Party Composition:
N Tiefling Occultist (Construct Collector) 3
N Android Medium (Reincarnated Medium) 3
NG Half-elf Investigator (Scavenger) 3
CG Half-orc Ranger (Guildbreaker) 3
So, half the party is fairly tech savvy and morally ambivalent. The Ranger opened the door to the reactor core without really thinking about it or consulting the rest of the party, after they were already drained of resources and half dead from slogging through Meyanda’s minions. Meyanda and her collector robot made quick work of them, and they surrendered with all the party in single digit HP and the Ranger staggered at 0.
The Occultist and the Medium expressed a genuine interest in learning more about Hellion, so Meyanda gathered them all up in the navigation control room for a sermon. After expounding her story and beliefs, the both of them were on board to follow her back to Scrapwall and meet Hellion for themselves and possibly swear their devotion.
The other two are not so keen on that plan, but are acting compliant because there’s not much else they can do (especially since Meyanda healed Gruethur back up). They actively want to escape, although the Investigator is at odds with his own curiosity.
What I’m thinking of doing is having Meyanda prove their potential loyalty to her and to Hellion by serving as guards to replace the ones that they slew. Clearly, they are more powerful than her prior guards. This would give her motivation to help heal them up, and she’s fairly easily misled since she’s an android. This would also help to give some exposition on the reactor core, as the techy curious ones would want to have a hand in it.
So, I have a general idea of what will happen, this is just a completely unexpected turn of events. I’m open to suggestions and experiences to make this cool for my players and give them options that make sense. I really want to empathize them (more than they already are) to Meyanda for some serious stockholm syndrome roleplay.
Remember that the mission given to the party by the town of Torch was to retrieve Khonnir Baine. Restoring the torch to its previous function is not their mission, unless they accepted it as a second mission.
One problem is that guard duty will be uneventful for about one week. That will be dull for the players. Then excitement arrives when Torch sends another expedition into the caves. Stopping that expedition will also be a moral quandary, because it will probably be lead by Khonnir Baine, the wizard the PCs rescued. The outcome of that conflict will be unpredictable, so Maeve Agreste will have to prepare for many possibilites, such as the PCs winning, the PCs losing, the PCs joining Khonnir and turning against Meyanda, or the PCs negotiating a truce between Khonnir and Meyanda.
Another possibility is to declare Fires of Creation over. Meyanda sends them to Scrapwall to begin Lords of Rust. She is worried about the growing instablity in the reactor and now has some technologically savvy minions to send to consult with Hellion about it. However, being allied with Meyanda twists the plot of Lords of Rust. You could restore the plot somewhat by having the Smilers break their alliance with the Lords of Rust so that they will still be adversaries and will actively try to stop the party from reaching Hellion.
For The Choking Tower and later modules, allying with Meyanda and Hellion won't change much. They can still be on a mission to find Casandalee, but this time the mission will be from Hellion rather than for themselves. And they will still have to face the Technic League in Palace of Fallen Stars and Unity in The Divinity Drive. The party will be short a level or two from lack of XP because they did not battle Hellion, but a few side quests can fix that.
Thank you for the response, mapping out the ripple effect of these decisions was something I was working on next, and your suggestions seem like they would work well! I’m expecting them to break their alliance of convenience, but if they follow through with Meyanda and Hellion that would be a good way of handling it.
I'm dealing with a similiar situation in my own run, but the players have already destroyed the power transmitter; forcing Meyanda into an awkward position where she plans to bring the party to Scrapwall and attempt to reconvense with Hellion.
But, I was considering the fact that Hellion is insane, and almost certainly does not tolerate failure. So I'm thinking he will turn against Meyanda; intending to kill her and the PCs.