War for the Crown #3 - The Twilight Child

Game Master Kittenmancer

- Race and class, Alignment or morality
Half-Elf Arcanist, CN with very strong good tendencies (see character progression below)

- Role in the group - what can your character contribute in and out of combat
In combat, full arcane caster with a wide variety of support spells, as well as a few choice battlefield control and blasts should the situation call for it. Can be relied upon for all "wizarding duties".
Out of combat, is an endless well of knowledge, and can use every social skill to varying degrees of strength. Also speaks every single language mentioned in the player's guide and has a familiar that can telepathically communicate with the party.

- Background
In linked character sheet.

- (Optional) Character progression, how do you plan to develop them?
Elmar is a deeply passionate individual with a fierce sense of justice, and I intend to bring a focus on equal racial rights to the current progressive goals of the party. He is CN but will come off to most as CG, as that is where his heart lies, but I want to explore him struggling with how principled the approach to change should be, and what kind of means justify what kinds of ends.

- (Optional) Tell me a little about yourself and why this AP is particularly interesting to you.
I have been around the boards a little more than a decade and have participated in over a hundred games. Back in my college days I was involved in dozens of games at a time, but these days I have significantly cut back and focus on a few choice quality games to create deeper more meaningful experiences. I had gotten to briefly play book 1 of this AP with GM Dak before his abrupt departure, and it was one of the best APs I've experienced in years, and I have always wanted to return to it. I am excited about both what this AP brings as well as what I can bring to the table with Elmar!

Growing up in Yanmass with, relatively, poor parents was certainly not something the young Krowys appreciated. He was born with planar influence abound, but not enough to warrant anything outright negative, but certainly nothing positive like the Aasimars get. The boy wanted to be a respect Wizard, more than anything, but his hopes were repeatedly crushed ocassion after ocassion, him being unable to secure any kind of apprenticeship or the like.

Given that Yanmass is a trade city, the young boy, instead, took readily to being a freelance translator working tirelessly throughout the city. Languages and linguistics came extremely naturally to the boy, and that was how he earned a living. Translating whatever documents, conversations, or artifacts he could get his hand on at a fee. It was through this work that he came across a tome, working for some undisclosed figure, that detailed essentially selling one's soul for the power granted typically to Witches by their powerful patron. The instructions were in the tome for every outer plane, and the boy spent a good day or two reviewing the options. Pacts made with Heaven, Nirvana, and Elysium to a lesser extent, mostly involved fighting the forces of Evil at every possible turn. Pacts with the Boneyard required primarily the eradication of undead, which the boy was terrified of, and pacts with the Maelstrom wild vary, but very often involved committing to the cause of anarchy... Krowys was a (more-so at this point than after the pact, however) proud Taldan, and while he may not be exactly human, he wasn't going to abandon laws just to get a bit of power from some overrated shapeshifting snake.

That left 4 planes. Pacts with Hell were well known, as well as the consequences, so that was the first option the young child eliminated. The Abyss suffered the same deal as the Maelstrom, except with much more suffering and sadism involved. No. That left Abaddon, which the boy also easily eliminated since he didn't want his potential familiar to eat his soul, and Axis... seemingly spoke to the child. It was rare that forces of pure Anarchy reared their head, and only if they actively attacked the forces of Law were pact witches contractually obligated to intervene. Some forces of Proteans didn't even want to attack Axis, and that was to say nothing of Valkyries whose motives varied.

So, over the night, and losing sleep as a consequence, the boy contacted both Axis and a familiar, and a rather-typical "give your soul for power" agreement was made with Axis. Once the boy died, his soul was not going to be judged by Pharasma... it was going directly to Axis for the plane to reap its end of the bargain, to collect his soul. Which, for the record, the young boy did not mind.

