"Evil Interlude"


Hell's Rebels


I have been listening to an actual play podcast of Carrion Crown where for Halloween they did an "Evil interlude" where the players made evil characters who were Whispering Way inductees

It made me think that this could be a fun idea for if I don't have a full set of players for this game. Perhaps I could then use who they make as some Lieutenants in Book 4. Or use the interlude as a way of giving the lieutenants like Trax, Kyrre, Tiarise more exposure...

The problems I am having:

- The nature of Barzillai's takeover and activities are quite secretive and also restrictive. Indeed any evil PCs would probably be quite restrictive in scope

- Exposure to some NPCs might result in quite heavy spoilers

Does anyone have any ideas? Perhaps some kind of Night of Ashes prequel where the players crack down on dissident elements?

Or is this something that doesn't really fit due to the more narrow focus of this game

Acquisitives

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

So... let's say you want to have an evil one shot to flesh out some of the stuff for the campaign - I think if it's a one-shot, you'd want to have MAXIMUM FUN and different stuff.

One option - and I think it's probably fun -

Spoiler:

is you know that middle part of Book 6, where the PCs go underneath the city? And there's all these weird super-powered monsters down there?

Well... the text explicitly says that Barzillai didn't go down there alone. He had help.

BE THE HELP.

The one shot is at like... 16th level. You get to be super-powered villains. The best guys that Barzillai's got.

No dinking around with 1d6 damage. Nope. You are a deathdealing whirl of blades. A high champion of hellknights. A binder of great devils. A master of death.

And it's not like you have to worry about them living... so... yeah. And Paizo's even provided a map of the action.

When your players get down there in a year or so, they'll be like... oh... we did this... but... oh no!!!!

Just a thought.


Why not just have scenes from Hell's Vengeance?


roguerouge wrote:
Why not just have scenes from Hell's Vengeance?

Hells Vengeance actually seems quite removed from the plot of Hells Rebels from what I can see. It happens the opposite end of the country

Shadow Lodge

Lanathar wrote:
roguerouge wrote:
Why not just have scenes from Hell's Vengeance?
Hells Vengeance actually seems quite removed from the plot of Hells Rebels from what I can see. It happens the opposite end of the country

Cheliax isn't all that large.

But I quite like Yakman's idea, and Hell's Vengeance is mostly regarded as a weaker AP than Hell's Rebels, so I'm not gonna fight for this one too hard.


My theory with Hell's Vengeance is that you can ditch a lot of it, which makes it more useable as a sub-plot to a HR game. As for it's use, I suppose I like the idea more since I'm planning on ditching the final arc of book 6 and planning on allowing the PCs to try to intervene in Westcrown. Foreshadowing their post-script antagonists would be a good thing at my table.


Is the intention to support the plot, reveal the plot or confound the plot?

Yakman's idea would reveal items about the plot - the players would have to be told something about why they are there. And would give the players intimate knowledge about future enemies - classes, magic items, etc.

Introducing Hell's Vengeance creates other problems - is this supposed to tie-in with the AP? Players will look for connections even if there aren't supposed to be any. Paizo went to considerable lengths to keep the two AP's completely separate and unentangled with each other (we can perhaps debate the plausibility of that at another time.) If you start running portions of each, you'll drive entangling them to the top of your players' minds. "Hey, these Glorious Reclamation guys would make great allies - how do we get in contact with them?" This, for instance, would be why Hell's Rebels comes first in the publishing order.

Also, don't underestimate player ability to derail the plan. Unintentionally of course :) They don't know how it's "supposed" to turn out. Take Yakman's idea - the AP narrative assumes all of the "good guys" are eliminated. But your players won't know that - what if they don't care if someone runs away or choose to use mercy? Survivors would make for some continuity challenges later - "Hey what about those guys that ran away - surely they should be around and willing to help us?" The more you prep them against that, the more you're revealing about "the future" and the more you're railroading them. Take an out of plot example: the players get to be some of Tombus' goons cracking down on tieflings in the Devil's Nursery. Imagine this: "I don't care if the entire Nursery burns to the ground! Get rid of this awful blight on our city." The player is just role-playing his character's antagonism toward tieflings. He's evil, that means there aren't any rules, right? But it sure makes a mess of the city for the rest of the AP. Shorter version: when you put pc's on the stage, you give them agency. The game is designed for the pc's to accomplish their goals. Make sure you're comfortable with all the possible ways the players might pursue those goals. And even the goals they might choose/make up.

I've done something like this in the past, but it was in a homebrew situation so if things went sideways the only one inconvenienced was me. Or my ideas about how the campaign was going to go. I wasn't going to be forced to re-write/re-construct books of an AP I was expecting to use. (Which admittedly is an extreme outcome.)


Running a side-quest with different PCs is fine, but using things super connected to the AP or completely separated from the AP will likely have too much of an impact and reveal spoilers or won't mean anything at all. Hell's Rebels is a very well written AP that has consistent things throughout it whereas some of the APs lend more to adding in other adventures. (Eg: Carrion Crown you can play the Winding Way investigating the players or some such thing without actually finding the main PCs, Kingmaker you can have the players play NPCs doing smaller missions, things like that.)

