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*This isn't the GM's reference thread, so friendly spoiler warning for all books.
I have fully read and begun to GM Book 1. I have fully read Book 2 and skimmed 3-6, taking notes. Excuse any ignorance despite this.
The adventure seems a bit 2D politically. There are many potential factions mentioned, but they do not seem alive. Barzillai as the BBEG has some reactions. Everyone else, however, seems frozen in time and merely a brief backdrop. Please correct me in all ways I am wrong, but I am looking for ways to make the campaign a bit more reactive and proactive, living, and 3D.
The cultists of Mathallah sit at the anchor and do nothing until slaughtered by Thrune. The (separate? Aware of one another?) cultists in the Lucky Bones also just have their own sacrifice parties. (I also notice the lore on Math is pretty light).
The Skinsaw Cult is also missing from most the campaign despite being next door. I don't know enough about them to know what they might be doing before the SRs peeve one of their members in Vyre.
The gangs (Red Jills, River Talons, and Luncafex) are all small-time and don't feature much.
The noble houses are generally left out until you need to recruit them (there's one or two encounters with individuals before then, but otherwise they seem to ignore what's happening).
Does the Court of Coin ever do anything?
The Order of the Rack seems strangely absent for most the campaign?
The Church of Asmodeus and the Hellknights seem to have judicial and extrajudicial power, but they seem content to let Barzillai handle (or fail to handle) everything. I don't know if they are worried about the Silver Ravens at all and/or if they're fine with watching Barzillai fail.
Other groups have gone aground, so that's a reasonable reason why they're missing (Archivists destroyed, Rose of Kintargo and Bellflower Network in hiding, the followers of Calistria, Caden, Desna, and Sarenrae silenced). Although then they just seem to fall in line after being aided by the PCs.
I know it's not their affair, but the Nidalese don't seem to intervene in any way, even in secret. The local temple's priestess features in later books, but just to pummel the players on behalf of her boytoy, not interact with them.
The Iomedaens/Glorious Reclamation are left out on purpose, I believe a book note says, because their targets are elsewhere and they're more center stage for Hell's Vengeance campaign. Still could have a tiny involvement, though.
The Aspis Corsortium is strangely missing despite being featured in nearly every Pathfinder Society mission that even passes through Cheliax.
The Eagle Knights, if any, probably wouldn't target Kintargo much for sabotage, I imagine, especially when they realize they are rebelling, but still a potential option.
I don't know if any other devils or devil cults would be interested in getting involved. (Mathallah is a "recent" convert and seems more interested in herself than the diabolism of Hell or Asmodeus). The later contract devil does get involved a little, but that is PC-driven - not by taking notice of or approaching the PCs himself.
I am interested in any way any of you have spiced up your games. I really want to have the world moving around the players, whether they act or not... and then actually react to the PCs, not wait their turn to be discovered and beaten to a pulp.
This is just spit-balling, but I am also trying to think of a side/third party that gets involved. A devil who tries getting ahead by helping or hindering the PCs, a deeper Mathallah or Skinsaw group with some grand goal, an infiltrating Nidalese vampire cult trying to influence Kintargo/Ravounel, a growing countryside rebellion that eventually comes at odds with the Kintargo-grown rebellion, a disinterested archmage/lich/someone who uses the PCs to get at something for a book or two... or something like that.
What have I missed, and what ideas have you had or even enacted in your Hell's Rebels campaigns?
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The adventure seems a bit 2D politically.
This is an understatement and a half, and the shallow politics is the major failing of the AP. The reason the politics are shallow is that the political groups, with the exception of the Court of Coin which doesn't intervene as a faction, are disconnected from any social base, and as such have no programs or interests and no basis for taking action. A reconstruction of the politics of Hell's Rebels must therefore proceed from an analysis of Chelish and Ravounel society.
Economically, Cheliax is a manufacturing and colonial power with a mercantilist policy. Within the Chelish economy, Kintargo acts as a center of sea trade with Segada via Anchor's End, Nidal via Nisroch, Varisia via Korvosa and Magnimar, and the Lands of the Linnorm Kings via Kalsgard. Within the Chelish system, sea trade with points south is dominated by Corentyn, so trade with Sargava and Rahadoum is negligable. Kintargo is also a terminus of the east-west land trade route through Ridwan and Canorate to Korholm on Lake Encarthan. Ravounel imports gold, black marble, slaves, and whiskey from Arcadia, to which it exports wool, linen, and cotton textiles and weaponry. Ravounel imports cotton and iron from Cheliax, to which it exports wool, cotton, and linen textiles, salt, fish, whale oil, black marble, slaves, gold, and silver. Ravounel imports partially finished textiles and magic items from Varisia and Nidal, to which it exports salt. Ravounel imports iron and partially finished textiles from Molthune, to which it exports salt, fish, and whale oil. Because it's a mercantilist economy, Ravounel's bullion export goes entirely to Cheliax. Ravounel's slave and black marble imports are also transshipped, almost entirely, to Cheliax.
