Greetings! I’m running 2 games at once currently and one common hardship I’ve run into as a GM is conveying depth to the Broken as antagonists. There’s a lot of potential to them, a lot of tragedy, but as there’s very little contact between them and the players, it’s hard to present it narratively. I plan to have the players be captured at some point, I’ve used interactions with the few coherent npcs (overheard dialogue, interrogation) to try and characterize the henchmens and their Broken. A few rumors here and there during back at camp. Any other tips on how to flesh them out?
I’m also looking for help for each specific Broken. It’s kinda easy to setup with Render, he has human henchmen from the get go, but he’s rather onesided as a character. It’s harder with Breaker, what do witches talk about around a campfire? (I’ve ran mine as semicoherent possessed and disturbing monsters) Blighter’s minions are at best raving maniacs, at worst mute.
I have done some narrations were I depicted the Broken having interactions with their underlings and they were pretty cool. Remember that the players can interact with the Broken through foiling their plans, meeting obstacles on missions put there by the Broken etc. So they can interact without actually meeting them.
You could let the players bump into refugees or new recruits who have seen the Broken and heard the Broken speak. You can have the Broken turn up on failed secondary missions. You can have free play or back at camp scenes in which we see a confrontation between the Broken and the Chosen, or its aftermath. You could have some kind of undead heralds delivering messages from the Broken to the Legion on a regular basis, if you like.
One great place to get some of this across is in the Intel briefings. Like if the Legion asks about the best approach for an upcoming mission, you can go into some of that Broken lore/ongoing story when you tell them what it is.
Like, instead of “Sneak in through the mountain pass instead of assaulting them head-on”, say something about how Breaker’s efforts to create more powerful Shadow Witches has diverted her attention from having sufficient rank-and-file Burned to adequately cover every approach to the valley camp. Exploiting this weakness will not only help tactically with this mission, but will lend credence to Render’s complaints that Breaker is too obsessed with her covens and not sufficiently devoted to the Cinder King’s immediate goals."
This is when the players are literally ASKING you to go into stuff like this.