WotBS A funny thing happened on the way to Dassen

As I mentioned in another thread, my players are convinced they are going to be waylaid by Ragesian agents as they make their way from Seaquen to Bresk at the start of the fourth adventure, so they're putting together Clever Plans to avoid and/or gain advantage over these predicted agents.

Now, while the book has no such agents, I really would like to reward their cleverness and foresight with some sort of interesting encounter -- nothing too difficult (after all, they're trying to avoid battle, not get into one!), but there should be some sort of benefit that comes out of the encounter. Their current plan still seems to have them going through the swamps to get to the plains of Dassen. I don't think a random monster encounter would be useful, so I've been trying to come up with some sort of Ragesian expeditionary force that they just happen to run into in the swamp. Anyone have any clever ideas on what such an expedition might be doing, and what they might know?

Of course, their alternate clever idea has them going by sea. Not clear what they might encounter out there -- maybe one of the Shahalesti ships limping home after the hurricane, I guess -- or what they might know. Could be a fun excuse for an underwater encounter, though.

So, does anyone have any wild ideas they can share?

What I did for my players was using the 4th edition encounter of a Ragesian Wyvern Knight, the wyvern and his buddy shortly after the swamp. The wyvern riders had Tidereaver's Tears with them, and they might give informations about a possible contact with Nelebekus/Brutus so it might feel rewarding for your players to definitely know the orbs have something to do with the Ragesians.

Bill T,

When is your next session? How large and complicated or small and straightforward so you want this to be?

What is their relationship with Katrina? Could she have had a chance to feed any of the information about the party or its plans back, perhaps via Sending?

The more I think on this, the more I think you should reward, and not punish your players for the careful plans and activities. Unless there is an active agent (such as Katrina, but I believe she is related to one of your player characters) is reporting on their plans, let their plans succeed! They can entirely avoid the Ragesian agents sent to interfere with them! Instead, they can stumble upon a different group of Ragesian agents who are not expecting them at all and have different plans entirely! Once the party uses the element of surprise and deals with them, they can find the information that A) this group had nothing do with them, and B) there IS another group that was sent out to interfere with them; only by their careful work did they avoid the trap that was laid for them.

Having an unexpected challenge, and having confirmation that their paranoia is justified and maybe enen necessary to survive is in fact its own reward in the campaign.

The primary question becomes what other sort of operation can be in play here? The obvious choice is to have an expanded and larger version of "Bodies in the Water" involving an Inquisition retrieval team. But perhaps the idea of something happening before they reach Dassen at all would work best.

The idea of an adventure at sea has a lot of merit, but remember that Ragesia is primarily land locked, and presumably not well known for its navy. Minister of Pain Guthwulf might have used Planar Ally to bring forth a different devil, one that might lead have command of a privateer ship and be raiding for specific information and travellers. A pirate ship at the disposal of a devil and a small inquisition squad could be a very nice encounter, and gives you the excuse to drop some extra documents to support the party's paranoia. I would probably favor a bone devil (Osyluth) or Fury (Erinyes) for my own style.

thekwp said:

The more I think on this, the more I think you should reward, and not punish your players for the careful plans and activities. Unless there is an active agent (such as Katrina, but I believe she is related to one of your player characters) is reporting on their plans, let their plans succeed! They can entirely avoid the Ragesian agents sent to interfere with them! Instead, they can stumble upon a different group of Ragesian agents who are not expecting them at all and have different plans entirely! Once the party uses the element of surprise and deals with them, they can find the information that A) this group had nothing do with them, and B) there IS another group that was sent out to interfere with them; only by their careful work did they avoid the trap that was laid for them.

Having an unexpected challenge, and having confirmation that their paranoia is justified and maybe enen necessary to survive is in fact its own reward in the campaign.

The primary question becomes what other sort of operation can be in play here? The obvious choice is to have an expanded and larger version of "Bodies in the Water" involving an Inquisition retrieval team. But perhaps the idea of something happening before they reach Dassen at all would work best.

