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Hey all. So, I'm beginning my second game of Kingmaker with a new group and I can't wait to see how they do things differently and what paths they'll go down. Further, I've had the opportunity with my first game and group to get a feel for the campaign and figure out what my vision for it is. As such I've come up with a new backstory for the campaign that addresses or changes such things as Vordakai's total lack of relation to anything else, the logic behind Briar, and how Nyrissa is not an active presence up until the sixth book.
Just as many folks on this forum have integrated Realm of the Felnight Queen into their games, I'm using Rhoswen. But the similarities pretty much end at the name. If anything she'll be a guide or ally of the PCs. To name Choral's dragons I borrowed from the pair encountered in Rise of the Runelords; Fortress of the Stone Giants. You'll notice I've changed other names, these are just because I felt like it.
Pharasma's involvement is predicated on the fact that I run my games hardcore in respect to PC death and resurrection magic is almost unheard of.
I still haven't figured out the how and why of the Rogarvia Vanishing, maybe Nyrissa did it. Though I know Choral was a red dragon in disguise and has been slumbering on a vast bed of gold for the past centuries, just doing what dragons do, and will at some inconvenient point erupt forth to do more of what dragons do.
I'm eager for thoughts, reviews, ideas and criticism and hope that at least some folks enjoy this.
Ranalc tarried in Nyrissa's woodland halls for he knew not how long. Time flowed differently within Nyrissa's embrace, while in the world outside two centuries passed until the coming of Choral the Conqueror to the North. Whispers through the trees reached Nyrissa and Ranalc of the devastation being visited upon Rostland by Choral's dragons and Ranalc was stirred from his smitten reverie. Feeling honor-bound to defend his homeland in its time of need, Ranalc resolved to sally forth from the Stolen Lands. Distressed to see Ranalc go into danger but understanding his resolve, Nyrissa gifted her love with an enchanted sword she named Briar and sent him on his way with her blessing and a knightly retinue from her court at his back.
Ranalc and his fey knights met with the red dragons Econtrador and Sulamingas on the decimated Rostland Plains and boldly gave battle. But no matter what the enchantments were that Nyrissa had laid upon Briar, in the end they did not avail Ranalc and his comrades against the dragons. Fairy tales and legends are still told today in Brevoy of the shining host that emerged from the wilderness, ethereal trumpets blaring, only to tragically wither in flame just as all else did.
Grief-stricken, Nyrissa refused to accept Ranalc's death and, by means of her own otherworldly nature, risked great peril to follow his soul beyond the veil. There she found him in queue for judgment and led him back to this world as if by the hand. Though his body was still marred by his wounds, Ranalc's eyes opened and in the throes of their blissful reunion they conceived a child; Rhoswen.
For no reason understood by mortals, every birth and death is destined: Ranalc's soul was meant to pass from this world under the dragon's flame and his resurrection was in defiance of this. And as she was conceived after the time of her father's appointed death, Rhoswen's birth had not been anticipated or ordained by fate. These both stood as trespasses against the cosmic order maintained by Pharasma, goddess of birth, death and fate.
A chief tenet of Pharasma is to not suffer the abomination of necromancy; to eliminate any hollow parody of life and free the soul trapped therein so that it may continue unstymied on its course to other spheres. But Ranalc's heart beat, he breathed and he had even sired a child. Rather than tethering Ranalc's spirit to his dead body like strings to a puppet, Nyrissa had restored him to true life. Further, it was a changed life. For the two hundred years preceding his death Ranalc had dined and lived in the enchanted realm of the fey, and had now returned after passing beyond the veil and seeing plainly mysteries unknown to earthly folk. By Nyrissa's involvement Count Treyvan Ranalc had been brought back beyond mortal life and into something more akin to his lover's gossamer nature. It seemed unlikely that death would find Ranalc a second time, and while Pharasma impartially presides over the course of death it is not her place to pass it as a sentence. But even if Nyrissa and Ranalc defied her judgment in the afterlife, Pharasma could still exact penance in the mortal world.
She sent visions to the seers and shamans of the Reyshalka tribe of centaurs, who dwelt as nomads on the Dunsward steppes to the East of the Tors of Levenies. From these visions the wisefolk interpreted an injustice against the spirits and a disharmony that they had been chosen to set aright. A call went out through the clans and a band of hunters assembled. The epic verse of Reyshalka oral history still tells of how these anointed few crossed the Tors of Levenies and entered Nyrissa's domain.
