Heldren and Waldsby - The Twin Thorps [spoilers]

[Alexander Riggs]

So, I'm looking to start running this campaign in the near future, and I'm pretty excited, but I was struck by the slightly odd twist in the first adventure of making Waldsby a "mirror" of Heldren.

For one thing, this feels like it was originally meant to take a larger role, but was cut down for whatever reason. It is vaguely explained that they are the same "due to being connected by a leyline" (for all the good that explanation does), and, other than having a similar layout, the same statues, and those two long-lost twins, there doesn't really seem to be much point in making them the same.

At the same time, my group is a lot less invested in the Pathfinder campaign setting than I am, and so they probably wouldn't mind if everything in the adventure that currently takes place in Irrisen instead took place in a mirror fey world (winter court, anyone?) or an alternate reality, or something to that effect, which I think might be more fun and allow me to play a bit more with the similarities.

Long story short, I was wondering how other people are handling these twin villages. Are you playing the similarities down, and just removing the connection altogether? Running it as-is with a weak connection and weaker explanation (in my opinion), or trying to expand the connection into something more noticeable and relevant?

[Ice Titan]

Reign of Winter spoilers for my PCs! Seriously avoid guys. (They like to read my posts-- who could blame 'em?)

I'm going to play up the alternate reality angle instead of the Taldor/Irrisen swap so that I can use a homebrew world I'm working on right now. The PCs will be important because they are alive in the "Taldor" world but dead in the "Irrisen" world-- I plan to take the Taldan noblewoman and just make her a villager, turn her into a kind of childhood friend/love interest for a PC, and then when they go to Irrisen, Nadya is that girl in an alternate universe and the PC's alternate self is her dead husband. I think that should sow some serious drama.

[Revan]

Been playing Chrono Cross, ice Titan?

[Ice Titan]

Revan wrote:

Been playing Chrono Cross, ice Titan?

How'd you guess? :(

Been playin' KOTOR over there, Revan?

[Orthos]

Ice Titan wrote:

Revan wrote:

Been playing Chrono Cross, ice Titan?

How'd you guess? :(

Awesome. I've wanted to do a campaign like that for some time. I pulled off a Trigger-style game some years ago.

[The Golux]

If nothing else, it's an unusually well-justified and implemented reason to reuse a map.

[AmosTrask32]

So, I really liked the mirror towns, and decided to "guide" my players during character creation towards the end of having two of them actually be secretly from Waldsby. One (a middle aged human witch, failed apprentice) was a young mother of two baby girls when the Jadwiga came for her and took her from her family for retraining. She was found wanting by the winter witches and cast out, her mind shattered by the ordeal, banished.

Meanwhile her husband remarried years later, and the two girls were raised increasingly by an evil stepmother and her spoiled son. When the boy was accused of stealing from a travelling Winter Witch, the stepmother cut one of the daughter's hair and sent her to take his punishment. Luckily the house spirit intervened, giving her a chance to run for the forest. She ran for miles through snow, chased by ravens and was nearly caught by one of the guardian dolls before she was finally found on the edges of the Land of the Linnorm kings and taken as a thrall...

Flash forward many years, the insane failed witch has settled in the edge of the Border wood and her long lost daughter, now a knight of Taldor, has shed her Irriseni heritage and has dreams of becoming a member of the Ulfen Guard. The story begins when the daughter passes through Heldren and feels a strange connection to the small town...

So basically, Nazhena is the stepmother, Radosek is the step brother, Nadya is the daughter that stayed... and two of my PCs don't know they are mother and daughter. I think I may be more excited about this story arc than the actual plot...