(Possible spoilers) Asrabey on Axis island.

[starcrawler]

Hey, my group finally finished the first module, however one of my players seems to be struggling with why Asrabey would try and hunt down the Duchess, he knows that Asrabey wanted to kill the duchess to show that the Unseen Court had nothing to do with the attempt on the Kings life, but he doesn't see why by doing so he would kill Risuri forces to get to him. I've tried to explain it and I might be missing something (Maybe I just need to read everything again) but I'm struggling to find a good explanation to give him other then "He wants to kill the duchess using any means"

They kept him alive and when they found out that he was released back to the Dreaming he wasn't very happy and found it "Stupid" that he would get away with killing Risuri forces to try and execute the duchess. Can anyone help me to try and understand this myself so I can give him a good reason to clear his mind without any possible spoilers?

I'm probably just missing something due to tiredness.

Spoiler

After posting this I remembered that it's something to do with the Obscurati, so I'm assuming that once the players find out this connection (Particularly the one whom found it strange) they'll understand this further, but still for the time being it is hard (for me at least) to explain his reasoning without spoilers to clear the air.

 

[RangerWickett]

What it basically comes down to is, "Fey think differently than we do" and "Politicians do terrible things."

To the Unseen Court, and to Asrabey, the common soldiers do not matter. They can barely fathom why King Aodhan might be upset at the deaths of such insignificant individuals. For Asrabey, killing them is about as much of a problem as trampling someone's flower garden. He might apologize if it becomes an issue, but to him the soldiers are as easily replaced as some petunias.

As for why Asrabey would be let go, he's practically an ambassador from the Unseen Court, who are in charge of a nation that could potentially attack Risur from within its own borders. It's more valuable for the people in charge to give him back and extract some concessions from the fey than to just kill him. When one of the USA's contractors murdered some people in Afghanistan, he got off scot-free because Afghanistan did not want to deal with the trouble of punishing him. In exchange, some Afghan politicians probably got a good amount of money.

That's politics for you. If an enemy pilot flies a plane and blows up a school, and we capture him, yes, we'd probably want to keep him in prison or execute him. But a prisoner transfer accomplishes more, and is less likely to provoke further violence.

 

[starcrawler]

Thanks a lot, that clears up quite a bit and hopefully will satisfy my players. I'm already looking forward to adventure 5 when they meet him again because they genuinely hate him so I'm interested to see what they do, but that's a long way off at the moment.