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Here's where you get to GM your world. First, I don't understand why the council would be OK with letting her go. This seems like a horrible mischaracterization when dealing with someone that literally cut off the livelihood of the entire town. But, that's all water under the bridge at this point.
Meyanda needs to follow her motivations. She was working for Hellion, so she would certainly return to Hellion.
Now you need to decide what Hellion will do with Meyanda. Does he reward her for returning with information about this group of adventurers that are most assuredly heading their way? Or does he punish her for failing to keep the power converter operating?
I'd recommend picking a spot to drop Meyanda into Hellion's group. You could put her at a halfway point in the module or just save her for somewhere near the end. Her return should have some dramatic impact and perhaps even be a surprise for the players who so foolishly let her escape.
I would adjust some of the tactics and encounters in the book as the Lords of Rust now have a lot of information they can use against the PCs.
There are a lot of things you can do with it and make it fun. Your players' actions should have consequences and impacts upon the storyline and this is one of those times.
[b]PFRPGrognard is giving you the right advice in this situation.
The problem is similar to the scenario where she somehow escapes the PCs.
My players have agreed to let Meyanda go back to Scrapwall (along with her pistol and the disabled/disconnected power transmitter from the reactor). They held a court session with the Torch council in which they convinced them that letting her go was the best course of action.
I am still at a loss to understand how the players came up with this idea. I might understand the players not wanting to see her executed, but letting her go?
I see Meyanda as returning to Scrapwall with the power transmitter. She is the high priest of Hellion after all and still loyal to him.
The best clue as to the reaction of Hellion is on page 30 of Lords of Rust:
N. Receiver Array (CR 6)
Until quite recently, this site was the base of a gang of chokers who had become obsessed with the worship of Hellion, for it was here, in the twisted ruins below an immense receiver dish that was once a part of a larger communications array, that Hellion chose to first make its presence known. At that time, the complex was already the lair of a large band of chokers, and the sudden emergence of a strange voice from the very walls of their home was a shock for them. The chokers began to follow the voice’s commands, and as some of their number grew devout enough, they gained the ability to cast divine spells. Thus the Thralls of Hellion were born.Unfortunately for the chokers, Hellion chose them as the guardians of something entirely beyond their power to defend. The receiving array was where the AI had Meyanda beam power from Torch, and agents of the Lords of Rust came daily to swap out batteries and carry fully charged replacements back to the depths of the buried excavator, analogous to slowly but steadily filling an impossibly deep well. When the PCs disrupted this plan by defeating Meyanda, the chokers panicked and tried to cover up the loss of power, but Hellion had already learned of the development. The Thralls of Hellion, its first group of devoted worshipers, became a convenient outlet for the AI’s frustration and anger, and it sent the Lords of Rust to scour them from Scrapwall.
Thus, Hellion sounds angry about the disruption of the power supply and eager to take out his anger on anyone who might be at fault.
However, Peter Acs is the GM. He can (and I believe "should") override the module when that would make the campaign more fun for the players. What would be the most interesting way to encounter Meyanda again? She could be slowly tortured in the Scrapmaster’s Arena (area Q1) to gain the party's sympathy. She could be a respected sub-boss besides Helskarg, Nalakai, and Kulgara in the Lords of Rust ready to make life miserable for the party. She could be performing menial work to earn her place in the Lords of Rust again. She could show up just as the party is about to fool the Lords of Rust and say, "No, I've met those people. They are from Torch." She could have been sent off to Iadenveigh or the Choking Tower in the 3rd module to seek a new power source and make life more complicated for the party there. She could have been sent to steal a power source from the Technic League and be found as their prisoner in the 5th module.
Or another weird idea is that Meyanda could be totally professional She could arrange to buy power from Torch. The town rents out the torch to customers. How about she pay for a block of time and use that time to turn off the torch and send power to Scrapwall? She would have to make arrangements with Hellion in order to find enough wealth to buy the power. The party could accompany her. That would require totally rewriting the 2nd module. I have pulled off such rewrites myself, but only after I had three years of experience as a GM.
In my own campaign, the party captured Meyanda alive and turned her over to the town council. The town council improvised a cell in a basement of a councillor's mansion, because they did not want any Technic League spies to know about her. She escaped from the cell some time later and would have shown up in Scrapwall when her appearance made sense for the plot. It never did, so instead, she showed up after the death of Hellion had altered her. Her cleric levels had been transformed into oracle levels with the apocalypse mystery and wasting curse, and she was concerned with leading the loyal remnants of the Lords of Rust out of Scrapwall. Her sole purpose there was to emphasize that Hellion had actually been some kind of god.
