I'm at a crossroads with my campaign and I'm looking for some help fleshing out some backstory before my game gets together again in late July. We're taking a summer break so I have some time to pull some things together.

The gang is just coming back from Fanon's Tower with the Staff and heading back to Kaldor, where I've spent the last year of gaming building up the political backdrop of a KSC. I've also been building Panaga as a Big Bad Guy on the rise, and the PCs have finally gotten a taste of his sublime douchebaggery.

IMPH, Panaga is (as in Curse of Hlen) a 6th Order V'ii of Agrik who is looking to advance himself. That much is obvious. The question is, what does he want? My spin of it is that he's not looking for a step advancement to the next Order, he's looking to bypass the whole V'ii heirarchy and establish himself outright as a Demigod. I'm giving him a lot more ambition than CoH alludes to, I admit, but it gives him the motivation to establish his own side-pacts with Navehan and Morgathan factions on Yashain and Kethira, which further obfuscates the efforts of the PCs to pin him down.

So... they're leaving the Tower. They managed to rescue Rysal, the trapped Laranian Demigod, and as soon as Rysal was free from the Tower there is every chance that Panaga could find out that he's on the loose and go sniffing around to find out how he got loose. I'm sure that will put him on the track of the PCs, and then life will get interesting. They deliberately left him a calling card. This will be fun.

What I am considering doing is advancing the clock on Kethira for the time spent by the party camped out in Fanon's little "blessed realm" with Romon. Months, maybe as much as a year if necessary, can pass in the blink of an eye. The point of this would be to fast forward to a Kaldor that is in the grips of a KSC and in which Panaga has maybe even been pulling some strings.

What would that Kaldor look like? How bad can I make it and still have most of the damage be reversible if we should have "good triumph over evil" in the end?

Who kills King Miginath? Kinda boring for him to just die peacefully in his own sleep. I'd previously introduced to the game a doppleganger Navehan demon who was bound to Panaga's service. If a mortal wizard can summon and control a lesser demon, why can't Panaga? The PCs are already aware of it's existence, but when faced with A) track it down and kill it, B) find Sedris Meleken, or C) Fanon's Tower, they chose C. Therefore the demon and Sedris are still unaccounted for.

My theory is that the doppleganger visits Miginath's court at Olokand, where the old king has taken ill. Miginath announces before his three bastard sons that as he has no male heirs, and Kaldor needs an heir, he will give his blessing to one of his nieces to carry on in his stead should he pass away suddenly. Though he says that he wants to consider all of his nieces equally, the only two that are brought to his bedside in Olokand are the daughters of his elder brother Haldan, and Dame Erila his personal confidante. Cheselyne's rumor machine instantly produces the news that Miginath will announce her as his heir in court the next day, but he spends most of that night sequestered alone with Erila. Regular visits are made by his personal physician. At dawn he is too ill to attend court, and Cheselyne's rumor machine has made it seem like the pronouncement is a done deal. That night, while Maldan is asleep in his own bed, the doppleganger steals into Caer Olokand disguised as Maldan and slays Miginath in his own bed.

What happens next?

I really see this as that I have two options for this:
1. I can bring the PCs back in the winter and present them with this as a done deal.
2. I can bring the PCs back in the summer, during the tournament itself, and insert them into the middle of the intrigue.

I have a PC who has been one of Erila's agents/messengers. I have a Verdreth who is related to the Master Esoterica of Kaldor. I have a PC Knight who would dearly love to be at the Olokand tournament. I have a PC Knight who is a member of the High Guard. Tying them into the intrigue at Olokand would be quite possible.

The second alternative would probably be most fun for you and your players. But it would also be the one that required most work for you as a GM.

Both seem like viable options. #2 seems tempting, since the characters have some connections to the court but to me, the key question is: "How much are the *players* really interested in being involved in the summer intrigues?" I'd sound out their thoughts on the subject, and go with what they want.

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-- Jim Chokey

"Argent, chief embattled tenne. A coney of the field and crossed carrots proper"

When I first ran it "The Curse of Hlen" was not released and Panaga's nature as a Vii was not revealed - as such I ran him as a other-world archmage with a captured demon Icarus that allowed him to cast huge spells doing almost anything and pass the costs along to the demon, as well as order the demon around etc.