Agriculture, with the exception of salt and wool production which are better analyzed as industry, is primarily geared towards domestic consumption rather than export. This was not always the case: Ravounel agriculture before the Civil War had to supply armies bound for Nidal and points north, and the North Plains formerly supported an extensive plantation economy in wheat. This is no longer the case. The Civil War destroyed the internal Chelish market for wheat. The only remaining cash crops are hemp and flax, for which suitable land is limited mostly to the upper Yolubilis valley and which primarily serve the internal market.
For aquaculture, Kintargo, Vyre, and Cypress Point host large fishing and whaling fleets year-round. Kintargo also harvests oysters and other shellfish. Surplus fish is preserved in salt and exported, with Kintargo being the port of exit for surplus salmon preserved in Revousa and Whiterock. Intensive Pezzacki exploitation of whales (because whaling is that town's only industry) has more or less outcompeted Ravounel whaling, but the high prices caused by stock depletion and access to the overland route to Molthune has kept the industry alive.
Within the Ravounel economy, Kintargo and Vyre are centers of manufacture and incipient industry, with the towns of Whiterock and Revousa also on the cusp of developing industry. Manufacture and industry in Ravounel is geared toward facilitating trade rather than domestic consumption, because Ravounel has a minuscule internal market. Production of wool textiles, salt, and silver; construction; and shipbuilding are the basic industries which depend entirely on domestic raw materials. Salt is panned in Kintargo and mined on the North Plains. Wool is harvested in the Menador Mountains and shipped down the Yolubilis and Katharevousa for partial or total finishing in Kintargo. Granite and silver are quarried and mined in the Menador Mountains, and likewise shipped downriver for finishing in Kintargo (granite is used for a building material, while silver is either minted or smithed into fancy goods). Hemp and linen farmed in the Yolubilis valley are shipped downriver for finishing in Kintargo, and are used to produce rope and sailcloth. Timber cut largely from satellite forests off the big Ravounel Forest (see the map in Tomorrow Must Burn for what I mean) is floated downriver for finishing in Kintargo, and used to produce hulls and buildings. Cut wood unsuitable for shipbuilding or construction is burned for charcoal, pitch, and potash in Whiterock and Revousa—these are then shipped downriver to Kintargo for various uses. Charcoal and to a far lesser degree whale oil are the major industrial fuels, and it is the dearth of bitumen (and iron) which primarily retards the development of industry in Ravounel.
Cotton textile production, gold finishing, and iron finishing are dependent upon imports, with the lighter cotton going to Vyre with its inferior harborage, and the heavier iron and gold going to Kintargo. Vyre's major industry, therefore, is textile production, primarily cotton but also some wool and linen to the extent production exceeds the market in Kintargo (hemp is not used in Vyre for industrial purposes, as cannabis fetches a higher price there as an intoxicant).
Vyre is more famous, however, for its tourist economy and traffic in exotic and hard to find goods.
So much for the economic base. Who owns the land and the tools, and who profits from their use? Who uses them? What interests do these create? What policies flow therefrom, and who are the winners and losers? Landlordism in Ravounel was revolutionized by the Civil War, which ruined the North Plains landlords and led to their abandonment of their properties for lives of decadence in Kintargo. These landlords were captured by usurious Asmodean and slightly-less-usurious Abadarite loans, and today their rights in the countryside are mostly theoretical and unenforced. Emblematic of these landlords are baronial houses like Aulamaxa, Solstine, and Mayhart, whose estates were smaller, lay entirely in the North Plains, and were accordingly unable to retool their properties to the support of industry. This portion of the nobility is nationalistic, believing that independence will enable policies to support export-oriented agriculture in their lands.
The remaining landlords' lands each produce something useful in either the existing export economy or for domestic consumption. These are houses like Victocora (whose lands include Revousa), Jhaltero (Whiterock), Delronge (most of the left bank of the Yolubilis, thus hemp, flax, and timber-and-byproducts production), Jarvis (Argo Isle) and Aulorian (Menador foothills). These either never fell victim to usury or were able to pay off their debts, and today sell to or are functionally the bourgeois. The split here is between the enterprises orientated toward facilitating trade and those orientated toward producing for domestic consumption, with the latter tending more nationalistic for an independent tariff policy that will develop the internal market while the former tend imperialist for access to an existing big market. The exception is House Vashnarstill, which ought to be imperialist but isn't because it's fallen out of favor with Thrune and has had its all-important patronage in the form of an Arcadian import monopoly withdrawn. There's also a small-big split, with the counts (Sarini, Tanessen, and to a lesser extent Aulorian) tending imperialist, because their elevanted positions are dependent upon Thrune patronage and not on any economic base.
