Make them more interesting: Soria

A cursory read of Raven’s Purge suggests that Soria exists only to temporarily own an elven ruby of the Heart of the Sky, which the players should soon nick from her and stick in Stanengist. The orc armies will soon follow them to a glorious battle in Vond, after which hopefully Soria doesn’t end up being sacrificed by Zytera, and the PCs win. Hurrah!

It’s far more interesting if basically none of this happens. Soria is one of the more interesting Key Players, both in what it means to be at the head of an emerging Kin nation, and what it feels like to be one of the few people interested in creating a genuinely new future for the Ravenlands.

What is Soria like?

You need to jettison a lot of Soria’s depiction in Raven’s Purge

Iridne shed her flesh and had her ruby set in Hemelda, the Blood Star cloak clasp, so she could advise the leaders of the orcs. Empress Soria – an orc! – now openly wears the only ruby of the Heart of the Sky whose whereabouts are known. (Guesses are that three of the others are in Stanengist, another is in Maligarn, another is in Nekhaka; and maybe Kalman Rodenfell could be persuaded to trade places with one of them or offer himself up for even more power.) People are starting to share old stories about the crown that could unite the land, and attention is now turning to the Eye of the Rose. All this is great.

But then we are told that Soria’s husband recently gave her Hemelda as a present, to make his queen more interesting and to reflect majesty back on him; that Iridne secretly whispers to Horka in his sleep, and that makes Soria jealous (Raven’s Purge p. 45), so much so that she’s open to swapping Iridne out for some other ruby just to gain some peace and quiet (ibid. p. 106); and Iridne has only recently mentioned “oh hey, there’s this thing called the Stanengist crown and a thing called the protonexus that Zytera opened”.

None of that makes any sense. If Soria is Empress, then she is the true ruler, and Hroka her consort, because that’s how orc society has to work. If Iridne decided she wanted to secretly advise the orcs, then the leader of the Viraga, or some other important orc, must have owned Hemelda since pretty much day one. If Iridne decided to leave Stanengist out of outrage against the subjugation of the orcs, she would absolutely have told them about the true nature of the World Crown as soon as she could. And regardless of all of this, while the orcs were pretty much interested bystanders during the fourth Alder War between Zytera and his erstwhile masters from Alderland, enough of them will have heard gloating Zyteran generals say words like “observe the firepower of this fully armed and operational demon army” and wondered “where are they getting these demons from?”, that a general idea of “somewhere in that mountain pass above Alderstone” will have survived in the orcs’ oral tradition.

Also, consider Soria’s weakness as written: “after a number of betrayals, Soria has poor faith in others and tends to keep information to herself, even when it would be more beneficial to share it”. This isn’t just patronising (“hey, what sort of weaknesses do women have? Yeah, that’ll work”), but also ridiculously out of character for a leader of a secret society. If Soria is the head of the Viraga, then she has not been repeatedly betrayed by other people (if she had, those other people would be the leaders)! And unless the Viraga are a bunch of amateurs, the reason she’s stayed in charge is because she’s been good at sharing information with the right people, to advance the goals of the organisation as a whole, while protecting it from leaks and infiltration.

What does a confident Soria, wielder of Hemelda, look like?

The description (ibid., p. 45) says “Soria radiates power and intelligence, and could be mistaken for a human female of the sturdier kind with a hint of fangs. She is dark, with olive skin and green eyes.”

As mentioned before: no, Soria must not be mistaken for a human. She is an orc mother, capable of rearing eight children at once if she has to (just one glance at her ceremonial armour, when she wears it, should be enough to convince you). She’ll replace you with the best of the survivors after she’s finished punching you to death with her bare hands. “Dark, with olive skin”? Sure. That means black hair and olive-green skin, right?

And Soria must surely glory in having the aid of one of the ancient elves of the Heart of the Star! Not only can she float through the air (you can be sure that she uses that in court audiences to e.g. surprise prostrating supplicants, and won’t be above using it to spy on people), but Iridne guides her in subtle ways, and she can bind the commanders of the Eye of the Rose to her command, in a way that improves morale and defensive performance. You can be sure that she makes sure to parade her ownership of the ancient elven ruby as often as possible.

Why would Soria give up Iridne?

“At some point during the game, Iridne will speak to Soria and tell her of Zytera’s Protonexus, and that the orcs must unite and march on Vond to seal the threatening gate to the demon worlds with the crown, Stanengist” (ibid., p. 45). This sort of implies that Iridne will volunteer to become part of the crown and sacrifice herself; but really, would she? Iridne disagreed so much with Gemelda, Nebulos and Neyd in the crown, and Kalman Rodenfell who used it to enslave the orcs, that she left and went to help the orcs. You only need four rubies to close the rift; it’s not clear why Iridne would think that she should sacrifice herself when plenty of other decent candidates are available.

