There needs to be a Key Player opposed to Zytera who also remembers what happened centuries ago, and that may as well be Kalman Rodenfell. The PCs can meet him in a wondrous elf village, which should be a nice change from the mud and guts of the rest of the campaign, and he may as well be able to tell them pretty much everything: he was there right from the start, and he was both the elf who took the initiative in creating Stanengist and its first wielder, responsible for enslaving the orcs.

The trick, though, is that his memory is decidely elective, because he feels guilty about what he’s done and doesn’t know what to do now: close the rift or save the ancient elves? So it’ll take more than one conversation to get the full truth out of him.

There should be evidence of past, failed, plans to resolve the problem: stopping demons coming out of the rift in a variety of ways, or trying to find a way for Zytera to not die, by exploring elf-frailer or elf-demon hybrids.

Gracenotes: he’s called Rodenfell because, like the ancient elves of the Heart of the Sky, he also fell from the Red Wanderer at roughly the same time; his weakness as written is especially stupid because he must have met Merigall already; you should let the players see Rodenfell wrestling / fidgeting with his memories; an elf has been happily breeding huge, cute furry animals who like portals; do you want bad elves? here’s a bad elf.

As written, Stanengist will send demons mad if they place it on their head. Nobody had any reason to know it would do that when Stanengist was first forged, but the players will eventually find out, and when they do there’s every chance they’ll abuse the mechanic as a quick demon-killing trick. The thing is, that mechanism was written to be a weakness for only some key players, and as written can still fail. That’s unfortunate, because moral dilemmas are awesome, but if there’s no way to know what happens if you put more rubies in the crown, the players won’t have that discussion.

So I propose to say that the more rubies you have in Stanengist, the more powerful it is, and to make that discoverable. That means that if the PCs decide just to close the rift, they can do that with a minimum of fuss, but they then need to do a fair bit of extra work to kill Zytera, which turns the campaign into a nice three-act structure, which is always nice. Or, if they decide to rampage through the land killing demons with a crown full of elven rubies, that makes it harder for their allies to trust them, and more likely their enemies will see them coming.

Gracenotes: wide players taking out a flock of harpies with a Stanengist bola; make it possible to put Kalman Rodenfell in the crown as well; magic crowns don’t understand the point of stealth; sneaking around Amber’s Peak trying to work out what the demon you detected was, as Zertorme follows you wondering what magic effect he just felt; Disrupt Demon means Katorda loses his stupid head, and Zygofer or Therania fall off their spider body, and at higher levels the effect cascades.

As players of Raven’s Purge, you’re supposed to eventually know two important things about Stanengist: that it can send demons mad (which a number of major key players reasonably do not know), and that it can seal the protonexus (exactly why the ancient elves and Krasylla know this is not clear).

Rather than being told that by mysterious elves in the crown, the players should be piecing together knowledge of Stanengist like they piece together knowledge about the world, as should be everyone else.

If you accept my theory that the ancient elf circlet wasn’t always called Stanengist, and reforging it into a crown both opened the rift and made enslaving the orcs possible, that means there are many different ways that you could start learning about Stanengist. Elf-friends know about the ancient elves that should be in the crown; forging a powerful magic item like this probably required the help of ancient dwarven sorcerers who will have left records and/or followers; the orcs have conflicting memories and theories about what actually happened that can spur the players into investigating the past; powerful demons have a decent understanding about rifts and crowns; and if all that fails, the ancient elves in the crown remember a few things on top of what all other elves know.

This knowledge will be spreading during the campaign, and people talking to each other: everyone will be talking to elves and elvenspring, Arvia will find out what ancient dwarves have been up to if the PCs don’t, the orcs will be comparing notes and remembering, and if powerful demons decide they like it here now, they’ve got stories to tell to people who are prepared to put down their weapons and talk for a while.

Gracenotes: the constant mantra of “kill the demons, rule the land” from Stanengist should be really annoying to the elves inside and/or the wearer; another reason why Zytera doesn’t know about Stanengist is that it was almost immediately crippled by Iridne storming off in a huff; once the dwarves realised what might have happened, might they have tried to make a replacement Stanengist?; orcs with a culture born from slavery will put spy booby-traps in their epic poems.

Arvia’s purpose in the campaign is to tell the PCs about the doomed plot to kill Krasylla, be a target for Zytera’s ritual, and that’s basically it apart from some unserious soap-opera nonsense and amateur wishful thinking about elven stones. The fix is to lean on her intriguing background as a noble and a roving warrior, ignore the campaign’s tell-don’t-show justification of her being a religious fanatic (the plan to kill Krasylla is neither religious nor fanatic; it’s a perfectly sane plan!), and explore what a firebrand religious conservative dwarf should actually look like.

A leader of many dwarves, and a seasoned traveller of the tunnels under the Ravenlands, of course she heard about the Galdane Aslenes and had them flock to her banner. But her twisted way of thinking doesn’t just lead her to experiment on elven rubies because they’re part of Huge’s domain; she’ll embrace crackpot ideas like trying to enslave the orcs again, being happy about a second demon flood because she thinks the dwarves will be safe and the humans and orcs will die, or going along with Zygofer’s marriage proposal because she’s certain that she’ll be fine and that gets her into Vond.

Apart from increasingly frustrated PCs, her main enemies are likely to be dwarves with more cautious and incremental plans, frustrated with her sway over a sizeable part of the dwarven population. Everyone else just tries to stay out of her way.

