Crushing the barbarians early and befriending Drelev

[BigCoffee]

I really do make a lot of these threads now ^^;; But well this is a seperate and legitimate question.

My players contacted Drelev as soon as Varnhold was liberated in the hopes of forming a 3-town alliance against future mega-problems like liches, giant owlbears and the likes. He mostly told them off, that he was busy with his barbarian problems and acted very all mighty.

Now this will lead my baron to want to use his Staff of Meteor Swarm (something I had in Vordekai's loot, with only 1 charge in it, I wanted to see if they would get creative) to kill barbarians himself in a show of force to then earn Drelev's trust. The only problem is that he wants to massacre the barbarian hordes *now* instead of waiting for a well needed 5 year timeskip.

I mostly plan on him killing some barbarians and culling them for awhile, and then have Armag and the sisters (who work for the hag friend of big 'N') show up, give them some backing and rush back in. Drevel will instead still be neutral and either die (backstabbed by his hateful wife) or be forced to betray the PC's for some reason, making him, hopefully, into a decent npc for future quests.

Did anyone ever encounter a similar situation and how did you/your pc's deal with it?

[Caius]

Our group had something similar but very different. We went to the barbarians first as it seemed to be the side main-quest as opposed to taking drelev. Our DM has been running that without explicit reason for hostility we can talk to most intelligent creatures and the barbarians attacked because they signed an oath but not a pact of aggression. As a result we were able to take the trials without any fighting after a good negotiation. After going through and finding that the armag issue was way above what anyone expected we were able to take advantage of this and forge a friendly relationship with him. After taking time to clear up some of the other quests we've put our attention to Drelev and snuck into the city under the guise of peasants. We scoped out the situation and then bribed our way back out and that night secured the payment intended for the mercenaries and left a pyramid of 10 giant heads on the docks. We've returned now not hiding anything at all about ourselves to crash the baroness' birthday party and leave with drelev in chains or dead.

[BigCoffee]

That is 100% the reverse of what will happen here I think XD Drelev is an ass, but he got attacked first (I think its stated in the book he tried to befriend the barbarians first and was attacked). Armag comes in to play 2-3-4 years down the road. And anyway Mikmek, master scout and trapper, is out gathering intel on every thing of importance in the Slough for a mont or two.

But first the baron get's married (he had 3 marriage offers), he will then set up one of the other girls with his headsman (someone from the Surtova family) and the elven alchemist will still be forever alone because this is not elf country.

I just need to make sure they don't skip everything to go mess with Irovetti after this...

[Diafanus]

I was trying to figure out a reason not to do this as well. We are playing Varnhold Vanishing and the PC's have made a habit already of attacking just enough (the Kobolds, bandits, the Centaurs) of breaking the opponent and then making them swear loyalty to them and their kingdom. So my first thought is why would Drelev attack Tatzleford? At the very end of Kingmaker it says Ivoretti made him do it, but throughout the AP it says Drelev is desperate. So why wouldn't he try to get the PC's to fight FOR him? Especially since he is so weakened and has Ivoretti's men 'watching' his Fort?

[Lee Hanna]

Apparently, Irovetti is a bigger threat than the PCs, as far as Drelev can tell.

IMC, I will be weaving them more tightly together, and including that once Drelev joins Irovetti, he's a traitor to Brevoy, and there's no going back.