Corax the lumberjack appears in Encounter B of Book 2, in an argument-devolving-into-violence with a nixie over logging rights.
As written,
- he's abusive, speaking in words "laced with profanities".
- he hates the fey, whom the PCs might have had several positive encounters with at this point. At the least, it's clear there's enough of them about that the kingdom will have to live with them (indeed, Book 2 offers another quest hook about helping a helpful dryad).
- he's prepared to kill his own charmed men rather than lose face in front of his crew. In the absence of PC intervention, he starts the fight.
- he has negative Charisma.
- his desired role is Ruler (which he's spectacularly bad at, thanks to the negative CHA) - the only NPC with this listed as his desired role.
Many of the other would-be councillors (such as Akiros) our group can see heavily depending on the nature of the past interactions with them, but they all seem potentially plausible. With Corax, we found it hard to imagine anyone would sign him up under any circumstances.
So did anyone? Share your Corax-y stories!
Nope. My players killed him.
No one believed us when we showed up and claimed to be the rulers of the area.
We broke up the impending fight, siding with the Nixie somewhat so we could secure the release of the loggers.
The Nixie, Melenasie(?), then charmed one of the party, our Druid I think. So while we were trying to subdue our Druid, Corax attacked her. So we then were trying to subdue everyone but the Nixie, whom we couldn't reach.
I believe Corax lost a few men, the rest fled. Corax himself stormed off madder than a hornet. We used a bunch of Feather Token Trees to pacify the Nixie, now also mad at us.
I don't think we ever saw Corax again, though he probably works at the lumber camp that we set up at the old bandit camp. This evolved into a large lumber camp/fort complex, Fort Bandit Camp.
We named the hex Melenashire, after the nixie, and avoided it for awhile, we were still having to swim across the rivers and didn't want to do so at the hardest section where someone wanted to make it harder.
Our biggest takeaway from it was to be more authoritarian or lordly in our dealing with encounters from then on in hopes of avoiding future fiascos.
We also started paying more attention to the trees, and started replanting and carrying more Tree Tokens everywhere.
The Corax/Melianse encounter was one of my favorites. I tend to play the fey as morally alien to humans, and Melianse is Neutral, which meant while she didn't want to outright harm anything, but she had no qualms about charming them or having others harm the loggers on behalf of her dead trees.
Corax, on the other hand, has to report to his logging bosses (I used a version of the Lumber Consortium in my campaign), he has to keep face in front of his men, and he is somewhat concerned with being a good leader, so he wants his charmed men freed.
To their credit, my PCs tried to resolve the situation with diplomacy. They understood that the loggers didn't realize that they were taking trees from a fae's home, and they also understood that a resident of the land they were trying to colonize was distraught at the death of trees that had been alive for hundreds of years. They got Melianse to agree to release the charmed men and to release the trees that were already cut down to the loggers in return for replacement trees. Unfortunately, the party assumed that Corax would be all for helping to replace the trees, but they never consulted him when they made the deal with Melianse. Corax already had everything he wanted, so he had no reason to risk his men for a faerie. It didn't help that there was a miscommunication during the initial conversation. (PRO-TIP: "Well, we could just kill you, but we won't," is never a good negotiating tactic.) It didn't come to blows, but the loggers didn't leave on the best of terms with my PCs.
Anyway, after all of that, there's no way that Corax would want anything to do with the PC's nation, but I think that Corax is a well thought out, colorful NPC that's easy to use as a long term NPC... just not an entirely friendly one.
Not in my game. My players tricked Corax and his men into fighting the scythe tree, which did not go well for them.