The true bourgeoisie don't own land but do own and make money off capital (money or means of production), and consist of people like Newt of the Newt Market, Sallix of Sallix Salt Works, Kohl Draksitus of Vashnarstill Shipyard, and Molly Mayapple. Small shopkeepers and artisans (e.g., Olmer, Hetamon Haace, Laria Longroad, Shensen) are largely aligned with this group, though tend more democratic. The masses have begun to self-organize, with Draksitus having to raise wages to avoid trade unionism at Vashnarstill Shipyard, Vespam Artisans forming as a cooperative, and the Cloven Hoof Society organizing the most despised unskilled laborers on a communal basis. Each of these groups—the big bourgeoisie, the petty bourgeoisie, and the working class—is locked out of the Court of Coin and expresses itself in mayoral elections. As such, each is incipiently democratic to some degree, with the degree increasing as you descend the economic ladder. However, the rise of the big bourgeoisie was also facilitated by Thrune rule and patronage as against the landlords, and both the big and petty bourgeoisie benefit from the export economy and especially from stability, so can tend imperialist.
Thrune rule in Ravounel was guaranteed largely by patronage of the big bourgeoisie and bourgeois-adjacent landlords, and thus of manufacture and industry. It engages in this patronage through a number of policies. First was the chartering of churches as banks (the churches of Asmodeus and Abadar were gifted the expropriated assets of the churches of Aroden and Calistria respectively) and the promotion of usury. We have seen how this policy ruined the agricultural economy of Ravounel, but it also spurred industry where it could be fostered, and loans to true bourgeois facilitated the development of their enterprises. Second was the granting of a monopoly to Sunset Imports, which directed trade through Kintargo and spurred the development of allied industry dependent upon it, primarily partial or total finishing of raw materials or partially-finished goods. Third was the development of a cotton industry dependent upon Chelish raw materials. Fourth was the tariff policy. The legal quirk that left Ravounel not a part of Cheliax long found an expression in a separate Ravounel tariff policy, which allowed Ravounel to act as a low-tariff conduit between Cheliax and the rest of the world. Raw materials and partially finished goods would flow into Ravounel hardly impeded by a tariff, and then Ravounel goods could be shipped to Cheliax again hardly impeded by a tariff. This allowed the development of industry.
Two recent Thrune policies were designed to direct ever more of Ravounel's exports to Cheliax. The first was a radical restructuring of tariff policy in around 4700. Ravounel's independent tariff policy was abolished and it was absorbed into the Chelish tariff zone. This depressed imports of partially-finished goods and raw materials from outside Cheliax, but did away with the tariff barrier between Ravounel and Cheliax. Manufacture was developed enough in Ravounel that it took a hit but wasn't killed off, and began using Chelish cotton and iron instead of Rahadoumi cotton and Molthuni iron instead, binding the country more into Cheliax. The second was the transfer of Sunset Imports' monopoly to a company in Corentyn, also around 4700, redirecting the Arcadian trade. This gutted Sunset Imports, but made Ravounel look even more towards Cheliax and less outward.
Returning to politics, I've been throwing around terms like nationalist, imperialist, and democrat, and these factions are in evidence. Most clearly, they are in evidence in the Aria Park protest, after which they never show up again—at least in principled/ideological terms. The factions at the Aria Park protest are: aristocratic, big-bourgeois, and petty-bourgeois imperialist counter-demonstrators, the latter of whom form the social base for the Chelish Citizens' Group saboteurs; aristocratic, big-bourgeois, and petty-bourgeois nationalists who chafe under direct rule from Egorian; big-bourgeois and petty-bourgeois liberals who chafe under the unitary tariff; big-bourgeois, petty-bourgeois and working-class liberals demanding new elections; and petty-bourgeois and working-class radicals (Jacobins, anarchists, and socialists) hoping to spark a revolution. As presented, the protest is leaderless and spontaneous, but that's obviously a load of rubbish. The Kintargo mob at the beginning of the AP is likely headed by big bourgeois, and we have identified those dramatis personae: Kohl Draksitus and the Newt (Sallix is dead). Also Zachrin Vhast is probably involved somewhere, if subtly. Barzillai Thrune's major political play is for the loyalty of House Aulorian (in which he's successful) and his missteps all involve alienating other noble and bourgeois power brokers whom the royals in Egorian so carefully cultivated.
