Thorn's End without Quilindra

[CeruleanSpirit]

Question for everybody:

I decided to remove Quilindra out of my campaign, I knew the group would discover her disguise and would never follow a Succubus (They have been fighting demons all campaign long, bad idea). I made a elaborate ploy where the elven mageof the group can map the Auidara elven gates and locate Thorn's End.

I need to make them enter Thorn's End. How could I do that without's Quilindra's Pass. There is the army of demons outside Thorn's End, they will not let the PC enter unless...

Any idea?

[Ken Blaney]

I picture it as sort of a WW1 trench warfare between Thorn's End and the demons. As a result, there's only the occasional flare up of violence that escalates quickly on each side as Thron's End troops reinforce the side with combat and the demons summon allies or otherwise get called in.

So, you could let the PCs find a gap and sneak through and then end up in No Man's Land between the two forces causing a mad dash and a desperate plea for entrance for the last 100 feet or so as demons charge up behind them.

[Ken Blaney]

Alternatively, if you want to roll deep in the lore, Quilindra being a succubus means she likely works for Nocticula and could easily have designs on slaying Treerazer as she is wont to do to demonlords. Your PCs might decide that working with Nocticula against Treerazer is a good bargain for Kyonin. I think that takes a little set up during Book 4 or before hinting at Nocticula's future as the Redeemer Queen (there's a mention of her ascension, but I don't think there is about her absolution).

This is, roughly, the direction I'm taking it when we get to Book 5. One of my PCs is unknowingly married to Quilindra (sorta, he just has a profane gift from her and *thinks* he's married to Lixi Paramenter), so I have the Nocticula channel dialed in already.

[CeruleanSpirit]

Actually, I applied your first scenario last week. The players have found Thorn's End. They have a trick with a Cleric and Wizard PC where the Wizard cast Mass Invisibility on everyone, then the cleric cast Communal Air Walk and Silence. Viggrizor, the Nalfeshnee demon, was the only one with Constant True Seeing. They simply waited until he was out of sight and air-walked to the front door of Thorn's End.

In the end, I reshuffled the entire Memory of Darkness #5 module. I found the idea of working out with demon just bad on its face as all my PCs were of good alignment and they had fighting demons for the whole campaign.

The way I did it was that Hialin of the Winter Counsel had sent message through kyonin that the PCs and the elves of Celwynvian were traitors and were working for the drow. The PCs had found sympathetic allies in the half-elf city of Erages. The mission was then to infiltrate Kyonin to find the winter counsel.

[Ken Blaney]

Nice! Glad it worked out for you and your group.

I think your instincts are right here. Hialin accusing the PCs like works out pretty well for the AP as written. I'd like to borrow that for my own game, but I think he's going to get a reprieve from being the bad guy (for a handful of reasons related to character backstory and past campaigns we've run). I'm going to try really hard to get the Spike out of the wall via a Wish accidentally granted to one of the PCs.