Assuming you used the instigator bard in Book 2, did your players ever figure out he was from Pitax? If not, they could come across some information that identifies him as living in or coming from Pitax.
I think that there are plenty of opportunities to provide a glimpse of Irrovetti prior to Book 5. The question becomes how to do it right? One thought that I had was perhaps to have the PC's Kingdom roll a "special event" and it can be some sort of tournament or festival in its own right. Have Irrovetti show up to "scout the competition" so to speak. Naturally, he can drop hints about how he likes such "quaint" tournaments as the one the PCs are hosting, but how in the end, its the grand tournaments like the Rushlight Tournament that he hosts annually. Let him brag about his tournament and how it is the envy of all who come, etc., etc.
This would lay the seeds for the invitation that is to come later, and maybe even throw the PCs off a bit. Sure, he sounds like a bit of a D-Bag, but then, most nobles are. Certainly there didn't seem to be anything unfriendly about him. For added points, you could maybe throw in the Carnival of Tears here if you have not already run it. You don't necessarily need to run it all the way through, or even exactly as written (realizing you'd have to change stat blocks anyway) but the idea would be to make the investigation, and not the tournament per se, the emphasis of the adventure. That way, when they get the invitation to the Rushlight, it won't seem like a simple repeat.
The key here is to make sure that Irrovetti is not involved in the mayhem caused by the Carnival of Tears. If anything, make him helpful and sympathetic (while being a D-Bag at the same time). "Oh, I feel for you. My own kingdom used to have similar problems back when we were a fledgling community too. Thankfully, we have grown strong enough not to have to worry too much about horrific tragedies like this."
Yeah running the Carnival of Tears really just comes down to how much do you want to make of the "special event" if any. I was just using the Kingdom Turn rules as a means for having Irovetti show up without necessarily raising too much suspicion. However, your teleport idea, while it will certainly come as a warning of power level, isn't necessarily suspicious. It should; however, make your party pretty paranoid about him.
This could actually be fruitful when the time comes for the Rushlight Tournament, because if that happened to me, you better believe I would do everything I could to return the favor for when going to the tournament. (i.e. just teleporting in)
Use Gedovius, the gargoyle rogue, from the dungeons of Irovetti's palace in Book 5. The background of that character is just too cool to be simple fodder. I actually added 5 mesmerist levels of the Occult playtest to make him a bit more powerful, then turned him into a recurring assassin-type able to manipulate the minds of those around him so as to keep from being caught in my players' kingdom. His connection to Irovetti gives some very interesting leads towards Pitax, yet Irovetti's ability to lie via his bard skills offers him a great amount of leeway in "honest" denials.
In my game, the players never actually caught Gedovius, but there was evidence left behind in one of the assassin's victims that led to the perpetrator being a gargoyle. Thus, between the sorcerer's legend lore spell and the master spy, connections were made as to this gargoyle's origins, and its connections to Pitax.
Just one example of something that gets virtually no time in the books which can be played up more in the campaign! You can find his stats/story in Area S2 (pg 48-49)
Ravingdork's new undead troll
I'm toying with the idea of having an Hargulka's return for mine campaign.
Over-the-top Italian. Every time I try that, I sound like a waiter at your local spaghetti joint.
Believe me when I say that playing Kingmaker in Italy could be hardest. Especially because Castruccio is a very funny name for an Italian speaker since it could literally means "castrated honey boy"
I had a very hard time as GM trying to make him appears as a threatening and powerful enemy to mine players.
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(SPOILERS)
Prep for Book 4:
- I found it helped to have the settlement being attacked be founded by or inhabited by some friendly NPCs the players know well. I used some of the bandits who betrayed the stag lord in my game, but perhaps friendly fey would work well in yours.
- My players wound up simply teleporting to Fort Drelev to assassinate Drelev, and then explored the area afterwards. Actually, they went straight on to invading Pitax, so they haven't even explored most of the Slough. So I wound up throwing out most of the original plotlines and NPCs. Just as a warning!
