Ritual Interrupted

[Daern]

So I'm running the Ritual and rescue encounters on Sunday and my players have already expressed interest in talking to the dryad when the rescue her, so this thread is going to involve some brainstorming about her, and how to use her.

First of all, I've named her Buttercup. (I think the Wilden player is gonna be excited)

Second, if she survives, I think I am going to have her tell the story about the Seela and the Song of Forms. This will happen right before the Trial By Fire, but I think that's alright.

We could do roleplaying stats I guess: Appearance: Singed Goal: To keep her children alive Traits: Desperate and unhinged Weakness: see traits... ideas?

 

[EugeneZ]

Um, spoilers, incase it wasn't obvious above.

Well, I think you've got a pretty good handle on it. Frankly, I think Buttercup (nice name) might know much of what Nelle does, so you may want to refer to those snippets. She wouldn't know about Bhurisrava or his experiments, but she could provide a lot of information about the seela (as you pointed out) and the fire forest itself. An intelligent creature that spent forty years in the forest likely knows quite a bit.

Having Buttercup provide some of Nelle's information would be a good way of at least lessening the infodump that will occur when they *do* meet Nelle... and, frankly, makes the Nelle encounter reasonably optional. I don't recall the adventure perfectly, but I can't think of any reason he's absolutely neccessary.

He might be the only one who can finish Bhursirava's tale, though if the PCs rescue Gwenvere from her madness, they'll most likely get enough of the story to realize he's the dead man in the tree shrine.

 

[Daern]

Ah yes, I had her tell the story of Anyurial before she died, but now I'm wishing I had thrown in more Nelle stuff because it looks like the party is going to pass on that... We're at the Tower bridge now and I'm at a point of being unsure how much to lay out and how much to hold back... I think I want the Shahalesti's guilt to be quite obvious but I'm not sure of the rest.

 

[EugeneZ]

I ran into a sticky situation with my party... half of them wanted to save the forest, the other half just wanted to get out. I don't think I impressed on them enough that the Shahalesti involvement in the fire was the key to the entire adventure, plot-wise. So, yeah, I think revealing that information is probably a good plan. If they don't head up-river, the seela can give out a lot of Nelle's information as well.