CalebTGordan's Changes to Kingmaker BBEG *spoilers*

[CalebTGordan]

Nyrissa the queen nymph is probably the least hinted at BBEGs in The APs. She seems to come out of nowhere, with only a little foreshadowing built into the AP, but there are a few things I have done that may help others to bring the queen nymph to the attention of the PCs early without over doing it.

The Eldest
First, consider using the Eldest early on. They punished her, and while most of them wouldn't be concerned enough to keep track of her, a couple of them should be aware that she wants to get back into their favor and what she will do to get that. Specifically, Magdh the Three. With her ability to look into the future and other realms she will understand what Nyrissa plans to do and what that means. Talk to your players about having her be a patron or god that they worship.

In my game, Magdh brought back a PC from death in exchange for a quest for the sword Briar. She is very aware of the state of the Stolen Lands, the sword, and Nyrissa, but knows that direct action on her part will have negative consequences. Instead, in my game she told the PC that she brought back that Nyrissa has agents and spies everywhere, that the sword Briar is a key to her success or failure, and that the sword is lost. If the PC finds the sword before the queen nymph, they will be able to stop her from taking over all of the Stolen Lands.

I did not tell them where the sword was, what it was, or who Nyrissa really is. I only told them enough to be interested and invested. The result has been a character who is now deeply involved in shaping the kingdom, as well as keeping tabs on anything related to the BBEG and the main plot.

Agents of Nyrissa
The Staglord has an iron ring, which In my game was wrapped with what appears to be green hair. From that point on, every agent of hers has that same ring. All have a faint aura of magic, and most of them have magical abilities to help them in the task she sent them to do. The drawback is that they are all cursed as well. First, she is able to scry perfectly on anyone wearing the rings. Second, they have almost a self destruct type curse to the wearer once their task is finished. Not all have a self destruct curse, but enough of them do to discourage the PCs from using the rings.

I added Hulgulka and Gunnerson as agents. Hulgulka had a ring that gave him some protection against the party's strengths. Gunnerson had a ring that helped him find treasure. I am considering others as well, like Armag and someone close to Drelev.

Irovetti is of course an agent, and probably the most important one the PCs will face before they go into Thousand Breaths.

Her Plan
It is a little unclear what her plan is as it is laid out in the AP. It is clear enough that she wants to bottle the Stolen Lands to give to the Eldest, a gift that enough of the Eldest will accept as sufficient to restore her as one of them. Why she waits until the war of the River Kings is a bit odd to me. Something about an unstable region makes it possible. I changed things a bit here.

In my game, she needs a united region. She also needs the whole of the Stolen Lands to be united for her gift to be impressive enough. This allows for a much more impressive reveal when the PCs discover what she has been doing. In a way, the players are going to be playing right into her hands as they expand their kingdom.

Each agent is a stepping stone to a united region. The Stag Lord was supposed to be taken down by a more powerful agent, for example. She just didn't foresee the PCs being such big power houses and taking him out early. The final part of her plan was to have Irovetti move to take everything, thus uniting the kingdoms.

With the PCs, she has to adjust her plan a few times. At first it is to take them out with trolls and wild owlbears. Later, it is use agents to destablize their kingdom though powerful threats like Vodakai. When that fails, it is to goad them into a war that will ultimately complete her plan any way.

Other Foreshadowing
Having fey align themselves with her and cause trouble is also a good way to foreshadow. Having them not say her name but claim to follow a fey queen will cause some concern.

Additionaly, at some point you can have her directly speak to the party though magic. This would effectively taunt them and make her a more likely target for their resources, so do this late in the game.

Lastly, have NPCs also under the patronage of the Eldest show up and talk to the party. Some of these can be spies for her, but none of those NPCs should know too much. Be careful with information flow, suggesting and hinting instead of telling.

[Rickmeister]

In my game, she needs a united region. She also needs the whole of the Stolen Lands to be united for her gift to be impressive enough. This allows for a much more impressive reveal when the PCs discover what she has been doing. In a way, the players are going to be playing right into her hands as they expand their kingdom.

== EPIC!! Love this idea, playing right in the hands of the pc's. Also explains why she is provoking war: she wants the strongest to survive to unite them all.

[Orthos]

That's also pretty much exactly what I was thinking, but I'd not yet managed to put it so succinctly into words. Well done =)

[Whirling Dervish]

This is what I am doing as well. Magdh is playing a large role in my game, in fact it was her who led the effort to imprison Nyrissa for attempting to peer through time (Magdh's domain). Nyrissa knows who the PCs are, and has from the beginning. She's actually grooming them for the final battle she knows must happen, but is hoping to prevail.

