While I find the whole backstory about them really interesting, I'm wondering how the PCs are supposed to learn about it. While you could just tell the players afterward, that wouldn't have the same effect. I'm thinking maybe either Nugrah or the Stag Lord might have a journal somewhere explaining it?
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Yeah, a failing in many modules to have great backstory but never suggest a way to incorporate/foreshadow it.
I dropped hints at:
1. Nettle's Crossing. Davik kept a log of travelers. His early logs include passage for Nugrah and his son (no name), and he inserts a side note complaining about the abuse Nugrah commits on his "boy." Years later, he logs bandits, including the Stag Lord, and puts in a question mark "Nugrah's boy?"
2. The druid Oakbrown (from Felnight Queen module) who is an NPC in my game that lives in the Narlmarches and may interact with the party, perhaps warning them to keep an eye out for a man calling himself Nugrah. Nugrah is a druid who was part of a sect that didn't allow marriage. The druid did it anyways and his wife died in childbirth, making the druid's heart dark and twisted. He hasn't seen Nugrah for over a decade but knows Nugrah had a boy. Oakbrown doesn't trust the party enough to reveal the full story of how the druids handled Nugrah, but this may change if they find the unicorn and bring it to his attention, or handle a fey encounter (I inserted quite a few) positively. He won't just volunteer the additional info.
3. An abandoned hut in the woods that Nugrah used to live at and that local hunters avoid, good shelter for the party when exploring, especially if you use environment (e.g. if you're caught out in the rain, can't get a good night's rest). It still has an alcove shrine that no one disturbs with a faded drawing of a woman who died years ago (his wife) and a clear but ancient bloodstain in the center of the wooden hut floor. Local hunters can say its haunted and they don't disturb it. The old timers that sell at Oleg's say a crazy man killed a child after his wife died in childbirth believing he could bring his wife back. It's said the local druids handled it, because they didn't see the guy around these parts again.
4. Stag Lord Lieutenant (perhaps Akiros) reveals the Stag Lord was horribly scarred by his father with acid and likes to tell stories of his father's "love" when he's about to hand out discipline. "...He liked to bend one of my fingers back until it felt it was about to break...got my attention fast. Real fast...and I'm itching to figure out how to get your attention so this problem don't happen again..."
If memory serves, isn't there a fallen paladin or similar in the fort serving in a mercenary capacity?
Maybe you can have them meet your group as they recon the fort. He could give them some valuable info and/or help them from the inside.
Kingmaker requires a good deal of work to flow better, as does just about every other AP.
I handled this the lazy way, a bit like in the video game. The AP mentions a monster sending blurry visions of the future, don't remember the make but it looks like a slug with big eyes. I decided in my campaign they would send dreams of the past instead, when players sleep in the Greenbelt, and gave the players all the nice backstories that they might not discover otherwise day by day. That includes the death of Nettle, the one from Tartuk when he was still a gnome, the death of nugra s wife, the stag Lord s childhood, some backstory I made about akiros' childhood and maybe some other I don't even recall.
Because all those memories are quite shocking, I made Oleg kill the slug every morning that his children would cry about doing nightmares at night.
I found the name of the creature. It is called a Carbuncle.
Yeah, there's a fair amount of that in the 1st adventure in particular. I think I addressed it by having Nugrah say some stuff about how they killed his worthless son when they first come down into the basement. It's not the whole story, but it (and Nugrah being held prisoner in the basement) gave the players enough to guess that the Stag Lord's face was caused by acid, wielded by his abusive father.
Thanks for all the help. Something I keep wonderng: does it say anywhere WHY the sect he was in didn't allow people to get married and have kids? That just seems really weird, especially if they are druids. Wouldn't they want people to reproduce?
Good question... I personally completely overlooked that aspect and focused on the 'tried to resurrect her with black magic' part.
If I had to provide an explanation, I would make it coincide with what can be found in the real world. After all, the priests of the Latin Church also made vow of celibacy and it did not stop that religion from becoming of paramount importance. Type vow of celibacy on Wikipedia and see what you get.
Definitely, this limitation would apply only to a portion of the followers, probably the most important ones. Those men should be considered above others in terms of influence in the clergy. The vow of celibacy would probably bring them away from potential scandals that could hit the church and insure they spend more time studying and applying their rituals. It would avoid exactly the kind of story that happened to Nugrah... or Darth Vador btw...
That is what I would expect. Maybe someone has a better explanation.