So my players may possibly murder everyone in turtleback ferry themselves. For some reason they have associated the sihedron rune with murder cultists and believe that everyone in the town with a tattoo is a member of the cult.
I have no idea as to what the ramifications of what will happen if they actually do this will be.
Turtleback Ferry is a protected vassal of Magnimar so they would probably become wanted criminals once the word gets out (this might take awhile depending on how Fort Rannick is doing in your game since the town is isolated and on how thoroughly they murder everyone). This would lead to open hostility from Magnimar, likely Sandpoint (also allied with Magnimar), and Fort Rannick (if the Black Arrows are back in control of the fort) - and would likely derail the campaign. Any further heroics on the group's part will pale in comparison to the mass-murder of innocent people.
I would encourage the group to use Sense Motive and detect alignment spells to determine that the majority of the town are good people, if a little greedy. Do they have the note from Lucrecia to Xanesha found at the end of the second book? If so, encourage them to read that again...this may make it more clear to them that these people are sacrificial lambs, not evil minions.
If that doesn't work, try distracting the players with the Dam event + Black Magga, to try and get them back on track. If any of your players are the religious type, maybe a prophetic dream from their favored deity might be in order? Or have the wisest character think about trying to find proof of what they suspect before going on a serial killing spree.
I feel sympathy for you- my group nearly attacked the (half-dead) Black Arrows when they saw Kaven's tattoo, thinking they were all aligned with the enemy. Kaven blubbered that his tattoo was just for admission onto the Pleasure Barge, but they didn't believe him (they did not try to oppose a Bluff check). They decided to prepare Detect Evil to clear their names, but before they could Kaven fled in the night, making it extra obvious that he was the lone villain here.
Write evil on their character sheets, and have Mokmurian send them a letter offering them a job.
Have Magnimar put a 20,000gp bounty on their heads.
Otherwise nothing it would hasten Karzougs awakening but as that is undefined leave it as is but when/if they get there have Karzoug thank them for their help.
You could let them make a knowledge arcan check to work out what the rune tattoo does or ask them why they think what they think and try to get them to spot the logic holes.
So my players may possibly murder everyone in turtleback ferry themselves. For some reason they have associated the sihedron rune with murder cultists and believe that everyone in the town with a tattoo is a member of the cult.
I have no idea as to what the ramifications of what will happen if they actually do this will be.
Moving up the damn event could be a good call, especially if it involves townsfolk trying to assist/save the PC's...
I believe the characters handed the note to the mayor of magnimar and have forgotten the contents of it. we tend to have infrequent play sessions.
They seem to have confused the sihedron with being part of the skinsaw cult and lamashtu hence them coming to the conclusion that the town is full of cultists. The top of the list the lucrecia has saying "those that have agreed to grant their greed to the master's need" has increased their motivation to cleanse the town.
They can only have their paladin detect evil and most of the townspeople probably aren't strong enough to detect as evil anyway. The sense motive checks will be interesting since Lucrecia did a number on one of their wisdom scores while they were trying to grapple her.
Kavin never even got a chance to wake up. They saw the tattoo tied, him up, healed the others then convinced them that kavin was a traitor and executed him.
No matter what happens it should be interesting. This is my first campaign as a GM so i find myself at a loss of what to do a lot. I still haven't figured out how to bring Xanesha back in since she got away.
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When you have a group of PCs willing to slaughter a town full of innocents "for the greater good", who needs a BBEG?
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A paladin? I would remind the paladin PC that acting as "judge, jury, and executioner" without any outside support with local law enforcement is pretty unlawful. In the real world if you suspect someone is up to no good, you report it to the police, and in a tabletop RPG it is no different... adventurers are not above the law. If they go with that route, it should become quickly apparent that other than the tattoos (with every single person in town having the same story of how they got said tattoos) there is no proof that these people are the cultists that your players think that they are. Even if they were right, and the whole town was an evil murder-cult of Lamashtu, that doesn't mean they can just run in and slaughter them unprovoked without some proof first...so do your best to get them thinking that this is a BAD idea.