Politics in Vyre lack the feudal admixture that still exists in Kintargo, and are dominated by the Church of Norgorber on the one side and titans of the tourism and textile industries on the other.
You are absolutely right that the AP is the story of the Silver Ravens uniting all the disparate interests laid out above, either because they're ripe fruits that fall into their lap or because they're alienated by Barzillai Thrune. Later volumes and setting material indicate that their policy consists of: national independence, federalism, low tariffs, and emancipation of slaves, which looks fairly liberal on its face and indicates from the examination of the factions above that they did indeed unite aristocrats, at least petty bourgeois, and workers, and that the workers ended up fairly but not totally marginalized on the programmatic level. It seems to me, therefore, that the interesting story to be told is not of third parties intervening in the Thrune/Silver Raven struggle, but of factional struggles within the Silver Ravens, between nationalist, liberal, and radical wings.
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First of all, I always appreciate a post from one of the twin titans, zimmerwald and roguerogue, in helping me think about and adjust this AP.
Call me ignorant and cynical, but it seems to me people across time and society tend to punch toward whatever is easiest - usually downward. Although the nobles/big bourg may not love Thrune nor especially Barzillai, it's easier and safer to accept it and find wiggle room than try to overthrow the system and risk everything. Similarly, the petty-bourgeois don't want to lose their tenuous grasp on wealth and comfort, and it seems they are more likely to agree to tightly grip their coins and kick at the working class than join with them against those that control them both.
I hope to make Barzillai ans his agents busy boys, not just courting Aulorian but also speaking with other interest groups (or perhaps rather reminding them of their comfort and wealth with a gentle if ominous reminder of what happens when you cross this feudal system and Thrune itself). As he gets more publicly cruel and fails more and more... well, that still fits with the story that he loses most support eventually.
How do you suppose the Hellknight orders, specifically the Rack in the city, react to the goings-on here? They're not obligated to help or save Barzillai, and likely see justice in his growing failure to tamp out rebellion, but they're still upholders of the law and don't need Barz's or even the Queen's permission to step in and punish the unlawful.
The same goes for the Church of Asmodeus, and any inquisitors about.
I am thinking of expanding one of the gangs, or creating another one (or mafia). I hope they can present an interesting moral dilemma, like our generally romantic view of pirates, in that they're a nuisance to society, yet are willing to stick to the man as much as the general population - thus a potential ally when it comes to thwarting blockades, getting around unnoticed, handling arguably needed dirty work, etc.
As for my last paragraph about a third party... I just think it adds more to most stories, not specifically this AP necessarily. HR is pretty straight-forward. Barzillai is the BBEG, appears in the very first session, and there's no red herrings, twists in the main story, surprising enemies-turned-allies, anything. I wanted an additional, prominent subplot.
Now, politics itself, if you really flesh out all the politico-economic groups, is quite the subplot. If you cannot unite enough groups, you can still take out Thrune, but it won't accomplish much. I think may players will like this, yet a more exciting subplot still feels needed to me. (I say feels because I'm hours away only from my second session).
But maybe a parallel group that disagree with the way the SRs are accomplishing the revolution (too bloody/not bloody enough, too slow/too fast, too lawful/not lawful enough) - still with the same goals in mind (unlike the CCG), but in conflict. And/or a group who is "helping," and fights fire with fire by bringing in a devil or demon that totally isn't subtly corrupting them to aid them... or perhaps Norborger or Zon-Kuthon. The players thus need to form a coalition with them and cave to some of their goals and tactics, talk them down, or unfortunately disperse/destroy them - proving to everyone this isn't a cutesy non-violent, egalitarian revolution where everyone holds hands and wins together.
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One thing I'm actually considering doing is having other rebellion groups out there. One of these groups is going to have things go bad. Really bad. They'll be trying to spring a couple friends from the Dottari and end up killing a dozen of the guards - and these guys have been long-time members of the Dottari. They even grumble about what Thrune is making them do, but they have a job to do and need to make a living (and at least one PC has heard one of them complaining about this while coping with complaints about the increased tolls at the Bleakbridge).
When things go south? It's going to wash over to the Ravens, despite the fact that my Ravens have avoided killing any Dottari or Militia members. The Dottari are going to be far less lenient after this. Worse, because the number of Dottari are lessened, it will allow an increase in crime as a result, and people are going to be ending up dead as a result.
There are several street gangs mentioned in Book 2. These can be a source for potential rival rebellion groups and the like. And if the Ravens start recruiting among the gangs or trying to rein them in, it will very likely have an impact on how the city views the Ravens... and on Thrune's own reactions toward the adventurers.
