune agents for your somewhat less-than-secret delve into Delvehaven. Hide any contraband you took from the Pathfinder Lodge and be cooperative with them. Once they've finished shaking you down come visit me, I have a few small jobs for you." If the PCs decide to fight the Hellknight Thrune agents, that makes them fugatives for the rest of the AP (which would be fun). Recall at this point in the AP Oberigo has been tasked by Papa Drovenge to insert double agents into the various Council groups to flush out information on who the Usurpers are; thus, when they visit Oberigo, he reveals some key information to them: The Council of Thieves is alive and well—rumors that it long ago disbanded are false, and he believes that there a coup is going to be attempted soon inside the Council and wants the party's help in getting to the bottom of it. (Why should the party help? Oberigo can appeal to their Wisecrani patriotism ["We bring stability to the city, and a revolt will bring chaos and the House Thrune upon us"], or their love of money if they have a mercenary bent.) As such, he asks the party to do some favors for him:
1) Insider info: become a regular member of Abertin "the Dealer" Bittershins weekly high stakes card game, and try to learn where the halfling's loyalties lie.
2) Tailing work: spend an evening tailing Zol-the-Cleaner around town to see who he is talking to. This results in the party being stuck in the streets after dark and being attacked by a few heavy waves of shadow critters.
3) Noble recon: have dinner with the Mhartis family and see if they can figure out why they have been acting so strange recently. (Answer: they are being hunted by a vampire, which preps AP 4's "Vampire Panic!" side quest.)
4) prove that Durotas Scasi Bolvona, commander of the condottari, has been taking bribes from someone in the Council to allow them night-time access to the waterways around the Folly. This (somehow) results in a conflict between the Hellknights and the Dotari, which foreshadows the eventual conflict between the two groups in AP 4.
5) Loyalty test: pretend to be a outside purchaser of Pesh and try to entrap "Goren One Ear" into violating his Council regulations (this will make Goren's eventual reveal less lame).
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I did an 'in-between' session using some of the above ideas.
Player handout - note from Obertein warning the party of their impending arrest for breaking House Thrune law for breaking into Delvehaven, and harboring a known fugitive.
Worked out well. I'm starting AP 4 next week, and hopefully all of the Council reveals will be less ... heavy handed.
I'm sorry I missed seeing this when you still needed ideas, sozin. You're so generous with sharing the work you do I would have been happy to share my extracurricular stuff. Sorry. :(
Great! This is just great! My party is standing in the front of Delvehaven since yesterday evening and I think, I will also do this side plot.
But I do have a couple of questions:
1. Does this arrest means, that Arael and Janiven get arrested (or, did your party did let this happen?)? If they get arrested, will you let the PC's let them try to free the two, or does they just aren't able to help the PC's?
2. The Shrine of Aroden is no safe place anymore and the Children have to search for a new one? Did your party (or you) came up with any clever ideas?
3. If the CoW are now branded as fugitives, how do you plan to let this affect the Prestige points (or whatever they are called) in the last module?
And again: Thanks for sharing your ideas and your absolutly great handouts! May I ask how do you create those? Do you have some special program for it?
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1. Does this arrest means, that Arael and Janiven get arrested (or, did your party did let this happen?)? If they get arrested, will you let the PC's let them try to free the two, or does they just aren't able to help the PC's?
My party wisely decided to get out before the inquisitors raided their hideout, and both Janiven and Arael secreted themselves away. If J&A end up getting arrested, my plan was to have the party do a prison break from the Westcrown prison during the chaos of the Infernal Syndrome.
2. The Shrine of Aroden is no safe place anymore and the Children have to search for a new one? Did your party (or you) came up with any clever ideas?
Yeah, they -really- wanted to make their hideout be Delvehaven. I gave them that opportunity, but when they figured out that the Thrunists were scrying that location, they decided instead on the Sanqatada Cinqarda (where they'd developed contacts that were already sympathetic to the 'rebellion'.
If the CoW are now branded as fugitives, how do you plan to let this affect the Prestige points (or whatever they are called) in the last module?
Hmm ... hadn't thought about that. Not sure! I will ponder.
And again: Thanks for sharing your ideas and your absolutly great handouts! May I ask how do you create those? Do you have some special program for it?