I knew Hlen was a focus of the end-game so IMC he had discovered a special barasi point there leading to an undeveloped "p-world space". With the power of Icarus his plan was to take over the p-space and create a world there of his own design where the very fabric of the world responded to him as god.

Within this plane he would be to all effects a god. There his powers would be practically unlimited and even the other gods would not be able to confont him there.


The players attempted to confront him at the entrance to the space but failed to stop him from entering so they had to enter the place where he could do anything and get the last box of Icarus stuff to free Icarus before he realised what they were attempting.

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Member of the CoE (Council of Elitists)

I haven't let them actually encounter Panaga, but I've left enough hints that he doesn't do any all-powerful demigod bits and still pulls his trews on one leg at a time like anyone else. But, then there is the anomaly that he DID manage to capture a Laranian Demi-God. I had Rysal explain that he was caught by surprise in the City of Nascent Visions and his captor used Dhiriki magic on him. The PCs have already managed to figure out that Panaga is a relatively "low order Vii".

I did massage the Panaga timeline a bit. I have him languishing as a relatively low order Vii for a while and developing magical powers of his own until he is able to summon non-Vii other-worldly immortals (ie "demons") like the Dhiriki on his own and bind them to his will. That is the sort of magic that he used to summon and bind Icarus, perhaps having divined something crucial like Icarus's Dhiriki "demonic" truename. That starts his meteoric ascent to power, and cataclysmic descent into madness. His brain is like a bag of cats. He's made intrigue with Naveh's servants and pacts with Morgath's. Its only been in the last couple of years that he's really gone off the reservation. Before that, he was content to explore the mortal world of Kethira disguised as a human and put people who really pissed him off in prison in Fanon/Nevarna's tower.

My PCs thought to flip him the bird in Fanon's tower, after freeing all of the prisoners (except the dire wolf, who was described by Rysal as being "good sport" to hunt). They'd previously killed a doppleganger-like lesser Gytevsha who had been bound by Panaga to assume the form of a ranking noble and infiltrate like a Manchurian Candidate. The PCs killed one, but failed to track down the second one. It is still on the loose back in Kaldor. Woe to the PCs. Anyways, they had recovered "demon ichor" from the Gytevsha, which they used to vandalize the "trophy rooms" with epitaphs. The PC with the most prominent, obvious, noble name SIGNED HIS NAME to the graffiti.

This will come back to haunt them. It must.

Panaga doesn't need to warp time to exact revenge. He only needs to identify this well known family name, arrange to have a sibling model for the doppleganger, and have the doppleganger do something truly heinous. Like kill King Miginath. Then we have outselves a right proper KSC with the PCs framed as accomplices to the regicide.

I'd more expect Panaga to cast some horrible, degenerating and painful illness on an entire town but I guess he did do something low key like that in Curse of Hlen.

To me Panaga in modules 1 and 2 seemed quite different than Panaga in Hlen. Hlen wasn't released when I first ran it and I'd never even heard of a Vii before Staff of Fanon came out. Imagine my suprise later when Hlen came out with a city of demons and Panaga wasn't even human, etc.

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Member of the CoE (Council of Elitists)

I don't think Panaga has that much power on Kethira. Not just yet. Not enough to go flying about with big debilitating spells against a whole town. The action on Fanon's Vale is a product of his attempting to experiment with what Ikarus's Dar'k'tir artifact can allow him to do. So, mass mind-control. Thats how I see it at least. In my timeline, it won't be until "later" that he pulls his stunt on Hlen. I get the idea that Panaga is going further and further off the reservation as a Vii. He "raises the dead". That seems like the provenance of Morgath's servants.

One of the things that I did different with Panaga was to insert him into the Pagaelin Augur culture and the Walker religion. I have him wandering around Harn kidnapping people off and on over the last 40-50 years, certainly the right timeframe for him to have come into contact with the Pagaelin Augurs and the Walker religion. Certainly enough time for him to have worked his way into their cult structure to subvert them as his pawns. This would be yet another reason why the Bejist crowd are considered "heretics" by the regular Navehans, such as in Tashal. The irregularity alone of the Bejist crowd gave me excuse to insert some Navehan "inquisitors" into the campaign, sent from the "mother church" to set things straight. That's another side-plot that hasn't been explored much, but could be.

