Hi everyone!
First of all, sorry for my English, it's not my native language.
I'm not a very experienced DM, but after playing Kingmaker on PC, I fell in love with this adventure path.
I'm running a game for 5 players, and we are still in the first chapter. However, I've run into an issue and I'm not sure how to proceed: the cleric of the group acted against his alignment and his deity's beliefs, and I'm not sure what to do about it.
In order to contextualize the situation, here are some informations about the character and what happened.
The player I'm talking about is a young cleric of Desna, with a kinda peculiar background.
He's a Kellid barbarian from Numeria. On a very dry summer, while his tribe was camping near the Sellen River, there was an unexpected flood that destroyed the camp and swept him away.
He regained consciousness in the hands of slavers, but (after some weeks) managed to escape when they were attacked by someone (he did not stick around to check who, he just run away with another captive girl). Being far away from his lands, he tried his best to survive, but ran on hard times. Luckily, they were found by an itinerant elven cleric of Desna, who decided to help them.
Back in his tribe, when in a drunken stupor, he already had a vision of the goddess riding a giant elk in the skies, and he had always tried to see her again, but without any luck. Getting to know the elven cleric, he was introduced by him to the official religion, and, in the following months, became a novice cleric (always clinging to his tribal beliefs on the goddess however). After taking home the other captive girl, they went on in search of his tribe. After getting there however, he discovered that his whole family had been wiped out from the flood, and that only his dear sister's corpse was never found, so he decided to leave the tribe in search of her.
After having a dream from the goddess, the Elven cleric brought him to Restov, where he introduced him to his niece (one of the other players) and asked him to look after her: they would have to join an expedition in the Stolen Lands, and he would be unable to go with them, since he had to join another one of the expeditions (the one led by Maegar Varn).
This more or less is his background.
The rest of the group is as follows (all of them are Chaotic Good):
- An elven mage, niece of the cleric who introduced the player to Desna's cult. When she was very young she eloped with a human mage against her family wishes, and had a child with him. However, her husband was later killed, and her child was lost, pushing her in a decades long depression that stunted her will to learn more (that's why she is still first level). Her whole reason to be in the stolen lands is that her uncle has received a dream hinting that the child could still be alive and in the Stolen Lands.
- A gnome paladin of Cayden Cailean (I allowed him to be paladin despite his alignment, we are using a paladin variant specifically created for Cayden Cailean that we found online). He is a happy go lucky soul who just wishes to see the world and experience it. He comes from Jovvox, a gnome town in Mivon, and joined the cleric in his travel to Restov.
- A human warrior, Aldori Swordlord wannabe, loosely related to the Medvyed family. He is a womanizing troublemaker and he has been sent on this mission by his family, who hopes to gain some economic influence in this new frontier. He has a twin
- A human ranger, twin to the warrior. Unlike his brother, he his more dutiful and quiet. He should act as a balance to his brother, but unfortunately the player is not very experienced and does not interact very much outside of combat :\
Here's what happened:
The group arrived at Oleg's, and defeated most of the bandits, taking some as prisoners. They convinced one of them to guide them to their camp on the Thorn River, and they again managed to easily ambush and overwhelm them. Some of the bandits were captured again, but some managed to escape, and regrouped in the following days with the bandits that were not in the camp at the time (however they did not reach out to the Stag Lord, fearing his anger over their failure).
The group decided to show mercy on most of the bandits, giving them a chance to repent: they would be pardoned, on the condition of working at Oleg's for a time, under their scrutiny, being granted just food and lodging.
While they were out adventuring however, the other bandits attacked Oleg's, and despite the presence of Garess and his soldier, managed to break the defences thanks to the betrayal of one of the repentant bandits. A border patrol from Brevoy arrived just in time to repel them, but they did lots of damage, and escaped with most of the player's riches that they had left at the fort.
When they came back to the fort, the players were obviously outraged, and immediately started to pursue the bandits. Thanks to the stellar performance of the group's tracker, they managed to follow them easily, and caught up with them at an isolated farm that the group had already previously visited. Here, the bandits had killed the old couple still living there, and entrenched in the farm as their last defence. After a heated fight, the players managed to defeat them. However, one of the bandits, the falsely repentant one who had opened the doors of Oleg's to the others, tried to escape with the players riches.
The cleric player, being the one in the better position to do it, chased him on horse and finally caught him. He then angrily proceeded to castrate him, carefully healing him in order to be sure that he suffered the whole procedure, and finally killed him.
In hindsight I know the goddess should not have granted him the healing spell, but I was not sure how the situation was panning out at the time, and did not think of it; morover, it was the end of a long session, and we were all kinda tired.
At the start of the following session, having thought about it, I decided that when he requested the goddess' powers to heal the other players, he was anwered by a deafening silence. The player was kinda taken aback, and really worried. He also was suddenly unable to see the stars anymore, where he had always looked for Desna in the past.The situation went on for another couple of days, when finally he received a dream from Desna.
Desna, in the shape of a Mammooth (noob mistake, I brainfarted and was convinced that it was one of the goddess avatars ._.) appeared to him and requested to know if he knew what he did wrong.
The cleric tried to justify himself, saying that it was a common punishment for theft in his barbarian culture, but the goddess answered that it might well be so, but it was not the duty of Desna's clergy to deliver punishment for theft and betrayal, and surely not by using her powers to torture someone before execution. She then stated that the cleric would receive her pardon after showing his repentance.
Now, here's the problem: the player is at a loss about what to do, and I'm not sure what to do either. He is the group's only healer, and they are still first level. I don't want to punish him too hard, but I also don't want to set a precedent for his behaviour.
I thought about giving him another dream from Desna, but I'm not sure what she would want him to do.... It should be something that fits with what they are doing, I don't want them to run off on a side quest that leads them away from the Stolen Lands yet. I also don't want it to be too convenient and obvious (like "go clear these ruins of a Desnan temple that were here all along just waiting for a repentant cleric to free them...). I was thinking about something to do with a Varisian gipsy caravan, but again, I'm not sure about what Desna would really require of him.
Thank you in advance for your precious help, and sorry for the wall of text ^^”