- I made Drelev a cowardly, preening fop and a ladies' man, which helped to distinguish him from Armag the Barbarian King and later from Irovetti, who I ran as a...well, he ended up being a Generic Evil-Sounding Guy since mostly the players were interacting with his two top minions, the Ogre Mage and the Were-Rat (who was secretly Ilthuliak in disguise in my campaign - the PCs view Ilthuliak as a greater or equal threat as Nyrissa since I've been involving both in the story since Book 3).
Prep for Book 5:
- I used the barbarian army in Book 4 to lead right into Book 5 by having the players learn that the Army was being funded by Pitax to prep for an attack on them. The upside of this is that it launched them right into opposing Pitax. The downside was that the entire Pitax festival was thrown out (to be fair, I thought it was rather out of place to begin with).
- Somebody here ran a mech/steampunk version of Irovettis' empire: that thread had some good ideas. I suggest looking at it for some insight. Good luck!
Akalsaris, I believe you're thinking of DM's wonderful Cockwork Kingdom modification.
You probably meant "Clockwork", but I'm still laughing.
You probably meant "Clockwork", but I'm still laughing.
I dunno, his version seems appropriate for Irovetti. :)
/facepalm
Tiger Lords sem to me to be too barbaric for alchemists (who are city based or lab based). But witches would work very well for the hags of Gyrona), and maybe you can use some tiger-riding cavaliers.
I think the magus could work with the Tiger Lords. For the alchemist, I could see one popping up in Pitax.
Alchemists can be tweaked to be more "tribal-oriented". They can easily be treated as some kind of shaman/tribal sorcerer who focus on creating extracts from plants, animal parts and other natural sources. The high Int requirement don't have to represent academic knowledge.
Some archetypes might help with that:
*Blazing Torchbearer (focusing on flames manipulation)
*Beastmorph (using mutagens to gain animal features)
*Ragechemist (improving the combat stats of the mutagen while decreasing spellcasting power)
The biggest problem with foreshadowing Part 5 is the fact that Part 5 simply sucks. Irovetti and his whole plan would have been a decent threat at about level 6. At level 13? Fluff-wise he's lame (that's a recurring problem with Kingmaker villains, I think); mechanics-wise he is quite likely to never even know what hit him; involvement of Pitax in part 4 was pretty obvious, so the adventure setup presumes both passivity and gullibility on PCs' part, else Irovetti's half-baked scheme of luring PCs into a trap won't work for one reason or another; a large part of the module is supposed to be about massed combat between armies of little men, which hardly works at these levels; and there is just nothing particularly interesting about any of the opponents you encounter.
Consider replacing or rewriting the whole module. I did rewriting, utilizing pretty much nothing but some statblocks, and foreshadowed the change from the beginning - PCs were dispatched to the Stolen Lands because these lands were a no man's land between their home country and its most dangerous enemy, in place of Part 5 that enemy finally strikes, and what PCs did with their kingdom up to that point should determine whether their kingdom survives or is reduced to a pile of corpses and rubble by the time they wipe out enough enemy leaders to cause the invasion to falter. Mass combat might be used to determine how well PCs' subordinates are doing in their absence, though I'm just keeping an improvised "kingdom score", largely based on how many valuable allies they recruit and whether they invest their plunder in development of the land or, on the contrary, leech gold from their subjects.
Drelev and his cronies, for the record, tried to prepare for the same invasion by allying with the barbarians in this version of the Kingmaker, thinking they would be in control in this alliance.
Both, do them both
I also introduced the Rushlight Tournament as soon as they had their kingdom at the beginning of book 2, but then my party was made up entirely of 8-9 year old kids, so they ate that type of stuff up
RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4; Contributor; Publisher, Legendary Games
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In the original manuscripts, Irovetti and his palace were built rather differently mechanically speaking, and he was not actually evil. His involvement in the doings of Book 4 was far subtler. The final published version very much telegraphs "Hi, this guy is a BAD GUY" and that does tend to undermine any sort of surprise value in his plan.
When I ran it in my home campaign (with Irovetti as a 16th level Arcane Duelist bard FWIW), the players for much of the adventure were just about convinced that the real Irovetti had been kidnapped and that his advisors (led by Nunzio Arpaia) had staged a coup.
