The Fate of Illmarsh

[Skeleman]

I've just finished wrapping up book 4, and to put it lightly, it was not the favorite for either myself or my players. Their characters were especially upset at the attitudes of the Illmarshers all around. They managed to leave (barely) without burning the entire place down and hunting down the Sherriff for his head. I'm curious how this setting and events played out with other groups. I'm also interested in hearing how other characters handled the fallout in the town and the political vacuum caused by the removal of the church and the mayor.

[Kalindlara]

My players are probably the outliers (although they didn't care much for the townsfolk either).

Wake of the Watcher:

Not only did they save the remaining ulat-kini, including both Iq’lothatuaa and Zhabh-boath, they ended up setting all of them (skum and humans alike) on the path to worship of Desna.

While they didn't stay behind to see it through to completion (Whispering Way and all), they did leave a Desnan bralani conjured by planar ally to oversee the process.

They also firmly insisted that the skum adopt more consensual mating rituals - the jokingly-suggested image was of Iq’lothatuaa in a tuxedo with a bouquet of flowers, Bane-style.

Good times. ^_^

[Zhangar]

I made the sheriff and his deputies

Wake of the Watcher:

actual enforcers for the Cult of Dagon. I made the sheriff a CE general with the advanced template and additional tentacle attacks, and his deputies torturers. My PCs had to fight the sheriff after they took out the Temple.

My PCs, after debating whether they wanted to just torch the town, settled on bringing in clerics of Desna and a couple other deities from the major temples over at Carrion Hill, and requested a replacement mayor from Thrushmoor. Horace Croon agreed to handle running the town until a suitable replacement arrived.

(It's worth keeping in mind that most of the people of Illmarsh aren't actually evil - it's a mostly (chaotic) neutral settlement with some really horrible people in it.)

@ Kalindlara -

Spoiler:

The skum actually accepting redemption surprises me. But due to their status as genetically engineered aboleth soldiers, I'd rule skum as "hardwired" evil, just like red dragons.

[Sundakan]

My PCs were rightfully annoyed at the brainwashed a$#+%%#s in the town, and left after slaughtering everything down there in the Skum tunnels and every member of the temple they could find.

Given the way everyone was super into the cult, I have to imagine nothing but bad things resulted for the villagers from this, psychologically.

[Rakshaka]

I played the cultists up as dim-witted followers of traditions that they had never bothered to question, making some of them even pleasant to a degree despite the overwhelming need for them to satiate themselves on their demonic religion and sacrifice the un-believers to the drowned one. It created enough of a morally dubious quandary within the game (if a person does something evil out of ignorance, does that make them evil, etc.) that my players decided not to go the route other groups have gone (murder-fest). Its important in my opinion to make the people of Illmarsh as human as possible- that way when the wrongness of what happens to them occurs (color-bleached woman) it makes it all the more grounded in reality and thus horrifying.

[Yossarin]

I was a bit surprised at the reaction of my players to the citizens of Illmarsh, though I should not have been, in retrospect. When they first strolled into town, they had sympathy for the community because of the way the mayor explained Illmarsh's circumstances. When they caught him being less than forthcoming about details, suspicion took root and by the time they uncovered the entire conspiracy they were disgusted with pretty everyone from Illmarsh either for being complicit in the grotesque arrangement with the skum or turning a blind eye to it.

By no means were they the party to raze a town for their sins, but they all admitted before the close of the book that the town's transgressions ran so deep and so long that there would likely never be any justice to be had.

So...

Spoiler:

...I arranged it in such a way that the mi-go were almost entirely successful in summoning Shub-Niggurath in all of her incomprehensible glory during the final confrontation. The party could see signs of something awful filling the lake outside the dome, gigantic eyes filled with madness that pressed menacingly against the glass and hairy tentacles writhing like malevolent seaweed. On the surface, the poor people of Illmarsh were subjected to seeing Shub Niggurath for all of maybe thirty seconds as she rose from the water.

When the party returned to town, the village was mostly intact but the villagers had lost their minds. A shopkeep greeted them from behind his counter, but couldn't produce any product for them because he had torn out his own eyes. Several people at the local tavern had bashed their own skulls in against the walls. Others babbled or shivered, inconsolable, or just laughed in the absence of any other rational response.

The party felt justice had been done, and they even escorted a large portion of the community all the way to Caliphas to have them committed in the asylum there. Now that I have read Strange Aeons, there is the "Illmarsh Maddening" to accompany the "Thrushmoor Vanishing", just to round out the Versex County travel guide.

[walter mcwilliams]

Skeleman wrote:

I've just finished wrapping up book 4, and to put it lightly, it was not the favorite for either myself or my players. Their characters were especially upset at the attitudes of the Illmarshers all around. They managed to leave (barely) without burning the entire place down and hunting down the Sherriff for his head. I'm curious how this setting and events played out with other groups. I'm also interested in hearing how other characters handled the fallout in the town and the political vacuum caused by the removal of the church and the mayor.

Then it should be your favorite! That's exactly the reaction it generated in our party! We hated that place, and it's that installment which which stayed with us the most through the entire AP.

In our AP - Our gnome alchemist lost his sanity completely during this AP and carried and had intimate discussions with mayor greely's brain for the rest of the AP!

In the end, I believe our Life Oracle of Pharsama who was a no nonsense, straight laced, victorian midwife returned following our defeat of the WW to try and help the survivors.

But yeah! This was the highlight book for us and we still talk about it today three years later!

[Peregrino Gris]

A Illmarshers, yes my player too wanted to burn that place to the ground and kill every last one of its inhabitants, it was fun.

Spoiler:

One of my players was a LN cleric of Pharasma, so he sent a detailed report to the bishop of the region, who command and sent a contingent of inquisitors to "cleaned" and "purify" the town. Thanks to the authority provided be Ravens Head the cleric made sure that they put the proper attention to certain townsfolks.