[C8] Korlok question (spoilers re: Korlok)

[Conscious Meat]

If Korlok believes that he's under contract to continue to follow the last command issued to him ("wait here and let no one out until I come for you")... wouldn't he believe it to be a breach of his contract to let the adventurers leave in order to find the contract?

How do GMs handle this?

[James Jacobs]

Conscious Meat wrote:

If Korlok believes that he's under contract to continue to follow the last command issued to him ("wait here and let no one out until I come for you")... wouldn't he believe it to be a breach of his contract to let the adventurers leave in order to find the contract?

How do GMs handle this?

Maybe, but he's also enough of a pedant and a bad guy and a troublemaker and a DEVIL that he's convinced himself that letting the PCs out to look for the contract wouldn't be against the rules because they're OBVIOUSLY coming back as soon as they find it. (It's also a way he can test the strength of how much the contract keeps him from doing things too. An experiment, if you will.)

[Subparhiggins]

How I plan on playing this is that he's contractually obligated to arrest them, but the timeline for it wasn't specified. I'm running with the hashmark theme of him keeping track of his time served in the prison by giving the PCs 4 days to find his contract and get it back to him to uphold their end of the bargain, otherwise he's free to step outside the prison and pursue them to the best of his ability.

[Conscious Meat]

What I think I've settled on, is that I could have him offer to draw up a short-term contract where they agree to consider themselves nominally detained but on assignment for the specified task (contract retrieval), with the contract to terminate upon completion; and to also have Korlok explain that there probably is a loophole in his contract, because it'd be common practice to have a clause anticipating the possibility that the non-devilish party being long-term indisposed for whatever reason.

If the players ask what happens if they fetch the contract and there is in fact no such loophole, I could have him suggest that with one copy of the contract in possession, he thinks could make arrangements that both it and the other copy in the Fallen Fastness would be destroyed (e.g. handwave that periodically a Zebub or similar lesser creature is sent by Urevian to get a status report, and that Urevian might have the ability to make such happen; no need to drop Urevian's name to the players, ofc).

With that in mind... probably the bigger risk would be if the party sees "devil" and immediately attacks, haha. So far, they've generally *not* been murderhobo, but they've only met a single devil so far (the zebub janitor) and that was a combat encounter from the get-go. I'll want to play him Korlok's apparent martial training to encourage caution, should they meet him.

[MrPeach]

I just simply had him focus on the "wait here and let no one out" thing as Korlok deciding he doesn't have to arrest them as long as they don't enter the room. They aren't 'here' if they're outside the room and the door is open, so he doesn't have to arrest them - yet.