Foreshadowing Nualia

[Douglas Muir 406]

Nualia is a cool character with a great backstory who appears once and dies.

Has anyone done anything to foreshadow her? By having a PC glimpse her at the Festival, say?

Doug M.

[Aeshuura]

Sadly, I did not, though I did use someone else's printouts of a couple of pages of Nualia's childhood Diary... they are somewhere on the Community Created thread.

Check it out!

She became a relatively major npc in my campaign, even though she is really only in Burnt Offerings!

[DM_aka_Dudemeister]

If you want her to play a bigger role, have her surrender when she hits X HP (10-5 is usually about right). The PCs can arrest and interrogate her, to find out more about her evil plan, and her tragic back story.

From there you have a number of things you can do. You can have the sheriff escort her to Magnimar for trial, where Judge Ironbriar (or whatever his name is) uses her to enact his evil plots upon the PCs. The PCs could try to redeem her themselves, or any number of things.

[mike smith 853]

I had a bunch of stuff to set her up.

First I made a huge deal over the grave robbery and even a mild conspiracy over the death of her and her father. I had the PC's in charge of the investigation and so they we're already wondering about how that connected.

I took someone else's idea here on the forums and made one of the NPC artisans sculpt an image of an angel using Naulia as the inspiration. That way they knew what she looked like.

Next I added a scrying mirror to the Cathedral of Wrath, where the PC's fight the imp. I had Naulia in a mask appear and speak to them for a bit. I made sure they knew it was a woman.

And finally I used the awesome Tsuko notes on the community forum page, where someone had drawn Naulia out.

So by the time they actually faced her, they knew to hate her.

Frankly the one that kept coming back was Tsuko. They didn't kill him so I had him escape jail and had a lot of fun attacking and hiding or escaping the PC's in Thistletop.

[The-Last-Rogue]

mike smith 853 wrote:

I had a bunch of stuff to set her up.

First I made a huge deal over the grave robbery and even a mild conspiracy over the death of her and her father. I had the PC's in charge of the investigation and so they we're already wondering about how that connected.

This. That grave robbery is a bit of a buried lead, eh? Play it up, though; it really gave my players a hook to keep them interested in the events of 5 years past leading up to present Sandpoint.

Also, the Tsuto's journal. Print it out. Use it.

[Greycloak of Bowness]

I had a player whose shady character was in her band before the adventure started but didn't know who she was other than her name and that there was an attack planned on the town that was meant as a distraction. He had met Tsuto, Orik and that wizard lady, L?y??, whose name escapes me before the player betrayed Nualia to hang around the Swallowtail Festival so he could play "hero" and get all the babes.

He didn't know anything about her history or where her lair was but since he knew a little bit more than an average player did, he guided the party's investigation to uncover pretty much all of her story once they uncovered Tsuto's sketch book.

[leo1925]

I foreshadowed Nualia this way:
When the party first got in the sandpoint and went to the rusty dragon inn and started talking with some people there i had one of the few locals there mention the fire and that the previous head cleric and his adopted asimar child both died in that fire, later when the oracle of fire went to the church i gave him a vision, she saw the old church and an angel descending from the moonlight sky (the same man have said that it was a moonless night) and burning the church to the ground and if the oracle looked better in the moon she would see that it wasn't one moon but there were three moons aligned in such a way that resembles lamasthu's symbol.
Of course my players weren't paying a lot of attention and it took them a while to remember that the man have said it was a moonless night (and have the oracle look closer to the moon) and they never made the connection of asimar=>angel until the time they faced Nualia and and saw that she was an asimar.

[HangarFlying]

I plan on running this as close to written as possible.

Spoiler:

Though, one of my players is going to be a cleric and I'm going to run a background quest to establish Fr. Tobyn as his mentor, and the player is the one to go into the burnt church to find the remains of Tobyn and "Nualia". I hope to reinforce some kind of emotional bond so that when the group finally sees Nualia's picture in Tsuto's journal, it'll be a hard kick in the teeth for the cleric.

Spoiler:

I don't recall any description about this, but is it known that Nualia started the fire? Meaning, is it assumed by the community that it was a murder-suicide, or do they think she was an innocent victim?

[Starfury]

HangarFlying wrote:

I plan on running this as close to written as possible.

Given your cleric will have known Father Tobyn...

