Make them more interesting: Krasylla

Krasylla is, on the face of it, a way to prove how awesome Zygofer was. In 872, Zygofer foolishly picks a fight with Alderland; in 874 he opens the nexus wide and demons come out; with his rival humans dead, he buys time by having Merigall divert the demon flood to Aslene in 875, which gives them both time to cut off the flow of ether in 877, knee-capping the demon invasion. Krasylla sues for peace, and all that has happened since is that they’ve been gleefully guzzling human and/or demon sacrifices.

But flip that around: Zygofer is to be respected because he thwarted the fearsome demon war captain Krasylla, shortly after mastering Merigall. Krasylla is far more interesting than just another demon giddily chowing down on human flesh.

Gender-flip Krasylla

The first thing I think you should do, which will end up surprisingly effective without apparently changing anything significant, is simple: gender-flip Krasylla.

Krasylla is by now a grotesque mass of undifferentiated flesh, but having her present as female changes things. For one thing, we now have a key female player in Raven’s Purge, which is otherwise ruthlessly dedicated to only giving male characters agency.

I mean, consider the weaknesses of each mostly-written-as-male key player:

• Zytera: you can cut them in half with a magic sword, they have demon enemies, there’s an arrow of the Fire Wyrm with their name on it somewhere, and if you can stick them with it Erinya will come and eat them; oh, and if they get what they want they’ll go mad and die
• Zertorme: if he gets what he wants he will also go mad and die
• Merigall: their life essence is somewhere and you can yeet it into the sea
• Krasylla: there’s an Arrow of the Fire Wyrm with their name on it as well

Then compare the weaknesses with the female key players:

• Virelda: she shouldn’t cut her hair
• Arvia: she’s a bit crazy
• Soria: she hoards plot

They try to balance this out with Kalman Rodenfell (he will fall in love with Merigall for no obvious reason) and Kartorda (he’s such a butt-monkey he doesn’t even get a weakness), but you can tell their heart wasn’t in it.

If you make Krasylla a woman, you start fixing this. And if you turn Zytera’s rather baffling “I need a person of royal blood” ritual into an attempt to rule Ravenland by marrying into it, that also makes Krasylla a potential candidate for said ritual.

It’s also great if you’re a fan of Ursula out of The Little Mermaid.

Krasylla is the only one with a plan that will work

Look at the key players in Raven’s Purge again, and their plans:

• Zytera wants to wear Stanengist. This is possible, but will drive them permanently insane.
• Merigall wants their life essence, Viridia back, and to generally mess with things. Maybe?
• Zertorme wants to wear Stanengist. This might happen, but will definitely drive him insane.
• Kartorda wants to wear Stanengist. This is unlikely to happen, but must drive him insane as well.
• Kalman Rodenfell wants to save the elves from the Heart of the Sky, and to close the rift. He can inherently only do one of those things.
• Virelda wants Stanengist. She has no great plan on what to do next.
• Arvia wants Zytera and Krasylla dead. She doesn’t know stone magic, but is pretty sure Stanengist could help with that sort of thing.
• Soria wants to seal the rift with Stanengist. She’s unlikely to get her hands on it.

Krasylla’s plan, in contrast, is simple: have someone seal the rift with Stanengist, so the only demons left in the realm are the ones she commands.

It’s compatible with what Soria (explicitly) and Kalman Rodenfell (eventually) want, Virelda can probably be persuaded, and if Zytera, Zertorme or Kartorda get their wish, there’ll be a crown on the floor and we go again. Merigall might mess things up (if only for the lulz), and Arvia definitely wants him dead, but those are the only two whose plans are close to going against Krasylla’s.

Still think Krasylla is a fat mindless buffoon?

Krasylla is probably self-sufficient by now

Krasylla pouring energy into becoming sarmog is incompatible with the initial bargain that kept Krasylla subservient in Vond: that the flow of ether had been dramatically reduced and the demons were starving.

It’s possible, of course, that Krasylla in 877 already had enough ether-guzzling parts that, especially if they were camped out right next to the rift where all the ether came through, they could survive on ether alone. It would still be useful to throw their lot in with Zygofer, though, so as to make sure that their rivals would either die, or have to accept a similar offer but as a subordinate to Krasylla. (First-surrender advantage.)

If they didn’t, though, and then-Krasylla had to kill and eat Ravenland Kin and/or other demons to survive, you can be sure that they’ve fixed that since then.

