Curious as to how people may have developed the Sczarni in their Sandpoint. Looking for ideas.
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Haven't done much but the Sczarni have shown their face a little. Mostly used him to torment our paladin. I dropped a few rumours that he was involved in criminal activity, had a guy caught stealing during a certain incident involving 'T' say Vhiski put him up to it.
Paladin recklessly goes to confront him and eventually Hemlock had to arrest the paladin for harassing a 'legitimate business man' - shared frustrations, a telling off for making him defend Vhiski, and a quiet word about having to be smarter and the need for evidence and he was let go but still a sore point...
There is more information in the Jade Regent Adventure Path Players Guide.
Ameiko and Shalelu are fully statted out, as well as tips for trying to romance all four NPCs (Sandru, Koya, Ameiko, and Shalelu).
Finally, Ameiko is tied to Sandru and the death of the youngest of the Vhiskis, in the adventure that led her to retire from adventuring and settle down in the Rusty Dragon.
Jubrayl Vhiski himself is only slightly mentioned, but there is a fair amount of information related to him in three of the four entries.
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I had an idea, considering one of my PCs picked a Campaign Trait where he owed a favour to the Sczarni: Jubrayl treats him like a friend, but asks him to do a couple of innocuous, yet suspicious, things in Sandpoint. Using him as a go-between or causing a diversion, or something.
Then the player ditched the AP due to classes, so I sent a private message to the NE PC that the character who left to marry Shayliss introduced her to Jubrayl, who offered her the opportunity to never have to resort to anything out of desperation again. All he'd ask for in return would be something he'd think of later. She happily took him up on his offer.
Then that player also had to leave, so I threw up my hands and decided every single PC is going to have a mob debt!
The group decided to climb up the Glassworks so that everyone could peek through the skylights, and who should show up, but this goatee-sporting Varisian guy with a fancily-tailored outfit under masterwork studded leather, asking them what they were doing and promising not to tell anyone if they'd drop by for dinner and visit him sometime. Also, the new player's character is actually a kitsune, and Jubrayl's the only one who knows (and is playing up Sandpoint's propensity for gossip to stop him from realizing that the worst that will happen is that everyone will get really nosey at him). Though the kitsune guy's the only one who knows what the Sczarni actually is, much less that Jubrayl's a part of it.
I just want at least one of the players worried about getting blackmailed into smuggling or something. Then, when Book 2 happens, he gets to be a red herring, asking the PCs to stop all this (meaning to find the perpetrator and convince them to stop somehow). Hopefully, someone will suspect him, up until the point when he becomes the next victim.
I introduced Jubrayl very early and he's a constant side quest ever since. (we're now halfway trough book 4)
One thing I made sure of was that Jubrayl was smart enough to lead organized crime without getting arrested and, learning from my research of constantly watching the Godfather trilogy, gave him a strong and solid motive of 'looking after the Varisians in town, since nobody else does'.
That motive is of course not entirerly true, but it's - to him - no lie either.Andthat is of course true for all Jubrayl has done so far. Never lying, but never telling the truth at the same time, trying to get the best out of every situation for him or the Sczarni. He's an opportunist in my campaign, sometimes helping the PC's out of situations with seemingly no cost at all.
Does my group trust him? Of course not. They hate him, trying to find a way to bring him to justice. But so far he hasn't done anything that he couldn't negotiate away or that he couldn't reasonably explain with 'It's better for the Varisian community that way'.
When they found evidence after the ** spoiler omitted ** that ** spoiler omitted ** he provided evidence, that he has nothing to do with it at all and that those Sczarni responsible for it will be punished the Sczarni way (and it was all ** spoiler omitted ** fault anyway)
http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2oe16?Has-anyone-touched-on-Jubrayl-Vhiski-as-a n
update: with my group now on lvl. 13 I realize that Jubrayl sooner or later realizes that he's no match for them and he currently actively helps them rebuilding their destroyed Sandpoint home, even activated the Sczarni to lend a hand. Nevertheless, the day when he'll ask for a favor in return is near.
There's a Sandpoint NPC guide out here somewhere that fleshes out the Sczarni (and other Sandpoint groups) and I used that to create minor intrigues around the pc's after Book 1 - people following them around etc. But...
Some rivalry between the local thieve's guild and the town sheriff over the local brothel paled in comparison when a ghoul contagion erupted in the farmlands outside of town and someone started performing human sacrifices.
Events rapidly carried the group out of Sandpoint to Magnimar and points beyond and the local Sczarni became pretty unimportant. By the time they returned and repelled the giant attack, the pc's found the papers implicating him and Titus in the mill burning. The Mayor arrested Titus immediately and she and the Sheriff asked for help rounding up Jubrayl. He escaped for about a day but then was captured.
