Hi all!

With the official ending of Ashes to Ashes done now, I'd love to take some time to get some feedback from everyone! You will never offend me, so please, be honest. I absolutely want to know what you loved, and equally what you didn't like. But I need both. That way I have a good sense of what DOES work with players, and keep them coming, and what DOESN'T work with players, so I can try to find some reasonable alternatives if possible. Now granted, I know I will not please everyone all of the time, but this helps me to hone my craft and hopefully keep producing better, more engaging, and more entertaining storylines in the future that we both enjoy.

You may respond here via the forums or email me directly if you want.


1. Who was your favorite NPC in the storyline, and why?

2. Who was your least favorite NPC in the storyline, and why?

3. What was one, or a few, of your most memorable moments in the storyline?

4. What was some of the least memorable things in the storyline?

5. What is something you would have liked to see in the storyline, or seen more of?

6. Do you have any additional comments or suggestions you'd like to add?


Again, thank you! This really does help me prepare for future storylines, so thank you for your time filling it out!


-GM Kenstrom-
Waylayer of Wehnimer's Landing

I thoroughly enjoyed this one!

1. Who was your favorite NPC in the storyline, and why?

My favorite NPC in this story was the one who is no longer there: Praxopius Fortney. I loved the sense that this one man cast such a long shadow, and it paints him in an even more interesting light posthumously -- not just an inventor but a visionary, albeit one with a fractured mind and an amoral soul. My other favorite NPCs in the storyline were, oddly enough, the ones who have already been around a while, particularly Thadston, Amos, and Juramis, all of whom have become more compelling as they've gone through the upheavals of this story arc. Tyrrax grew on me a lot, although my character is still not a fan.

I'm still waiting to see what I think of Ivorel, Kharusa, and Rian, who have not had much more than bit parts as speaking characters, at least not on the larger stage. I'm sure we'll see more of them, though.

2. Who was your least favorite NPC in the storyline, and why?

I hate to say it, but...probably Kharusa. "Least favorite" doesn't mean "disliked," I hasten to add -- it just means she was a Macguffin for most of her time in the storyline, so her personality is a cipher. We know of some of the hardships she's had to face and have learned something about her powers, but publicly, we know very little of her as a character (although this is undoubtedly a matter of perception as she's had more communication with some people who have gotten to know her). It's also a matter of personal preference to me that I don't instantly take to characters with capital-P Powers. I like to see who they are, not just what they can do.

Irascible townsfolk are always my least favorite NPCs, haha! I understand the need for them, but sometimes I just want to poke them with their own pitchforks.

3. What was one, or a few, of your most memorable moments in the storyline?

- The trip to Brisker's Cove has to be my favorite part, even though later on, I died a bunch getting back there with my group. Finding all the little goodies in the rubble was fun, too -- they were good goodies!

- I thoroughly enjoyed the big reveal of what that scroll actually contained. The writing of this plot point was nice and tight, and I could hear Praxopius' voice in it.

- The "Runaway Jury" event was great! I got the impression it wasn't how you'd foreseen it going down, but I loved the way players came up with a twist and you ran with it.

- Really appreciated the involvement of individuals and groups/MHOs who got to affect the plot in meaningful ways. I can think of multiple examples here, and that shows how much the spotlight got spread around.

4. What was some of the least memorable things in the storyline?

Anything that was truly "least memorable" is something I don't actually remember well enough to put here, so like Pukk, I'm going to go with some of my less favorite elements:

- Magic-immune things are awful during invasions. When there are too many of them, I admit I fold up my tent and go home because my character can do nothing. Selective magic immunities would be much more fun.

- Did not love the way some players treated their opposition and felt some of it bordered on OOC, but that is not a flaw of the story; whenever something's heated and contentious, some people are going to have more trouble drawing boundaries.


5. What is something you would have liked to see in the storyline, or seen more of?

I may circle back to this later, but I felt it was nicely contained and fleshed out.

6. Do you have any additional comments or suggestions you'd like to add?

I was happy with the Rooks' serving as bit players instead of focal points of the story as I feel they're a little "deus ex machina" sometimes. Mostly, I just loved the whole thing and am looking forward to how these threads will weave into the next tale! I love what you do and hope you keep on doing it.

I'm a big fan. I'm very biased, of course. This whole storyline is consequence fallout on Xorus for all those things he did and will be trying to do.