Every time an ether-eating demon has come through the rift, Krasylla has absorbed them. It’s got to the point where most of the ether coming through the rift is now eaten by Krasylla, and if there are any other ether-eating demons left in Ravenland, you can be confident that if their life isn’t miserable now, it’s because they work for Krasylla now, who takes care of regular ether deliveries.

Krasylla’s contract

Canonically, Krasylla signed a contract with Zygofer in blood and phlegm (GM’s Guide, pp. 31-32), and “In the partially decomposed cloak worn by the old man, Zygofer, is the parchment that holds the contract that binds Krasylla to Zytera” (Raven’s Purge, p. 33).

This makes no sense. Zytera should have aides that replace Zygofer’s clothes with ones regularly; and in any case the parchment should be better-protected than that. As written, no matter what kind of geas was written into the contract that says stuff like “you shall not try to steal and destroy this contract”, you should expect Krasylla to try to steal and destroy the contract. Both Zytera and Krasylla are basically immortal, so you should expect all of their plans to be intricate and unfold over many decades. “Zygofer still has the physical contract on his person, and a good thief would be able to nick it” feels like a plan that would rapidly be supplanted by a better plan.

This is especially odd as subjugating Krasylla, shortly after dominating Merigall, is what cemented Zygofer’s position of eminence among the Alderlanders in Ravenland. He should pay as much attention to having Krasylla under control as he does in making sure he has Merigall’s life essence.

That’s why I think the parchment is, at best, a red herring. The true contract is tattooed on Zygofer’s body, in ink and demon blood and phlegm. And it’s written in Maha signs.

And that, in turn, is one of the reasons why I think Krasylla is trying to become sarmog, and has deliberately sacrificed her freedom of movement to do so. Because sarmog!Krasylla will be someone else, with a new name. Who the contract will no longer bind.

Krasylla as mistress of spies

Someone capable of rising to a position of pre-eminence among the demons of Churmog is unlikely to be stupid. Recognising their perilous situation when Zygofer cuts off the supply of ether, and making it first to the negotiating table, is a sign of that: Krasylla not only becomes Zygofer’s chief war demon, with all the privileges that come with that position, she also screws over the demon war captains who are still rampaging through Aslene, or back in Ravenland gnashing their teeth in indecisive frustration.

Krasylla now becomes a courtier, and there are two very important things you need in a position like this: access and information. Access she has, by dint of being in Vond, right next to the nexus and reporting directly to Zygofer, second only to Merigall. Information she needs to gather, and quickly. I think it’s very likely that she takes her best and brightest demons and sends them out into the Ravenlands, to be her eyes and ears, and continues maintaining and refining her spy network over the decades, until she and Merigall manage to repurpose the blood mist.

As an example of how you underestimate Krasylla at your peril: remember how Merigall and his fellow sorcerers mashed Zygofer and Therania together (GM’s Guide, p. 32), and then realised that something was missing. “However, in the depths of the Shadowgate Pass roamed a half-living but headless carcass of a giant, spider-like creature from the demonic horde. Merigall had it captured and fused the creature’s body to the combined bodies of Zygofer and Therania”.

What are the odds that Krasylla was completely unaware of any of this? What might it mean if Zytera has been walking around for the last 380 years on the back of one of Krasylla’s first spies?

Krasylla as local demon

This one is more of a stretch goal, but it’s still worth considering: if the problem with demons is that they’re inherently not from here, and should therefore go home, how about you fix that? This is ultimately what Krasylla will want to do once the nexus is sealed and there can be no further demons, but it doesn’t hurt to start preparing early.

If you take a Fisher King “the land and the King are one” approach, then one of Krasylla’s problems is that she’s only been eating Rust Brother-provided sacrifices, and maybe other demons who pop through the rift that she has no other use for, for the last few hundred years. That’s not a representative sample!

So maybe she decides that to be a proper Ravenlands demon, she should eat more kin, from more places. Bring me halflings and goblins from Belifar, she tells her people; yes, and Elvenspring from Vivend, Aslenes from Margelda and Yendra, dwarves from Feulenmark, orcs from Arina, even ogres from Harmsmoor.

Eventually, once she’s confident that her plans are almost ready, she might decide to eat one of Merigall’s children. They were born in Ravenland, after all.

The goals are two-fold. First of all, absorbing other identities while still remaining the controlling personality is a way of moving away from the Krasylla identity that the arrow of the Fire Wyrm is targeted at. Secondly, being able to speak in a (possibly hideous mockery of) local dialect, or in the manner of a Ravenland native Kin, makes her appear less like a foreign invader. This might be useful if Zygofer’s plan is to find a local Queen.