Speaking of Bejist, I think it seems to be accepted canon that the "anti-Daelda" magic at the Battle of Sorrows was a pack of Navehan cultists. I'm going with a different take on that. Siem's antithesis is Morgath. It seems to me that the more appropriate "evil cultists" to be working anti-Daelda black magic at the Battle of Sorrows would be Morgathian. It just plays out the Morgath/Morgoth versus Siem/Eru card game by another step.

With that in mind, I reworked Fanon himself as being one of the original Sidhe elves that Siem brought over and developed the "treasures" that he kept in his vault at the bottom of the tower as items that he kept there for special safekeeping and left there after the Battle of Sorrows.

Getting back to my original thoughts: what to do with these PCs?

I did put out the question to my players and they would prefer to deal more with the urban/court intrigue. The alternate that was suggested by one of the players is that "nothing brings a group together like being hunted/wanted". Which is true. Which is also very appropriate at this point. Which brings me to some current thoughts.

I am of a mind to bring them back to Kaldor only a few (6-7) weeks later in the middle of Larane just as the Olokand tournament would be kicking off. They're coming back at Airth, my location for Fanon's Vale, so they'll already be partway from Tashal to Olokand. It is a convenient place and time.

Previous to going to The Tower, they had an experience with a Navehan assassin, an agent of Panaga's, who for various reasons was allowed to escape. The assassin will have preceded them to Olokand, and when the PCs get there and the knights try to check in for the tournament they'll find that they're already checked in. The assassin, masquerading as a PC knight, is already there. This should provoke them to hunt the assassin down and stop the charade, but it gets more complicated than that. This is where I spring the business of what the PC's replacement has been doing in Kaldor while the PCs were on Yashain. Teehee.

When the PCs left for Yashain, they had already met Seryel - who left to do research on her own while the PCs were off doing their thing. She was "prepping" for the Kiraz stage of the three-part adventure. But I also like the variant of that from Thonahexus-1, so it would be convenient if she poked around a little too much and raised some suspicions of people. Now she has Panaga's attention, and probably also the attention of the White Hand or the Council of Eleven. Or both. Giving her a reason to be on the lam, the PCs are implicated by their association with her, and there is a White Hand strike team heading in the direction of the PCs. One of the PCs has past experience with the White Hand, the Aurors of Harn, and not in a friendly way so it will be convenient for him to spot them and maybe realize that they're about to run afoul of the Arcane Lore guild's White Mice.

Now, on top of all of this they're still at Olokand and it is Summer Court for King Miginath and there are foreign noble visitors to entertain. I've previously built up a state visit by the Crown Prince of Chybisa, who is going to formally propose marriage to Cheselyne the Younger much to the chagrin of a certain scion of the Dariune clan. Simultaneous with this is a "friendly visit" from the Harbaalese. I'd love to have Lerden Elendy pay a visit right now, but the King of Avastran is currently dealing with an perennial uprising of Clan Gos, funded by a conglomeration of Chelembian factions who are trying to fan the fire of civil war in Harbaal. This is actually doomed to backfire as putting down Elgosia "yet again" will only strengthen Lerden Elendy's mandate to be the next Pendragon. Nevertheless, the Harbaalese PC in the party grew up as a Ward of the Pendragon from Clan Stahlin, until he escaped to sea and ended up in Harn. He'll get recognized, of course, meaning that he'll need to go into hiding or risk being abducted by the Harbaalese and taken back to High Ifane where he probably faces a death sentence.

This is all without the doppleganger plot. Which I'm still holding on tap.

My ideal scenario is going to be to have one of the PCs, ideally the knight (and de-facto party leader) thrown in prison in Caer Olokand. The PCs will, I'm certain, want to break him out. Which will happen. But while it happens, the doppleganger will strike.