1. Who was your favorite NPC in the storyline, and why?

Grishom Stone. No, I kid. I jest. But this is a "casting a long shadow" storyline, so I have to go with the phantom menace, the man with the plan: Praxopius Fortney. Even though he is dead, and we only heard a recording of his voice at the finale (totally sounded like him), the whole thing that happened was set in motion by this guy. Like, you see this coming from a mile away, this guy is super manipulative and dishonest. But he's so manipulative and dishonest, everything goes to chaos anyway, because he might be telling the truth!

So, it's a "what's really going on here" mystery from the beginning, because nothing about it makes sense. Why would he publicly announce this genocide plan, and that a contagion formula will be given to Xorus, but not until two years later? He had a way of being totally honest, but only after the fact. If this was really a poison formula, he would have given it to Xorus, maybe made a show of destroying his notes. Then it seems like Prax really did arrange for this encrypted scroll to be sent. So access to it must be secured, even though the whole thing smells wrong.

So it kind of gets hinted at in one of the scraps in the scroll tubes that he can't be sure Xorus will do what he wants. Then we find out that the moon letter scroll people think is the poison formula, because he said he'd be sending Xorus the poison formula, is actually a "head's up" message that he's letting the krolvin know about the future genocide poison so they go nuts and self-destructive. But he doesn't tell Xorus that, "by the way, when I arrange for the krolvin to find out about this, they're going to come to the Landing where people were widely told by me that this was going to be sent to you." So this basic initial interpretation turns out to be right. Praxopius threw a krolvin fleet at Xorus. Xorus has a dark sense of humor, and might kill all the krolvin for Prax anyway, just for trying to pull that stunt.

But Snout wasn't supposed to die, and no one else was supposed to hear what the plan actually was. So then everyone who has been acting so very contrary to Xorus over this formula gets egg on their face, because it's just the general research agenda path they had been working on before Prax died. He doesn't even give the poison formulas for Rysus or Kragnack. "It was inside you all along, you just have to believe in yourself!" That kind of thing. So that ended up being a very cool way of making sense of everything, and keeping the danger up in the air, but not some immediately accessible thing.

But, outside of the NPCs who weren't actually there, per se, then I guess my favorite is Tyrrax. He's a well rounded krolvin and more reasonable than other warlords, Xorus was frustrated with not being able to talk to the guy alone, try to get him to see the light on the potential of Lalk Morgil. But that might be easier now after Prax's revelation. I had Xorus positioning on that right at the beginning, talking at Tyrrax about the Star of Khar'ta. I'm glad the jury didn't execute Tyrrax. He has potential. Props to Thadston for "getting it" and having Tyrrax fight his way out. I like Thadston and Amos.


2. Who was your least favorite NPC in the storyline, and why?

Ivorel I just haven't really learned anything about yet. Falzcrow was a message bearer but ended up not being important. (I can imagine an alternate timeline or future where horrible poison related things happen to him from probably being one of the only blood relations of Kragnack still alive.)

Kharusa there was some initial confusion on how enslaved she really was, since she can cast magic while in chains and blow up heads. But then she ended up being impulsive and emotionally reactive and running around and hiding. There was maybe potential there for her being more than what she seemed.


3. What was one, or a few, of your most memorable moments in the storyline?

The Xorus.

The most memorable thing has to be the reveal on what was actually written on the scroll. I was kind of leaning back during this storyline so it wouldn't be "give me my scroll" all the time, and it was very amusing to go from seemingly constantly losing, with every NPC acting against Xorus' interests at every turn, to having it turn into ".. so as we've discussed and I'm sure you know, therefore what this is really about is..." Trying to parse what those cryptic instruction meant was fun, too, I put together what we ended up doing pretty fast from going over it with Lylia. I also liked most everyone getting the Raznel festering taint leprosy curse off the scroll. It turned to ash, so my assumption was, it was coated in some of that poison. In which case all this drama over how to read the poison formula, when the black scroll itself is maybe coated in the inert black poison that crumbles objects? The bleak soil being the key to future development is what makes sense and seems most consistent with the established epochxin history.