Spoiler:

...he presumably knows/knew Nualia personally, so I'd reveal a fair amount of her backstory from 5 years ago. He should be aware of Nualia's original personality, a shy, quiet aasimar girl. She should be a very sympathetic NPC. Frankly, though no one was especially abusive of her, she generally wasn't well treated by Sandpoint's otherwise nice citizens. Father Tobyn was a strict father figure, and she was always viewed as an outsider when she walked around Sandpoint. Townsfolk constantly approached her for embarrassing/awkward requests even as a child, boys presumably showed a lot of unwelcome attention as she grew older, etc. Then there's the whole secret affair with the Varisian lad (maybe she confided in the PC about it?), the pregnancy, Father Tobyn's stern reaction, the miscarriage, her coma, and finally her fiery death. Lots of angst.

The point is, the PC should have a lot of insight into Nualia's personality and tragic history. Lots of room to weave her into your PC's background. Lots of fun for the DM! :)

Spoiler:

As I recall, the fire was centered in the Chapel's quarters. It burned hottest there. Father Tobyn's burnt remains were found, but Nualia's body (obviously) wasn't recovered. The townsfolk just assumed she was killed in the fire, and that the fire was accidental, not deliberate.

Now if that seems a little weak when you describe it to your player, it might take a little thought to smooth that out a bit. Maybe she was able to start the fire so that it appeared to be accidental. And maybe Nualia found a corpse about her size to take her place in the fire. (Maybe she even killed someone?) Also, the town was still recovering from the aftermath of Chopper's killing spree, including breaking in a new sheriff Hemlock.

Anyway, I think it's worth the effort to set up some fun surprises for your player!

[Douglas Muir 406]

Spoiler:

If Fr. Tobyn was his mentor, the PC would certainly have known Nualia.

Two possibilities here:

1) False remains -- she killed someone else and used that (burnt and unrecognizable) body. That sets up a nice little murder-mystery backstory (who was the missing person, does the PC remember any inconsistencies). I don't love it, though, because it requires Nualia to be a much more cold-blooded plotter.

2) Nualia survived, and everyone knows this, but she was horribly burned -- one arm was rendered useless -- and sent away to Magnimar for special care. Nobody has seen her since. In this scenario, the PC could have had a crush on Nualia (who he should remember as a sweet, shy girl). This diverges slightly from the adventure as written but I think it could go in some interesting directions. For instance, people could mention her at the Swallowtail Festival -- "it would have been nice if poor Nualia could have seen this, but apparently she never recovered -- they say she's still in an institution down in the city."

Either way, I would play up that Father T., though a good man, was also a stern disciplinarian.

and as to the other question,

Spoiler:

Quote:

I don't recall any description about this, but is it known that Nualia started the fire? Meaning, is it assumed by the community that it was a murder-suicide, or do they think she was an innocent victim?

Innocent victim for sure. There may be suspicions that the fire was deliberate -- in fact, I think there should be, it's more interesting -- but she's definitely seen as a victim.

Doug M.

[Haladir]

DM_aka_Dudemeister wrote:

If you want her to play a bigger role, have her surrender when she hits X HP (10-5 is usually about right). The PCs can arrest and interrogate her, to find out more about her evil plan, and her tragic back story.

From there you have a number of things you can do. You can have the sheriff escort her to Magnimar for trial, where Judge Ironbriar (or whatever his name is) uses her to enact his evil plots upon the PCs. The PCs could try to redeem her themselves, or any number of things.

Well, I had planned to do just that. I'm running a party of six characters all played by very experienced players, and they've been walking all over most encounters, so that I've been upping CRs and adding a whole lot of extra mooks in every encounter.

That said, in the fight with Nualia, they took her out in less than a round, before she even got to act. Actually, she went from full hp (47) to dead in a single hit. The party barbarian critical hit her with the masterwork ranseur (recovered from the Catacombs of Wrath) for 57 point of damage in one hit. (57 points?? from a third-level character?? Citical hit from a buffed, raging, power-attacking barbarian using a x3 crit weapon).

[Of course, I was still in "3.5-mode" and forgot that you weren't automatically dead at -10 hp, but the party was pretty much always delivering a coup-de-grace to every disabled foe, so that wouldn't have made a difference...]

[snowyak]

When my players heared about the robbing of the graves the did some investigations themselves.

like this(spoiler):

They found out the 2 graves were empty. father Tobyn's boddy had been gone.
Also the ring of Nualia that was found in after the fire, and was burried in a seperate chest, had been gone.
So the townsfolk found her ring and asumed Nualia was totally incinerated and burried it as a last form of honour

[Miranda Silva]

Since half the PCs grew up in Sandpoint or had ties there most knew of Nualia and her back story. That connection even helped them talk her down and she surrendered.