I’m currently DMing Haunting of Harrowstone, and here’s FYI a few changes I made to the backstory.
Gibs Hephenus gets a bigger role in the adventure (he knows a lot, since he WAS a guard at the prison 50 years ago). He is about 80 now. That made it a fun and unpleasant NPC to deal with, in order to know more about what happened the day the prison burned.
But his memory is sketchy and he doesn’t say everything…
Vesorianna’s story was changed. I removed the hysterics and made her more heroic. She pleaded with the guards on the ground level to stage a rescue. “They refused, these cowards!”
Later, at one time she saw the prisoners were attracted to another area of the underground level, clearing the lift area. She saw a few guards who were hidden and who took this opportunity to show themselves to the guards up there. She said they could lower the lift shaft to free these three guards stuck down there in the riot.
But the cowards again refused. She managed to dodge the guards, run to the lift’s winch, and throw the release, causing the heavy wooden platform to plummet into the dungeon below in the hope that the guards could leap onto it and be pulled to safety.
She could have saved these three guards but her effort was spoiled by coward guards (Gibs, I’m looking at you). Gibs and another guard managed to apprehend her and swiftly bustled her off to the prison workshop at the other end of Harrowstone, locking her inside for her own safety.
Then the fire. When exiting the building, the guards said they should rescue Vesorianna and sent Gibs to do it (he had the key). But he didn’t, the coward, he was too afraid. He later came to the others and said “she left the building from another door”, but he didn’t save her from the smoke, and she died.
In the village, people assumed she tried to go back inside the burning prison to save her husband and died.
Having Vesorianna rest in peace after the end of the adventure will also need an heartfelt excuse from Gibs.
Thank you, indeed Gibs wouldn’t last long if the players were after him. But weirdly, my players assume the writings on the monument are appearing « magically », so they never investigated the monument at night ;
That backstory change is interesting, and this way the same story is told a few times by the NPCs to the players, and each time, there is a twist added to it.
- Official fire version, as told by anyone in the village, just the basics, without any mention of Vesorianna
- Then later, Gib’s version (the book version, with Vesorianna as an hysteric woman). He pictures himself and his comrades as braves guards, and keeps telling that Vesorianna is a foolish woman, and all, but …
- And Vesorianna’s version, as summarized in my first post. In there, they learn that Gibs is in fact a coward and that Vesorianna is some kind of hero in the fire events.
It makes Vesorianna more interesting as a NPC to help, IMHO.
And Gibs gets more depth too. An old pathetic fool trying to convince the others (and perhaps himself).
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In the cemetery encounter, I also have Gibs and his thugs throw mud on grieving Kendra’s robes, in the hope she leaves the cemetery. Nice guys ;) But the event makes Kendra more sympathetic.
And later, when they learn that old Gibs WAS a guard when the historic prison fire happened, they have to befriend this unsympathetic old drunkyard, to get his version of the story. Fun role play events.