Thassilonian knowledge for PCs

[PWiggins84]

Hey guys,
So one of my PCs is playing a very academic wizard with a focus on the Thassilonian empire. We currently are knocking on the doors of thistletop and have already went through the catacombs of wrath.
My question is how much should the PC know about the Runelords, sin magic and what lead to the downfall?
He has spoken with Brodert Quink and is pumped about the CoW and his first "find" of the Alaznist statue.
How did you reveal the storied past to your players? Obviously the library will be amazing for hi but that is many months away.

[captain yesterday]

search thru the Runelords message boards, there has been a few recent threads on this topic, sorry i can't help further, getting kids ready for school and such:)

[Skeld]

My players just finished routing the giant army at Jorgenfist. I've kept most of the story behind the curtain in anticipation of a big reveal once they begin researching Thassilon in the library under Jorgenfist. As a matter of fact, I think I just mentioned "runelords" for the first time a couple sessions ago.

Up until this point, the players knew there was an ancient empire called Thassilon and that it's responsible for most of the ruins/monuments that dot Varisia. With Mokmurian and his army out of the way, I expect they'll spend a significant amount of time under Jorgenfist and will probably bring Brodert Quink to help. My big reveal is going to be a huge data/story dump where they should finally realize who and what they're up against and all the little clues that I've sprinkled around will finally gel and make sense.

-Skeld

[Kayland]

Even the greatest academic minds don't agree on Thassilon, when it existed, how it fell etc. Because of this even as an academic focusing on Thassilon I wouldn't give him too much knowledge...in fact I'd probably do the opposite.

Spoiler:

I'd give him background knowledge that he thinks he knows...and then slowly by slowly show them information that puts a lot of it on its ear so they'll realize so much of what the scholars currently think is wrong. Give some misinformation on the runewell...don't let them know its true purpose, especially not that they're tied to raising the Runelords. More information to that point is better revealed slowly in the second, third and fourth chapters of the AP.

The party will find out that Karzoug is coming back, if not already, at the end of the fourth chapter...so they definitely shouldn't know too much about him before then. It should be a kind of "oh crap" moment that leads to using the library to uncover even more information about him and how to stop him that dangles the carrot of the Runeforge etc.

You need to taper it so that each chapter you complete reveals just that much more...all of which kind of pushes against the conventional wisdom of what happened in the minds of currently scholar (Quint being the exception but even he has his obvious limits). You found the statue of Alaznist....cool. Who is this person?...what could the statue signify?...what is the purpose of this strange pool that seemed to call forth terrifying creations...? Bread crumb trails are always better than handing out loafs of whole wheat.

[PWiggins84]

Thanks for the replies! I searched through other similar posts and got some good ideas, I really like the self-discovery and false information bit kayland.

Thanks!

[The Numerator]

I have a very similar situation, and what I've done is given him some ideas which are misinformation...

misinformation:

namely, that Thassilon was divided into 7 kingdoms. He is currently researching his own the theory that each kingdom was known for one of the 7 virtues. He's been traveling with Varisian caravans throughout the region, looking for ruins and trying to map boarders between the kingdoms based on the popularity of certain runes. One last nugget I gave him was that in traveling w/ the Varisians, he noticed that their history was rich w/ legends about the "seven deadly sins", and he was intrigued by the coincidence in number. As he read through his books, he was disturbed to find that there were no runes in Thassilonian for these concepts... (cue spooky music)

[Kairos Dawnfury]

The Numerator wrote:

I have a very similar situation, and what I've done is given him some ideas which are misinformation...

** spoiler omitted **

I like that! I'll have to work that in somehow. Quink is how they're getting all their background and he's giving accurate bits, but I'm playing up how everyone thinks he's a quack.

He's a good tool to get out some of the background that they give in the AP the players don't nessecarily need to or get to know.