Hey guys, my players are coming up to the mystery box and they don't trust the ambassador at all. I'm hoping that the credits they got offered will be enough to keep their curiosity at bay because I really can't find anything about her. And if they turn him in and want to follow up what happens, I'll be too unsure what to do about it. Unless I've missed something major?
Hebiza Escolar isn't used later. The dev's have already confirmed in another thread that there are no plans for her in upcoming APs. I can confirm for sure that its never explained in AP2-3, and based on the descriptions of 4-6, the players won't be in the Pact Worlds anyway, so it shouldn't matter from there.
It's really up to you how much or how little or what you want for her backstory or reason for being there. I'm personally planning on playing that she's a defector from the corpse fleet delivering intel to Ambassador Nor and everything is on the up and up. But I have no plans on telling my players that, when it comes up.
If you plan on running later AP's though...
Hebiza Escolar isn't used later. The dev's have already confirmed in another thread that there are no plans for her in upcoming APs. I can confirm for sure that its never explained in AP2-3, and based on the descriptions of 4-6, the players won't be in the Pact Worlds anyway, so it shouldn't matter from there.
It's really up to you how much or how little or what you want for her backstory or reason for being there. I'm personally planning on playing that she's a defector from the corpse fleet delivering intel to Ambassador Nor and everything is on the up and up. But I have no plans on telling my players that, when it comes up.
If you plan on running later AP's though...
** spoiler omitted **
Here's a question: how effectively can the corpse fleet have defectors?
We don't have a lot of rules support for magic items yet, but it seems likely that a dedicated caster should be able to eventually produce an item to deliver virtually any spell in the book - the question becomes the price. Price is the overwhelmingly driving factor in how effectively the corpse fleet can afford items to keep their forces in compliance.
The go-to spell is Command Undead, which allows only 1 Will Save per cast, and on a failure, for caster level days, the target intelligent undead can't have an attitude worse than friendly towards the caster. That implies once you've gotten a Command Undead to hold on an intelligent undead, you can keep it up indefinitely, by asking your new friend to decline the save. You'll probably have more non-casters than casters in the fleet, which is why magic items would be the go-to here - you'd need a way to maintain the castings over time across the fleet. If that exists, corpse fleet defectors would be incredibly rare.
Another question is where undead come from. From what I can tell from reading Animate Dead, you can dynamically choose at cast time what you want - there's no indication each different undead takes a different set of materials, so I'm assuming it basically consumes UPBs. If that's how the Corpse Fleet makes its members, defecting is challenging, because created undead can't disobey their creator until their creator creates too much, which frees them, or dies, making the issue immaterial. Animate Dead has a pretty strong limit on creation - a level 20 caster can only have up to 10 CR of created undead under control - but there may be magic items that can improve that limit.
The tl;dr here is that we need more fluff on what it means to be an intelligent undead in Eoxian/Corpse Fleet society before we can explore issues like defectors in depth.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Price is the overwhelmingly driving factor in how effectively the corpse fleet can afford items to keep their forces in compliance.
It wouldn't just be price. You'd also have to consider logistics. A large fleet would need to keep track of everyone's duration and have policies to ensure that everyone reports in for re-brainwashing on time. That's going to make coordinating fleet movement and missions a lot more difficult. I would actually argue that logistics is the bigger problem, because you cannot afford to have half your officers run down to the command undead booth in the middle of battle.
The go-to spell is Command Undead, which allows only 1 Will Save per cast, and on a failure, for caster level days, the target intelligent undead can't have an attitude worse than friendly towards the caster. That implies once you've gotten a Command Undead to hold on an intelligent undead, you can keep it up indefinitely, by asking your new friend to decline the save.
I would argue that command undead is a very bad idea for controlling them. For one major reason and a couple minor ones, it has this line...
An intelligent commanded undead never obeys suicidal or obviously harmful suggestions,
In a military unit, in a time of war (or hell, even just training), I need my officers and enlisted to at least occasionally obey an order that looks (or possibly is) suicidal or obviously harmful. With command undead, they would always just say no, because of that line, even if they would normally be on board.
Moreover, I want my subordinates to be at least occasionally unfriendly toward me. I need them to provide feedback when something is a stupid idea (outside of combat), and I want them honest, not assuming that I have their best interests at heart. I really don't want them to be forced to be on friendly terms with one another. Competition between rivals inside the organization will often lead to increased performance.
It's a much better idea to breed loyalty and general obedience the same way normal military does, through indoctrination and shared experiences.
Finally, and this is just me, but I would doubt that an organization of undead that believe themselves superior to living creatures would even consider this. If mortal military organizations are capable of maintaining general loyalty and obedience without resulting to permanent and repeated magical mind control, why should they? I mean, undead are supposed to be 'better' than people, why should they have to worry about any of that. It would go against the entire reason the corpse fleet defected from Eox in the first place.
If that exists, corpse fleet defectors would be incredibly rare.
I would argue that they're incredibly rare, period, for the same reason that whistleblowers and military defectors are rare in the real world. The structure and modus operandi of a military unit is designed to maximize loyalty and obedience and trust. It takes a lot to overcome that.
Another question is where undead come from. From what I can tell from reading Animate Dead, you can dynamically choose at cast time what you want - there's no indication each different undead takes a different set of materials, so I'm assuming it basically consumes UPBs. If that's how the Corpse Fleet makes its members, defecting is challenging, because created undead can't disobey their creator until their creator creates too much, which frees them, or dies, making the issue immaterial. Animate Dead has a pretty strong limit on creation - a level 20 caster can only have up to 10 CR of created undead under control - but there may be magic items that can improve that limit.
I came away from reading the Gazetteer in AP3 with the impression that, on Eox, the vast majority of 'new' undead spend a period of time in bondage to their creator as payment for the act of turning them into undead. Mortals volunteer for the whole thing, and will gladly spend a century working some mindless task for a bone sage to get effective immortality out of the deal.
My impression of how it worked in the corpse fleet was that most of their intelligent recruits were volunteers from the 'free' undead on Eox. When they captured people and turned them into undead (generally against their will), they usually turned them into mindless undead. If they made intelligent undead this way, they used some period of time of forced compliance (through magical control granted by animate dead) to indoctrinate them into the corpse fleet motif. Once they were 'on board' as it were, they were released to be soldiers just like any other undead.
That's just how I read it, though.
Awesome, thought so thanks for the info guys :)
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Eskolar has no importance later, because it's pretty hard for Paizo to assume it'll be alive. Players can try to kill her in the Acreon. They might not even follow Nor's job offer. My group was thinking about delivering her to Absalom police. Lot of variance to make it appear later, I think.
However, as the GM, you can make assumptions that Paizo can't do in a generic AP. I know my Eskolar survived. So I plan to make her appear again.
I'm pretty much on board with pithica42. I'd say that she is a defector from the Corpse fleet.
Also, in my game, I'm going to make Corpse Fleet to be trying to get the Stellar Degenerator by themselves, not just because they followed the PC and learnt about it. This makes Eskolar pretty important, as she can be the spy that told Ambassador Nor that the Corpse Fleet is trying to get a star-killer weapon.