Pharasma may be the goddess of death but the centaurs had each sworn to kill no living thing while on her business. Her custodial duty to fate demands that she only act to correct those that defy it and that she does so with the least impact possible. But even though they came with no lethal intent the champions of the Reyshalka tribe were grim of aspect and determined in the hunt. Any of Nyrissa's gentle folk that they came upon parted and fled before the thunder of their hooves until all of the forest of the Narlmarches had been flushed out, except for Nyrissa and Ranalc themselves. With the infant Rhoswen crying in Nyrissa's arms they were brought to bay at the trunk of a great oak.
Ranalc drew Briar and fought wildly against their hunters, but nets woven with enchantment were thrown over him and Briar was taken from his hands. He was dragged away, screaming for Nyrissa and she for him. When he was gone from sight and hearing an aspect of Pharasma herself then appeared before Nyrissa. Tall and terrible, Briar appeared in her hand though she had not stooped for where it lay.
“It was for love of him that you defiled the course of life and death. The poor, unaccounted-for soul that you hold in your arms was condemned to exist by that love. You cannot be trusted with such a powerful thing.”
She then plunged Briar past Rhoswen and into Nyrissa's heart. Nyrissa did not feel the chill of death but when Pharasma withdrew the blade any warmth within her went with it. The love that had driven her to trespass against death itself, that she felt for the child in her arms, was drawn from her and into Briar. She did not resist or make a sound when Rhoswen was taken from her.
“This one is an innocent, but she is daughter to a father who was already dead. Just as I did not arrange for her conception I've no right to sit in judgment of her end, and so by the accident of her birth she is exiled from death. No pattern was woven for her in the tapestry, and she will always be apart from it, but I will watch over her.
“Ranalc will ever persist. He's already lived out his mortal fate, though you nullified it, and no second fate awaits in auxiliary. He will be entombed, given funerary rites and made to live out his death properly, with the Reyshalka tribe as his gravekeepers.
“You, Nyrissa, are still subject to the same fate that you have been ever since your beginning. Only now, I decree that when your allotted end comes to meet you it will be with Briar in hand. Perhaps you will greet it gladly, and then we shall meet again.”
The next that Nyrissa knew she was alone in the forest. There was no sign of Ranalc or Rhoswen. She found that their absence bothered her very little, but that the robbing of them meant everything. In place of the love for them that had animated her before there was now only anger and sorrow over their loss.
She dwells in the haunted forest of a Thousand Voices to this day, far in the West, gnawing her resentment and weeping for something she no longer even remembers the feeling of or really cares for. Pharasma thought that love was the most dangerous thing within Nyrissa but robbing her of it only left room for darker things to fester, and she has drawn the attention of Gyronna, hag-goddess of hatred, curses and revenge. And Nyrissa will have revenge; on the people of Brevoy, whose dragons first slew Ranalc, on Pharasma, who took everything from her, and on the weak, cowardly fey folk of the Stolen Lands, who failed their queen and let it all happen.
Where Ranalc languishes and what life Rhoswen has led are known only to Pharasma.
Lovely story, thank you so much for sharing!
Let me start off by saying that the most important role of thumb when adapting/changing story elements is this one: does it help you accomplish your narrative goals? Your story changes a lot of established background, but it does so to tell a wonderful story, and it tells exactly the sort of epic tale I would imagine fey creatures to weave for themselves. It also makes Nyrissa into a sort of extra tragic Orpheus, presenting players with a difficult quandary: would they have acted any differently in Nyrissa's place? There is nothing wrong with players feeling sympathy for the villain and even agreeing that the villain has been wronged by the gods, and a story of redeeming Nyrissa, possibly in defiance of Pharasma herself, is certainly epic enough for level 18+.
If you don't mind, I could share my own custom backstory for Nyrissa, Count Ranalc, et al (sans Rhoswen though).
Philip: Yeah, Ranalc will be replacing Vordakai in this one, though he's not really undead. If he were a product of necromancy Pharasma would have had no problem having him destroyed. But he was resurrected back into true life, which is beyond Pharasma's domain of influence. I don't allow resurrection magic for PCs in my games, because I feel it lessens the drama of death, and when it does happen it's a big mythical deal like in this case. But just like necromancy it still goes against the cosmic order that Pharasma oversees.
While he's not not undead Ranalc is no longer really human anymore either. After all he's been through he's almost fey himself. Pharasma gave up the hope of seeing him come before her for judgment in the afterlife, but there had to be consequences. So now in Ranalc's second life Pharasma has condemned him to act out the death that he and Nyrissa defied and has interred him in a crypt as if it were a jail cell. Once he gets out he's going to have gone a little mad and be much darker. And while he's not undead himself, his history with death will lend itself to undead minions and themes and so on like Vordakai.