My thought is that I like the urban/court intrigue of a pending (or progressing) succession crisis but I don't think I want to weave the PCs directly into all of that. I want to use it as a robust and detailed backdrop of political machination that is happening "just off stage" while the PCs are involved in their own entanglements. They can touch on it peripherally, and it will affect them, but it isn't the main course.

He enchanted the entire town of Fannon's Vale with a powerful enchantment that prevented anyone from leaving. (Savoryn VII - times the whole town.) And he/his demon destroyed a god on Yashain in her own tower in spite of an army of bird-men - in a running fight with immense destructive energies.

While the players were out chasing him I had them encounter another town deserted because he had afflicted them all with



and they had all deserted the town to hide in the caves and hills.

And they also encountered a town that had all been turned to zombies.

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Member of the CoE (Council of Elitists)

Ooooh! I really like that!

I don't have to have the PCs encounter a town like that directly. They can hear about a town like that from someone else. One of the PCs is a Shek-P'var who already has a bad rap for riding the ragged edge of the rules. He has a rival (an agent of the White Hand) who has it in for him and would love to catch him in flagrant delicto. Maybe I have his rival, already dispatched to the area to conduct his own investigation, already alerted due to Seryel's clumsy inquiries, who finds this town. He'd be ripe for wanting to pin this on the PCs.

I'll hold off on the zombie town. Too much like Hlen.

IMC the village afflicted with CURSE OF BRYEN (which is different in different versions of HM) was caused by a similar event as in Fanon's Vale. Children were playing and using something reflective to shine the sun into the strager's eyes and laughing at it so he used the idea as the basis of his revenge on them (and everyone in the town).

Probably be good if he delivered a good speech announcing their doom like he did in the Vale.

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Member of the CoE (Council of Elitists)

I sounded out the players, and some would be game for the urban/court intrigue and others aren't so hip on it. I can use it as a backdrop, but I don't want to tightly weave the PCs into the middle of it. They could be AGENTS of a faction (or two), but really the whole intrigue needs to play out in the shadows and off-stage. Nobody wants to be in the middle of a civil war, because the players' expectation is that "civil war" means that we'll be doing our gaming with a mass miniatures system instead of a RPG system. Nobody actually wants to do that. The Shek-P'var don't want to be "battle mages" either.

So I'm looking at the "advance the timeline only a little" option with the PCs. This is pure deux ex machina, of course, since I really don't have a "game mechanic" reason to do this, but purely a "campaign mechanic" reason. I want the timeline slid forward because it makes it easier for me insert the PCs into the the proverbial nest of adders.

They slipped over to Yashain on the 9th of Nolus, and if time flows 1:1 it'll be somewhere around the 15th when they depart.

I guess that what I'm mulling over is how much time, realistically, do I need to insert in order to really make a mess of life for the PCs?

Hmm... Okay, so whats the end that I have in mind?

I guess that what I really want is to kickstart the succession crisis instead of pussyfooting around it and hinting at it. For that, all I need to do is have the old king keel over and die at random some day. Which could be the 10th of Nolus for all I care. King dead, can of worms immediately opened, and the brown stuff immediately hits the fan.

I also want to pull the boards out from under the PCs and disrupt their social status. For that, I need the Shek-P'var in the group suspected or accused of some chicanery AND I need the major PC knight of the group accused of something wicked. I suppose that I really DON'T need that second part, because it might be enough to have an open succession crisis. In that scenario, the major PC knight would indubitably be yanked hither and yon by duty to family, crown, and patrons.

Actually... it would be JUST as good to have a major PC patron of the group be accused of the murder of the king. That would do it right there.

So rolling back the clock, the PCs have done some favors for Declaen Caldeth and the major PC knight was inducted as an honorary knight-commander of the Order of the Wyvern. I've already established the timeline of the Earl's Progress as taking place right now as we speak, which positions Caldeth at Olokand with the King. Insert the death of the king, arrange so that Caldeth and anything he's ever touched comes off as tainted by accusation against him, and we have the "do gooder" motivation of the PCs to clear his name.