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Call me ignorant and cynical, but it seems to me people across time and society tend to punch toward whatever is easiest - usually downward. Although the nobles/big bourg may not love Thrune nor especially Barzillai, it's easier and safer to accept it and find wiggle room than try to overthrow the system and risk everything. Similarly, the petty-bourgeois don't want to lose their tenuous grasp on wealth and comfort, and it seems they are more likely to agree to tightly grip their coins and kick at the working class than join with them against those that control them both.
I agree entirely, but Paizo doesn't, and have written an AP where the entire society unites around a leadership cadre mostly of petty-bourgeois in striking down a mad dog tyrant before settling comfortably into what is basically the prior status quo. There are three ways to deal with this nonsense. The first is to do as the AP does, and downplay all forms of worker consciousness and organization so that the Kintargo mob can serve as the pliant instrument of its social betters, while those betters unite more or less unproblematically as soon as the PCs get around to speaking with them. This is profoundly uninteresting. The second is to rewrite the AP so that the SRs are an independent working-class organization and movement, which necessarily tosses out much of the AP and subsystem content making for a lot of work replacing it, and moreover doesn't really jive with Ravounel society. There remains a lot of social development in front of Ravounel before it has a working class with that kind of strength or self-conception, and many of the aristocracy and petty-bourgeoisie haven't actually been weaned of their national/liberal impulses yet - they would be so weaned only if the 4715-16 revolution failed, but that's an alternate history. Third is to play out the AP more or less as written, but to add content to make the Silver Ravens themselves fractious and hard to manage because of how many interests they're seeking to balance.
Some of the alliances they make are destined to come apart: by the time of Tomorrow Must Burn, Mialari Docur has gone apolitical, Shensen and the ex-PCs are more interested in adventuring than in running their movement, and rule of the country has passed without much complaint to the Court of Coin, which is now a right-liberal party that dominates the Silver Council. This to me paints a picture of a movement that split between liberal and radical wings, with the radicals keeping the SR name but losing out on power to the big bourgeoisie and bourgeois-adjacent aristocrats (see here. That dynamic should play out throughout the AP. The events of Books 5 and 6 even play into it. As written the PCs more or less let politics' course be dictated by Hellish interests and bargain with those same interests. It's a nice bit of tragedy.
How would this play out over the AP? I have some further thoughts on the bases of factional conflict here. As for how to play it out, the subsystem mechanics can be mined. As written, there are three types of people in the SRs: supporters, members (team members and allies who are not given officer positions), and officers. Also as written, the PCs are incentivized to give as many of their allies as possible officer positions; specifically, they're incentivized to make them all Recruiters, since unlike every other officer position, Recruiter bonuses stack. However, Recruiter's kind of a low-status job, and high-level NPCs (who make the best Recruiters until the PCs outpace them all and become the best Recruiters) are going to want the plum jobs that allow them more sway over the organization. Finally, as written, who gets what job is purely up to the PCs.
So here's how to play the conflict. First, as the rebellion grows and begins to absorb other factions (Red Jills, Order of the Torrent, etc.) wholesale, the members and other officers start to demand democratic accountability of the leadership to them. How do the PCs react? Do they guard their prerogatives and risk losing allies, or do they open up? If the latter, how far do they open up: is the election of officers limited to members, or do supporters get a say? How often do elections take place? It has to be often enough to make it an interesting gameplay element, so let's replace one of the events on the random event table, and also spark one every time the PCs leave the city (so when they come back from Acisazi, Vyre, Menador, etc. they have to deal with one). Find NPC Allies who have their own personal followings from preexisting factions (Longroad, Sabinus, Docur, etc.), whose politics are not aligned with the PCs'. Which NPCs end up being a problem will obviously depend on the PCs' politics, and that's a judgment GMs will have to make. Mechanically, play it like a social combat encounter (Ultimate Intrigue), where the PC and their challenger, or the PCs and their challenger slate, compete for bonuses that will ultimately apply to a Loyalty check. Whichever party rolls higher on the Loyalty check wins the contested position and gets to direct the SRs. What happens if the PC loses and wants their position back? They'll have to trigger another election, which means either rolling on the event table or role-playing some internal opposition organizing.
I haven't actually read War for the Crown beyond the first book because it failed to grab me, so this is just speculation, but there may be ideas in there for how to make this sort of ongoing faction-management work.
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The most important caveat--this campaign is going to be very different table to table. It's more like Kingmaker that way. My advice is based on my table's experiences--in which there's a Sailor Moon narrative, a martial arts narrative, a cultist revolutionary, led by a tactical genius, leading to war narratives. I got to access to some of the stuff below that others might and other stuff that people worked in just got cut for time. (Also, I made them put on a musical.)
