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He should have fallen on his sword. That would have been the sensible thing to do.
Punched his ticket for Elysium right away, no waiting around.
He thought they'd only kill him.
Why did he think that? How stupid was he? Why in the world did he think that?
And now instead of his next great adventure he's flubbed a save against dominate person.
Palace Arkona is as black a place as its exterior of Janderhoff black marble. Treble-headed elephants, peacocks with sabers, and tigers with carven eyes graze from the walls of the palace and over the gardens beyond. This massive manor houses Old Korvosa's de facto ruling family, the inscrutable but feared House Arkona. The bizarre architectural embellishments and decorations of the palace come from distant Vudra, whose imports made House Arkona the power it is today.
A massive black-marble and wrought-iron wall surrounds the property, and guards both human and otherwise patrol the yards and ruthlessly eject trespassers.[1]
None know what takes place within those walls, although rumors abound.
Arkonas are born within, and oft as not they die within, long before their time, and are interred beneath, in private funerals unannounced.
What occurs between those first and last days must be terrible indeed, for that family's wrath and cruel appetite breeds truer than the pigment of their eyes.
The Lord Arkona (never a Lady Arkona) continues in some capacity to maintain the reputation for cruelty and coldness earned by Garath [200 years ago], while a close relative of the current lord acts as his right-hand man (or woman) and is the face of the family at gatherings of nobles.[2]
Their business is vice and murder.
Nothing occurs in the back alleys or stinking vaults of Old Korvosa without House Arkona knowing about it.
It is a poorly kept secret that the family controls or has influence over every major (and most minor) criminal enterprise in the city, from watered-down mead to murder.[3]
Rumors abound that House Arkona supports the Cerulean Society in some way, but no investigation has ever found a connection. Any link between the two remains a carefully guarded secret.[4]
-
1. pg. 28.↩
2. pg. 41.↩
3. pg. 41.↩
4. pg. 46.↩
The Arkonas were Chellish before being Chellish was cool, and she honestly respects them for that.
Ileosa's revealed preference as a big Chellish fish is to swim in shallow backwaters, and she thinks in this the Arkonas may be kindred souls.
That said - she does know how to swim with sharks, and you might think sinister House Arkona would have made a natural ally of hers in Korvosa...
As you say.
The current Lord Arkona breaks somewhat from the tradition of his forebears.[1]
, attempts at every opportunity to lift up the poor and provide them with enough sustenance to survive. To that end, he has leveled several buildings the family owns to make room for massive low-rent tenement apartments. These actions have made Glorio the most popular nobleman among the city's many poor and destitute and has caused no end of anxiousness and worry from his family members.[2]
He frequently walks through Old Korvosa (surrounded by bodyguards both seen and unseen, of course), handing out candies to the dirty children and silver pieces to their despondent parents. Glorio publicly demonstrates affection for his cousin and second-in-command, Melyia -
- whose unearthly beauty counters her lord's rather average appearance.
Scandalous rumors abound as to the nature of their relationship, but rather than crush such rumors and make their whisperers disapear, Glorio seems to revel in the attention they create. Wherever he and Melyia go, eyes follow - even when those eyes belong to the equally beautiful and -
Equally!?
Who the fuck do you think that you're calling equals!?
Asmodeus, if you can grant me one thing, let it be the chance to slice off her nose.
Everyone in Westcrown said my beauty was beyond compare.
But in Korvosa you can't shake a stick without hitting someone they're comparing to me.
Lord Glorio Arkona's surprising arrival on the political scene in 4704 heralded a new and unexpected direction for the family. Long tolerated in the higher circles, House Arkona has become suddenly a force to be reckoned with not only on, under, and above the streets, but also in the royal court and posh sitting rooms of the nobility.
Regardless of Glorio's future successes, House Arkona shall not soon forget the legitimacy he has brought to his secretive and sinister family.[3]
1. pg 60.↩
2. pg. 41.↩
3. pg 60.↩
Glorio Arkona is a literal mob boss.
He's pretending at something in addition to that, but he hasn't exactly relinquished the criminal empire... if he's the standup standing up for the little guy that he appears - or if he's devoted enough to appearances -, she can maybe buy him off by pointing out the chaos that would follow if he joined Toff in trying to get rid of her.
If he's not, maybe she can buy him off with money.
...This feels winnable. Not won, but winnable.
There's some tentative optimism: it's looking entirely possible that Toff leapt here before looking.
(Gods, what is even Toff's problem???)
Why are we wasting our time on intrigue that the GM's going to roll back?
Ileosa could have asked that same question, but apropos instead Lord Ornelos.
...I'm not sure who we ought to throw in with.
On the one hand, the Queen is pages 64-65 of Ultimate Campaign folded like origami and dressed like a human being, and she tried to purge the Field Marshall. On the other hand, she mostly failed to purge the Field Marshall and what I've heard from our Wizard regarding her Acadamae doesn't incline me towards its head honcho.
And on the third hand, Ileosa is scrunkly and charming,
Not that this isn't fascinating - but not that it is -
what's our plan for the shadows? Seems like we should have one.
It seems like the problem is that each of the shadows is individually powerful, and we have no way to track them all down, and also there are thousands of them, and also even if we somehow killed them all we'd just be hit by a different wave from a different outbreak.
I see three possibilities here:
1) There isn't a solution and the Gamemaster wants us to realize that, and then we'll do small excursions in a doomed world.
2) There's a particular solution that the Gamemaster has in mind, but they want to see if we can come up with it, and also impress the difficulty of the problem so that we're suitably impressed by their plan.
3) The Gamemaster doesn't already have a plan for the shadows but wants to give us the chance to find one if there is one, just in case.
My money's on number 1; we're only level 3 right now and it'd be a weird campaign if high level wizards fixed the inciting incident without us playing any major role.
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