When 'awesome' becomes 'stupid'?

[hirou]

SPOILERS FOR ADVENTURE 4!

Basically, my party decided that they absolutely cannot allow Isobel to remain in slavery, regardless of 'low profile mission', 'RHC acts in secret' and other foolish regulations. Thanks to good cover identities, some good ideas and lucky rolls they successfully infiltrated high-class party in Cherage and basically stole Isobel right from under the nose of Eleonor and dozens of guards.

The thing is, the cool plan is not always the best one. In short:
-party leader, eladrin artificier was caught by Danor RHC analogue. He's not directly implicated in the incident, but... Eladrin? In Cherage? Right after Vekeshi agent kidnaps a property of Danor citizen? He's not going anywhere soon;
-Isobelle was hidden on party's ship. Eleonor is throwing around enough gold that she's VERY likely to be found, reducing the result of the whole affair to zero;
-they've certainly attracted enough attention for Ob to investigate so-called "Finona Duval and her crew"...

Delft will have a long and heated Sending discussion with the party, and the problem is, realistically he's supposed to call them off at this point. If Danor realizes that RHC cell supported actions of Vekeshi kidnapper... This is about the worst thing possible right before the peace summit.

O' Mighty Hivemind, any good ideas how to resolve this without complete disaster?

 

[RangerWickett]

It's the classic spy thriller trope. Everything has gone to sh*t, one of the baddies has the hero cornered with a gun pointed at his back, it looks like there's no way out. We zoom in on the face of the despairing hero and then BANG!

What, it wasn't me that was shot? The hero spins around and sees a Soviet officer with a smoking pistol, having just gunned down his own man. He nods to the hero, says, "God bless America. Now get out of here!"

(You're in Moscow. Just swap the countries and you'll be fine.)

So you could throw the party a bone -- one of the 'Danoran Intelligence' agents is actually an RHC spy. He discreetly releases the eladrin PC, warns him to expect Elanor and her goons to come for their ship, and tells them that trying to stow Isobel away on the boat won't work, but he knows a guy at the railyard who can help them out. (This lets you cram Isobel and Mister Mapple into the same freight car for a while. You might even keep her there through the trip, with their plan being to reach Vendricce then flee into Elfaivar.)

Once the PC prisoner escapes, the spy will claim to his superiors, "But sir, you yourself showed up and ordered him released." The spy has a solid work record so far, so he'll be believed, and the Danoran intelligence guys will have a wild goose chase looking for an illusionist or changeling.

Elanor and the authorities go to the party's ship and find no escaped eladrin. However, the ship's crew is found out and arrested, but they clam up and give the PCs a chance to escape. Your goal is to keep the adventure going while still having consequences for the party screw up.

Then the next morning, as the party is getting back on the train to leave Cherage, an exhausted and frantic Elanor pulls in her favors with the rail enclave security and demands people be searched as they board the train. Queues are formed, guards start to search people, the conductor keeps looking at his watch, . . . give the party a chance to try something. If they're subtle and clever and succeed, great, they win. If they screw up and are about to get caught, . . .

irony is at peak level here, . . .

it's Luc Jierre who pulls rank and calls a stop to it. Elanor's rich and has friends, but he's a Jierre, and his train cannot be late. The enclave security apologizes to Elanor, then escorts her away. The party's cover is still safe, and the adventure can continue.

(Also, sending won't work into or out of Danor, so no Delft.)

It's possible that this just nixes most of the drama in Nalaam. The Family stills gives Damata Griento a hard time, but maybe you just skip the arena. Or maybe you give the party a chance to finish off Elanor. A possible timeline is that while the PCs ride the train to the Malice Lands, Elanor fumes in Cherage. She's convinced Isobel is still on the train, and so she takes the next day's train. In Orithea she risks a sending to call ahead to Nalaam. Mages there do some divinations, determine that Isobel is shacked up with Mr. Mapple, and make arrangements to capture them both as soon as the train arrives in Nalaam.