The idea of an adventure at sea has a lot of merit, but remember that Ragesia is primarily land locked, and presumably not well known for its navy. Minister of Pain Guthwulf might have used Planar Ally to bring forth a different devil, one that might lead have command of a privateer ship and be raiding for specific information and travellers. A pirate ship at the disposal of a devil and a small inquisition squad could be a very nice encounter, and gives you the excuse to drop some extra documents to support the party's paranoia. I would probably favor a bone devil (Osyluth) or Fury (Erinyes) for my own style.

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Yes, yes, and yes! This encounter is intended as a reward -- I have been thinking something along the lines of your option A, like scouts and engineers preparing to get an army through the swamps. Option B hadn't occurred to me at all, but it's a great idea. Assuming the heroes are smart enough not to wipe the scouts out, one of them could tell the heroes that a devil had visited. I'd like to be able to tell them that they hoped to capture Balan, but I'm not sure why they'd mention that.

Whether the adventure is at sea or in the swamps is up to the players -- at the moment, they're favoring travelling through the swamps to get to Dassen. A ship with a Ragesian letter of marque would be a cool twist, though, especially since there are likely several beat-up Shahalesti ships with undoubtedly disloyal elf wizards aboard.

Oh, your question about the party's "relationship" to Katrina is a bit ironic: One of the PCs decided she was Katrina's sister. (Another decided he had merc'd with her before Coaltongue died -- and still has nightmares from it -- but that seems less relevant.) That's going to put me in a bind when Katrina finally has to decide where her loyalties are, but I figured I should embrace the challenge that the familial relationship provides.

Great ideas for me to ponder. Thanks!

oh I completely misread the trip your party is taking... I thought you meant the trip to Seaquen in #3, but instead you are focusing on the beginning of #4.

I find the idea of yet another of Guthwulf's devil minions charming. What the devil could be up to depends on the informations the Ragesians have about the plans of the agents of Seaquen. Maybe the devil would simply spy on them to gather information, so a paranoid party would be able to catch him/her before much harm is done and get some informations about their enemy instead. Maybe even a hint on a ragesian presence in Bresk?

What I did in my campaign to make Katrina more interesting for the two Elves is to make her the sort-of Ex of Guthwulf (she dated him once or twice when she was kind of new in Ragesia in order to secure her position, but he's convinced that she loves him) and let the Inquisitor do things to "win her back". So if you have Katrina in your party, the devil might be trying to contact her in order to bring her back to Ragesia.

Made it to Dassen, but turning back from Bresk?

That went well: The heroes went by sea, so they encountered the bone devil's warship the next morning. The devil teleported aboard, got attacked, fought back (the party warrior ended up jumping overboard when the devil panicked him), and left its surrender terms (and fled back to Ragesia for healing). The heroes then faked a surrender, and the the party sorceress finally thought to use her wand of dimensional anchor to force the issue with the devil. (I figure those wands are pretty cheap these days, simply because no one's teleporting). It eventually surrendered and described what Revulus was doing, which included a description of the composition of Inquisitor Crona's task force (but not their destination).

However, they managed to kill one of the Talon's warriors when they confronted them at the halfling caravan, and now they're freaking out. They're considering simply abandoning the mission outright, or maybe trying their diplomacy skills with the dwarves between Dassen and Ragesia. A better idea they're entertaining is to take the surviving soldiers, along with the bodies they found in the ice, to Lady Dene's stronghold and explain, in selective detail, what happened (they had considered taking the bodies to Lady Dene anyhow).

So, my next question: Can anyone fill me in on Lady Dene? The text doesn't have much to say about her. I'd really appreciate any ideas on her situation and motivations -- why she thinks refugees are profitable, why her army is the way it is, whether or not she might want to visit Bresk, etc.