Finally, my players ended up choosing a political theory that was a mix of cultural liberalism, middle class freedoms, and pay it forward charity. I had to remember that it's not my revolution--it's theirs. I can complicate things, but I have to respect their choices... if they're viable.
I have fully read and begun to GM Book 1. I have fully read Book 2 and skimmed 3-6, taking notes. Excuse any ignorance despite this.
Take a close read of book 3 as soon as you can. A LOT of your decisions for books 1 and 2 depend on what you do there.
Are they going to Vyre? You can move that whole thing to book five, where it fits well with freeing Ravounel, not just Kintrargo. If you're really into the Norgorber cult, this would allow you center them by making book five about the council fight for control, rather than having it Queen of Delights vs. the King of Keys and the Norgorber cult that shows up in the earlier books as random homicidal jesters. (I'm headed in that direction and I'm feeling like writing all that up is going to be overwhelming complicated.)
Moving that whole Vyre dinner opens up a second military mission in book three: bringing in No Response from Deepmar. The motivation was to destroy the crystal they were mining to reduce their access to a material component for devil calling--a key way to help the Glorious Reclamation and themselves too. Made some of the surviving prisoners key to splitting the dottari and recruiting a noble house. (Note: the crystal is not actually a material component for anything related to devil summoning so far as I can tell.)
Who's going to be onstage? That's a highlight of my life as a DM, because virtually everyone onstage and dozens in the audience of the Dance of the Damned were known well by the players. (The key to making military movies work is where you have affection for every grunt at risk.)
This was also where I had the Game of Houses become a multi-direction shooting war up in the balcony while the main scene was on stage. (So this is where you can make the noble house politics a bit more central.)
The adventure seems a bit 2D politically. There are many potential factions mentioned, but they do not seem alive. Barzillai as the BBEG has some reactions. Everyone else, however, seems frozen in time and merely a brief backdrop. Please correct me in all ways I am wrong, but I am looking for ways to make the campaign a bit more reactive and proactive, living, and 3D.
I do wish I had made more central non-nobles and non-religious groups. I made some things up as I went along, and might have done better than I currently think. The tieflings went well as a revolutionary group--more urban guerrilla war than any other district, the target of atrocities and racism, problematic expressions of respectability politics to be navigated. The Shelynites were hilarious--they demanded a musical from the Silver Ravens to express their revolutionary ideas and to prove they had the management chops to deal with the post-revolutionary phase. The Calistrians have ended up being the schism group, with a legitimately silly inciting incident.
These were the exceptions... Lady Docur just seems to show up whenever there's a deal to be done around information management in the post-revolution era. Promoting a dottari schism and figuring out what they wanted ended up being a worthwhile sub-plot. Still, not much sense of a worker's revolution here, although Laria ended up being Sailor Moon's working class foil at my table--it all came to a head with a miner's strike.
The cultists of Mathallah sit at the anchor and do nothing until slaughtered by Thrune. The (separate? Aware of one another?) cultists in the Lucky Bones also just have their own sacrifice parties. (I also notice the lore on Math is pretty light).
I'm trying to tie the Mysteries found in book two as a key to her library, which is where the party can find out about the path to the soul anchor in book six. We'll see if this works.
The Skinsaw Cult is also missing from most the campaign despite being next door. I don't know enough about them to know what they might be doing before the SRs peeve one of their members in Vyre.
See above for Vyre as a way to write more about them. There's a tantalizing hint in book four that their interest in advancing their doomsday clock would be helped by taking sides in the rebellion.
The gangs (Red Jills, River Talons, and Luncafex) are all small-time and don't feature much.
They are there for campaigns that want to have a thieves' guild war sub-plot. Lacunafex being connected to Lady Docur and the meaning of their name really made them shine at my table. They are also rivals for the royal house associated with information gathering... Jhaltero.
The noble houses are generally left out until you need to recruit them (there's one or two encounters with individuals before then, but otherwise they seem to ignore what's happening).
The noble houses have at least a sketch of what their current interests are and Zimmerwald and others are pretty astute about them. The boards are amazing here. With a little thought, you can do a lot with this information. It helped that the Sailor Moon character was a scion of Jhaltero. I had two solo side sessions that introduced her to each family as a coming out process as a debutante, which was her family's test of loyalty for her after her revolutionary work got her kicked out of Lady Docur's school.
Does the Court of Coin ever do anything?
Nope! And then maybe!
The Order of the Rack seems strangely absent for most the campaign?
Having them doing raids late in book three to collect particular books worked wonders for their profile. Also, writing up a full "take Castle Kintargo" and a Defend Old Kintargo set piece helps.