Then the Brisker's Cove warehouses and trying to find the right brass scroll tubes. Everything is crashing and burning, trying to find relevant information, even though Ivorel will almost surely happen to find the right tube. I had not gotten to meet Juramis before. Then this power struggle situation of selling the scroll, forcing Amos to not sell the scroll, verifying the scroll's destruction for Tyrrax, getting Tyrrax up there so the two MacGuffins are together in the right place and right time, only to have it turn out Tyrrax's lens explodes in the moonbeam because it was never supposed to be used in that situation with that scroll. That scroll was supposed to have been burned up a year earlier. So then Raelee's lens making ends up saving the day, after initially having seemed to have wasted her time and energy.

Then there was waiting and getting snatched up to have the head exploder try, and fail, to get inside Xorus' mind. I was reasonably sure that would fail, because steps were taken to try to make it fail. In theory this ends up saving the day near the beginning of the storyline, because as Thadston told Tyrrax near the end, "Xorus is the Lalk Morgil." Thadston had said after the failed mind read that there's probably a thousand dangerous things in Xorus' head that the krolvin shouldn't be able to access. So I'm just glad that Thadston still isn't trying to throw Xorus into the volcano or anything.

Fighting side by side alongside Thadston and Amos in the milita barracks, saving the krolvin warlord from armigers and townsfolk, was all kinds of irony and very memorable. The moral struggling over whether the weapon should be developed and used on the krolvin was memorable, even though everyone is wrong, and the clear and only choice is to give it to Xorus.


4. What was some of the least memorable things in the storyline?

Least memorable are probably the almost random things with Juramis, like going out in the Lysierian Hills / Aillidh Brae directions with him and finding his cat. Not bad, just not as memorable as burning his warehouses in Brisker's Cove. Of course, I'm remembering it right now, so it's probably whatever I'm not thinking of that's really the least memorable.

Certain instances of quasi-OOC drama were more memorable than they should have been, but that's a PCs thing rather than an NPCs thing.


5. What is something you would have liked to see in the storyline, or seen more of?

Ashes! Ashes to Ashes. The potential is still hanging out there now, but part of me just wants to see people get horrifically killed by the demon blood poisons, like Rysus or Kragnack style. Part of me was also thinking, "Tyrrax is going to go tell them all the Lalk Morgil is destroyed so they're not all acting nuts over it. I still want to try to get in close to this guy, but it would be really satisfying for Tyrrax to melt and collapse into black ash as soon as he gets back to his lieutenants, right after announcing it's destroyed."

In principle I'd like to have seen some auction and trying to outbid groups like the Ivory Thorns. DBC could have pulled the plug on the auction later. But I figure we were getting time pinched. Amos' displeasure at the scroll's contents made me think he was secretly planning to do some more sneaky sale of it anyway. But maybe he was just frustrated he went through all that and got urglaes sharded on a fake out.


6. Do you have any additional comments or suggestions you'd like to add?

Xorus has been working on the thing to one extent or another for almost four years. We'll have to have a "lab accident" at some point and have it kill a bunch of people and wake up the Bleak. Or something. Maybe Amos will save the day by just happening to have an antidote to sell to people at reasonable "what's your life worth to you" prices.

It seemed like there was a lot of attempts to shine some spotlight on new-ish or less frequent/recent-ish characters. Like when the krolvin were blindly searching for the formula, or the jury / tribunal selection. So that's cool. I tried to not get too overbearing on pointing out to people that Lalk Morgil isn't a genocide formula, it's a contagion that was already used and already did its thing but could potentially be adapted more broadly later if there's knowledge of how it works. There was a lot of not understanding that nuance, it seemed, certainly less understanding of what Prax ended up saying himself at the end. About it basically just being an extension of the existing base of knowledge on the subject. It isn't hard to turn people to ash with those poisons. Nasty stuff!

1. Who was your favorite NPC in the storyline, and why?

Tyrrax. It's no easy feat to have a character who conveys everything we need to know about him while being somewhat inarticulate, but by the end of all this, almost entirely from observing his actions alone, I felt like I had a better grasp of who he was than almost every other NPC in almost every other storyline.

It was super unusual and unique to be faced with what's nominally an enemy commander only to walk away feeling like he was arguably more the hero of the story than anyone in town. Despite attacking the Landing, there's not all that much to blame him for when he was battling on a premise that was all one of Praxopius' ruses--whose past ruses had also led the White Sparrows to attack the Landing and, of course, led the Landing to attack itself.