Bill T. said:

So, my next question: Can anyone fill me in on Lady Dene? The text doesn't have much to say about her. I'd really appreciate any ideas on her situation and motivations -- why she thinks refugees are profitable, why her army is the way it is, whether or not she might want to visit Bresk, etc.

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Since my party is generally interested in talking to everyone, I made short portfolios for all the Lords/Ladies and their proxies just in case. Note that this Dene and her proxy are my own interpretations based on the 3e and 4e infos, so take them with a grain of salt

Lady Selena Dene is a young, beautiful, but rather inexperienced and naive princess. She's rumored to go by the nickname "the doe" at court since she's considered to be a harmless, easy to frighten, cute girl. She does know that she has a rather small army and is afraid by the Seaquen call to arms and the growing mass of refugees there that can easily turned into a large Seaquenian army, especially since she's heared that "legendary" Xavious Foebane is the one doing the musterings. Her own army is small because her family didn't fare too well in the previous "blood war" for the succession. The Denes lost a good part of their soldiers in a futile battle against Megadon's forces and have never recovered since then.

She's also a bit of an environmentalist, loves nature and has a rather large knowledge of local animals. She also has a pet stag and a small, private zoo. She doesn't know too much about economics, but her "trusted advisors" have assured her that the refugees going along her roads will have some money to spend and that she might profit from those "scary strangers from Ragesia". Since she doesn't want to keep them in her country, keeping the prices for mundane tasks and inn stayings high seems like an obvious choice.

After hearing what happened to her people, Lady Dene will most likely be horrified and refuse to go to Bresk unless she can be convinced that she has nothing to fear. She knows the stories of the bloody succession wars (in my campaign nearly every noble house that is still alive today has lost members... Timor is an orphan because of the wars etc.) and doesn't want to be part of anything that can turn into another civil war. She might want the party to report to her proxy and tell him what happened. She knows that her proxy is far more experienced at court than she is and that he might traverse this serpent's nest much easier than she could.

Lady Dene's proxy in Bresk is a stern, rough man that goes by the name of Thorn (Dorn in my German campaign). He seems like a battle-hardened veteran in his thirties-fourties and he is not really a master of diplomacy. In fact, he's better at intimidating people into keeping their meddlings away from "his princess". What only insiders know is that Thorn is the bastard half-brother of Lady Dene who served as her bodyguard in years past. He's a rough negotiator and will not agree to any plan that might endanger Lady Dene, her reputation or the things she loves. Thorn will be interested in an official non-agression pact with Seaquen and might also be curious about the green Dragon in the swamp (if the party made Naielasza friendly that is). He thinks the threat of such a marvellous beast might be reason enough for the other lords to stay out of Lady Dene's affairs.

Lylandra said:

Since my party is generally interested in talking to everyone, I made short portfolios for all the Lords/Ladies and their proxies just in case. Note that this Dene and her proxy are my own interpretations based on the 3e and 4e infos, so take them with a grain of salt

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So noted, but adding that to my campaign for when my party gets there. Thanks Lylandra!

I agree with thekwp -- that's really great, Lylandra! Thanks!

I had vague ideas of her being a young tree-hugger -- maybe even given her a level or three of druid -- but hadn't given any thought to tying in the Blood Wars. Just to continue that idea, I was thinking the previous Lady Dene died when she was young, but maybe that's too cliche -- it'd be more fitting if the current Lady Dene's mother was overprotective of her only daughter and happy to let her spend her time playing with the creatures of the forest. Mom only died in the last year (got lost in the woods, or something equally underwhelming, maybe) and now Lady Dene is trying to make sense of her new situation, just as the situation has changed radically thanks to Emperor Coaltongue's death.

The price-gouging idea is great -- make money off of the refugees while discouraging them from sticking around, all at once. That's a good strategic move from her perspective.

I suspect I'll park Thorn with Lady Dene to start with, just so he can accompany the party to Bresk.

Oh, and I believe Lady Dene's first name should be Lydia, just from the campaign's credits -- although, the way things are going, I'll probably end up calling her Lylandra.