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RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4; Contributor; Publisher, Legendary Games
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Irovetti is supposed to be a retired adventurer himself, a johnny-come-lately to the Bandit Council who's had his own issues getting accepted by the more experienced River Kings. This was the emotional cue he played on in soliciting the PCs good will, that they were not so different and that they needed to stick together against the old guard who would rather see them squabble amongst themselves or just wipe them off the map.
Then again, Pitax is an established kingdom, whereas the Stolen Lands area was not. Mivon didn't really move into the area because as Brevoy exiles they probably liked not being right next door and preferred to have a buffer state in between themselves and the homeland. Pitax is the other established kingdom, but with Irovetti's takeover they weren't really in an expansionist mode. The sponsors of the kingdom charters in Kingmaker recruited some yokels to go quiet the bandit presence in the Stolen Lands, and if they managed to carve out a meaningful domain then so much the better.
One advantage of the kingdom-building rules is that it encourages you to take a long sweep of time, and let years pass throughout the course of the campaign. There is no ticking time bomb. As the PCs are scratching out their nascent kingdom, the Drelevs are establishing theirs and Varn his, and the far west crew is getting wiped out, and Pitax is stabilizing and extending their reach into Drelev and feeling out the PCs.
IMC Irovetti was a real rival, but not because he was evil. He was simply ambitious and wanted the same thing the PCs did - land, territory, and power. Add the fact that he was beguiled by a faerie lover that was whispering in his ear all kinds of suggestions to keep the area destabilized and he was not so much a villain as an antagonist. He can play charming and freely admit that he's a scoundrel, wearing it with pride, while pointing to the other WORSE scoundrels out there. He extends the hand of favor as the big brother, and you can verify that even among the other bandits he's something of an outsider just as you are. That doesn't prove his trustworthiness, but it proves that at least SOME of what he has told you is true, and that he has good reason to be more concerned about other rivals and not so much about you.
Even when Drelev collapses, he can be part of a land grab with every legitimate gripe that Drelev was double-dealing with him too, and in the River Kingdoms you have what you hold. Just because the PCs took down Drelev the man doesn't mean they automatically inherit all of his lands. If Drelev can't hold it, then it's fair game for all takers. Nothing personal, just business.
In sum, you just have to establish Irovetti as a rational actor, so that he's not so much trustworthy as (apparently) predictable. The PCs know he's a scoundrel and he doesn't try to hide it. Since he's up front about it, the PCs learn to take him at face value. That's when you know the setup is complete and it's time to set his scheme in motion.
My party loved irrovetti so I made him a victim of a plot and used the palace as a rescue mission / dungeon
Lots of good ideas here. So many that now y'all have me questioning what I should do with my Irovetti when the time comes to run the campaign, lol.
On the one hand, I love the idea of having the PCs called to a meeting in Brevoy in between books 1 and 2 where the other groups who set out to civilize the area are also called. Of course, only 3 of 4 show up. Someone suggested having Irovetti show up in full-on bad arse mode, throw down a shield clearly belonging to one of the missing adventurers and basically tell everyone present that he's torqued off and that they will pay.
On the other, the idea of making Irovetti a sympathetic and helpful ally, albeit one who is ultimately looking to stab them in the back, also can make for some cool moments. I guess my main concern with going that route is that if I am going to establish allies for the PCs (in the form of other nations) then it kind of sucks for the players if they all end up stabbing the party in the back. "Why'd we bother with the whole diplomacy thing again?" Certainly there are ways around this (perhaps other nations come to ally with the PCs, etc.) but both options are pretty intriguing.
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Another vote for running the Rushlight Tournament MUCH earlier. Why would established monarchs (i.e., high-level PCs) compete themselves instead of sending champions? But at lower level, as minor lordlings, it makes a lot more sense for them to compete - there is actually something for them to gain. But just make it a tournament and maybe even let them get to know Irovetti as a rival but not necessarily as an enemy.
You might also have the Iron Wraiths make an appearance, otherwise by the time you get to Ch 6, it's like who the heck are they?