Curing the Gray Maidens

[Gaelstromdk]

Hello, I'm near the end of book 4 with my crew. We've played over 2 years at about 3 hours every two weeks with a team of Monk, Druid, Bloodrager, Magus, and now including Trinia.

Some spoilers up to Book 4 following.

I have been struggling a bit to keep up with the lore and only able to read ahead a little each week, because there's a lot since this is my first ever DM'd game, but I realized something as I was trying to read some of the endgame stuff. My crew have blitzed through many things in one turn. It's actually made a bit of a plot hole in the fact the gray maidens are taking over so quickly now in a matter of weeks, but even in game lore timing it's at most like 3 months. My team used horses and then Travel Through Plants in the Cinderlands so they are just taking down things in 3 days effectively for the whole of book 4. so I've actually started thinking about minimizing Gray Maiden numbers and making Iliosa a more Sauron style influence on them.

I would like some creative suggestions if possible on the Gray Maidens, because technically they would only be brainwashed in the story for a matter of weeks, at most months even for slow players, since the campaign really isn't that long when you give it a timeline. So unless there's some magical influence very few of them would actually be mind broken for real and would steadily recover. Or would basically be ruled by fear of retribution more than anything else. So the more I think about the gray maidens the less sense they make.

My first thought is the characters are about to infiltrate the Deaths Head Vault, and I was going to describe the horrific indoctrination methods used. And then I was going to ad lib a sort of magical control over them so that the team who is trouncing everyone will have the intention of being non-lethal to the gray maidens and up the difficulty, thereby saving innocent girls who have been overtaken.

Does this make sense? Is there any in world rules I could use for this that doesn't break the plot-based brainwash?

Any other thoughts people have are also appreciated, I want to give my people a really solid completion of the campaign over the final months.

[AwesomenessDog]

You can have a "retroactive" secretive effort put into building up the gray maidens before she even killed her husband, thus giving her the small army of already loyal women who just need smaller and less indoctrinated women who will just follow orders to be the lower level and more recent inclusions that the party disrupts in the Deathshead Vault.

But if you don't want that, the Pakalchi Sahkil is in of itself a highly indoctrinating force, Kordatra Destaid is a former Asmodean who can very easily trick people into deals where they have no choice but to serve the Queen, and Zenobia is literally a vampire variant (admittedly without mind control powers but still) with plenty of manipulative prowess herself even from the sheer fact that she used to be seen as the highest pillar of justice.

Some potential sexism:

There is another matter to consider at least for the original context of the AP back from 2007, which is dated now but can still be leaned into or not but is worth understanding: Ileosa was a big "women can take power" story, yes she is also super corrupt, which is strangely even *more progressive for 2007* but I digress. Other NPCs in the campaign specifically were given moral quandary around her being Queen instead of King, both because holy hell Cheliax has a Queen and look what it's like over there and because waman. Other female NPCs also were said to be rallying around her specifically because she was an inspiration to them, e.g. Sabina Merrin. As I mentioned, this is a very dated view by now, but having Zenobia as previously being considered not just the most fair and kind Justicar in Korvosa, not even most fair and kind female Justicar, would be pretty massive of a first impression for anyone brought in for indoctrination, let alone other considerations around serving a Queen.

As for where this leaves us, the majority of the Grey Maidens as stated in the book are LN, not evil, and not good. Certainly they aren't all neutral because one stat block said so, but they certainly mostly are neutral with some inconsequential variance among the rank and file who don't know more. This means or heavily implies that the majority of the Grey Maidens are just misguided and with Ileosa defeated and exposed they likely could be guided back a cure with a little targeted therapy.

But if we decide that we are going to do some sort of extended mind control, well, break enchantment defeats dominate person (with a good enough roll). Now in order to keep your players from accidentally or purposefully discovering and exploiting this weakness in Vavana (enchanter 9) or other's magic, it could be a more complex curse, held in power by the contract Ileosa has with Sermiganto. Once Sermignato and the castle is defeated, and the party finds Ileosa's contract, it becomes a matter of undoing the contract and then finally breaking the spell. This would allow you basically let them realize the problem, push them further to defeating Ileosa, potentially even peacefully (read without outright killing her), and then as a "post campaign credits roll" thing for one or more of your PCs, have them working on undoing this contract and curing the Maidens.

[Gaelstromdk]

I appreciate the thoughts, those are good ideas. We had some scheduling conflicts so it's been a while since we played and now we're about to hit this dungeon finally.

I had read vaguely about Zenobia, however she seemed to be a relatively recent conversion herself based on the story. Hers being a more willing conversion though does play a role since she abandoned her faith in fear to get remade.

The Pakalchi Sakhil I imagine will have a major effect on them, however the part I struggle with is how girls who may only have been treated this way for a matter or weeks or months could become like CR9. Your idea that some were started long before though does help considerably with that, so it can cover for the ones in the palace who are a higher CR. Plus why they remain loyal even beyond the fall of the indoctrination source.

I may have missed the Asmodean contract element of Kordatra, that is a possibility, and also when they kill her shortly (unless she escapes) it'll cause a good direct reason for the Gray Maidens' immediate drop in presence in the city.

I've already basically dropped hints via Cressida that they are not there by choice, so the party is aware they should be non-lethal which helps. Some people with weaker minds doing whatever it takes to not be hurt or tortured makes sense through this, but like most armies who use forced indoctrination they crumble fairly fast amidst an overwhelming force, so the gray maidens giving off hints that they'll be killed if they don't fight will help keep the party in check I think.