Simultaneously, insert the Thonahexus-1 spin on the Kiraz adventure as taking place RIGHT NOW. As we speak, a force of Agrikan knights have trekked overland from Lake Direna, having crossed Lake Benath in talbars, and are preparing to infiltrate Caer Olokand to secure the master key to Kiraz. I need to arrange for the PCs to intersect with this so that they can have a knock-down drag-out in and around Caer Olokand. The Agrikans need to escape with the key, and it would be convenient if the PCs get themselves arrested for their troubles.

Panaga hasn't been quiet for the last month. He is getting more brazen and experimental with his powers. Curse of Bryen on a whole village sounds like fun. The PC Shek-P'var can learn of this second-hand, as one of them is accused by the White Hand of having done this himself. Seryel can have her notes delivered, as in the workup to the Kiraz adventure, but she'll be unavailable for comment or interview personally because she'll be on the run from the White Hand themselves. She has asked too many questions.

The Chybisans are in Olokand. The Harbaalese are in Olokand.

I need the Chybisans in town because the pending marriage of the Crown Prince to Cheselyne the Younger is going to set up an Empress Maud scenario for my KSC. Of course NOBODY IN KALDOR wants her to be the legitimate Elendsa successor if she's marrying the Chybisan heir, but thats exactly Chybisan plan. It would probably be more subtle, except that when Miginath keels over unexpectedly, things get rushed a little.

The Harbaalese? They're around so that I have a good excuse to stage a Harbaalese invasion in the middle of the Kaldor Civil War. This invasion will take place right about the time that the PCs are going to visit Hlen.

Time at 1:1 is boring. How about when they come back it has been 6 months or a year? (Barasi points are well known for that sort of thing plus it will limit re-use of that spot.) The king's been dead for months and the war is on in full? Plus Panaga has been stiring up trouble in a dozen spots and a new threat of some sort showed up somewhere?

That's probably too much all at once - I've had parties throw up their arms and move to Lythia over too much trouble.

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Member of the CoE (Council of Elitists)

They haven't exactly figured out how Barasi points really work, or the quirks involved in them. I see big advantages to skipping forward 6-12 months, but what occurs to me is that a brief slip forward this time might set them up to start asking questions and then find out that this is a common side-effect not a rare thing.

My mistake was in letting them use a Barasi point earlier to briefly visit Yashain to discover the cliffs/desert and not introducing the timeslip at that time.

I don't want to make it mechanical, but in my mind it is either:
1) the longer one stays in Yashain, the faster the time advances; or,
2) the longer one stays in Yashain, the greater the odds of a "time event" occuring.
3) it is something to do with staying in the tower that increases the odds of a time dilation effect.

I think there is a reason that Panaga doesn't spend much time in the tower. Maybe this is part of it.

Also, IMPH Panaga isn't "the destroyer" who visited the tower centuries ago and killled or drove of Nevarna. IMC that was Lothrim who was "the destroyer".

IMC "most" planes time averages close to 1:1 but for peroids may be lower or higher. But time shifts often occur in using Kemdals Gate or natural Barasi points. Time on the other world may make very little difference whether time there is 2:1, 1:1 or 1:50 if the trip thru the barasi point can take a year without the person noticing.

Generally IMC using psionic transferance on a Barasi point deals a significant risk of loosing a significant amount of time in transit - especially at low ML or at weak Barasi Points or with particular like the history of Gelimo "Kasp of Haus". Many natural Barasi Points wander or may be stronger or weaker, appear or disappear at different times. IMC using a stablized Barasi point like at Fanon's Vale would not normally risk a time shift but it may depend how/why it was stablized that could vary. When available spells are generally more potent (less time shift) for traversing Barasi points.

But if I wanted a 6 month shift I might just make the gate stablized in one direction and make the return trip through the gate a 6 month shift. The characters would have to wonder whether the time shift came from the other plane, the Gate or something else as any are possible.

I don't know that Fanon needed the gate in both directions or that a 6 month shift would both an old elf. Or if the spell stablizing it has weakened or damaged over time or effected by other factors.

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Member of the CoE (Council of Elitists)

Ooooh... spell stabilizing it has weakened...

As much as my PCs can be a pack of mewling sycophantic do gooders, I can't rely on the "do gooder" motivation to drive them to do anything except backstab me. No... but the "clear your own name" motivation works pretty darn well.