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Message: <blockquote data-quote="RangerWickett" data-source="post: 7071348" data-attributes="member: 63">Shaaladel would be suspicious, and have Aurana do some divinations, which would probably clue them in that the Torch could be restored. Since there's no formal alliance yet (not until adventure 9, probably), he'd have spies on the lookout. However, stealing the Torch from Seaquen is hard, as long as the city still has the teleportation beacon from adventure 3, because now any thieves have to manage to hoof it a few miles to get out of the beacon's radius. But Shaaladel would have people ready to teleport after the party if they leave the security of Seaquen, though they'd have some lead time. (Party leaves, a few minutes later spies find out, 10 minutes later a sending reaches Aurana, 10 minutes later she and her underlings have cast their own sendings alerting the ready-response agents, an hour later they finish their scrying spells, three rounds of buff spells later they scrysassinate the party. Buff spells include - protection from energy, resist energy, and vampiric touch they cast on a sacrificial beast to get them enough temporary hit points to survive the burning sky.)Meanwhile, word reaches Leska that the Torch is out in public. She has a dozen inquisitors scry on the PCs, does some other divinations, realizes that ambushes might just get her inquisitors killed. So she orders Kreven (in adventure 8) to accelerate his tests, which prompts the attack on Seaquen with the blizzard elementals. She might also send some devils to infiltrate Seaquen and just slaughter innocents in the town, leaving behind at each massacre a tablet that reads "More shall die until Ragesia has the Torch." In any event, Seaquen realizes they need to move against Kreven and the Koren Obelisk. This is exceptionally difficult without a functional Torch.Honestly, unless you've diverged a bit from the adventures as written, there aren't really enough Taranesti to restore anything. Not enough managed to escape the genocide perpetrated by the Shahalesti to create a full nation.I see him as more focused on punishing the actual plotters (i.e., Leska) rather than needing to punish the actual assassins.Oh, the instant Rhuarc's in the room with anyone Shaaladel cares about, he decides to kill them. So he basically feigns indifference, lets people talk or whatever, and waits for Shalosha to have only her bodyguard around (he can have his shadow spy on her if necessary). Unless the party really keeps him on lockdown, he'd hide in plain sight, slip away, pepper Shalosha with some poison and shatterspell arrows, then hide and skirmish - harrying them with tragedies - until Shalosha is dead. If he dies after that, eh, no big. Unless the party somehow gave him a wild new love of life, he was expecting to die anyway, and murdering Shaaladel's daughter would be more satisfying than even getting the bastard himself. I'd say basically the only way this doesn't happen is if the party keeps Rhuarc manacled constantly, or if Shalosha announces a desire to murder her own father.Or maybe Rhuarc plays the long con and waits until they're in the temple, then tries to kill errybody. I imagine it's damned hard to spot a shadowdancer in a constantly shifting hallucination of memories.I feel that having Shalosha in the temple is one of the key ways to turn her against her father, since she gets to witness Shaaladel enact a genocide. I'm not sure how best to get her there, though. Aside from her, hm, do you have any NPCs from Seaquen, Dassen, or elsewhere whom you don't intend to bring back -- maybe one of the lords of Dassen decides to join with Ragesia and shows up with a retinue, or the mage Kiernan figures Seaquen cannot win and so betrays the Lyceum. Maybe some priest the PCs met at the temple in Seaquen is actually a spy. Perhaps Koren the Wayfarer shows up and just has a contingent teleport spell to get her outside the temple when she's sufficiently injured, so the party knows who she is in adventure 8.</blockquote>

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