The two arrows of the fire wyrm

Krasylla’s one weakness is the Arrows of the Fire Wyrm (GM’s Guide, pp. 128-129; they’re also mentioned in The Bloodmarch, pp. 67-68, but not in a way that adds anything of interest for someone running a Ravenland campaign). One of them is intended for her, another is intended for Zytera, and the third doesn’t matter. Let’s say that there’s some kind of inscription on each arrow, maybe in Maha signs, maybe in some other writing system (there’s no reason to believe that Maha is a universal language of magic, or that the Galdanes use it even if it is).

It would be very boring if Krasylla didn’t know about the arrows, and wildly uncharacteristic of her if she’s a superb spy-mistress, so let’s assume that she’s got a plan. Ultimately, it’s to become sarmog, and hope that either (1) she is no longer Krasylla, and the arrow with “Krasylla” written on it therefore won’t do anything when it hits her; or that she’ll be more powerful (mobile, for a start), and be able to either (2) evade Erinya by going somewhere the fire wyrm can’t get at her (limestone islands are nice), or (3) be more likely to be able to take the dragon in a fight.

What if she’s wrong / she gets shot before she turns into sarmog?

The timing problems of shooting Krasylla (or Zytera) with an arrow

The campaign is pretty clear that any clues as to where the arrow is are merely teases: no matter what you do, the arrow is guaranteed to be in the armoury in Vond (Raven’s Purge, p. 190). Later on it contradicts itself and says that it’s in Merigall’s quarters (p. 201), which could of course be because Merigall heard of the arrow having been found and nicked it. Merigall does want a way of taking down everyone of importance in the campaign, after all, and the writers are determined to give them one. But the GM’s Guide (pp. 129-130) is pretty clear that the one Merigall has is the one that targets Zygofer. This feels like a form of mutually-assured destruction (if Zygofer dies, so does Merigall, somehow), so maybe Merigall has it (1) so nobody else can kill Zygofer with it, but (2) once Merigall gets their life essence back, all bets are off.

Regardless, though, the intention is clearly that there’s going to be a big huge battle at Vond involving many armies (there’s tables and everything), followed by the PCs sneaking about for a bit finding out stuff, and culminating in a dramatic confrontation between the PCs and all of the major NPCs, full of posturing, grandstanding, dastardly plans revealed at the last minute, backstabbing, mayhem and death. It’s during all of this that the PCs are supposed to shoot Krasylla and/or Zytera with magic arrows.

The problem is that Erinya isn’t going to arrive in anything like short enough time.

It’s been public knowledge for the last 300-odd years that Krasylla and Zytera, the targets of her anger, spend most of their time in Vond. And yet she hasn’t gone there even once and rampaged around, which she absolutely could have if her intent was to deal out vengeance as soon as possible. That implies to me that she sees the relationship between her and the arrows as one of ritual summoning: Zygofer and Krasylla will become the target of her inevitable vengeance, yes, but she must be called. This fits the fairy tale vibe of the type of fantasy that Forbidden Lands is trying to mimic, and is the same sort of thing as an evil fairy godmother prophesying that the fair maiden will prick her finger on a spindle in 18 years’ time and fall into a deep sleep, rather than straight-up poisoning the baby there and then.

So Erinya isn’t swimming around deep beneath Vond, grumbling and wondering where the hell Krasylla or Zytera might be. She’s probably minding her own business back in Aslene. Once an arrow hits her target, she’ll spring into action, swimming through lava channels deep underground, then digging through the rocks and soil beneath her target, before emerging from beneath and grabbing them in her jaws.

Even if you say that she’s lurking right on the other side of Shadowgate Pass, 10 hexes away (roughly 80km), and that she can swim through lava twice as fast as a horse, it’s still going to take her half a day to get here. Even if you up those numbers by a ridiculous degree, e.g. make her not just as fast as any animal (200km/h), or a high speed train (500km/h), but go straight to jet speed (1,500km/h), that’s still going to take her 3 minutes to get here. If the players were hoping to one-shot Krasylla, they’re probably going to all be dead by the time the dragon turns up. Or maybe Krasylla gave a final monologue on how unfair life is, how she’ll get her revenge in the next life, mark her words, and since then everyone’s been standing around awkwardly, waiting for Erinya to show up, see what happens, before anyone tries another gambit.

