My first attempt at running the campaign’s reached the High Road, and I’ve started to think a little more deeply about how, in this take on the campaign, the Chosen worked (or didn’t work) alongside the Legion.
For this game, we had Shreya. We started with a Panyar rookie singing a ballad about Shreya and Elenessa before being told to shut up by an officer. The Shreya/Blighter tragedy has been played up a little bit in people’s minds.
(That said, Blighter herself has been offstage so far, so there’s been little chance to develop it)
And this version of Shreya is uncomfortable to be around. Dissonant serenity - she doesn’t say much, and a flight reflex clashes with a supernatural calm when legionnaires are in her presence.
She’s the one who blesses each legionnaire before they leave on a mission, bestowing the corruption resistance. She’s also the one who’ll kill them if it fails. And they all know that.
Lots of fuel for atmosphere there. But…
It’s been hard to justify why the squads were doing all the fighting and Shreya was on so few missions. With hindsight, I could have established that she needed to mystically shield the camp from detection, I guess. Or played up the risk of her being Broken if the Cinder King’s forces overwhelmed her in battle.
For Westlake, we did manage to find in-story justification - she spent her time tending to the tent city outside the city walls. But that was an exception.
If, say, we’d got the Horned One it might be easier to explain that. She’s a shapeshifting scout who says litle and is rarely in camp. But that approach doesn’t work so well for Shreya or Zora.
How have other GMs tackled this?