Yep me again author of the this don't make sense let's fix it thread. Players get out seriously you will so ruin your own fun if you continue...
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
OK, so the biggest WTF why for me in kingmaker is why Narissa doesn't just wipe out the PCs herself in say book 3 or so. After they beat her cats paws again, and have started claiming significant slices of kingdom, she could wipe the floor with the PCs so why doesn't she?
I know there's plenty of explanations like, she's busy, or she's got other enemies, or I want book 6 jump out of nowhere because that's how I roll yo. We can do better than that.
In my world Narissa is a former changeling not the half-hag children changeling but the half mortal half fey can choose to be one or the other type. Narissa chose to become fey, but following this thread's background when she is stripped of both her ambition and her love she revert back to human i.e. Old Beldame! Old Beldame can only become Narissa on Summer and Winter Solstice until certain conditions are met. When she reverts back to Old Beldame she has no memory of being Narissa though Narissa knows everything that Beldame knows and in fact can influence (not outright control) her through dreams and what not.
There are 8 magical seals that hold back Narissa's ambition and keeps her trapped in mortal flesh, each time Narissa can get to a seal by defeating the guardian she gets to be "herself" more, which is why she has to rely on cats paws and whatnot for the PCs and why most of her aid comes in the form of powerful but tainted magical items (Beldame makes them, then forgets.) 1 year and a day after the guardian is killed a fairy circle forms somewhere in the stolen lands.
The first seal was broken with the death of the unicorn in Book 1 (I will be using tales of the old margrove to add creepiness to the forests hexes that touch the seals, and adding more random encounters when a seal is broken.) Other seal guardians shall be:
-There is another tougher winter themed unicorn guardian with class levels in oracle that will run with Windchaser's herd.
-Blodeuwedd Queens one with a crown of ash (Summer) one with a feywisper crown (Winter.)
-2 Baobhan sith [Winter} the dancing lady the PCs unwittingly kill and (Summer) another bab sith with class levels in sorc.
-Last 2 haven't figured out yet, ideas???
Each time a guardian is killed Narissa gets 1/8 of a day in her true form back. Before book 1 she only had the solstice and whatever she could manipulate The old Beldame into which amounted to an affair with the stag lord's druid dad an the creation of the Stag lord's helm. After book 1 and the death of the unicorn she manipulates the dual threat of the owlbear and troll king (both magic items created by both her and her other self.) In book 2 the PCs unwittingly kill the Dancing Lady getting her 6hrs a night as herself and revealing that perhaps they can be manipulated into killing at least the Winter Guardians. In book 3 she has dropped the Occulus of Abandon in Vodraki's tomb and used her magic to lure that ranger to freeing him. Thus removing Varnhold and putting a lich on the board that could possibly be manipulated into killing summer fey.
Book 4,5 and 6 haven't quite figured out yet. This idea hit me last night and my crew hasn't quite hit Old Beldame's square yet. Any suggestions?
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The way I figured it was she was locked in the First World, her dalliances with her catspaws were always in the form of dreams, when they wake up they mysteriously had the golden hairs or magic rings or what-have-you. She needs the power of First World Blooms in order to enter the world.
|
|
It won't be clear till the last book, but Nyrissa may need the heroes alive per a prophecy only she knows.
Also, to repair her reputation with the Eldest, she intends to merge her realm in the fey with the Stolen Lands and is taking efforts to weaken the boundaries between the mortal and fey worlds (either to prove her power or as a bribe to the Eldest). She wants the Stolen Lands weak so that when they merge, it is with little resistance. Hence, her dreams and influences upon the Stag Lord and so forth. However, until Book 5, everything is really chump change. She's focused on finding Briar and bigger things. By Book 5, the War of the River Kings will destabilize the region more than 10 Stag Lords could do.
So, (as per the spoiler), the party isn't more than a pest until Book 5, when they may be the ones from prophecy. Also, Vordakai is his own threat. I'm not sure Nyrissa would be keen helping or hurting him.
I realize this idea isn't that original (You mean Ben is Glory!!!) However, I just plain like the idea of my crew unknowingly interacting with the BBE.
I'm hoping they will actually befriend her make it more shocking and powerful when they kill Narissa and she becomes the Old Beldame for one last moment.
Not a bad way to twist it.
I would however give them a chance somewhere along the line to discover what's going on, and let them try to "rescue" the Beldame from her alter ego somehow, or perhaps unify the two personalities, rather than having them kill her be the only option. Just a thought =)
In my own game I have The Puck there as an avenue for my players to possibly get access to high-risk information like this: knowledge from the highest fey in the Courts that the various Queens would not willingly allow to be handed over without a major cost, but Puck will share because he finds it fun/amusing/curious about the potential results and is on a much longer leash than most fey nobles.
