TL;DR so you can skip my hot take below:
- Kagha being a demagogue with easy answers for the refugee question in the grove makes no sense, Olodan only complicates this further.
- "Siding with" her is a thankless job that dips into comic book villainy as you massacre the refugees singlehandedly for her.
- To fix this, remove the child murdering scene when you first meet her
- Remove all reference to the refugees being "just about to leave" and involve the druids in the cleansing of the grove somehow
- Said cleansing should be expulsion of the Tieflings without heed of consequence, not ethnic cleansing as it is right now lol
- Maybe make Kagha a bit less of a cold bitch to the player when "siding with" her.
Now for some unorganised rambling on why Kagha is a ridiculous character;
The main questline for Act 1 revolves around helping or hindering these Tiefling refugees in the druid grove of Silvanus. They are opposed by the grove's interim leader who is secretly working with a druid hate group to make their circle xenophobic isolationists and possibly genocide the helpless refugees. As you walk into this situation you find this interim leader on the cusp of imprisoning a child and possibly witness it being murdered. Only the circle's second in command seems to take offense to this, even the pedestrian servants grumble on how this is a comeuppance for a long period of grievances they have had with these unwelcome outsiders. If you go back to the outer area there is a woman sending secret messages to the circle's actual leader, a swole chad bear-man-elf with perfect intentions and not a hint of xenophobia. This woman tells you that she is basically the circle's one person resistance movement and that the interim leader is druid Hitler who has swayed everyone but two people to her hateful cause.
The player is not nescessarily incentivised to act on the Tieflings' behalf in this situation and some of your companions even seem to prefer you siding with the evil druids (although all of them are of the opinion that WENEEDAHEALER-...). If you decide to do this though, prepare to be surprised about how nobody will be thankful for your help. Kagha, the interim druid leader, hates you the moment you step into her sanctum. All she does is sneer at you. She then orders you to go "deal with" the Tiefling leader, which can spiral into your party inciting a race war against them. Expect no help from the druids here if you even get to this point. When I tried it, I basically had to admit to Kagha that I am a racist and wanted to see hellspawn removed from this plane of existence. When I said it was none of my concern, Kghga blew me off and the opportunity I had to slaughter an entire people was gone. From what I have read on the forums the outcome you get when you manage to go through with this is you taking on the entire refugee camp alone, Kagha sealing off the grove forever and prompty telling you to sod off.
If you happen to be a rational human being and ignore the path I described in the second paragraph you will find that not only have the Tieflings done nothing wrong, they have a very easy and concrete way out of the druids' hair forever. All they need is a clear road to Baldur's Gate and they will no longer be a problem. Zevlor, the Tiefling leader, even comically shouts out that they were "getting ready to LEAVE!" if the goblins end up attacking the grove in full force. While this is happening the druids do absolutely nothing and should you persevere in your final standoff with the goblin raid or assassinate their leaders beforehand Kagha will even be promptly murdered for her child killing by the child's vengeful parents. In fact, there are three scenarios related to that outcome; Either Kagha is fully exposed as a druid KKK member and you talk her into siding against her Grand Wizard which leads to her being remorseful when Halsin (the real leader of the circle) returns and demotes her or you never expose her and she says almost to Halsin's face that she and Olodan the hatemongress will coup the grove in his absence anyway.
Now, ignoring the matter of the real-world political implications of a xenophobic populist rallying ignorant people against harmless refugees for a moment (because God knows we want to stay clear of that) the problem is that there really is no moral choice here. Kagha is absurdly in the wrong and the Tieflings are absurdly innocent. Making the latter more guilty is probably not going to work. Zevlor and all the Tiefling side characters are falling over themselves to prove how whimsical and charming they are (there is a three minute cinematic performance of a song with a montage of playing Tiefling children in there somewhere) and band-aid fixing that by having a Tiefling John Doe slap a druid's ass or something would be painfully artificial. I hope others in this threat can provide more elegant solutions, but as it stands right now I think cutting Kagha altogether would be the right thing to do. Leave the inexperienced Rath as the leader of the grove who is then struggling to accomodate for the refugees' needs, which leads to both parties realising that the grove is not going to sustain them for much longer. If you really want to salvage her character I would start by cutting the child murder scene, making her a little more friendly with the player (maybe even have her be knowledgeable about the tadpole like Halsin?) and have her final solution involve kicking the Tieflings out without heed of consequence instead of kicking them into the next life. The wholesale slaughter of those people, children and all, just has to go.
Last edited by Vhaldez; 24/10/20 06:46 PM. Reason: Spelled Kagha wrong everywhere lol