The Church of Asmodeus and the Hellknights seem to have judicial and extrajudicial power, but they seem content to let Barzillai handle (or fail to handle) everything. I don't know if they are worried about the Silver Ravens at all and/or if they're fine with watching Barzillai fail.
House Thrune runs the show. They may be outside their direct line of command in various ways, but ultimately the royal house still rules at my table.
Other groups have gone aground, so that's a reasonable reason why they're missing (Archivists destroyed, Rose of Kintargo and Bellflower Network in hiding, the followers of Calistria, Caden, Desna, and Sarenrae silenced). Although then they just seem to fall in line after being aided by the PCs.
Some of this depends on your table. One campaign on these boards is remaking the Asmodean temple into a Sarenite temple. Don't forget House Jarvis for Cayden. Calistria could make for a great feminist revolutionary sect--it just didn't happen at this table.
I know it's not their affair, but the Nidalese don't seem to intervene in any way, even in secret. The local temple's priestess features in later books, but just to pummel the players on behalf of her boytoy, not interact with them.
That was a whole publishing thing that just didn't make it in book five. It's the area I feel most concerned about for the end game at my table, and I can't really avoid it. A new nation-state means diplomacy with the incredibly dangerous evil nation sitting on their border.
The Iomedaens/Glorious Reclamation are left out on purpose, I believe a book note says, because their targets are elsewhere and they're more center stage for Hell's Vengeance campaign. Still could have a tiny involvement, though.
Strangely, I gave my table a chance to pick up a thread during the Dance of the Damned and they just refused to do so. I had planned on a cross-over event for book six but it's not looking like that's going to happen.
The Aspis Corsortium is strangely missing despite being featured in nearly every Pathfinder Society mission that even passes through Cheliax.
Huh. Good point.
The Eagle Knights, if any, probably wouldn't target Kintargo much for sabotage, I imagine, especially when they realize they are rebelling, but still a potential option.
The parliament or assembly or whatever voted down taking advantage of the Glorious Reclamation, leading to a focus on privateer operations against the slave trade on the sea. If you want to make Andoran more central, that's the incident to change--either the vote or the compromise--help Kintargo rather than fight the slave trade.
I don't know if any other devils or devil cults would be interested in getting involved. (Mathallah is a "recent" convert and seems more interested in herself than the diabolism of Hell or Asmodeus). The later contract devil does get involved a little, but that is PC-driven - not by taking notice of or approaching the PCs himself.
I went furthest off canon with Mahathallah. I'm still not sure if it's going to work out.
I'd recommend using a cabal devil as a sub-boss for book two or three plots.
Have a small subset of devils teleport away and be returning villains. Erinyes are the most common devil encounter, so they'd work best, especially since they have true seeing and get through disguise magic.
I had The Gardener try to ascend to become a handmaid devil of Belial through a ritual for the Hetamon kidnapping. The Belial thing was tied to a tiefling PC backstory about them promoting tiefling births in Cheliax.
I am interested in any way any of you have spiced up your games. I really want to have the world moving around the players, whether they act or not... and then actually react to the PCs, not wait their turn to be discovered and beaten to a pulp.
In addition to the above...
Zella Zdilli was the Thrune propagandist with a sixth level message spell that affected the whole city. Think Dolores Umbridge as a diviner, but annoyingly controlling on a city-wide level. I just had her be the Secretary of Education and takeover both the university and the School for Girls
The musical: "Les Miserables, But We Win."
Street trial for the serial killer. Street trials I wouldn't have thought of without the boards.
There will be an election. That whole retrograde baloney in book five is not going to happen. And the player agency wipe (version: "All Part of My Plan!") in book six will not be happening at my table
Having them develop an organizing pitch in book two.
The Abadaran business seminars that they got to do regularly with the Silver Ravens as a condition of an early raise dead on a PC. It was a weirdly funny juxtaposition and weirdly popular at my table. Perhaps because they were always 2 minutes or less.
Giving the party a chance to dance with Barzillai Thrune. Having the Cultist of Doubral Reform PC having a dance with Aluceda Zhol.
Use
This is just spit-balling, but I am also trying to think of a side/third party that gets involved. A devil who tries getting ahead by helping or hindering the PCs, a deeper Mathallah or Skinsaw group with some grand goal, an infiltrating Nidalese vampire cult trying to influence Kintargo/Ravounel, a growing countryside rebellion that eventually comes at odds with the Kintargo-grown rebellion, a disinterested archmage/lich/someone who uses the PCs to get at something for a book or two... or something like that.
I simply didn't have the bandwidth for some of this. My changes have been to strip away some of the extraneous stuff and refocus on the revolution. I've tried to make Mahathallah matter more and I'm really not sure if that works.