I like it b/c it ups the stakes, and I like you suggestion of allowing a way to separate the 2 personalities perhaps some ritual using Briar...
Plus it offers up a way to at least slow or speed her progress thru the various gatekeepers...
Just finished book 2 so obviously I'm planning ahead. Narissa was punished by Titania mostly out of jealousy but also for sleeping with her consort (even though she was tricked.)
The punishment took 2 forms:
1)She was stripped of all emotion save her ambition so she'd forever try and fail to rise up from her punishment.
2)She is semi mortal. She has her otherworldly fay form she gets to use in brief spurts but also has an ignorant mortal form that when dead reincarnates again and again. This way the glory of youthful beauty is constantly stripped of her.
I scrapped the seals but her emotions are tied to places that aren't seals per-se more like the places are contained by guardians lest the emotions either reunite with Narissa or run amuck. Each time a guardian is slain Narissa gets something back.
-The Unicorn guarded Narissa's vigilance
-The Dancing Lady at the forgotten keep was guardian to her lust
Haven't figured out when and where her other emotions are and who guards them. Except Briar that is in the old sycamore. When her children die it will awaken the tree and it will act as an advanced gigantic Treant.
With each freed emotion Narissa gets stronger and acts during more of the year/month/week/day. She doesn't get it all back its more like it being awake nourishes her in some way and her anger is going to express itself in the land itself.
This is a bit down the pipe but I like thinking ahead and it might shape more of what comes between
I like what you're doing here. I solved the problem by having Nyrissa need foci for her bottling ritual, and these foci must be related to the PCs. Really, she's manipulating them into helping her with the bottling ritual. She knows powerful heroes (the PCs) will one day come for her, and she's trying to head them off by trapping them in the Stolen Lands just before one of the crucial moments of the prophecy - them entering Thousand Voices.
These foci are tied to threads of fate related to the first world, and Magdh watches on with interest. She even helps the PCs subtly throughout the AP. It's a gentle chess match between Magdh and Nyrissa, with the PCs as knights, kings, queens, and pawns. Magdh needs them to make it into Thousand Voices and kill Nyrissa once and for all. Nyrissa is trying to uproot the Stolen Lands and present it (and the PCs trapped inside) as a trophy of her true power to the eldest.
That was my solution. I like yours as well because it gives significant interaction early on in the game, and explains Nyrissa's behavior.
Well, APs not answering questions like "Why BBEG doesn't directly murder the PCs even though she walks around personally, doing her stuff (like she killed the unicorn in Part 1)?" are nothing new. In this particular case, Nyrissa cannot physically enter the material world in my campaign, due to a reason incorporated in the overall backstory changes.
What chanhes? A long time ago, Nyrissa controlled the region that is now the Stolen Lands and surroundings, ruling over mortals as a ruthless God-Queen, but then she fell in love with a mortal hero and even had children with him. However, she knew that her fey peers wouldn't tolerate treating mortals as anything more than slaves, prey and sacrifices, once they learn of what happened, and that her previous oaths to her court will make her powerless to fight them off. So she swore the strongest oath imaginable to mortals or fae, so powerful, that it was written into her very soul and nature, to not harm, attack or diminish any of her mortal descendants directly or indirectly, and not even cross into the material world as long as any of them live. Then she severed the ties between the world of fey and the would-be Stolen Lands as well as she could, before being seized by her peers and punished, as in the original, by having her ability to love (essentially, her empathy) torn out and forged into the sword Briar. Of course, other fey lords could just planeshift and kill Nyrissa's children, freeing her from her oath, but, being dicks they are, they chose not to, so that she will be further punished by being unable to pursue her old and now-unobstacled ambitions of rulership and domination.
Then millenia passed, and wars and plagues conspired to drive the bloodline of Nyrissa's descendants into near-extinction. The last of them will die just in time for the final adventure. Until that, Nyrissa is content to manipulate a few minions in the Stolen Lands through her envoys and dream magic, ostensibly to keep the land untamed and unable to resist her possible return, but really mostly out of boredom - creatures that Stag Lord and Hargulka can as much as inconvenience are powerless insects next to her and her key vassals. Her real attention is dedicated to finding Briar, which remains far away from the Stolen Lands during the early adventures, and in this search (conducted through her most loyal and subtlest minions) she moves with caution, to avoid attention from mortal powerhouses, which might recognize Briar for what it is and/or strike back against her. She also doesn't trust anyone whose will isn't completely subjugated to her with this quest.
In this scenario, foreshadowing before Briar enters the stage is supposed to primarily come from research into the past of the lands that form PCs new kingdom, that they may, or may not undertake, depending on how much old legends pique their interest, and how much attention they will pay to the hints of some fae mastermind behind the scenes. If they will be perfectly inquisitive and willing to put some effort into gathering invormation, they will have a good idea of the final threat before Nyrissa even gains ability to invade the material plane.