I personally would have given the paladin a BIG warning for having executed Kaven without even questioning him first...there is nothing lawful good about executing an unconscious man that has been tortured to near-death by "the hills have eyes" ogrekin, and if he/she goes along with killing off the town a fall from grace would be in order. Assuming the paladin follows one of the main Golarion gods you can look up what happens when they are upset with their followers. For example - Iomedae shows her displeasure with flickering lights, shattering weapons, and turning metal dull, and if a paladin of Iomedae turns evil, their cloak turns black and their armor and weaponry turns to dull lead. Or you can make something cool up. ;)
If they go along with it despite your warnings I would play up the horror of what they are doing. Describe crying children screaming while they watch their parents die before their eyes. Describe the schoolteacher trying to bravely protect her kids with a frying pan or pitchfork. Make the townsfolk extra ineffectual- don't even write up stat blocks for them, just assume your level 8 or so PCs can just slay each one with one hit. And describe those kills with relish, so it reeeeally sinks in.
The PCs being wanted criminals by basically all civilized people in Varisia leaves you with few options. A lot of the future adventures start off with friendly NPCs asking the heroic PCs for help...so with your PCs no longer being heroes the adventure is derailed. You can totally embrace the dark-side and take the campaign down an evil path, with the PCs working for Karzoug - because hey, your PCs succeeded where Lucrecia failed in sacrificing that whole town for his return, so why not recruit them (this would require a lot of work on your part to alter the AP) OR you can inform the group that everything is derailed and that it is time to reroll new characters. Maybe have the new PC's first act of heroism by claiming the bounty on their old, evil PCs. Then come up with some adventure hook to get them to Hook Mountain and resume everything from there.
In the future, with infrequent play sessions it is a good idea to run brief recaps of what has happened before so that people don't get lost, especially if your players are poor note-takers (like mine).
just for the record the paladin did not execute kavin it was the black arrows after being convinced that he was a traitor. The paladin and the monk have been slowly becoming more and more violent. At the beginning of the campaign the monk had an oath of peace and the party had been arguing over whether it was ethical or not to kill the goblins attacking the town. They were even in the habit of asking every enemy to surrender every turn with very few successes.
Since the paladin decided he wanted to be originally from sandpoint and an aasimar I made him partially responsible for nualia's fall to the darkside as she had been constantly compared to him.
The flood upon their return to turtleback should keep them from actually murdering the town.
I do generally do a recap of the previous session, but when we meet 3 weeks in a row then have a month long break things get forgotten by all parties easily. alcohol doesn't help.
The characters may have forgotten the details of the letter since they spent 2 weeks recovering/searching for xanesha before heading on the weeklong trip to turtleback. For some reason the group hasn't really caught on to the greed thing with the sihedron rune despite multiple expositions about it
the more I GM the better i'll get hopefully.
thank you all for the feedback.
I would ask your players to list all the evil cultists that bore Sihedron tattoos or other markings on their person. And how many cultists had items with Sihedron markings. Of course if possessing an object with the Sihedron marking is evil, then the players may have a real problem. Are any of them carrying Nualia's Sihedron medallion? Or the ring of force shield from Malfeshnekor's prison?
Other than Kaven, everyone else who had Sihedron marking on their body was a victim not a perpetrator.
I'd also suggest just giving them the Lucretia note handout again. Doesn't matter whether they left it with the Mayor or not, the character's would remember the content even if the player's do not.
Seriously any Paladin who massacres a town on evidence as flimsy as theirs needs to add the anti in front of their class name.
I have never made a Paladin fall in a campaign but this would be such a clear action that I would have no choice. Then his former church would send out an elite team to find him and bring him to Justice before Pharasma.
More usefully recap/reminding the players of things if often good, the characters are much more immersed in the world and unlikely to forget important stuff then Players who have the real world taking up their time and thoughts.
Also if the players have a misapprehension about something in the world it can be worth talking through them about it to make sure it is not a simple mistake made by the whole not actually being the characters. If they are happy that their characters would have come to the conclusion after thinking about it then they have to roll with it
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I wouldn't go that far, John. Ex-, definitely, but not necessarily anti-.
I'll echo passing out the handout again they found on Xanesha. If you play infrequently as you say, then they're probably remembering the information wrong. Refreshing their memory on what it actually said might prompt a round of forehead slapping and jumping back on the right path.
Then again, if they still are deadest to put Turtleback Ferry to the sword after refreshing their memories, then they've decided to jump off the railroad for good.