So Paul died again. This time, he said hold my beer and climbed on the cross.
There was much drama, much anger and fury and butthurt. And then all was well.
The Left Turn.
Ivor presented a one two combination on top of Thurrass'X murdering the tribal leader. The bumpkins were hesitant until Ivor managed to melt the phylactery, but it was the absolute lack of leadership that allowed the saviours to take complete control of the tribe.
Dissent aside, the remaining tribe members now return to their hills as mandated by their new messiah, to await further orders, or boredom.
Stomp on God and live to tell the tale
If you are surrounded by a hundred mad barbarians, don't stomp on their gods face. It always sucks to lose a character, and it sucks to get painted into a corner, but don't stomp on god. Also, yelling at god that it's not god, typically ticks off the locals too.
Religious people are nuts. I'm just gonna go ahead and say it. You can talk about happiness and pleasure and joy and love and spreading that good will, and I'm all for that.
Religious people are still nuts, and they don't have carte blanche regarding good will and all that afore mentioned jazz.
My point is that if you stomp on gods face in the middle of a joyous populous of the most civilized peoples, I guarantee they'll at least tell you to leave in a rude tone.
These are mad furious barbarians. They did the mad furious barbarian equivelant of that.
However, Thurrass'X isn't dead. Why is that?
Story trumps rules
Make no mistake, Thurrass'X isn't returning to serve alongside Ivor anytime soon. I still have some threads I want to explore and settle before jaunting time forwards to my next plot point.
If I let Thurrass'X live, I get to explore those threads and it's as I said to Paul during the post game meeting: I could do all sorts of things to Thurrass'X that are not out of the realm of possibility. Amnesia, brain damage, etc.
Joe choosing to use 'Spare the Dying' didn't mean Ivor had the ability to resurrect Thurrass'X. It meant that he was invoking upon the story to save or humiliate. Either way, makes for good story in my books so I let it work and thus was the mountain man saved.
I probably should have made Joe roll strength to lift Thurrass'X. In hind sight that would have quickly undermined the moment with a humorous tone,
Powerful Players
As we move ahead in the story, the characters are becoming more and more embroiled within the political framework and intrigue is building. On the back end, I'm finding the various players asking for services from each other which is a new and exciting development.
Moving forward, I've got to keep the story moving towards my goal to keep things interesting and keep the pressure on.
End Game
I have an 'end' to this chapter that I'm building towards and if the players return to and drain the lake to discover what I've got hidden underneath there, then I will hav a natural lead back into the end I've got planned.
If the story goes a bit side long due to a new wrinkle, I may have to adjust my end game some, but at the current heading and pace, it seems the players are doing great!