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Guest
Guest
I'm coming up on a massive, massive 24-hour long session that I've agreed to ST (don't ask me why I assented to this mad idea) for the DB campaign I've been running for the past couple of months, and I need some advice for people with more experience with Fair Folk than I've got.
My PCs are relatively young and inexperienced Blooded (one of our two monks -just- got his Form Charm) who find themselves in a part of the West that could charitably be described as the ass-end of Creation but which has a substantial military presence (this being 50 years before the Empress disappeared) due to its proximity to the Bordermarches and the archipelago having one of the few harbors around with tides dramatic enough to accomodate a drydock. They've been busy doing the local politicking thing, acquiring influence, making nice with the more experienced but not inaccessibly senior up-and-comers on the satrap's staff, helping to undermine the local cult of Siakal and establish the Immaculate faith, accidentally picking a fight with a local Forest King and his court (which they won, if barely) and encountering a few weird and unsettling signs of raksha activity.
Now, the commanding General of the local Legion is currently holding a massive wedding gala which, for lack of other events on the local DB social calendar, is occupying festivities that have lasted for the better part of a week. The group is coming up on the seventh and last day of festivities, during which time a very fashionable comedy of manners, the latest thing in Imperial City theatre, is being staged on someone's luxury yacht in the middle of the harbor of the island that's home to the Legion's biggest garrison and the High Fane of the cult of Siakal.
Now, a bunch of stuff has gone on with trouble with the local kahunas and priests of Siakal, and my players have been expecting serious trouble in the city. My essential idea is that during the play, a handpicked talon of Legionnaires will have raided this High Fane, looking for a particular fugitive from imperial justice, which, because of information from a traitor on the inside, the locals will use as the signal to start an uprising against Realm control that has been covertly supported by the Guild (in the form of some First Age weapons acquired from local pelagials).
Unbeknownst to anyone else involved, a Fair Folk noble styling himself the Smiler Amongst Kelp, banished centuries ago from the islands by someone who may or may not have been Danaa'd herself, has been waiting for just such an opportunity to attack the High Fane of Siakal and reclaim an artifact that he needs to awaken the massive behemoth that Danaa'd sealed long ago using the power of an entire capped Demesne as a seal and that subsequent generations have just thought was a somewhat strange island. He sends one of his lieutenants, a cataphract named Crimson Slaughtering Bear (so-named as part of a long feud with Black Grinning Bear), to attack this island in the midst of all this ruckus. Various nasty sea creatures attack the Dynasts in the harbor while the Fair Folk raid the Fane.
now, here's the rub - what do I do afterwards, precisely? I had the idea of the veteran sorceror one of the PCs has as a mentor and something of an expert on the Fair Folk suddenly have some information click in his mind and point out some details of a mention of Danaa'd sealing something nasty in this islands in the Immaculate Texts in some connection with the Fair Folk, and that the unsealing of said big nasty can't be permitted to happen. The experienced secular Dynasts, of course, have no time for this rubbish, having an uprising to put down, leaving the PCs to help this sorceror in putting a stop to this admittedly vague but potentially serious menace to Realm control of the West.
I'm primarily wondering what sorts of obstacles to throw in the way of the PCs between the sorceror figuring this out and actually confronting the Smiler himself. What sort of minions should a raksha noble throw at a brotherhood of relatively inexperienced DBs? I have a decent idea of what I want from the last fight (the campaign will take an enforced hiatus of a month or two after this session and will skip ahead 50 odd years), but it's the intervening bits that have me puzzled.
Any suggestions? What sorts of battle tactics would a raksha that's forced to be in Creation use, anyway, apart from Imposition of Law and Bastion of (Grace)? Any cool and nifty gossamer/Wyld-y weapons you've used in the past and wouldn't mind me nicking for use by Crimson Slaughtering Bear or the Smiler?
My PCs are relatively young and inexperienced Blooded (one of our two monks -just- got his Form Charm) who find themselves in a part of the West that could charitably be described as the ass-end of Creation but which has a substantial military presence (this being 50 years before the Empress disappeared) due to its proximity to the Bordermarches and the archipelago having one of the few harbors around with tides dramatic enough to accomodate a drydock. They've been busy doing the local politicking thing, acquiring influence, making nice with the more experienced but not inaccessibly senior up-and-comers on the satrap's staff, helping to undermine the local cult of Siakal and establish the Immaculate faith, accidentally picking a fight with a local Forest King and his court (which they won, if barely) and encountering a few weird and unsettling signs of raksha activity.
Now, the commanding General of the local Legion is currently holding a massive wedding gala which, for lack of other events on the local DB social calendar, is occupying festivities that have lasted for the better part of a week. The group is coming up on the seventh and last day of festivities, during which time a very fashionable comedy of manners, the latest thing in Imperial City theatre, is being staged on someone's luxury yacht in the middle of the harbor of the island that's home to the Legion's biggest garrison and the High Fane of the cult of Siakal.
Now, a bunch of stuff has gone on with trouble with the local kahunas and priests of Siakal, and my players have been expecting serious trouble in the city. My essential idea is that during the play, a handpicked talon of Legionnaires will have raided this High Fane, looking for a particular fugitive from imperial justice, which, because of information from a traitor on the inside, the locals will use as the signal to start an uprising against Realm control that has been covertly supported by the Guild (in the form of some First Age weapons acquired from local pelagials).
Unbeknownst to anyone else involved, a Fair Folk noble styling himself the Smiler Amongst Kelp, banished centuries ago from the islands by someone who may or may not have been Danaa'd herself, has been waiting for just such an opportunity to attack the High Fane of Siakal and reclaim an artifact that he needs to awaken the massive behemoth that Danaa'd sealed long ago using the power of an entire capped Demesne as a seal and that subsequent generations have just thought was a somewhat strange island. He sends one of his lieutenants, a cataphract named Crimson Slaughtering Bear (so-named as part of a long feud with Black Grinning Bear), to attack this island in the midst of all this ruckus. Various nasty sea creatures attack the Dynasts in the harbor while the Fair Folk raid the Fane.
now, here's the rub - what do I do afterwards, precisely? I had the idea of the veteran sorceror one of the PCs has as a mentor and something of an expert on the Fair Folk suddenly have some information click in his mind and point out some details of a mention of Danaa'd sealing something nasty in this islands in the Immaculate Texts in some connection with the Fair Folk, and that the unsealing of said big nasty can't be permitted to happen. The experienced secular Dynasts, of course, have no time for this rubbish, having an uprising to put down, leaving the PCs to help this sorceror in putting a stop to this admittedly vague but potentially serious menace to Realm control of the West.
I'm primarily wondering what sorts of obstacles to throw in the way of the PCs between the sorceror figuring this out and actually confronting the Smiler himself. What sort of minions should a raksha noble throw at a brotherhood of relatively inexperienced DBs? I have a decent idea of what I want from the last fight (the campaign will take an enforced hiatus of a month or two after this session and will skip ahead 50 odd years), but it's the intervening bits that have me puzzled.
Any suggestions? What sorts of battle tactics would a raksha that's forced to be in Creation use, anyway, apart from Imposition of Law and Bastion of (Grace)? Any cool and nifty gossamer/Wyld-y weapons you've used in the past and wouldn't mind me nicking for use by Crimson Slaughtering Bear or the Smiler?