I wrote up a little scene where Titus protested his arrest, the Mayor said she had declared martial law, he challenged her right to do that and she screamed at him that a dragon burning her town the ground gave her every right. She then told Hemlock to pummel Titus unconscious if he spoke again. He started to and Ameiko, who was standing nearby and well past tolerating his crap, 1-2'd him. The Mayor of Magnimar, a few other nobles and a couple Justices came to Sandpoint to see the giant attack damage first hand. Titus and Jubrayl were sentenced to the Hells, the Scarnetti Sandpoint holdings seized and the rest of the family "exiled" back to Magnimar.
http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2oe16?Has-anyone-touched-on-Jubrayl-Vhiski-as-a n
Thanks for the link. That's a good thread.
I did a whole bunch of subplots and intrigue.
The way I started the relationship was.. when the PCs returned from the Catacombs of Wrath, our fighter started waving his new magic sword around. It got seen, and that night it was stolen. The PCs had to track it down... leading to the Sczarni.
Here's a guide I made with the Sczarni fleshed out some more
Sandpoint guide
So it sits empty while the local economy starts to struggle.
The Sczarni, however, see a big opportunity. Importing support from Magnimar, they hatch a plan to replace key people with Faceless Stalkers (the mayor, Ameiko, Hemlock) and put a glassmaker they control in charge of the glassworks.
They control this man by holding his wife and children "hostage" - meaning all the staff in his house are sczarni. One slip up and his family is gone.
Their ultimate plan is to re-open the glassworks, and indeed all of Sandpoint, as a smuggling hub for Varisia.
If the players can foil the plot and rescue the glassmaker's family - they also have a loyal craftsman who would be happy to take it over as a legitimate business, much to the relief of Ameiko and the mayor.
It fit rather well spread across the aftermath of Burnt Offerings and then the latter half of Skinsaw Murders.
quick update on my group: since they neaded downtime between books 4 and 5 I changed things around a little bit to give them two weeks in Sandpoint between returning from Jorgenfist and the opening of the sinkhole (without changing too much storywise, the earthquake and Scribbler's awakening still happend at the same time, but the sinkhole appeared after two other earthquakes that happened when two Lamias in Janderhoff were found and executed) This of course meant that the city guard weren't the first to investigate the hole and stumble upon the Scribbler.
As I've written before, my group developed a love/hate relationship with Jubrayl, but since they're now at a power level, where the whole Sczarni organization is no longer a threat in any way and I ran out of clever schemes for Jubrayl, I decided to switch things a little bit around and had the Sczarni clear the closed smuggler tunnels at night while at day working on Chopper's Isle were they helped the group build a casino. (with all Varisian employees, so that they don't have to resort to illegal ways of financing their lifes) I short: It were the Sczarni who stumbled upon the Scribbler and whose bodies were found in his lair.
On top of that, the body in A10 was Jubrayl's. Yeah, I killed him off, because it was a character, the group was now clearly attached too, I had troubles finding new ways to utilize him and I thought it would make the Scribbler more evil if he killed a character the group spent some time with than a city guard they never really interacted before.
What I didn't expected though was that my group actually decided to reincarnate Jubrayl. The reasoned that a) this gives them a leverage against him, b) he'd be in their debt, c) he is a very important person for the Varisian community and it is good to show them that the Heroes of Sandpoint care for the ethnical minorities in Sandpoint too and d) if we use the 'unofficial' reincarnation list from d20pfrsd he might reincarnate into something funny.
So I opened the list and let the Shaman who casted the spell roll the dice. Jubrayl is now a Kitsune.
(We have a Kitsune in the group of course, the only one who's lawful good and wanted Jubrayl arrested for anything they could find solid evidence for from day one. She's also young, beautiful and the only female Kitsune in the area. So yeah, a lot of possibilites opened up for me, once the group returns from the Runeforge)
But this also means, since our plans include for me to GM Jade Regent after we finished RotRL, CotCT and SD, that I'll certainly use him instead his brother in that AP since he now thematically fits ways better.
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He's there as a contact point/ally/foil for more "criminal underworld" type PCs.
In one of my Runelords games, he played a role in a couple of segue adventures I'd written between the events of Burnt Offerings and Skinsaw Murders...
I had Vishki approach one of the less-heroic PCs to make an offer: Volunteer to take over the tunnel guard duty, and then let his Sczarni smugglers come and go. He would then reward the PC with money and access.
After that plot came to light, the PCs brought in the authorities. Vishki was able to weasel his way out of any legal action, but the tunnels became closed to him. He then sent some heavies after the PCs to try to chase them out of town, but that didn't work, either.
And later, Vishki turned up dead as one of the Skinsaw Murders: The Skinsaw Man left him as a "gift" for the paladin PC by eliminating a notorious criminal.