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Anyone feel like it is more than a little condescending?
It makes me wonder why Nualia would want or even care about Sandpoint forgiving her. There are a couple throw away lines about Abstalar wanting to get her forgiveness too, but it is 99% getting the town to forgive her rather than the other way around.
It feels like, at best, she'd be indifferent, but more likely she'd be pissed at the audacity of Abstalar and the PCs. Especially when you consider that according to the adventure, from Nualia's perspective, she hasn't been in the boneyard that long. She hasn't had time for her rage and hatred to calm, so it feels like offering her forgiveness would just make her angrier. She'd need to be in a place where she could forgive the people of Sandpoint before she'd even consider accepting their forgiveness.
Maybe I am overthinking it, but that is just the way it is coming off to me.
Creative Director
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Not sure if you're asking from a player viewpoint, but as written in the adventure, things are quite a bit more nuanced and complicated in ways you suggest...
But the word "forgive" was chosen very specifically, rising from the concept of "if you forgive someone who wronged you and has since died, your forgiveness of their actions can help them escape purgatory and get to a better afterlife." That's the primary goal that Abstalar is approaching this from—he wants to forgive Nualia so she won't be consigned to damnation for her actions.
As for Nualia, once she's contacted by the call sprit ritual, Nualia is very much not into being forgiven. As she's likely to say (from page 24): "...the apology of a few means nothing when all of Sandpoint hated me." She absolutely reacts the way that you point out; pretty pissed at the audacity of the PCs and Abstalar. The whole point of the influence encounter on page 25 is as much about influencing her to convince her that they're sincere in apologizing to her and want to forgive her, starting from a baseline of her being pissed at the situation. And even if the PCs do the best they can in that influence encoutner, the most they can hope for there is to replace Nualia's sadness with anger.
The meta-reason for this encounter isn't to let the PCs wrap things up with Nualia in one nice bow with one single encounter, but to give them the adventure's main quest—to stop the dooms that are coming to Sandpoint. They won't be able to fully apologize/forgive her in this first chapter, but they WILL learn about the threat facing the town and be able to start acting on it.
The whole process of forgiving her, apologizing to her, and convincing Sandpoint to own up to their previous mistakes and work to make sure that they don't do this again next time, plays out over the rest of the campaign... mostly in the form of a few events in Chapter 2, and particularly via the "Seeking Forgiveness" event on page 34.
So yes... it's meant to present a complicated mix of shame and pride and condescension and good will on Abstalar's part, and to get the players thinking about the situation. Human nature isn't tidy and simple.
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Asking from a GMs viewpoint, since megadungeons are more fun as a GM than they are as a player, at least for me.
Maybe since it is initially presented as "Let's forgive Nualia" I let my interpretation of Abstalar (perhaps unintentionally) being condescending about it color my reading of the rest of it. My first thoughts when I read that part was "You condescending a&@%$~~."
All the lines about apologizing to her and gaining her forgiveness just felt minor in regards to the narrative of forgiving her. It feels like it is saying that Nualia was wrong to feel the way she did, and that it was wrong for her to retaliate. While her method of retaliation was indeed wrong, the desire to retaliate against those who had wronged her for her entire life is not.
Maybe I'm reading subtext that wasn't intended or something, but the entire thing just feels shitty. When I do get around to running it, I do plan on reframing things as earning her forgiveness, rather than the (intentional or not) condescension of forgiving her.
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Creative Director
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Asking from a GMs viewpoint, since megadungeons are more fun as a GM than they are as a player, at least for me.
** spoiler omitted **
Maybe I'm reading subtext that wasn't intended or something, but the entire thing just feels shitty. When I do get around to running it, I do plan on reframing things as earning her forgiveness, rather than the (intentional or not) condescension of forgiving her.
If anything in a published adventure strikes you as the GM as being problematic for your table, you absolutely should make chagnes to that element to make things more fun for your group. That's one of the primary functions of the GM, in my opinion, so you reading the adventure with a critical eye to that extent is exactly what a good GM should be doing! :-)
That said!
You don't automatically get rewarded in the afterlife if you're a demon worshiper, in other words.
As for Abstalar... my intent is to present him as a good man who's trying to make up for his predecessor's awful choices and the social and spiritual damage his predecessor did, and one of the ways he hopes to do that is to try to make things better for Nualia, or at the very least let her know that not everyone hated her and that some people understand where she's coming from. It's not meant to be condescending at all, but IS meant to be a little bit self-centered, since it's his own guilt that is in part driving Abstalar to try to give forgiveness.
Nualia was not wrong to feel the way she did, but it was wrong for her to react the way she did by trying to kill so many people. Just because a person is treated awful doesn't justify that person being awful to others. That's kind of the whole cycle of bullying and abuse that happens all the time in the real world, and it just makes more bullies and abusers until someone works to break that cycle.
