Going back to the original question, one of the complicating factors is that one PC is very reluctant to engage in social conflict because of his character’s terrible social skills. I don’t know why, but he nerfed his character at the start, beginning with comically low exponents in key areas (basically, conflict of any kind, with uneven stats that gave him B1 roots in them). I can’t remember my thoughts at the time; a more astute GM would have talked him out of it.
It’s turned out to be quite demoralizing for him, though over the course of adventuring he’s really gained ground.
I didn’t mean to suggest that the players won’t listen to the Queen at all. All I was pointing out is that if I say to them, “She says so-and-so. She’s lying,” it presents no great conundrum because she has so little leverage. They can just kick her in the teeth and say, “We don’t believe you.” Compare with a King who lies to you while you’re at a public audience. Do you call him out as a liar publicly, or nod in agreement that the sky is pink. The King’s power makes the lie into a meaningful choice point.
I’m not sure Dallin’s beliefs are that relevant; they only captured the Queen in the final half hour of the session, so they don’t reference her:
[ul]
[li]Figure out the lich’s weakness, I must capture one of his generals to find more information (COMPLETED)[/li][li]Find out how the sceptre can redeem my “curse”, I must expelled the Queen from the sceptre first (COMPLETED)[/li][li]Nywin is alone in this world, I should find her some stewardship that is not Siggar[/li][/ul]
Isn’t that an excellent moral conundrum right there, though? The Queen is lying. She has no power. What do you do? How do you treat her? What does that say about you?
And how are people who aren’t familiar with who the Queen really is going to wonder about and react to these adventurers being assholes to this poor random hill man? And what happened to him in this scenario? Is he just along for the ride now that the Queen is in his body? Or is he stuck back in the soul jar? Is he dead? Does he have any friends or relatives?
So, Dallin knows how to use the sceptre to redeem his curse or is it just that the queen is expelled?
Also, do they know the liche’s weakness, or have they just captured a general.
Because the queen probably knows the liche’s weakness and also how to use the sceptre. If it was me, I’d offer to redeem him with the sceptre but point out that I need someone gifted in sorcery, since I’m separated from my magicks. I’d also offer to aid them against the liche king and give them solid info to prove it.
If both of those beliefs are 100% completed, this character needs new beliefs pronto.
The hill man (“Earmi”) was a scout of Ghellut the Bloody, who recently took Nolloth. (This was the enemy general they were riding out to capture, the Queen’s arrival short-circuited that.) I hadn’t decided whether he’s stuck in there, but that makes sense as they haven’t used the medallion to expel him. Yes, he has countrymen who will potentially come after him, although I’m wary of introducing ever more complications as this game desperately needs some winnowing and closure!
Dallin does not know how to remove the curse, no, though they do know the liche’s weakness. (He requires the medallion, at the very least, to live for any length of time, and without the circlet it is a miserable undeath, having to ever move to new bodies which immediately begin decaying.)
So yes, this is exactly the direction I went last session. Neither Dallin nor the Queen’s current body are Gifted, but we’re using Sorcery as a stand-in for “use magical artifact” skill. She’s offered to use the sceptre to remove his curse (something she says is well within her abilities), but he’s instead demanded she teach him to do it. This will secure her at least a few months of life.
In an online discussion this afternoon, Siggar’s player suggested some really astonishing ideas. One is that they travel to Pelark, and try to illicitly implant Queen Cuvas (of Darpera) into the body of Queen Wealdine, ruler of Pelark - for the purpose of having her use Pelark’s army to fight Bedarkon (so far, it’s standing back and letting Keroon wither). Wealdine has only had a walk-on part so far, tending to the Inge’s wounds when he washed up there. Wealdine is Gifted too, though the players don’t know this, so this will give Cuvas access to her full powers, and then some.
He’s also somewhat sympathetic to the Queen’s assertions that their long-lived dynasty allowed Darpera to prosper in a way that subsequent kingdoms haven’t, and he’s actually wondering whether the right thing to do is to hand over the artifacts to Bedarkon and reinstate the lot of them! Incredible.
Question: Are you trying to wind up the campaign, or just get closure on this particular plot arc? Cuz I am seeing soooooo many avenues this plot could branch out to. You could go really epic here, if the campaign is expected to keep running for a long time to come.
Another question: Have you decided what will happen should the hill man die? Would the immortal queen die as well? Or would her soul be set free? The latter option carries a lot of opportunities with it too.
Yes, the game now has a ton of potentially interesting loose ends.
[ul]
[li]When the players killed King Menaka (a Tyrant) and scattered the Giragita, they left a power vacuum in Novy Dom. Who has filled it?[/li][li]Siggar’s sister was pregnant while infected with Onddo spores, and the resulting fungus child was planted near the weirwood. What will come of a soil mother that has some human sensibilities?[/li][li]When Andrew left the game, his character Corn was trying to organize the criminal element of Keroon. Now that it’s under siege and the black market booming, he could well emerge as a potent NPC.[/li][li]The ancestral dead are angry and frightened of the players, who have shown a willingness to wield Darperan necromantic artifacts.[/li][li]The other refugees from Grunweld are still in need of a lot of help.[/li][li]Pelark’s opportunistic attempt to dominate Keroon[/li][li]etc.[/li][/ul]
Whether or not the campaign ends, I want to get closure on this particular plot arc. It’s a personal weakness, elements in the game keep proliferating. In this case, it happened because I chose to make the main antagonist someone who was threatening the entire Vale, not just the players. But as a consequence, he has to then be powerful enough to explain why one of the local rulers doesn’t just send a team of soldiers to off him. This necessary distances the end - 3 LP characters aren’t just going to waltz up to an ancient undead sorcerer and kill him, as they would a wight with a few tricks up his sleeve.