Thanks again, wish me luck.

[Bellona]

This has been a helpful - if short! :) - thread for me. My own players have basically finished the "Mantis and Maiden" section in Book 4 and I'm facing a similar conundrum with what they did.

Their characters killed a number of key personnel (one by accident), and rescued not only Marcus but also all the Grey Maiden recruits-to-be, plus they took some prisoners. They also made off with any documents which they could find. They even grabbed all the dead bodies that they they stuff into a Bag of Holding (mainly in the interest of getting away quickly; it takes time to strip that expensive magical full plate armour off a dead body).

So they now have some proof of the indoctrination conditions (eye-witness accounts from the rescued victims, what the group saw with their own eyes, and the paperwork trail too). They also have some unconscious GrMs*, including Tisharue.

Tish will not be an easy nut to crack when it comes to rehabilitation. She is listed as LE, and her stat block makes it clear that she's in it for the power. And as a Forlorn elf, she's messed up anyway. (Alas, my players seem to be allergic to playing elves in Golarion, so they - both in and out of character - have no idea about Forlorn elves. Even after meeting Laori Vaus! :o [So many failed Knowledge (Local) checks by a dwarf, half-orc, and two halflings! :D ].) So I'm thinking that the best that they can do with Tish is to ask Cressida to drop her into the deepest, darkest jail cell at Citadel Volshyenek, and deal with her later.

The rescued GrM recruits decided en masse that it would be safer for them if they just fled Korvosan territory. That way, they couldn't be "re-acquired" and they wouldn't be putting their families at risk for sheltering them. (At least until Ileosa and her GrMs are no longer a threat.)

But what about the rest of the GrM guards taken as prisoners? While getting Cressida to jail them too might be a short term solution, there's less justification for that than in Tish's case. Theoretically, they could be "cured"/de-programmed. I'm now considering working a new clause into Ileosa's contract, one which exerts some sort of control over the rank and file GrMs.

* I used the "GM" abbreviation originally, but then realised that it could be misunderstood in a standard RPG context. Which is why I changed it to "GrM" instead. :)

[AwesomenessDog]

Bellona wrote:

This has been a helpful - if short! :) - thread for me. My own players have basically finished the "Mantis and Maiden" section in Book 4 and I'm facing a similar conundrum with what they did.

Their characters killed a number of key personnel (one by accident), and rescued not only Marcus but also all the Grey Maiden recruits-to-be, plus they took some prisoners. They also made off with any documents which they could find. They even grabbed all the dead bodies that they they stuff into a Bag of Holding (mainly in the interest of getting away quickly; it takes time to strip that expensive magical full plate armour off a dead body).

So they now have some proof of the indoctrination conditions (eye-witness accounts from the rescued victims, what the group saw with their own eyes, and the paperwork trail too). They also have some unconscious GrMs*, including Tisharue.

Tish will not be an easy nut to crack when it comes to rehabilitation. She is listed as LE, and her stat block makes it clear that she's in it for the power. And as a Forlorn elf, she's messed up anyway. (Alas, my players seem to be allergic to playing elves in Golarion, so they - both in and out of character - have no idea about Forlorn elves. Even after meeting Laori Vaus! :o [So many failed Knowledge (Local) checks by a dwarf, half-orc, and two halflings! :D ].) So I'm thinking that the best that they can do with Tish is to ask Cressida to drop her into the deepest, darkest jail cell at Citadel Volshyenek, and deal with her later.

The rescued GrM recruits decided en masse that it would be safer for them if they just fled Korvosan territory. That way, they couldn't be "re-acquired" and they wouldn't be putting their families at risk for sheltering them. (At least until Ileosa and her GrMs are no longer a threat.)

But what about the rest of the GrM guards taken as prisoners? While getting Cressida to jail them too might be a short term solution, there's less justification for that than in Tish's case. Theoretically, they could be "cured"/de-programmed. I'm now considering working a new clause into Ileosa's contract, one which exerts some sort of control over the rank and file GrMs.

* I used the "GM" abbreviation originally, but then realised that it could be misunderstood in a standard RPG context. Which is why I changed it to "GrM" instead. :)

All sounds really good, if you want a sort of "future proofing" or knowledge about how future events can tie easily into what you and your party have done, read on:

Only small hitch is that eventually Cressida gets pushed out of Citadel Volshyenek as she becomes outed as an active rebel. Technically it was supposed to happen before the party returns in book 4, but if you do plan to have her eventually be forced to retreat into the Dead Warrens (those catacombs from book 1), you could of course have the prisoners moved there or converted so they don't have to be held there, or even have them be recaptured by Ileosa. At least knowing about the idea of forlorn elves to deal with Tisharu should be a DC 15 Kn (local) check at most; if Trinia is around, she might be able to nudge them to that fact.

Letting some Grey Maidens go free from Korvosa can be a custom group of rogue Grey Maidens. Normally in the canon, after Ileosa is dealt with, the Grey Maidens break up into several factions which mostly leave Korvosa and go in various places, still bonded by their sisterhood, but in some cases rebelling against the evil that Ileosa represented, and in another doubling down on it and joining up with Cheliax and the rule of Queen Abrogail.

And lastly Kordaitra's dealings with devils is from being a former Asmodean cleric; don't ask how she retrained to be a pure cavalier 10+ and Ileosa's dealings with devils are mentioned in book 6 in a contract she has with a devil.