Help needed with transition between Rivers Run Red and Varnhold Vanishing

[alex_van_d]

Our party has just finished Rivers Run Red and will be beginning Varnhold Vanishing soon. We'll be spending a year of game time just growing our kingdom first.

However, there really isn't a good link between Varnhold and the Barony of Lebeda (As our kingdom is called.)

I'd like to put some diplomatic encounters here to build a connection between the two before the events of the next module and even beyond into the ones after.

I was thinking along the lines of a diplomatic summit organized by Brevoy. Brevoy wants to see stable kingdoms to the south and so gathers all of the newly minted petty kingdoms in one place in order to create treaties to solidify the borders and create trade etc... in order to ensure peace to their south.

Who would go to such an event? (Varnhold, Drelev, would Pitax show up?)

What would be their agendas? What encounters and/or interesting events could happen?

Besides this event what other interesting events could happen to build connections between the PCs and the neighbouring kingdoms?

[Philip Knowsley]

Another way to handle this is by inserting some 'Kingdom Events' which
relate to Varnhold.

I've done this a couple of times. Once I rolled 'Visiting dignitaries', so
I had this be Varn & his court doing a tour of my PCs new kingdom. I took
that as an opportunity to have him propose that our Baron marry his daughter
to cement the friendship between the nations.

We're just about to do our next bit of kingdom building, so I'm going to
insert a similar, selfmade, event - where Holly (the daughter) comes to
visit on her own, as she wants to know the measure of the man to whom her
hand has been offered.

Somthing else you could do is to have bandits or monsters on the shared
border of both kingdoms - that would be an opportunity for both nations
to act together in mutual interests.

Someone else on these hallowed boards took the opportunity to have discussions
around trade treaties etc.

Somebody else mentioned one set of leaders kid/s going away to be squires
to another set of leaders...

[tonyz]

Have some diplomatic negotiations about where the kingdom border is.

[Hassy]

+1 on Varn's daughter.

IMC the reward for killing the trolls was offered by Varn (seeing the trade route to Mivon open is also in his interests). Too late for that in yours, but maybe some trolls escaped and are camping just a hex or two to the east (e.g. the shore of Lake Silverstep) and Varn proposes a joint mission.

[thenovalord]

our king married varns sister

[Touc]

Before RRR finished, I had a diplomatic envoy (Varnhold's wizard Cephal Lorentis) visit and discuss an alliance between their budding kingdoms, discussing the Brevoy civil rumblings and centaur incursions. This was later followed by a visit by Maegar Varn who brought some of his famous Delver's Stout brew to share. Our party discussed alliance by marriage with either his daughter or Varn himself, eventually settling with no rights of succession but a defensive treaty between the two.

I setup the VV to occur during the wedding so that the date would come and pass with no word. Included in the Varnhold village some wedding preparations, partially made carvings, etc.

I highly recommend looking up Dudemeister's threads on his changes to VV; the input there helped me generate the ideas I'm posting here. I found, on their own without any tinkering, RRR and VV had really loose hooks to get the party involved. With some modification, they ended up being a phenomenal romp. [Using Dude's proposal to "join" the centaurs by completing rituals and visiting holy centaur sites gave an excuse to explore the Nomen Heights and let the land have a mystic feel, even delvig into the elven history to this area].

Anyways, too much for one post, but simple point is to put them into a situation where they care what happens to Varnhold.

I'd also start foreshadowing Baron Drelev later in VV. My hook was to have him make a false alliance or false request for help with boggard attacks, and when the party sent an army into the Hooktongue Slough to deal with the boggard incursions, he sent his army to Tatzlford. It was timed so that when the group returned battered to their kingdom, word came the enemy army was on the way.

[Rickmeister]

My player's kingdom made friends with Varnhold... Reluctant and at the ready at first, they became good friends over the years.

It hurt like a mofo when ... :D
Which was nice, reeeeaallll nice roleplaying experience :D

[alex_van_d]

There's some great ideas here. (I really like DudeMeisters Nomad stuff.)

So let's say I have someone from Varnhold and Drelev attend this diplomatic meeting organized by Brevoy I'm thinking about.

What's Varnhold looking for? What kind of deals will they make? What kind of interesting roleplaying encounter could happen? Particularly with multiple outcomes that the players actions can result in.

Ditto for Drelev.

[Strange Doc]

As with the others above, I too had Varn and company travel to the PC's Barony of Kassia (they started the campaign playing the Crypt of the Everflame module and named the new land after Ekat Kassen). Varn offered his daughter's hand to the Baron (a cavalier by the way) to help stabilize his Western border. Also, they negotiated a loan of 3 bp per month to help fund the war effort vs. the Nomen centaurs. The negotiation was an entire session which turned out to be pretty entertaining with the High priest and the Baron getting a 15% return for their money (man, will that suck when they realize they’ll never get that bp back!) and the use of 4 hexes of plains (using for farmland) that were originally chartered to Varn.

The wedding brought envoys from the neighboring states of Mivon, Varnhold, Drelev, and Brevoy (both New Stetven and Restov were represented, adding to the tension). The Spymaster was busier than a one legged man in an @$$ kicking contest. Long story short: Varnhold is now tied to the PC's Duchy (just upgraded recently) by economy and marriage, so when the new Duchess of Kassia loses contact with dear ol' daddy in a few months...