I have a planar theme going where Nyrissa is aligned with the First World, Ranalc with the Shadow Plane and Rhoswen with the Ethereal Plane.
Mackenzie: Thank you for the kind words! I'm glad that the tragedy and ambiguity comes through. By all means, I'd be delighted if other people shared their own work and perspectives.
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Very cool! I'm glad you clarified that you don't allow easy resurrection magic for PCs, that was my one concern reading through your story. I'm really hoping you'll share with us how you plan to use Rhoswen.
Instead, I adapted the very old "Castle Amberville" adventure (written for basic edition D&D), recasting Stephen Amber as fey archlord Ranalc, and making the reason for the castle's exile to a demiplane as the failed love story of Ranalc and Nyrissa. Ranalc's capacity for love was removed from him and forged into a sword, and he and his court were banished to the demiplane. Nyrissa's was likewise forged into a separate sword, and she was banished to her separate demiplane.
Their daughter Rhoswen was young at the time, and was raised by her father Ranalc who, with no remaining capacity for love, ended up being more than a bit abusive/neglectful. When Rhoswen was all grown up, she ended up meeting and falling in love with a visitor to their demiplane, Nex (the arch-wizard), who was really just charming her in order to steal much of the power of Ranalc himself. Nex convinced Nyrissa to kill her father and drain his power. She suffered a retributive blast from the attack that left her a blasted skeleton (in Catherine's place in the adventure), and Ranalc was trapped between life and death, and sealed into his tomb.
The PCs were drawn into the demiplane and the castle itself because they came to rescue folk who'd been taken there - the Wild Hunt would ride out from the demiplane and capture people from the Stolen Lands. Those prisoners were brought back and entrapped in green mirrors by Rhoswen, who used the potential of their lost lives to build a power framework which she hoped would let her restore herself to full life. When the PCs reached the throne room, they met an apparently ghostly Rhoswen seated on the throne, surrounded by the mirrors, who bargained with them. They'd already by that time found the library with its lore about what had happened, and they'd recovered the sword that was Ranalc's love from the big tomb on the southeast portion of the greenbelt map before ever entering the demiplane, so they figured out that they could restore the sword to Ranalc and thereby restore him to life. But they had to convince her... (NOTE: I removed the entire visit-to-a-foreign-country midsection of the Castle Amber adventure. They just had to navigate the basement level and that took them to the tomb.)
After the PCs restored Ranalc, he was able to restore Rhoswen to life, but he also said he was forced to exile her to the mortal world for her betrayal - with obvious regret, and great concern for her future safety and happiness. She ended up marrying one of the PCs, and I was able to have a number of kingdom events based on the fact that a depowered-daughter-of-an-archfey was in the kingdom. (The month that her first child was due, there was a sudden influx of pterodactyls; it became a running gag that when she gave birth, new critters would appear, such as cows giving birth to baby mammoths.) I played Rhoswen as mysterious and tempermental; she pretended to have more remaining power than she actually did, to keep people from threatening her. (Her actual power level tracked just a bit lower than the PCs.)
So all the above let me connect to a few other items in the Adventure Path. The green mirrors were similar to the green bottles I had Vordakai use to capture the people he took. The PCs also found green mirror shards near the dead unicorn and in a few other places where Nyrissa had visited, or where her minions were. I think the dancing lady had a mirror, for example. Nyrissa could use them to communicate with her minions, or to project herself briefly into the mortal world or draw people through into her demiplane. More important, there were green mirror shards in the entrance to Vordakai's Tomb, because Nyrissa dropped the Eye off there when she arranged for him to be awakened by another of her charmed lovers (the Varnling guy who disturbed the tomb).
At the very end of the campaign, they found among Nyrissa's treasures a whole collection of green glass bottles containing all the living descendents of Choral the Conquerer, who had been stolen from their beds by Nyrissa, using green mirrors placed in their households by charmed servants, and the Eye of Abaddon plus Choral's blood to summon them (and only them) to her that fateful night. So the PCs had to decide who they wanted ruling Brevoy, and whether or not to release all (or any) of Choral's descendents.
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The fey of the First World find love to be an exceedingly delicious and versatile ingredient when crafting stories to amuse themselves with. However, it is only a shallow sort of love: the infatuation of a knight smitten by the beauty of an ethereal faerie queen, or the obsession of a sage trying to find a path back to the glade where he once spied a dryad. To actually fall so deeply in love as to actually put the object of one's affection above the value of the story however, that is a crime the Eldest cannot abide.