I did something slightly different though. Rather than a united kingdom, she needs very specific items as foci for her bottling spell, and they all have to be things that impacted the PCs in some way. So she needs them to go gallivanting across the region in order to create these foci.

I also foreshadowed with Realm of the Fellnight Queen; Rhoswen's realm is actually a bottled domain that was Nyrissa's first pass at such a spell (though on a much smaller scale). So my PCs have already been on an adventure on Nyrissa's bookshelf though they don't know it yet...

[CalebTGordan]

While I didn't use Realm of the Fellnight Queen, I can see how that fits well into the adventure and how you could use it to foreshadow Nyrissa. I don't know if it is possible, but you may even have Nyrissa show up in that module in some form or another.

I like the foci angle, and that seems to work well for you. I may still use something like that but for a different purpose. I think having agents gathering foci and information on the PCs would be a good idea, and it would make sense of how she would be prepared for them.

One thing that I didn't mention was her vision of a party of people wielding Briar defeating her. This certainly spurs her to have agents looking for Briar, in fact it is one of Irovetti's main tasks when she makes him a minion. However, the vision was so long ago and vague enough that she isn't sure who, where, or when. Worse yet, her fey nature and pride have caused her to forget to be watchful and careful.

The fey don't really have much of a long term memory. They do have one, but not like ours. They live in the moment, mostly as a by product of the First World, an because of that Nyrissa is slowly forgetting the vision. She won't ever forget Briar, but she certainly has forgotten to be watchful of adventuring parties that may end up wielding the sword. It is amazing that she is able to plan for the long term future, and that she has been slowly manipulating the Stolen Lands for hundreds of years now. But her long term planning is a result of her burning desire to be whole, be with her lover, and be back in the First World as an Eldest. She still has a bit of a problem with foresight, but that has as much to do with her pride as it does with her fey nature.

Her pride tells her that she is already an Eldest, that she is invincible, and that she and her plans are perfect. When a plan doesn't go as planned, she either tells herself that she meant for that to happen or that she didn't have control over the situation. Her pride certainly leads her to continuously underestimate the PCs.

She is still an amazing strategist, leader, and enemy. Her fey nature and pride are not so much disabilities or handicaps to her as they are obstacles that she has had to overcome to get as far as she has. Remember that she has had hundreds of years to plan and shape the Stolen Lands, it is only recently that her plans have started to work. She may have had dozens or more plans that she has attempted and failed over the years, and through those failures she has learned and grown into the dangerous BBEG that she is in this adventure.

[CalebTGordan]

I added in the Margreve from Open Design's Tales of the Margreve because of the many posts here in the forums about it. Here is how I used it with Nyrissa.

She has been in this area for thousands of years, and knows the Stolen Lands very well because of it. The Narlmarches are not nearly as strong or dangerous as the Margreve, but they the forest does require people to follow the old ways if they wish to rule over it. I added in the Challenge of the Fang, which Nyrissa instigated early to try and make civilizing the forest harder.

There were also plenty of fey who made demands of the party to follow the old ways, some of them were and are followers of Nyrissa. Some of them spoke of her, mostly by just calling her the queen of the land and telling the party they only followed that queen.

This has actually had an effect on the development of the Narlmarches, and it has taken until the latter part of Book 3 for them to even begin expanding into it.

Nyrissa is also aware of most of the monster lairs, lost treasures, and ancient ruins. There are still parts of the Stolen Lands that she isn't aware of (the lost Shory city from Crucible of Chaos is going to be one of those hidden gems in my game,) but she is knows enough of the secrets to know what the PCs should be needing to do to unite the lands.

What she isn't able to do is find the sword Briar. She knows that the sword should be in the Stolen lands, but two things happened to keep it well hidden. First, when the Eldest formed the blade they did it in a way that made it impossible for Nyrissa or her agents to scry on it. They also used layers of agents and protection to keep it out of her reach. If one agent fell, there were supposed to be another to take their place. Unfortunately, the layers only lasted for so long, and the last protector of the sword ended up being captured and the sword fell into the hands of Irovetti.

The second thing that happened was the death of Aroden and the loss of prophecy. She thought that if prophecy was no longer valid to tell the fate of man, the prophecy she saw of her own demise would also be invalidated. It did not take her many years to stop looking for the sword personally, nor did she send out as many agents. Deep down she still feared the prophecy, but more and more she justified it all away. In the end, she had only a few agents looking for the sword, but her hold on them wasn't nearly powerful enough for Irovetti to give her the sword right away.