Re: Ideas around the death of Kallyr, in game?

From: ian_hammond_cooper <ian_hammond_cooper_at_...>
Date: Sun, 14 Apr 2013 20:54:06 -0000

> Ian Cooper is covering this in the Coming Storm.

Well, at the moment its not in scope for that project. I've talked of pitching a separate Kallyrsaga to Moon Designs, but that's a way off being real for all of us.

The Coming Storm covers 1618-1625, so it ends with the liberation of Sartar and in particular the Battle of Dangerford. Kallyr is an NPC in the book - and the PCs come to her attention after the 11 lights heroquest in the campaign; so they interact with her, but this book is not her personal story. The Coming Storm is about trying to help your clan survive (and tribe) the early days of the Hero Wars.

For context, the Coming Storm's closest RQ antecedent in style is probably Borderlands, though the year-by-year chronicle obviously owes a debt to the Great Pendragon Campaign. Kallyr's story is epic not chronicle (well even tragedy).

Kallysaga, which is something some folks have heard me talk about at cons. would be Kallyr's personal story. It really is ideas in my head right now. The idea is that you can run it alongside The Coming Storm or the Colymar campaign, or your own Sartar campaign, and that its events go from about 1623 to the Battle of the Queens.

My current perspective is as follows:

• Kallyr is a tragic figure. Much like Macbeth she hears a prophecy of greatness, and becomes arrogant because of her certainty in it. That is her fatal flaw.
• Being near Kallyr is dangerous - her certainty in the prophecy can cause her to take risks that may get you killed.
• I think its quite possible that Kallyr is abandoned by her rivals and enemies at a crucial moment of the battle, because they don't want her to live. Now that Sartar is free other hands should run it. I think they believe she should 'do a Cincinnatus' and retire to her farm, not try to run the kingdom; they fear he rule.
• Dramatically then the PCs may be the only ones to fight for the body (think the Illiad, lots of fighting over corpses)
• In the end Kallyr will come to regret the choices that she makes to fulfil her destiny. So even if the PCs recover her body, and even if they don't dislike her for her ambition, is it cruel to bring her back.

Now, IMO the decision to bring Kallyr back is one that the PCs should make. And the choice should be about the price that was paid to get her to where she is today. If you were one of Macbeth's followers and could resurrect him at the end of the play, would you? She is in the afterlife, with the gods, is it really a kindness to bring her back. ( BTW The Red Cow know all about that, they have access to Splendorbread, so they can do it, but the last chieftain they brought back developed the re-life sickness, so they are loath to use it).

I'm not sure how much that helps anyone who is at the that point in their campaign. After all your Kallyr is however you pitched her, and so the conflict over bringing her back has to make sense to your game.

'Kallyrsaga' does have one scenario right now: Slaves of the Reaching Moon. My group have played it as part of my house playtest of The Coming Storm. I'll give it another outing at Eternal Con. I'll likely run these ideas in my house campaign, whatever happens.

Of course the Moon Designs team will make all the final decisions on what gets published and when, and life is uncertain. So don't take anything I say as more valid than a horse-tip down the boozer.