If you want to do a side-quest place it in Vyre and have the players be members of the Skinsaw Cult trying to take out support that the PCs have garnered there. Did the group get Manticce Kaleekii on their side? Have the King of Keys send them on a mission to try to take her out. But then you'll either have to make sure they fail, she escapes at the last moment, have the main PCs do something in the future to gain the support of Vyre... there could be consequences that you'll have to roll with. (That being said, not being able to gain the support of Vyre/having to do something more to gain the support of Vyre due to the side-quest PCs could be entertaining...)
Or have rebellion members in Vyre trying to take out the Skinsaw influence.
Either way, it adds reasons for the cult to be in the AP and can show why the cult shows up in Kintargo later.

Using things out of Hell's Vengeance doesn't seem like it would really work. The AP is only 'connected' to Hell's Rebels in a "here's why the Silver Ravens are able to gain traction and succeed/the rest of Cheliax is too busy to deal with the Silver Ravens" type of way rather than any actual story points.


It sounds like, as suspected, the Hells Rebels plot is tightly knitted in that too many spoilers could be revealed in doing anything like this

I think my thought was more a vehicle to introduce some of the lieutenants a little more to the players and perhaps revealing some of their deeds somehow (e.g. the tooth fairy shenanigans). The sort of things that seem unlikely to ever come out

But doing so whilst avoiding spoilers and avoiding the potential for some massive plot derailing as PCs and gonna PC seems tough


I had actually played around with a similar idea before. In my case, I was going to heavily tweak No Response from Deepmar to serve as a lead in. Though I hadn't played with the concept to far beyond that...

The others in this thread are right about there being a risk of spoiling things or causing paradoxes, though to offer a counterpoint, one of the biggest issues I had in my first run of HR was the lack of foreshadowing of Barzillai's lieutenants. I think there's a balance that can be struck, provided you have a decent amount of versatility and your players are willing to play along with the idea. So long as they're clear on the fact that there are certain rules they must obey (they are Lawful Evil, after all), and you're able to twist things around a bit to fit with the effects of their actions, it can work.

My concept roughly had each player being a subordinate in some capacity to a lieutenant, serving as the ones that do their grunt work. This puts them low enough that you can give them tasks that may have an impact on what the main AP heroes encounter or have to deal with without the following events hinging on their success specifically. For instance, taking down the Torrent armigers or capturing one of the later imprisoned NPCs would be a simple enough mission, but if they fail then the lieutenant can pick up the slack. You can curb more extreme deviations (like killing someone who's supposed to be captured) by having them receive very strict orders (Lawful Evil, so you'd better do as your boss tells you). This also means you don't have to give your players a whole lot of meta knowledge about the lieutenants beyond maybe their core concept and a rough idea of how evil they are.

Thinking on it all again, your biggest advantage that you can play with is the fact that as a LE organisation, Barzillai and his group don't need to have much transparency. As subordinates, his agents could be given specific instructions and very little information about the people they're acting against. This means you can show some events without spoiling them because the players won't necessarily have the context necessary to know who these people are or where this place is until they meet them or get there. By dehumanising the enemies as faceless "rebels", you can focus on characterising the villains. This could also help in instances where you really want to showcase the villainy of the bad guys: to them, all these people were just nameless mooks that needed to be slaughtered/captured. Then when you switch to the rebel's perspective, it makes their crimes that much more heinous. I'd definitely run the various Night of Ashes slaughters this way. Actually I think there's a fight in one of the later Hell's Vengeance books against a party of heroic adventurers that could be re-skinned to be the destruction of the Thrashing Badger and the last stand of the Milanites.

Personally, I also really like Yakman's idea. Something I might do to address the spoilers would be to run it a book or two earlier as a one-shot dungeon crawl, but tell the players nothing about when it takes place, where they are or why they're there. All they need to know is that Barzillai needs some muscle to take out some people that are in his way and get to a thing they're guarding; what it is and why Barzillai needs it is above the PCs' pay grade. That, and don't have them stick around to see the post-death results of what ends up down there so it stays a surprise later. Cut it right as Barzillai finds the thing he's looking for. If played right, all the players will know is that Barzillai found something he needed in a cave at some point. Then when the players finally get to it, they can go "oh THIS is where that was!" It's tricky, but I think it could end up being pretty cool if pulled off right.


So regarding the Night of Ashes - the people we know that are taken down:

Shensen - CR11
Strea - CR9
Porcia - CR7

Thrashing Badger is interesting as it would be odd if there were Milani worshippers stronger than the Rose. But perhaps that is the point - the stronger ones are killed

Is it clarified that Porcia was at home rather than with the archivists? I wonder what her guards could be? Either her manor or the Many Steps could be a way to put in more Scrivenites?

Cloven hoof society can have more tieflings. Silver star could have some divine sarenrae based characters. Although if any of those existed they should lead the sect and not Shensen surely? So just generic people. Not sure how much there would be by way of other threats there...

Which suggests level 8 characters if just using one batch? A bit of a large variation in enemies. It would take some suspension of disbelief to have 3 or 4 people involved in all the key events on the Night

As for post NoA - apprehending the Armigers would be overly easy for any moderately levelled group so I would probably cut that

The caves from Book 6 would be much harder...

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