Regarding the Queen’s soul - the players spontaneously assumed that the Queen’s soul would go back into the sceptre upon her death. I hadn’t decided, actually! The warrior was found impaled on his own sword (that’s the way into the sword, to be slain by it; it stores souls of the dead which the wielder can consume for bonuses). You can’t impale yourself on a sceptre, so presumably there’s some other way in - but perhaps the Queen has to be touching it.
If so, she’s in a lot of danger right now. Were she to die, she’d do as others do and join the ancestral dead. (In Grunweld, these accumulate around settled areas. Over time, the dead of great city-states like Keroon formed a community of their own, led by those with enough will to remain differentiated - with political aims of their own.) The queen would be a powerful figure among the dead, but she’d face a lot of opposition unless she could find her way to some Darperan loyalists. Unfortunately, most of those are imprisoned in the Tower of Silence (which is where her sceptre had been placed) - Darpera had a policy that all dead were to be placed there, the better to provide for Darperan sorcerers needing a supply of souls for magic. So they’re none too happy either.
Hmm… OK, the PCs don’t have the resources to kill the liche, agreed. Could it be possible to give them such resources? Give them an army! Or rather, have an NPC-controlled army march against the liche, and let the PCs join it if they wish. If they don’t want to, have the army destroy the liche off-screen, and have the repercussions be felt through the setting. Could this work?
Edit: There could be other reasons why a local ruler hasn’t sent an army after him yet. He doesn’t have to be all-powerful. Perhaps the liche has been pulling some dirty tricks with the local nobility, or perhaps his power is waning for some reason. Or you could just send a REALLY big army after him…
I have a similar situation in the campaign I’m currently running. The major threat in the campaign is a trade war that has led to a brutal economic crisis affecting an entire region – literally hundreds of square miles. I intend on adding even more huge-scale elements too. The way we are handling this on the PC level is by focusing on the little things. What can the PCs do to affect such a huge problem? The PCs in my campaign are all either nobles or noble-connected, so this helps, but I’m finding it important to still zero-in and focus only on the PCs themselves. If their actions don’t concern the over-arching threat of the campaign, it is hardly mentioned at all. I’ll just make sure that the repercussions are felt through the environment.
So, likewise, does your liche have a motivation to eliminate the PCs specifically? If so, does he have the means to find them, reach them, and do so? If the answer to all of the above is yes, what are the PCs doing to avoid this fate? Are they in hiding? If not, then they must assuredly find some sort of protection to hide behind – like an army on the march, or a king granting them amnesty. But if the liche isn’t an immediate threat, why not just ignore him for the time being? Focus on something else relevant to the PCs. The liche will slide back into the picture eventually, and he will make his influence felt through repercussions in the setting.
Well, I was speaking from an earlier period in the campaign - this isn’t really a problem at the moment. The players have more than enough mean for a good try.
After securing a rather heroic reputation in Keroon as Menaka’s slayer, Siggar was invited to join Keroon’s defenders in the hopes of boosting morale. Since that time he’s performed his duties well. He and Dallin traded on their good reputations to win over a few of the soldiers, and have formed them into a volunteer squad that was nominally going to try to sneak into Nolloth to capture Ghellut the Bloody. (That plan was abandoned as soon as Queen Cuvas appeared, as she was far more important than Ghellut.)
So, they have a small force, plus the means of moving it around - they’ve discovered ‘the reaching’ a confusing and nausea-provoking means of moving great distances. Conceivably, they could use this to teleport (more or less) directly into the liche’s encampment. What they’re lacking at the moment is good intel on his location and the disposition of his troops. Cuvas has all of this, of course, owing to her scrying.
(One problem with the reaching is that time seems to flow very rapidly while they’re in there. They pursued one of Bedarkon’s servants, a great spider, into it after it stole the artifacts. By the time they made it back to Keroon, seemingly a few hours later, it was winter and Keroon was close to starvation. So they don’t use this means of travel lightly.)
They’ve been hold up in Keroon. He’s been sending in monstrous infiltrators; he doesn’t have an army large enough to overcome its defenses just yet. (Though, by springtime, Keroon may be in pretty bad shape.) The entirety of his forces I’ve left completely unspecified. He had been building up a force of undead, and while that remains, the loss of the artifacts to the players means that he’s had to choose less dependable allies - coerced Giragita, great spiders, things from the lake bed. It really depends on what the players do.
If they decide to teleport into his encampment, then I’d probably choose to make it a smaller affair. If they ride to battle at the head of a force of Pelarker mercenaries, with Cuvas slinging battle magic, then I’d make his force considerably larger.