It’s more interesting if there’s a hunt for the arrow

If you talk to Arvia, she can tell you that Peyraman and Viseria have just left with the arrow (Raven’s Purge, p. 44), but that’s a pretty pointless clue as there’s no chance of intercepting them before they get captured. What if there was, though?

Krasylla’s ultimate plan is to become sarmog, sure, but she’d also be pretty happy about getting the arrow before it’s shot into her. So we can be pretty sure that a great deal of her spies are tasked with looking out for a special magic arrow from Aslene; and if Krasylla’s spies can find the plotters with the arrow, so can the PCs. The spies are probably concentrating their efforts among the Galdane Aslene in Yendra, but Quards might have nicked it so there’ll be spies there as well.

What does one of Krasylla’s spies look like? It’s hard to say: there’ll be a few perfectly normal humans, bribed with e.g. good food, better gear, a better horse, the untimely demise of their enemies, maybe even hot sex with a demon from time to time. (Not money; like most people in the Ravenlands, the Aslenes don’t have coins.) The blood mist might be called into action, either passively (it might be able to pick up general vibes of people being sneaky and intersected in strange arrows) or actively, if individualist bloodlings can sneak into Galdane settlements and listen at doors / kidnap people and torture them for information.

But I think most of Krasylla’s spies will be shape-shifting demons. Shape shifting is never perfect (demons always have weaknesses, after all), so maybe they’re like Merigall and their eyes are always a weird colour like yellow or red; or maybe there’s a weird smell that follows them about, their skin occasionally glistens with a weird sheen, sometimes you hear a strange jingling of discordant bells, from time to time their flesh feels weirdly slimy or rough to the touch despite looking perfectly normal, etc.

There’s no guarantee that the demons are impersonating people, either. Birds are good spies because nobody pays them attention (except when they decide they need to be in the room to hear what the plotters are saying, at which point people start wondering why a crow has flown through the window). Horses are good, too, if you plan on spying on Aslenes, although it can get really boring. It’s not unusual for horses to occasionally bite people, but you have to be subtle about it, or you’ll be confined to a paddock far from arrow conspiracists or, worse, bought by Zertorme, curious about a horse with a taste for flesh.

How the arrow’s journey can get more interesting

Viseria has an arrow that she wants to shoot Krasylla with, and her plan is to go to Vond. That doesn’t mean that’s the only place to find her or her arrow.

There could be multiple arrows. If the plotters are concerned about being found out, they could send a number of decoy parties as well as the people with the real arrow. That of course requires them to have enough people to send, and makes the number of people who know at least something about the plan a lot larger, so it’s not fool-proof.

The arrow-bearers could ask Zertorme. Zertorme is a respected leader and reputed as a great sorcerer, so the first step of the journey might be to go to Amber’s Peak and ask him what he thinks of this arrow. Maybe he can decipher the inscription on it? (Human lifespans are such that it’s been generations since the arrow came from Aslene, and the people who have it now might not be 100% certain that they know what they have.)

They might go to Haggler’s House. This might simply be because it’s on the way to Vond, but maybe they’ve been told that they can find someone there who can tell them about a secret entrance that they could use. (Maybe this person betrays them, and that’s why they’re going to end up in the dungeon unless the PCs intervene.)

They might think they have the arrow intended for Zytera. This can combine with any of the above, and lead to someone dramatically shouting “die, tyrant!”, shooting Zytera with an arrow, only for Zytera to pluck the arrow out of their side and say smugly “this arrow is not the one destined to kill me”. Therania would keep the arrow as a useful tool, but maybe if it’s Zygofer who grabs it, he’ll contemptuously throw it to the ground like a self-confident megalomaniac?

Someone else could nick the arrow. At any point, one of Krasylla’s spies, an unconnected turncoat within the conspiracy looking for a reward, or just a casual thief could steal the arrow. Any survivors will then want to steal the arrow back, and a growing number of people are now hot on its trail, probably heading towards Vond.

Who’s thwarting Krasylla?

Zygofer is probably complacent, thinking that there’s a contract and an arrow with Krasylla’s name on. Therania might not be so sure, and might wonder at the sacrifices and demons that Krasylla gets to feed on, and whether their numbers should be reduced.

Merigall has worked with Krasylla in the past, and might have an ongoing “hey, if you see my life essence, I’ll make it worth your while” deal. Still, Merigall’s not the sort of person to commit to any course of action for that long.

Katorda has every interest in seeing both Krasylla and Merigall take each other out, or both be taken out by Zytera. If he can find one of Merigall’s children and feed it to Krasylla, that might be just the spark he wants.