The next day the party rides from Trekhom to Nalaam, and Elanor rides from Orithea to Trekhom, then buys teleportation passage to Nalaam. With style she has sending'ed ahead to invite Luc, Ottavia, and the PCs to the arena, mostly so she can show-up Luc. The PCs might arrive, see that Elanor is going through with the sale of Isobel, and that Mr. Mapple's in the arena. Elanor can even monologue a bit, explaining what she had to go through to hold onto Isobel - except Isobel isn't as docile and drugged up.

Of course, there's the risk that bringing Elanor back in makes the party feel like their earlier efforts were wasted, and on the railroad adventure, I'm nervous about making things seem too rail-roaded. But if you think your players would like a chance to thoroughly thwomp Elanor, it's an option. Otherwise, you might have her show up later, unaware of the PCs' identities. Or maybe they come across her in Adventure 8 when she's gone to Elfaivar to look for Isobel.

Good luck.

 

[RangerWickett]

Oh, and I forgot to mention that my own playtest party did something not too dissimilar, though it was more of a "lone PC gets in trouble by himself" situation. That PC ended up stowing aboard the train too, so we had three people -- Mapple, Isobel, and the PC -- all trying to avoid discovery in the same rail car.

 

[hirou]

You have great improvisation skills, I'm afraid I'm still too inexperienced for this kind of situations. Our game actually got suddenly moved to... yesterday, so unfortunately your advice won't be applicablee, but it was a fascinating and educational read. The new status quo is as follows:

• eladrin PC is still "out of picture", supposedly in custody; I've given his player some rough personalities outlines of Cardiff Hedgehill, Olivert Boon, Mr.Mapple and that Ob officer from Malice Lands from Adv.7, and he's chosen Boon as his stand-in for now; so Boon was tasked by Brianne to get closer to the party, and so far he's doing pretty good (simultaneously helping me to cover actual tracks of Luc and Ottavia, probably better than I'd have done it myself with him as NPC);
• Isobelle was indeed smuggled right under the nose of Porteur de Mort of Cherage's customs, even if it almost cost her her life (they put her in the bag of holding on the sea shelf below the ship, then, when it was detected by Arcana check, pulled out an empty bag, while Isobelle was frantically holding her breath);
• She was later teleported to Risur from Orithea by PC, along with a letter to Delft basically reading "we screwed up big this time, but we have this eladrin! Also, RHC agent in Danor's custody, any ideas how to deal with that?" The teleport coincided with Luc's lantern misshap which turned all fire in the city into water, which resulted in some frantic "It wasn't me!.. this time..." from the ritual caster;
• On the other hand, a month before they convinced Gale to join them on this trip, starting from Orithea... so they still have eladrin woman on the train, although much less tame than Isobelle;
• Mr.Mapple is so far called "super-hobo", and party loves him; they overheard part of Malia's sending to Malice bandits, and now are sure that he is the goal of the attack (as he was in the same 6th car Malia mentioned); so, it's actually likely that Gale will save Mr.Mapple from some certain harm...
• To top it off, Eleonor is still on the train, as it was the fastest way to get out of dead magic zone. Some cheap divinations in Orithea told her that her prize is likely too far away, but another much wanted eladrin is right in the next car...

One more week till the next game, one more week to try and stage this. I have a rough idea how arena encounter can be "forced" from the other side: I decided before-hand (and actually told our Vekeshi mystic) that, according to Nalaam arena rules, every person that enters the monetary contact with arena's participant is subject to arena challenges. E.g. in original timeline Eleonor is protected from Andrei's attacks by arena's mages in the beginning, but when she pays up to increase his punishment, this protection ends. So, if some of the PCs (and preferably Gale) are tricked into, say, accepting a gold coin from arena fighter, they can be attacked during the climax. This definitely need polishing, but this is the best idea I can give right now, at 3am.

 

[hirou]

Oh, and the same Vekeshi mystic had a brief talk with Luc and Ottavia. He mentioned Nathan Jierre (which is currently employed in secret Risuri National Institute of Applied Astronomy), and Luc is willing to pull some strings to help with eladrin's release from custody in exchange for information...