|
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
I recently had an idea for how to give Nyrissa a more expansive role in the campaign. I have seen several good ideas about her being the secret power behind some of the BBEGs, such as the Stag Lord, Hargulka, etc, but I thought what about taking it a step farther and having her be the PCs' patron as well?
Hear me out: Nyrissa is manipulating all the power players she can reach via emissaries, Dream spells, etc into focusing and fighting with each other. With some she uses their inherent greed, with others subtle manipulations to make them think their neighbors are enemies, pretty much whatever tactic she feels will work best for the given ruler. She is doing this for the simple reason that if the mortals are all too busy worrying about and fighting each other, no one will be able to realize what she is up to until it is too late to thwart her. She'll be the secret adviser making the Stag Lord feel he is destined to become a lord in truth; urging Hargulka to unite the monstrous population like never before (ala Dudemeister); keeping Varn and the centaurs at each others throats; feeding Drelev's paranoia; whispering tales of easy conquest to the barbarians; maybe even prodding Irovetti, though I think it may be more interesting if he actually sees her as a threat and opposes her, and part of the reason he is so gung-ho to attack the PC kingdom is that, you guessed it, she has been 'helping' them too.
I figure once the kingdom has started to grow to a respectable size, maybe shortly after the events of the second book, after the PCs have successfully defeated two of her pawns, she decides they need to play her game as well. So she visits the ruler in her dreams, offers the blessings of the First World, warns of impending disasters, threats, etc. Her warnings are, for the most part, genuine, though she fails to mention that she has actually manufactured many of these threats, and the PCs come to think of her as a benevolent patron... and when her true agenda is revealed much later, instead of a nebulous threat that has the players going "Who?", we have a personal vendetta and PCs chomping at the bit to go stomp the green witch that had been playing them for fools almost from the beginning.
So, what do people think? Workable? Specific advice? I've literally been planning this game for two years now, and I want to make sure it is the best Kingmaker campaign I can possibly make it!
This is a phenomenal idea! I might suggest going one further, however, to really throw off your players. Mine would instantly begin to question the reliability of voices in the ruler's head, so you may consider working through a third-party agent.
I plan on using Erik Freund's Venture Capitalism idea of having the players politic for their initial BP fund from various political factions in Brevoy instead of receiving a flat 50. One of the first individuals they'll encounter at the celebratory banquet (read: investor's meeting) is Lady Vellara (thanks, indigoreeds!), a Kyonin expatriate who only offers a meager amount of BP, but sweetens the deal with the promise of savvy political advice (which will be a great boon to my sometimes tactless PCs). If she can ingratiate her way into the party's good favor, she would make an excellent adviser to the future ruler (and maybe attain the Councilor position).
Now, if she were an unwitting pawn of Nyrissa (perhaps through a compulsion effect or similar magic), she could provide the party with warnings of certain events (further characterizing her as a trusted ally) while at the same time providing Nyrissa with invaluable insider information of the party's actions. Who needs to scry when you have a firsthand account? Much later on, when it seems their enemies have foreseen their every move, or when blooms begin manifesting directly from Lady Vellara's noble villa in the capital, the party may begin to look askance at their trusted ally, and upon finding her to be under magical compulsion, will be dying to get back at whoever has been playing them for all these years.
|
|
I was thinking less voices in head, more beautiful fey queen visiting in her dreams. At first she won't be sure if they are just dreams, but as the things Nyrissa tell her start coming true, it will be interesting to see if they buy her Glinda the Good Witch act. I will certainly be using the investor angle as well, as politics will be very big in my campaign, and may be able to add something like what you suggest as well; a backup plan, as it were. Wheels within wheels...
I was thinking perhaps something in between what you and Jedric suggest. (My players also would not trust a dream vision, but that could just be my players lol).
How about you make Nyrissa the PC's patron from Day One. She's the one they get the Charter from, etc. Make her one of the Lords (of course appearing in human form), etc. After book two, she again comes to the PCs and warns of impending danger, etc. Maybe, she says she was visited by a First Worlder, or maybe she reveals her true nature, telling a tale of the wicked Nyrissa who was kicked out of the First World, etc. (This assumes you have seeded the plot details through the actions, memories, etc. of the defeated pawns).
As the events of the campaign unfold and Brevoy becomes increasingly unstable, perhaps the "patron" version of N flees to the PC's capital to a) avoid persecution/repercussion and b) keep a closer eye on the surprisingly competent group of adventures who were really only supposed to be helping to stir the pot and keep everyone distracted. Now, in the PC's capital, she becomes an advisor, etc.