Hi all, I'm running Iron gods for the first time and need a bit of advice.
My players have agreed to let Meyanda go back to Scrapwall (along with her pistol and the disabled/disconnected power transmitter from the reactor). They held a court session with the Torch council in which they convinced them that letting her go was the best course of action.
This is despite the fact that she is completely unrepentant, refuses to engage with the human members of the party and has outright told them that she will go back to Hellion to continue the work of trying to usher in an age of machines. She has been unwaveringly blunt with them. She convinced the party cleric that letting her go would be a professional courtesy.
The only things she had going for her is that she is helping them get the reactor going long enough to re-power the decontamination chamber and heal Khonnir, and that she said that turning off the torch was nothing personal against the residents of the town and that she hadn't gone out of her way to hurt anybody. Which is technically true.
So now that she's safely going back to Scrapwall and Torch is on high alert against future such incursions, what would she do next?
So why is the reactor turned off below Torch? Aren't any of the PCs willing or able to restore power? I don't see Torch being OK with their livelihood being stripped away by a psychotic zealot like Meyanda. Surely Khonnir and Brother Kyte could get it running again. Did I miss something in an earlier post?
Peter Acs, what happened in your game with Sanvil Trett? If he's still active I could totally see him getting in touch with Meyanda and trying to sell her on an alliance with the Technic League. Mind you, if she's as honest with him as she was with the PCs it will be a setup so that he can find out about this Hellion entity, who is obviously a threat to the League.
Okay, then.
If Meyanda mentioned Scrapwall, you can try having the town council get increasingly nervous over the course of 2-3 weeks about her threats, and make the reward offer from the start of Lords of Rust to check out/deal with any potential danger to Torch ("Just in case"), in addition to Joram Kyte's request to contact Dinvaya (he should have no trouble convincing the party cleric to do it as a professional courtesy, right?)
If Scrapwall didn't come up, it gets trickier. Garmen Ulreth probably knows that Meyanda came from Scrapwall and might sell that information to the town council - if so, you might want to knock 500 GP off the reward offered to the PCs. ;)
So I didn't read the whole thread just the OP but here is my suggestion.
IF given the chance to get back to scrapwall 1 of 2 things are going to happen. She is allowed back in but do to her failure which the Lords and Hellion know about by this point because they stopped receiving power she will be demoted or punished and would make a decent encounter in areas Q-T in book two with some minions.
Situation 2; Due to her failure Hellion revokes her divine power and either kills or tortures her. If the latter the PC's can come upon her and free her and prove that they were right about Hellion being bad and or a false god and gain her as an ally.
Actually I have though of a few more. Situation 3; She returns is punished for her failure however through a show of force she bests Kulgara in single combat and manages to keep her position as Hellions prime Cleric. Meyanda and Hellion redouble their effort to claim energy from torch and decide on an aggressive approach sending more troops to guarantee their success. If the PC's don't make it to scrapwall before this force leves Torch is in trouble and may even encounter some of these forces on the road to scrapwall. If they do get to Scrapwall before this plan goes into action Make random encounters in scrapwall more common and recreate the Thralls of Hellion gang bolstering its forces with Ratfolk and Orcs besides the chokers and have them report directly to Meyanda.
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Situation 2; Due to her failure Hellion revokes her divine power and either kills or tortures her. If the latter the PC's can come upon her and free her and prove that they were right about Hellion being bad and or a false god and gain her as an ally.
In my opinion, this is the most likely and most interesting outcome. :)
Maybe just have her completely change her ways after Hellion is destroyed? After all, I assume this would make all her cleric powers and the like stop working so there would be no point in continuing her current life.
Wouldn't that destroy the current personality of Meyanda? Why would she consent to what amounts to her murder? Of course if the PCs are evil then there is no problem.
I mean while we know that the "cannon" ending has Casandalee become the new Iron God I don't think there is any reason Meyanda couldn't have the divinity drive installed into her and have her become the next Iron God if your players like her that much. The AP lets the party and GM have some freedom in how they use the emotion chips. In theory a party could join up with Hellion and help him become the Iron God and take out Casandalee and Unity.