So... my crew has just finished the glassworks. I've got a few side stories going alongside the main plot... (Such as: A contingent of physicians is in town from the Magnimar Physicians Collective due to a recent epidemic scare. Essentially, someone has tampered with Blackscour and turned it viral. Ties into a PC's backstory.) ...and my creative twitch alerted me to a possibility I haven't seen explored before. I'm hesitant to make such a grand stroke to the plot, but it seems so... perfect. I also realize that it could even be put in as a minor thing, coming to fruition around book 5 or 6.
But I'm tempted to simply make Big K an antagonist to the greater threat, fighting over territory with a foe that he himself has trouble locating and tracking.
But anyway, my idea is this:
Kendra Deverin was murdered some years ago, possibly around the time of the Chopper murders and before the great fire, and her likeness was stolen by the recently awakened Runelord Azlanist. Azlanist herself now masquerades as Mayor Deverin of Sandpoint, pulling strings from behind scenes and even pushing the PC's to foil Big K while she builds power undetected. She, rather than him, may in fact be responsible for all the Wrath killings in the region stoking the runewells. She may have just as large a plot to reclaim all the lands she held prior to the cataclysm.
Or she might just be a little deeper than that. I've yet to really plot it all out. Which is why I'm here.
If anyone on this forum can aid me with advice or criticism or wild speculation, I would be grateful. It seems like an idea with legs, but in the end it may simply be too convoluted to really pull off.
Thank you in advance. I've already gotten such great ideas for this game from this forum, and my players seem just as entertained and excited by them.
A couple cautionary notes...
1. The fate/role of the Runelords are part of other published material from Paizo including two other AP's - Shattered Star and, the currently in progress, Return of the Runelords. Moving Runelords into alternate roles may impact your ability to use those products in the future. Assuming you care about those kinds of continuity issues...
2. This is much more my personal opinion so discard it as needed but these kind of ideas always strike me as sounding better on paper than they prove to be in practice. They always sound cool to the GM but to the players? Not so much. Why? Well, will you give the pc's a chance to figure it out ahead of time? And what happens if they do? They end up in a direct encounter with a super high CR creature well before they're capable of dealing with it? And if you don't give them a chance (give them clues) then you essentially lied to them for the entire campaign before pulling the annoying "Gotcha!" It's likely the players/pc's won't learn enough about Runelords, etc. for the story to make sense at all until Book 5 or 6, so the entire campaign will be run before your reveal has weight or meaning.
3. I'd point out two other plot challenges:
a. Mayor Deverin has a critical, if under explained role, in the AP. She's the point of contact that keeps the pc's engaged in the events in Sandpoint. And for the entire AP to work (at least as written) the pc's need to care about Sandpoint and want to come back to it again and again as it goes through various forms of peril. If the pc's/players start being suspicious of her, that's going to make their connection with Sandpoint more challenging to maintain.
b. A functioning and independent Alaznist would not be wasting her time in a (relatively) unimportant backwater like Sandpoint and would instead be exploring the structures of Book 5 (to cut down on spoilers) where she can get real power, including the very same things that motivates the pc's to explore said structures. Also she knows exactly where <primary location of Book 6> is and could proceed directly there and <do bad things to Primary AP Antagonist #1> well before said Antagonist is ready to deal with them. And she has even more motivation to do so than the pc's ever will.
Thank you for your input. I appreciate the nod to the direction of established lore. That was the next place I was gonna look for information to adapt.
That being said, the greatest and most powerful quality of a traitor in a narrative is not his own, but the trust that is given to him or her.
I think a Runelord (or anyone for that matter) out of time and with an ounce of caution would take great pains to work in shadows until greater knowledge of the situation is had.
Wrath, while often brash and given to immediacy, is also the slow burning fire driving the colder and more calculated acts of revenge. (See also: The Count of Monte Cristo)
Sure, a creature gifted with such strength as the runelords embody may find it easy to traipse across the continent gathering power and exploring Willy nilly all the places of lore and strength, but consider the Palpatine play, or Edmund Dantes and his long requited designs. A greater goal realized would require a greater amount of preparation and caution.
Hell, she may even have already explored and consolidated what she desired from those places, returning to her simple, but excellently placed station.
Also, for the record, I do plan to ignore most of the other supplementary material. I only have ROTR and don't plan to interject much else but things I've homebrewed with my players. Currently, I'm soaking up the supplementary lore and finding it a wonderful sandbox in which to play and build.
I honestly think most of the prepared story past book four or five will go out the window. I have three players who've been a part of Runelords before (one who's run it as GM) and I want to construct a unique experience for them.
I agree that the Palpatine thing may be hard to pull off, especially in the very heart of the AP, but that is why I made this thread. To find like minded folk and make this more feasible.
More and more, as my group and I play this game, they are seeming to enjoy and crave narrative depth rather than point-and-click bad guys.
Also, as another point of interest, I have never run a campaign out of a box before. This is the first. It's hard for me to color inside the lines.
Your second post provides insight not obvious in your first. Deconstructing the material from the AP and building your own story is an awesome thing to do if you have the ambition but much harder for thread readers to effectively respond to. All we share is the framework of the published material - if you're coloring outside the lines, it's hard for us to know which lines are still important to you and which one's are irrelevant. Had I seen both posts, I would not have wasted your time with my answer which is pretty off base given your clarification in the second. I thought you were asking for which roads to take to the nearest McDonald's and you were actually asking for help building a new helicopter. :)
Oh yeah. A troop transport helicoptor. With massive subwoofers for blasting a heavy metal version of Flight of the Valkyries while the twin submachine guns do their work.
I will spend some time shortly detailing more of what I'm looking for as the idea behind it comes together. Maybe someone else can use elements of it in another game.
I initially posted this because the guy I usually use as a sounding board for my hair-brained schemes is also now one of my players. As is my wife who does the same job from time to time.
I'm left wandering the corridors of my house mumbling like a mad hermit to myself and asking my four year old if she remembers the ability mods for goblins as she rolls her eyes and asks me for chocolate milk and to stop being weird.