You can still have Irovetti figure things out too, which explains why he attacks not only the PCs but the other adventuring group sent near his borders. It allows for the possibility of an interesting roleplay encounter as the war with Pitax unfolds as Irovetti claims he's merely trying to save the world so to speak.
All in all, I think its a great idea, and one that I am likely to borrow heavily from when/if I run Kingmaker!
I like it! That actually fits in nicely with some of my own plans. I was going to give the various antagonists magic rings made from Nyrissa's hair (like the cursed ring in book 2) - signs of her favor. Once the PCs get their hands on the Stag Lord's ring, they will have come to her direct attention. Of course they won't know what the rings mean at first, but once they figure it out, they will realize they've been duped.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I did the same, and the PCs have gone on a ring-collecting spree since =) I personally tied all the rings to the Jabberwock, which I'd turned into a sort of personal symbol for Nyrissa. Staggy's ring gave him DR 5/vorpal, Hargulka's gave him a modified half-dragon template, etc.
The biggest question you have to answer if you want to involve Nyrissa and her direct subordinates as written in the campaign at all is this: if they have direct acces to the world, why they don't just go and preemptively murder everyone, who can potentially interfere with their plans for the Stolen Lands, before those people can grow from potential threats into actual. Particularly if Nyrissa is supposed to have a more active role in the world. Villains manipulate when they want things they cannot yet just take. For Nyrissa and her servants, there are no such things in the adventure path. And they don't have an excuse of more pressing matters, because their whole attention is centered on the Stolen Lands. If I tried to pull dream communications with Nyrissa, my players would be sure to ask me, what this roundabout approach was supposed to accomplish, that could not be more easily done directly.
For the record, I plan to complete my current Kingmaker run by the time PCs are level 9-10 tops, as, really, all adventures but the last are just low-level adventures, except that random goons are now suddenly level 6 or so, and wandering monsters shift from wolves to hydras, just because an adventure takes place late in AP. I'll use slightly buffed (and played as if they really want to survive) antagonists from Realm of the Fellnight Queen to substitute for statblocks of Nyrissa and co (there are three antagonist casters with access to 5th-level spells there - already a force that is terrifying beyond mundane reckoning, if played intelligently, but not yet strong enough to be 100% untouchable to relatively common threats), and Vordakai is likely to be the next-to-last major antagonists, as among all petty lordlings, loser barbarians and dumb brute monsters he is the only entity that can be presented as a legitimate mid-level threat.
The biggest question you have to answer if you want to involve Nyrissa and her direct subordinates as written in the campaign at all is this: if they have direct acces to the world, why they don't just go and preemptively murder everyone, who can potentially interfere with their plans for the Stolen Lands, before those people can grow from potential threats into actual.
Because then there would be no story. :)
A) The AP already says that Nyrissa has direct access to the world. She personally collected various trophies from the Stolen Lands in some of the books (unicorn horn in book 1, etc.). So you have that issue regardless.
B) Nyrissa doesn't get directly involved because she knows that the sword is still out there somewhere. Until it's been secured by one of her pets, her life is in danger.
C) Presumably Nyrissa can only cross over at certain times, although I don't recall if that's spelled out in the AP or not.
The AP doesn't distinctly say so, but a lot of GMs have ruled that the main cause of her indirect actions are some sort of limit on when and where she can enter the Material.
I personally ruled that all her trophies were brought by minions, but that's because I wanted her to be inaccessible - both the PCs getting to her and her getting to them - until So1kS.
|
|
Indeed. I was thinking of going so far as to remove the unicorn entirely, or have it had been killed by the Stag Lord and company instead, because my thought was that she is barred from the material world, as are her most powerful minions. Sending dreams and weak emissaries are the limit of how much she can affect the world until the events of the final adventure, hence the intricate web-weaving.
I had it be Ilthuliak - the dragon's last errand (and payment) before entering Thousandbreaths for good (and beginning her metamorphosis into a mythic Tarn Linnorm hybrid).
I just started book four and among other random Nyrissa references I've started implementing weird dream sequence/visions to lead up to book 6.
The party had to visit Kyonin to return an ancient Elven artifact and stumbled into a room with an elven oracle-figure that is consigned to a pool of water and lays there babbling mostly nonsense and occasionally gleams of insight (Battlestar reference go! :D).
After the queen was called over by the oracle and grabbed on the ankle, the queen now gets random visions in her dreams of walking through N's House. I'm gonna try and play up the ethereal nature of these sequences and use them as a away of foreshadowing book six.