The distinction between how Tyrrax prefers to comport himself and how the krolvin underneath were are more rowdy and full of bloodlust was also a fascinating parallel or contrast to the Landing characters--one well portrayed by Tyrrax himself in the finale, where we were busy battling off armigers and he commented on the irony of fighting among "ourselves" to protect him.



2. Who was your least favorite NPC in the storyline, and why?

Too close to call, so I'm giving it a three-way tie between Amos, Juramis, and Thadston. I'll cover Juramis in the least memorable section, so on to the other two.


Funnily enough for characters who hate each other, Amos and Thadston were basically in the same boat of feeling to me like pawns who move the story in whichever direction it needs to go at a given moment even when it contradicts their prior actions or words. Here's an example for each.

Years ago, Marshal Thadston struck a deal with Mother to have the Rooks help escort citizens away from a Raznel attack into wagons. Now in the present, Casiphia submitted a similar proposal to have the Rooks escort citizens away from krolvin attacks into the tunnels. Mayor Thadston warned the councilors against it because it would strengthen the Rooks and that's not worth it in the long run. Ultimately, the proposal never got voted on as it proved unnecessary after the town's diplomatic approach with Tyrrax largely succeeded. By the end of the story, however, instead it was Thadston who appeared to have struck a covert deal with Casiphia to have the Rooks help escort Tyrrax going through the tunnels.

Amos sailed back to town with his war fleet, proud of krolvin ships he'd destroyed while en route, but seemed unaware that the town had struck a temporary truce with Tyrrax which he had now jeopardized. However, somehow he was aware that the town councilors had voted to remove him as a Steward. The truce came one day after the vote, so maybe I could believe that someone dispatched a messenger bird in that brief window of time between events... But, on the same KST night, Amos claimed that nothing happens in the Landing without him finding out about it, so no, he should have known about the truce. Of course, once Kharusa disappeared or the armigers went rogue, Amos had no clue where or why, even though the latter should have been especially close to his eyes and ears.


I understand that I could probably find ways to justify these things. Maybe Thadston thought he could avoid having rioters blame the town guards and militia (other than Stormy) for letting Tyrrax go if he mostly kept them out of it and went to a backup force in the Rooks. Maybe Amos was only putting on a front to appear knowledgeable or ignorant as he thought would best serve him, etc.

But if I have to fill in blanks myself often enough because the characters aren't voicing these reasons, then it starts feeling like they're plot devices who act in whichever way will crank up the drama most.

That role is valuable, but I don't think it's best served by individual NPCs with core beliefs--it's best served by mobs of townspeople assembled from various perspectives. Now that--the trial mob and the painted protests on the walls--was a brilliant portion of the finale and one of my favorite parts of the story. Infinitely more effective at conveying the point of anti-krolvin concerns than anything Juramis did or Thadston's rather empty "shame on you" speech at the Reach.



3. What was one, or a few, of your most memorable moments in the storyline?

Helga and Kilron getting involved with the Tyrrax debate on ESP was hilarious and amazing.

"Blue Hand Traitor Company" and "Blood Witch Marshall" were classic.

The twist of Lalk Morgil never even existing was so perfect that in hindsight I'm shocked and disappointed I didn't see it coming. (The numerous PC discussions on the topic so thoroughly--and possibly unintentionally--covered why every outcome where it existed would backfire horribly that now I feel like it not existing was the only out all along.)

Tyrrax vs. Amos was fun--partly on its own merits for the twists like Tyrrax shooting Amos with a hand pylon or the urglaes, but probably more so on the point of the split PCs cheering for one to kill the other or that somehow both would be dead by the end (even though there was obviously no chance of that).

Rian and Kharusa immediately running back onto the ships instead of taking their chance to escape is basically the most KST thing ever.

Using the mail system was a fun surprise.


Lastly, Thadston referring to Amos and the Rooks as problems that need to be cut out with sharp blades instead of with fire, lest the fire burn those close to them...

I've been involved with KST for six years and that was the one and only time I've heard a slightly satisfactory in-universe explanation from an NPC about why PCs can't just kill people in cold blood. Obviously NPCs like Barnom or Grishom have well-defined magical defenses, but with mere mortal characters it was certainly a mystery to me why we'll get into NPC-led debates to rant and rave about them for hours only to ultimately do absolutely nothing. This finally made more sense of it. (...for some characters. Certainly not all.)