For years, the Eldest not only tolerated but encouraged the blooming romance between Count Ranalc and the nymph Nyrissa, savoring each new tale crafted by the two throughout their long courtship, as the Count defeated great warriors and fetched artifacts from lands so distant their stories had not yet been told, all to win the favor of a beautiful nymph princess. Such epics were a delicacy rarely experienced by the courts of the Eldest, and that one of their own could produce such exquisite narratives was proof of their right to rule the First World. It was always assumed that eventually Nyrissa would reject Count Ranalc's wooing, or he would find another to be even more beautiful, and Nyrissa would then weave a tragedy while Ranalc moved on to new stories, but alas, that was not to be.
When word spread that the two had secretly eloped and Count Ranalc was now working to elevate Nyrissa to a position of equality, the other Eldest were furious. The other Eldest raised entire armies of the fey to march on the realm of Count Ranalc, not because a nymph would aspire to such a lofty position, not because Ranalc was assisting her in doing so, but rather because they had betrayed the very principles of the First World, casting aside the intricate stories they had woven to instead have a private wedding which contributed nothing to the tale.
Ranalc's realm suffered a far worse fate than merely being burned, salted, or otherwise laid to waste. The armies of the Eldest accepted a powerful geas to never even remember the inhabitants of that realm, forgetting them altogether. Overnight, the fey of Count Ranalc's court faded into mere shadows of their former selves and fled the First World for a dark plane more suited to their new existence. The Count found himself swept away in the mass exodus of his people, and was separated from his beloved Nyrissa for just long enough for her to be snatched away by a powerful Jabberwock. The foul creature could fly as fast as any hurricane, with a hide impervious to all but a handful of legendary weapons and teeth which could rend even the most powerful fey, even an Eldest such as the Count. And so he fled with all his people, mourning the certain death of his beloved.
Yet Nyrissa lives even to this day, for when she stood in judgement before the Eldest whose ranks she had thought to join, unhumbled by her inglorious defeat, she was sentenced to lose the very thing which had caused the magnificent war. The Lantern King fetched from her bosom her very heart, and Shyka wore the face of a mighty blacksmith as he forged her heart into a thorny sword, so that her love could only pierce and injure from that day forward. Magdh named the sword Briar, and entrusted it to a dragon who had long been courting a member of her entourage, a warning not to follow in the footsteps of Nyrissa. Finally, the Green Mother, who is mother in spirit if not in truth to all nymphs, decreed that Nyrissa would be banished, but that she could at least have company in her exile, for her sisters would be exiled as well, punished for allowing Nyrissa to commit so heinous a crime.
Centuries passed as Nyrissa led her sisters from one world to the next, always searching for the home of the dragon who now owned her heart. Count Ranalc could have aided her easily, had she still possessed the capacity to return his affections, but now there was only a hollowness within her which distrusted all others. In time, she even came to suspect her own siblings of conspiring against her and punished each in turn for imagined slights. Yet her wanderings eventually brought her to Golarion, and at last she heard rumors of the wyrm known as Silverstep, and felt a momentary twinge of hope.
Though lacking in strength and bravery, Nyrissa never lacked in guile, and approached the lair of a red dragon who had long desired to best Silverstep in combat and claim the realm under Silverstep's dominion...
(More later.)
That's a wonderfully out-there Rhoswen, Cintra. I've been thinking of using a wild hunt dynamic with Ranalc too, actually. If the PCs don't take him out immediately after Varnhold vanishes, that is. And the mirrors are a great touch. What'd your players end up doing with the bottled Rogarvias?
I love the abstract, story-book natures you're illustrating, Mackenzie. The literal taste for story-weaving and the dependence on being remembered is great. Can't wait for the rest.
I was inspired partly by the Bleaching suffered by gnomes, where they have to constantly experience new things or the color drains from them and they become something less. Since it is a condition unique to gnomes who have left the First World, part of the implication is that there is either something intrinsically different about the First World... or that the societies which exist there are so fundamentally different as to never allow that to happen. A society founded upon currencies of stories would result in gnomes never lacking for new experiences, and forgetting about someone and all their stories could have an effect on them very much like the Bleaching. At any rate, I'm glad you enjoyed it, I'll post the rest later today or tomorrow.
OH-MY-GOD.
this tread is pure GOLD. guys i'm SO going to steal some of your ideas.
By the way, my tought about the disappearance of the Rogarvian was that all of them were snatched by a ginormous sentient(?) orb of dragonkind who was found by the dwarves of the golushkin mountains.. wich somehow connects with the fact that one of my players is a bastard of a minor house...who was raised among bandits at the very border of southern Brevoy..
the idea of using the eye of Abaddon is also great, but the range of the artifact is, if i recall correctly, only a mile..