Thank you for the kind words! I don't use anything fancy - basically a combination of Adobe Acrobat (to export/cut-and-paste images from the pdfs), and Photoshop. Over the last few years I've basically been exporting every image out of the Paizo pdfs, and cataloging them into the following taxonomy:
-Paizo
---Art
------Heraldry
------Maps
------Objects
------Paper
------Paintings
------Portraits
----------Aberration
----------Animal
----------Construct
----------Dragon
----------Elemental
----------Fey
----------Humanoids
--------------Elf
--------------Dwarf
--------------Human
--------------...
----------...
----------Undead
----------Vermin
------Pogs
For example, in my paper folder, I have all the different paper backgrounds that Paizo has used over the years. Then when I'm making a handout, I pick a piece of paper that looks good, find a handwriting font, apply various ink/splatter effects, and then emboss in interesting images into the picture as flair.
After doing a dozen or so of them I can usually rip one out in a few hours.
I realise this thread is more than a little old now but thought I'd chime in anyway. I'm about to do something very similar in my game, a little intermission but I'm giving each of my four players individual little plots to follow.
(since they're all varying alignments it suits them to have their own agendas in the background)
This guy took the runecurse from the Asmodean knot, identified it and managed to hold on to it without the bone devil turning up for long enough to palm it off on none other that Eritein Oberigo basically selling it to him with a load of other documents from the knot in response to his request for information. A few days later I gave reports of a massive ruckuss at his mansion that destroyed part of it and rumours he had been killed by a devil.
I decided Oberigo is far to cool an NPC to be killed 'off-screen' so he somehow escaped the bone devil but encouraged rumours of his demise to allow him to go into hiding since he already knows something is rotten in the council of thieves and wants to avoid getting assasinated. This slightly changes his role later in the adventure (he won't be captured for example) but with regards to this tiefling he'll be grabbed by a couple of Oberigos minions and bought to him. Orberigo, impressed with his cojones will basically tell him he works for him now and give him a little task, to track down and 'deal with' a former member of his household who is under Dottari protection waiting to expose the real details of Oberigo's 'death.' As the AP continues Ertien will provide information and possibly support for the players through this player along with giving him little 'side missions' (the first of which will be rescuing the informant in AP 4)
This guy wants to be an assasin, (he's LN but I've always maintained Evil allignment shouldn't be a prereq for assasin: see Assasins Creed games and other books/films/games with characters that have the skills of an assasin but use them for good or at least neutral reasons) I found the Aspis Consortium in the faction guide and discovred their HQ is in Westcrown so decided they'e be perfect. They will be approaching him and recruiting him with a small 'test' job and if he does well he'll be given further tasks (basically npcs I pick from the AP's from now on or ones I add in) he'll go up in rank with the AC and gain appropriate benefits until I decide to give him a hit on a completly innocent person at which point he'll have to decide to go through with it and turn LE or not and incur the wrath of the consortium.
This guy is being investigated by the inquisition for his suspected part in the rebellion. Though there is only very little circumstanial evidence a particularly ambitious inquisitor egged on by his nephew Thesing Umberto (the dwarf played the lead in the 6 trials) has found an obscure loophole that allows him to challenge a fellow priest of Asmodeus to a spell duel (using the new rules from ult magic) to determine his guilt. The inquisitor is confident of victory as he has a cabal devil advising him. The devil however is playing him and waiting to see who emerges victorious from the duel and assuming it's the player she'll abandon the inquisitor and begin 'advising' the dwarf (who is looking to become a mystic theurge so a cabal devil helping with that works out well I think)
This one is complicated, the sorcerer died at the climax of BoE but I wanted him back (he was an actor so fit with 6 trials perfectly) so I put in a way for the cleric of Asmodeus to strike a deal with a devil to bring him back. The deal was for the two of them to do everything they can to reinstall the devil (who was cast out of the 9 hells) to his former status as an infernal duke. The devil currently has no physical body so is possesing the sorcerer and when they go down to deal with Liebedega the devil will 'hijack' his body then I'll be coming up with a few other quests the players will have to do at various points in the rest of the adventure path to return the devil to hell and allow him to regain his status. This intermission will be used to introduce all this
So those are my plans, comments and suggestions appreciated :-)