For those DMs who foreshadow Nyrissa, how early?

[Lee Hanna]

How early would want to start dropping hints about Nyrissa coming to call? Or that she's looking for something?

My big fear (based on what I've seen my group do in the past, including in this AP) is that once I lay a crumb, they will want to follow it exclusively. They're not ready for Book 6, and neither am I-- we're at the boundaries of Books 2 and 3, FWIW.

What I have done, is bait a hook given me by one of the players. Our Baroness' mother mysteriously disappeared when the character was about age 7. I've run with that: both her parents were adventurers here in the past. After the PC was born, human father stayed at home, while half-elven mother took off on her own-- father says he doesn't know where she went, and everyone at home says she just disappeared one night. The PC now has her mother's earlier adventuring journals, which talk (in code) about seeking something, and notes about some places to be checked out someday.

What she doesn't know is that while father & mother were quietly seeking Ovinrbaane for the previous king, mother was secretly looking for Briar, too, on behalf of some nebulous elven group. I intend for them to find mother's second journal, which will have more details, as well as a copy of "Zuddiger's Picnic."

So, my questions center on when to reveal:
1 that there is a powerful magic sword out there?
2 that parents were looking for it?
3 That there is Another magic sword out there?
4 and a faerie queen wants it?
5 Mom was secretly looking for this?

And just where is mother, anyway? It would be extremely convenient for Evindra to be the missing mother, but I worry that it would be too neat, too trite? (It would solve a long-running mystery, and be a logical source for the infodump about Briar, Nyrissa, and her return.) I might have someone at the Rushlight Tournament (former companion, from a foreign country?) give Baroness a quiet briefing, but still with incomplete information. Should they find her bones somewhere, with the updated notebook? In Drelev's or Irrovetti's collections? In Armag's tomb?

I did let them know that adventuring was done around here, and that Bokken, his brother, and a nutty older nobleman were also adventurers here about the same time. That last guy (touched by dreams of Nyrissa, like Stag Lord and his father) was the one who went adventuring again, and triggered Talonquake. The Swamp Witch has said that she knew mother and father as well, but they did not confide in her, so she doesn't know anything significant. I think some of the centaurs might remember her, too, but they haven't met yet.

So far, the group has found rings of green hair on the bodies of several of their foes (thanks for those on this board who proposed that one), and suspect that the ancient elven towers (in the forest, in the mountains, etc.) are all linked, and I've added traces of interplanar gates in them.

So, anyway, suggestions?

[Philip Knowsley]

Only 1 suggestion...
Just because they have been given clues (& will try to follow), doesn't
mean that the answers are easy to find...
i.e. I'd feel free to hand over bits & pieces, but that doesn't mean that
those bits & pieces lead anywhere - until you decide you want them to...
"There's a drunk in the tavern who's singing a song he heard from xyz"
"There's a book in your new library which talks about your mother's travels"
etc etc etc
You dictate the pace as you will.

As for mummy - why can't they find her in A's tomb? Heh heh heh...
Alive, dead, undead...your choice - but of course, it'd just be plain evil
to make your PC kill her own mother...again...

[Orthos]

Speaking for how these went in my campaign.

Quote:

So, my questions center on when to reveal:

1 that there is a powerful magic sword out there?

I actually revealed Briar's existence early in Chapter 2. One of my characters is on a quest from one of the Fey Queens (my campaign world doesn't use the Eldest) to find out who stole it, and another was a Black Blade Magus whose Black Blade was seeking "its counterpart" to defeat and destroy. It didn't take long for the PCs to piece together they were looking for the same entity.

I gave them Briar's name right off the bat, but only at first told them it was "a weapon of enormous power". Granted, my Briar also changes what kind of weapon it is whenever it changes hands to the preferred weapon type of its new wielder, so part of the trick of tracking it is that it would look different in different people's hands.

As for Ovinrbaane, I revealed Armag's existence a little afterward, between Chapter 2 and 3, when I ran the Malzagorta Niska sidequest. I had her and her minions make mention of the Twice-Born, prompting the PCs to do some investigating; this in turn brought them the attention of one of their neighbor colonies, who gave them the Rhyme of Armag (found somewhere on this subforum) which mentioned the barbarian warlord's return and his sword. (Though I didn't mention it by actual name, I did make note of its translation, "Enemy of All Enemies".)