And Soria will be clear that she still needs the respect boost of “I am friends with an ancient elf of antiquity and you are not”. The orcs have numbers on their side but not much else, and until they have gained a solid, reliable peace with their neighbours, Soria will not give up her trump card. The levitation effect from the cloak clasp is nice and would survive Iridne decamping to Stanengist, but its usefulness to a stateswoman is limited.

Needless to say, trying to steal Iridne from Soria is almost certainly going to fail. A combination of paranoia and braggadocio will mean that Soria is constantly guarded by all sorts of orcs, some obvious and some covert, as befits a head of state. You need to sneak past all of them when Soria is asleep and hope Iridne wants to be stolen and doesn’t raise the alarm.

Soria’s weakness is that she’s a new ruler, with enemies

Zytera has pretty much complete control over his realm, but there are a number of magical ways of killing them stone dead. Soria doesn’t have any mystical weaknesses like that; instead, her problem is that her hold over her realm is fragile, threatened from within by rivalries with other Queens and doubts from traditionalists about where she wants to take the orcs, and from without by the humans and dwarves who border her lands.

The PCs can go pretty much wherever they want, explore anything that strikes their interest, and devote weeks or months to tracking down a rare magical artifact. Soria, meanwhile, has an empire to rule, and dangerous neighbours she needs to consider when doing anything of any significance. This doesn’t necessarily mean that she’s weak or indecisive; rather, she has a great many things she needs to consider when doing anything, and sometimes she needs to be more careful and deliberate than she would like, because the lives of thousands of orcs are at stake. Nations, like aircraft carriers and cruise ships, take a while to manoeuvre.

This suits her. If her neighbours and rivals want to think she’s just another stupid orc, that’s fine; better than them worrying about what she’s up to, or how to undermine her plans. If their default assumption is “we can crush her whenever we want”, great: they might be able to crush the orcs at the moment, but if they think that’s going to remain true for the foreseeable future, that gives her time to shore up her defences.

She might even deliberately allow internal opposition: let rival Queens maintain power bases, even though she could send her armies against theirs at any moment and wipe them out. Part of this is an understanding that infighting is what has historically weakened the orcs (maybe she has listened to the Viraga and their tales of the dwarves’ and elves’ divide and conquer strategies when the orcs were enslaved). A proper Empress needs strong Queens sworn to her service, after all. But another possibility is that she is deliberately trying to manoeuvre herself into a position of pre-eminence through diplomacy and political intrigue rather than brute strength, for two reasons.

First of all, she can use the practice: if her stratagems fail, nobody will particularly notice because orcs don’t do subtle, and she still has the fallback solution of sending the boys round; but if she does manage to manipulate her fellow orcs, she’ll learn what did and didn’t work, and that will be useful for when she needs to do the same to more subtle Kin. Secondly, this sends a message to those willing to hear it: that it’s possible to be a successful orc even if you’re not a hulking brute whose muscles have muscles.

Similarly, if Soria gets to watch the PCs in action, or hears of what they’ve done, that will accelerate any plans she had to get a group of adventurers of her own. Maybe she can’t move fast and break things, but her adventurers sure can.

Why is Soria interesting?

Soria is effectively all of the orcs, and that means plot hooks

To a first approximation, Soria’s interests as Empress of the orcs are the same as the orcs overall. She wants them to remain free; to master and expand the territory they exploit; to make friends or thwart nearby enemies; to advance orcdom.

If the PCs want to become Soria’s friends, that’s a bunch of things they can help her out with right there. Saying “we will absolutely throw Stanengist through the rift, which means it can never again be used to enslave the orcs” is obviously huge (although Soria is confident enough that she may well demand that as a precondition for any talks at all). Teams of orc navvies are already at work building roads through the Orcish forests, but killing wandering monsters will endear the PCs to Soria. If you’ve put e.g. Weatherstone in orc-controlled lands, then maybe Soria can point the PCs that way, to see how hard they are, and whether they manage to neutralise the potential threat of a small commando force of undead. Travelling to neighbouring villages, or even better dwarven cities, and saying “Orcs are actually not that bad once you get used to them” will obviously curry her favour. Encouraging skilled craftspeople to travel to the orcish lands is also obviously good.

If you want a big fight in Vond, you need Soria onside

There are three players in the Ravenlands who can raise armies against Zytera: Zertorme, the dwarves, and the orcs.