4. What was some of the least memorable things in the storyline?

Juramis gave me serious mood whiplash when his antics involved running around the streets helping him find a lost cat while in the middle of a bloody conflict, or getting killed by random bandits and acting like an inept goofball who didn't even know what was going on after getting resurrected.

Technically, I guess these things aren't unmemorable since I remember them, but they did fall flat for me. Larsya's egg throwing competition had a similar effect of killing tension, but that one's a lot more excusable because A) the krolvin fleet had sailed back to Glaoveln at that point in the story, B) she's young, C) she's a somewhat sheltered noble, and D) unlike Juramis, she wasn't claiming a longstanding grudge against the krolvin that we were supposed to take seriously.



5. What is something you would have liked to see in the storyline, or seen more of?

Loved how much new blood was brought into the mix--getting taken by the krolvin, having Kharusa overtake Coglock and force him to write on the well, writing a report about the mine, serving as jurors, and other things I'm probably forgetting.

I also love the sporadic afternoon KSTs, even though I think I missed all but one of them. Please keep doing that--that's awesome and brings a more dynamic feel to the story!



6. Do you have any additional comments or suggestions you'd like to add?

This could just be a me problem, but I had trouble suspending disbelief enough to take the stakes of this story seriously.

First of all, the possibility that Lalk Morgil was real and would fall into the wrong hands... Nope. I can get invested in a wide variety of premises, but there was a 0% chance of a storyline killing all krolvin in the world. Couldn't suspend disbelief for that one, so the worst case was fairly low stakes like doing some damage before players cured it or we'd just destroy it outright.

So how about the krolvin threat to the town? The thing is that it's not exactly intimidating when:

* We battle krolvin all the time as a matter of routine in OSA, Troubled Waters, or even just everyday hunting in the level 20s
* The introduction of the latest threat involves a couple stray scouts abducting people and searching their boots
* Opposing the threat is, among other things, a mayor who can absorb pylon power into his arms and blow up ships by punching them and a giant with magical tattoos that give him incredible strength to battle said mayor by swinging trees like cudgels (...and said giant also has connections to a Grand Magister who, just in the most recent story, froze a fleet of warships in the bay)

This isn't to say I disliked the early parts of the story. Actually, just the opposite: I thought the portals were a really cool touch, I liked the countermaneuvering from Cordarius and Ayred, and I liked Tyrrax's counter-countermaneuvering using captives as a lure to get more mind probing in. The early invasions were my preferred ones, feeling more strategic on both sides, while the latter invasions turned into slogs of sheer force on force.

That said, the scouts and early portal shenanigans portrayed a fairly weak threat. It wasn't an uncommon nor unreasonable sentiment for people to assume that Thadston or Amos would destroy Tyrrax in a one-on-one battle and that the krolvin were desperate. Xorus made a valiant effort to convey that we should take Tyrrax seriously since he was confident enough in his strength to confront dozens of adventurers alone, but I still think we needed a display of krolvin power sooner than Tyrrax's battle against with to make them feel less mundane.

At least, I'd say that if we were supposed to regard Tyrrax as an antagonist, but I'm definitely not convinced that was the intent.

If the point all along was the moral conflict, then I'd say that's a valid direction and arguably a far better one. However, in that case I would have wanted that component of the story to get a lot more focus than it had prior to the end with the trial and riot.

There were some moral undercurrents all throughout--things like Falzcrow worrying that the Lalk Morgil might affect half-krolvin, or the question of whether to destroy the formula or use it, but it wasn't clear that that was the guiding thrust of the story (if it was) since players seemed to have less agency in the moral choice situations up until the trial. Amos was always going to get the formula and try to sell it, Thadston was always going to then overturn the idea of selling it, etc.

A pathogen that has to be delivered by blade never really made any sense to me or my character. Even airborne it is impossible to ignore that the Krolvin are a seafaring nation and perhaps more spread out than any other population (maybe forest gnomes or giantkin can claim to come close but even then....) A disease that would "wipe them out" would have to be magically delivered...at which point you can just deliver fireballs for the same effect...or have an incubation period of 6 months to a year.

The Krolvin are literally the worst race in the game, excluding the undead, to target with a disease.