Quote:

2 that parents were looking for it?

I'd recommend dropping this shortly after revealing the existence of the item they're pursuing. Especially if just revealing the fact that the sword is out there doesn't get their attention.

Quote:

3 That there is Another magic sword out there?

4 and a faerie queen wants it?

Like I said to question 1, I revealed this pretty early in Chapter 2. The Queen who got our Ruler contracted to look for it made it quite clear that this was a weapon of extreme power and mighty magic, and that the courts would probably go to war over it if they could.

Quote:

5 Mom was secretly looking for this?

This is the stinger. I would bundle this with more information about Mom, where she was, why she was looking for the weapon, what her connection to the fey was, and other such information. As such it should probably come a little later. I'd recommend somewhere in Chapter 4 perhaps?

[Lee Hanna]

Thanks.

I am going for a wrinkle in the Armag tale: the black sisters seen in book 4, will be only one faction of the local church, another faction has another candidate for "their" Armag descendant: one of the PCs. I think I had that in the back of my mind a while ago, but when that PC was killed (by Hargulka's trolls) and then raised, well, it just fell together. At the same time that she was brought back from the temple in question, a warpriest came along with her (by fantastic coincidence, the cavalier picked up a cohort at the same time). He's supposedly assisting the cavalier (general), but he's going to be helping out this barbarian (enforcer) just as often.

FWIW, the other faction will be aligned with the Irrovetti-equivalent in my campaign, and pre-Armag (V. Koth) will be met earlier, when I run Rushlight Tournament out of order.

So, I think I should start introducing his tale pretty soon, as this warpriest educates her on "her" legend.

I need to go read A's tomb again: where to put her?

Any opinions on re-skinning Evindra as Lost Mother?

Lost Mother, I am envisioning as something of a half-elven superspy, who settled down for a while among the Brevic humans. If the player wants to, we can play with the whole, "Did she really love Dad? Why was I born?" IMC, elves and humans don't play well together, so an agent manipulating short-lived humans as tools wouldn't be so far-fetched. Thus, I am wondering if Mom may just be leaving the clues, setting it up so that Daughter will finish this quest for her.

[JohnB]

We are in book 6 now - and my players a have been getting irritated with fey for a while now. Just elements have been showing up every so often - right back to book 1/2 - although they haven't been able to get any specific information until recently.

You are the GM and get to set the difficulty rolls for searching out information about Nyrissa - Set all the DCs up in the 50's to start with. Bring it down as they get nearer to the end of the adventure as Nyrissa (and her servants) starts revealing her hand more.

My players knew there was some sort of fey queen who was 'being a nuisance' - but anyone who was 'really ion the know' was too scared to say anything.

It was only when they went up to White Rose and started talking to people who really knew first hand that they started to get any detail. After all that frustration and irritation, they were relieved to finally have a name to 'go and talk to' (in the way that only adventurers know how)

[Orthos]

My group got her name in the middle of Book Two, but in such a manner that it didn't confirm she was the same as the Queen of Forgotten Time that they had also heard of in a separate story. They suspected from the get-go that there was some connection between the two - if only because both stories starred a powerful noble female fey who wasn't one of the queens - and once they had visual confirmation that QOFT was a nymph (via her making a spectral appearance after the defeat of Hargulka and at the fight with the Talonquake) they immediately drew a link, they just had no way to prove it. Since then they've learned a bit more about both, and the links between their stories and where they fit into one another are starting to become more apparent. I give it less than a chapter before it blows open - they've just handed over one of her rings to her rebellious daughter living in my replacement for Pitax, who once she's convinced the PCs will be able to put a stop to her mother's plans will probably spill the whole story in detail.

Playing my fey super traditionalist has also worked in my favor for that - many fey have offered to tell them Nyrissa and/or QOFT's stories in more detail, but nobody wants to pay whatever price they'll demand. We've had everything from a character losing all his memories to a fey deal to a character being forced into a reincarnate for dying before completing their fey-queen-given quest to a character making a loosely-worded agreement that resulted in the creation of a completely new species of fey. So it makes sense they'd be a bit skittish about glibly making such agreements, and now as they're starting to get to the point where they can find more of that information on their own, they're having access to it without having to pay Mab, Puck, Titania, Oberon, Greymaulkin, or any of the other high-ranking faeries for their services.