The natural invasion route for any large army is going to be up the Wash to the Blaudwater, past the Blaudwater to Alderstone, and then either Vond is in Alderstone or it’s in the mountains a handful of hexes to the west. Zertorme will naturally go that way, but if Soria’s orcs are his enemies, they can harry his army from either the Arina Forest or the Groveland Woods. A dwarven army similarly needs to go through the Arina Forest, or as near as dammit as makes no difference.

So if your players want to have a huge pitched battle in Vond, they’re going to have to persuade Soria that the large armies from Amber’s Peak and Stonegarden are definitely targeted at Zytera and not her, and they’re going to have to in turn persuade Zertorme and whoever’s in charge of the dwarven armies that there’s to be no back-stabbing. Sorry, kids, but you’ve got to eat your greens before you get to pudding: if you want a clash of massive armies, you’ve got to do shedloads of diplomacy first.

Soria is the embodiment of the campaign

Raven’s Purge is interesting because it’s a combination of two very different things: (1) exploring a previously-unknown world and (2) reacting to a world ruled by an oppressive evil sorcerer. (Probably trying to overthrow said evil sorcerer, but the game doesn’t force you to go down that route.) The trick is that because of the blood mist, many people are discovering the history and geography of their own world in real time, including the PCs and, to a great degree, Soria.

If you divide the campaign into three acts, Act I starts with the PCs setting out from their village wondering what the world is like, and typically ends with them finding the first of the ancient elven artifacts (one of Stanengist, Maligarn or Nekhaka, I would suggest). Act II is about them exploring the history of this artifact and trying to find more, probably culminating in them finding enough artifacts that they could seal the rift (Stanengist if they don’t already have it; Maligarn and/or Nekhaka if they started out with Stanengist). Act III is then about how they decide what to do with these objects of power (like e.g. are they happy with just 4 rubies’ worth or do they go for the whole set, or even more), and how many other Kin they carry with them to a final confrontation at Vond.

You could easily have significant set-piece conversations with Soria in each of the three acts. In Act I, it’s an introduction to each other: who are the PCs? who is Soria? what do they all want? Come Act II, when the PCs reveal that they have an ancient artifact with a ruby from the Heart of the Sky, that’s Soria’s opportunity to acknowledge that she has one too, and for each of them to discuss their philosophy of the ideal society. Midway through Act III is when the PCs ask Soria for her armies’ cooperation, and when she makes her demands in turn.

Incidentally, maybe it makes sense for Soria’s journey to match the PCs’ own? So you could start her as just a Queen, albeit a powerful and cunning one, and have her declare herself as Empress in Act II, but still with a fragile hold on the crown; and maybe she finally gets rid of the last of her internal enemies during Act III, as the PCs are preparing a massed attack on Vond. Ideally she’ll ask the PCs to help her get rid of said last internal enemies, just to demonstrate the strength of their alliance.

Soria is the future

Another way of looking at it is that Raven’s Purge is about a society gradually recovering from a disaster, and deciding (a) who to blame and/or (b) what to do to make sure this doesn’t happen again.

Among the Key Players, obviously Zytera and Kartorda think nothing wrong happened, and will actively resist any change (apart from, in Kartorda’s case, maybe replacing Zytera as the man in charge). Krasylla agrees that Zytera is bad, and wants to become Sarmog so she’s in charge, but that’s very much the sort of opinion that you get when you start from “Zytera’s rule is good, but how could it be better?”; it’s fair to say that this is a minority opinion in the Ravenlands. Merigall’s friends with all of the ruling demons but is also dedicated to messing with everybody, which means they might not be first against the wall when the revolution comes. Still, they clearly have a camp.

So much for the baddies. Against them, Kalman Rodenfell is very much stuck in the past, and so to varying degrees are Virelda, Arvia and Zertorme. All of these would be happy to just have the last few hundred years not have happened, or be cleanly reversed, even if they have additional things they’d like to change about the world.

Not so for Soria. Suppose you somehow manage to get rid of the remnants of the blood mist, all of the demons, the Rust Brothers and all of Zytera’s cruel rule? You’re still going to have a defiant independent orc nation smack bang in the middle of the Ravenlands. Soria is here to say that the orcs are not going away, and especially that they’re never going to be enslaved again.

This may be fine by the PCs – after all, they’ve never known a world where there weren’t loads of orcs. Or they may be from a traditionalist background, or otherwise racists. But either way, they’re going to have to take a stance on whether they want the Ravenlands to be filled with thousands of orcs.