This is also a must-read thread Raynulf's Rebellion for starting to think about plot holes and priorities at the table. Good review and good dialogue afterwards with the author.
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Moving that whole Vyre dinner opens up a second military mission in book three: bringing in No Response from Deepmar. The motivation was to destroy the crystal they were mining to reduce their access to a material component for devil calling--a key way to help the Glorious Reclamation and themselves too. Made some of the surviving prisoners key to splitting the dottari and recruiting a noble house. (Note: the crystal is not actually a material component for anything related to devil summoning so far as I can tell.)
No Response From Deepmar has its own problems, that run all the way through. It assumes the PCs are government hirelings, for one thing, and while that can work with an HR party, it won't necessarily. If it doesn't, a GM will need to think of another means for the PCs to get the information that a Thrune black site has gone dark. It's [set up as] another "rescue the prisoners" quest in a campaign stuffed with them, and can come off as uninspired. The villains of the piece aren't actually connected up with anything. And the motivation for disrupting production of these crystals as a means to aid revolutionaries elsewhere is okay, but there are better variations on this theme (for example, including Out of Anarchy, where part of the adventure is literally allying with a revolutionary faction in Pezzack, albeit at the expense of local strix, which can prove a complication in Book 5).
I'd keep the Book 3 excursion to Vyre, but move the dinner party to Book 5 (which needs a set piece as right now it just completely glosses over Vyre), and focus the Book 3 excursion around Molly. As it is, you present her with her deeds, and she's automatically assumed to get her stuff back. And, just. . . no. Possession is nine tenths of the law, and whoever has her property isn't going to give it up unless compelled to (an aside: I hate collection, it's just the worst). Compelling the current owner to give it up is adventure fodder, and fairly easily fleshed out. This can go a couple of ways. You can go through a legal drama in whatever passes for courts in Vyre, but I imagine most parties won't go for that. They could blackmail or murder him, but that's not really on-theme. But consider, Molly's property is in warehouses. As anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear today should know, warehouses need workers. They probably have grievances and could be organized and mobilized to pressure their boss to give up his claim in favor of Molly. Et voila! The PCs have established not merely a lone ally, but a whole branch of their organization and a core of supporters in Vyre, really intervening in the politics of the city and tying it to Kintargo. Bonus points if the boss is connected to the Grey Spiders somehow (this is not at all unreasonable, they were the ones who stole Molly's deeds in the first place), since this means you can easily justify their presence later and don't have to do the work of replacing them in encounters.
No Response From Deepmar has its own problems, that run all the way through. It assumes the PCs are government hirelings, for one thing, and while that can work with an HR party, it won't necessarily. If it doesn't, a GM will need to think of another means for the PCs to get the information that a Thrune black site has gone dark. It's [set up as] another "rescue the prisoners" quest in a campaign stuffed with them, and can come off as uninspired. The villains of the piece aren't actually connected up with anything. And the motivation for disrupting production of these crystals as a means to aid revolutionaries elsewhere is okay, but there are better variations on this theme (for example, including Out of Anarchy, where part of the adventure is literally allying with a revolutionary faction in Pezzack, albeit at the expense of local strix, which can prove a complication in Book 5).
Absolutely. My solution to those problems was to have the street-level skill monkey PC learn of the site's military function, while the Sailor Moon Jhaltero PC learned of the "no response" part. I had the prison camp commander be a cousin of the Jarvis', and as they're a half-orc that brought some flavor to that house. Bringing him back, with the, uh, injuries he had, really sold the SRs to the head of the house; she was touched, given her own similar disability.
The villains of that module--I had a minor connection to them doing operations in Vyre, to keep connecting Vyre to the campaign until I wanted to do something with it.
Out of Anarchy I decided to throw into the mix for book five's travels around Ravounel theme, given the connection to the Strix that you note.
Funny Truth_, but almost all points you raise are ones that I adressed in my campaign (and some more, and except the Aspis Consortium).
I don't have the motivation to write about them all, but if you're interested you can check my post history in this sub for some of my random ramblings.
For example, I replaced Matahalalalala (sorry) with Mestama and changed the soul anchor to be a vestige from the first world, a conduit forgotten by the gods and that's why it affects the river of souls. That made it feasible for me to include lots of nasty hags (and other cool evil fey) to ease the devil dominance (devilnance?), one which betrayed her coven (Lucilla Gillin) and invited Barzillai to the soul lift. The PCs just defeated her at the start of book 6 as a 16th level witch, with some extra powers granted by her new lord Mephistopheles (I had the Lucky Bones contain ghosts from the Grey Spiders as bosses instead of her). The soul anchor being connected to the first world also explained the "chaotic taint" of Ravounel.