Gracenotes: someone wanting to suborn a Ravenlands standing army will find it much easier than in our world because the value of soldiers is in their training, not their gear (and they can take that with them anyway); Arvia is quite possibly demon-agnostic and wouldn’t be sorry to see the Blood Mist back; after a while your players should dread meeting Arvia because she’ll always twist everything and make things worse; if you move Mard to Haggler’s House you can have her get entangled with Merigall, which both of them deserve.

Zytera is in a position of power, can do uncanny and terrible things, and Zygofer has proven capable of breathtaking tactical abilities in the past. They had no reason to care about Stanengist in the past, though, and their plans with female rulers of Ravenland are unavoidably flawed. The good news is that lets you interact with Zytera more often than the campaign expects (you can probably ignore the soap opera bit, though).

Gracenotes: when you’re the King you have to fear other Kings, e.g. from Alderland, why have all of Zytera’s experiments failed?, does Zygofer have a mental hold over all Blood Sorcerers?, best guess at when Zygofer got Merigall back, Zygofer can plausibly threaten that killing him would be bad, the best counter-Stanengist plan is to collect elf rubies, Zytera is already limited by the size of their army in how much they can rule, Zygofer’s plan to be legitimised by ruling with a Queen of Ravenland is really good, Zytera also has some good diplomacy ploys, unless they’re shopping for unusual Kin body parts, the Maligarn sword can’t be with Marga and Martea because they’ve have told Zertorme or Merigall, have another hopeless plan from Kalman Rodenfell.

If he’s a normal Elvenspring, Zertorme should be dead by now. He’s only still alive because he’s part-demon, which is politically awkward. Whether he fakes his death, ages rapidly and is reborn, or burns up and then has to regrow himself, he regularly regenerates into a new Zertorme.

Rather than seeking out new allies – which either can’t do because he’s just a figurehead or a racist patrician, or won’t because he’s lazy – he’s palling around with a fire demon. Why is she here? Maybe Merigall did it, maybe his regular regenerations made demons curious, maybe she’s him somehow. This is the main threat to his leadership, and she knows it, which is why she stole his face.

Zertorme is interesting because he’s a political leader, and he’s not locked into one strategy. As such, he’s not doomed to betray everyone as the campaign suggests. That makes him more interesting than most key players.

Gracenotes: being around demonic experiments is like second-hand cigarette smoke, your players should meet Zertorme many times, before and after regeneration, Zertorme’s illusions are really impressive, the situational benefits of an imprecise memory, demonic regeneration is weird and gruesome, that means there could be a trade in relics, that there are undead or ghosts means you can gloat at your dead mentor, if Brinhelda was born from Zertorme is Zertorme still demonic?, one of Merigall’s children is a permanent courtier at Amber’s Peak, ruling with Stanengist is arguably so he can show his father, he’s most likely to find out about it because the PCs won’t keep their mouth shut.

In Raven’s Purge, only male key players have agency, but everyone basically agrees with Krasylla. She doesn’t need Zytera’s help, and turning into sarmog might get her out of her contract with Zytera. She’s been adapting to a number 2 position for a while, and wondering what it would be to be a local demon.

Krasylla’s main weakness, which she’s thought about, is being shot by an arrow of the Fire Wyrm (which won’t happen instantaneously), and it makes sense that Krasylla would have spies looking out for the arrow. When the PCs get involved, hilarity can ensue.

Consider who can thwart Krasylla.

Gracenotes: Krasylla is now Ursula out of the Little Mermaid, maybe Zytera’s giant spider is Krasylla’s spy, what if Krasylla eats one of Merigall’s children, Krasylla talking in a hideous mockery of a local dialect, even if Maha is the universal language of magic the Galdanes want no part of it, if Erinya attacks you through lava where do you need to stand to be safe?, Raven’s Purge is wrong about which arrow Merigall has, Erinya is summoned through a ritual rather than having agency, as it should be, what does it take to bribe a spy, flaws that shape-shifters have, Zertorme likes this chompy horse spy, humans are too short-lived to be good plotters, Zytera should always posture given the chance, oh hey, Katorda exists.

If a random encounter gives you a monster egg that’s about to hatch, the last thing you want the PCs to do is sell it and forget. They should negotiate with buyers instead, which can and should get interesting.

If a brewer has been robbed, don’t just rescue him and let him go home; instead, wonder why he had to leave his village and/or why maybe supernatural creatures want his beer. Maybe you’ve now recruited a brewer for your stronghold?

If a village is sacrificing a youngster to a great serpent, do they have enough people that they can afford to? Even if they, did the Bloodmist change everything, by supporting more people / allowing people to leave? Or is this a desperation tactic?

My favourite asides: the buyers are working with the monster, Batman reference, another reference to trading a dead gryphon for horses.

The Seals are lost and unprotected, Ferenblaud and his people are still safe (some of them guard the seals), and there is every incentive to break a Seal and stop the winter.

The summer elves would have liberated the land and taken Ferenblaud and his monsters away, not cursed everyone with eternal ice.

No, what happened was that Ferenblaud rigged the curse to happen if he was losing. Elves don’t fear the passing of time, especially not if the prison actually protects them. The freezer-burned look isn’t accidental, it’s a deliberately-chosen look.

The Redrunners’ situation is still politically tricky. They should find and choose one seal to defend.

Nekhaka will Break you, which is a problem as you want to use it all the time, and if you don’t people can tell when you do. This is excessive compared to other elf artifacts.