All of this is to say that the whole situation with Nualia, Abstalar, and the townsfolk of Sandpoint is meant to be a complex one, a thought-provoking one, and a situation that faces the PCs that can't just be defeated by reducing something to 0 Hit Points.
One potential way you can run this in your game is to present things as is, and then if/when your players react the same way to Abstalar's plan and they accuse him of being condescending or self-centered, have him take a beat to do some self-reflection and then blush in shame and admit to the PCs that they're absolutely right. From there, he should change his presentation from "seeking to forgive her" to "seeking to apologize to her." The whole of chapter 1 will play out pretty much the same, but consider giving your PCs a +1 untyped bonus to all checks made while influencing Nualia (or maybe a hero point) for being wise enough to understand human nature and how hard it is for any of us to admit that we're wrong or that an apology is needed... even the best among us, like faithful worshipers of Desna, aren't perfect.
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As an aside... the "forgiveness/apology/redemption" of Nualia is something I've been wanting to include in an adventure for well over a decade. Her origin story is 100% intended to be tragic–a case of a town causing their own potential destruction because of their own actions, but the nuances and finer details of that sort of exploration wasn't something that Burnt Offerings had the luxury (or even the desire) to explore.
It's also, I suppose, evidence of my own personal and emotional growth over the last many years as a storyteller that I'm interested in telling this sort of story today as a natural outgrowth of a story I told 17 years ago.
And beyond that... while I do enjoy writing and running and playing in dungeoncrawls, my FAVORITE ones are those that have complex social elements and roleplaying opportunities like this. It's refreshing and inspiring to see that these elements have sparked conversation and discussion and debate, so thank you for picking up on this!
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To me what struck me as a bit strange or out of place was that it is the player characters who are called on to be the ones called to treat with her. I mean from a gameplay perspective, of course: the PCs are the movers and shakers.
But at this point the PCs are also random adventurers who might not even be from Sandpoint at all. They are not official representatives of Sandpoint and could easily have less claim to 'speak for the town' than the dozens of Sandpoint locals who approach to argue against the ritual. Aurahani - a cleric of a faith dedicated to helping lost souls - and Abstalar - a figure who both represents the institution that failed her and regrets it and a man who clearly knows her story deeply - narratively seem to make much more sense as the people delivering said apology and forgiveness.
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I’m considering an idea which might help connect Rusthenge and Seven Dooms, and explain why PCs should take part in the Ritual. Here it goes.
PCs are the children of victims of Jervis Stoot. They were so young (age of 5 or so) then, and had no remaining relatives in Sandpoint who would take care of them. People considered Turandarock Academy, but it was full of children then. So they decided that Ezakien Tobyn should take care of them temporarily in Sandpoint Cathedral. PCs met Nualia there, though Father Tobyn always interfered between them and Nualia. That fateful day, Nualia set fire to the cathedral, but forced PCs to escape. Even with her mind influenced by Lamashtu, Nualia couldn’t kill PCs, orphans like her.
After the fire, the question of who should take care of PCs arose again. It was then that a young but trustworthy-looking lady from Chakikoth Isle, who was in Sandpoint on some sort of a pilgrimage, made an offer to take PCs under her wing. “They should leave this place at least for a while. They had experienced too much of tragedy in this town. I promise by the god to return them when they grow up. Our village is very small, but peaceful place.” Her words moved the people of Sandpoint, and PCs left Sandpoint with the woman. Her name was Ordwi.
For PCs, Nualia was a rescuer who gave her life to help them. At least so they thought. It is because of this thought that PCs take part in the Ritual.
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My Rusthenge tie-in was, essentially, that the body found in Rusthenge (Blanton) was Blanton Valdemar, a relative of the Valdemars that remained in Iron Harbor after construction on the Valdemar Mansion there was abandoned. In my version of events he was able to get out his name and that he was from Sandpoint before he passed.
The Elders of Osprey Cove sent a missive to Sandpoint about Blanton's death. The Sandpoint town council decides to send a group to Osprey Cove to retrieve the body and the party ended up getting chosen and/or volunteering (2 in my party chose the background that makes them members of the town guard).
The transportation to Osprey Cove was provided by the Scarnetti's (so kind of them) so I was able to start some harmless hijinks that indicated the Scarnetti's might have a less than favorable attitude towards them. After their adventures in Iron Harbor my party returned to Sandpoint, with Blanton's remains in tow (and even brought Derrol Finnick back to "civilization" with them).
Returning to Sandpoint after having resolved the issues in Iron Harbor the party now had their first little bit of renown, which played into why Zantus asked them as a group to investigate under the boneyard.
Returning Blanton's remains also gave a stronger hook (from the party's perspective) as to why Kaleb Valedmar wanted to treat them to dinner at the Rusty Dragon, as now it was framed with wanting to thank the party for returning the remains of a member of the Valedmar family.