Fast-forward about 15 years, and there was horrid, utterly disgusting chaos in the decadent land of Taldor. Just thinking about it made the transformed Aphorite and fox Arbiter's blood/machinery boil. They desperately needed to do something about it, and Taldor's laws potentially be damned. A beauraucracy should actually function, not go into utter chaos the moment primogeniture was put up for a vote, dang it! As a result of what little the now 25 year-old Aphorite knew of Axis's laws, he primarily supported Princess Eutropia, seeing the extraneous detail regarding gender in the inheritance of the crown utterly pointless, as Axis's positions had no such needless, mindless restrictions. The man, above all, worked for Axis. If he needed to ignore Taldor's laws from time to time to help steer even just the trade town he resides in closer to the perfect structure of Axis, so be it.

First it was the Mysterious Nightmares, then the sudden disappearance of the Taldan Horse company which protected the city, then rumours of horribly anarchic bandit raids and a mysterious, seemingly benign, cult? Krowys's blood boiled, and the mathematics laced into his body flaked, at the mere idea that Yanmass would fall into such disorder, and he felt Axis would not take too kindly if the man didn't make some form of attempt to fix it.

He's relatively bland on the outside, but knows how to manipulate people with his words rather than pure charm. He will somehow convince a crowd of people by merely talking with a relatively flat expression, the content of his words doing the talking rather than his actual body language or inflection. He very much likes it this way, as he would rather his intellect and linguistic savvy be in the driver's seat concerning his ability to convince/lie/intimidate than something as innately uncontrollable as "Charisma."

Liber, on the other hand, is an extremely expressive disaster of an Arbiter who's only recently transformed into the metal orb that she is now. While, yes, that comes with the unequivocally good thing of "being able to talk to anyone and everyone," the sudden change in body has been wrecking absolute havoc on the poor girl, and she misses quite a lot about being a fox. She hasn't even seen another Arbiter, and only gets a vague directional sense of where the nearest inevitable is should she ever need to report. She's, to put it lightly, an absolute disaster orb of metal and magic.

Selling pieces of her jewelry along the way to afford the passage to Yanmass, she's finally made it. If was some time later as she hawked wares at a stall, when she spied a man having trouble with his mount.

She couldn't tell which she felt more for the man or the horse, but she gathered herself and hurried over and calmed the horse, with but a touch and a word.

Later he, they... would return to see her. He accepted her, a foreigner and her son the half-orc as his own. Eventually man and woman were wed.

With that union his house thrived, starting a breeding and grooming business with halfling partners. The caravans would come and their horses, mules, elephants and camels would receive the best care.

Life was good. Kaliban grew up helping and running through the tent city outside of Yanmass. He was a helpful lad, especially to his elders... a trait passed on to him from both parents.

His interests grew from the mundane to the arcane, with one fateful encounter. But, seriously who would have thought that old man he ran errands for was a wizard?

Always keeping his finger on Yanmass' pulse... the recent rumors were disturbing, missing cavalry, a cult? Caradinna was being more vocal than usual about nightmares and she was a friend. She seemed to have connected some dots. Sure, most people that knew her thought she was crazy.

But, Kaliban had taken the time to spend some time with her. Helping her, running errands, bringing her a cooked meal and convincing her it was fine to eat... oftimes having to eat it with her. During those times when she wasn't fighting to be heard... she had her most lucid moments.

He'd be a fool not give her words a modicum of credence and check things out himself. Besides, there were newcomers and what was better than meeting new people?

So much was happening in the capital, in the kingdom and now here in Yanmass. Could be all be connected? Now, he was sounding like Caradinna.

Princess Eutropia certainly inherited a powder keg. A lone female against the odds... hmm. Reminded him of his mother in a way. He'd love to help her, but what could he do, so far away?

In some respects, I'm going to a well roundedness that I find optimal vs. optimizing for a specific and expected thing. It works for me.

I was just commenting elsewhere, that all my characters were always NG, unless they were forced to be LG/CG (mechanics - monk, paladin, barbarian) and that all my characters were undercover paladins. No matter their alignment or class. They find their way to be heroic.

I don't get to play many social skill games and I've wanted to showcase Overlooked Mastermind for a very long time. But, honestly any adventure will do... it's the other folks at the table that matter most.

The collaboration between DM and players and the awesome stuff we can create together.

He's a senatorial hopeful, so perhaps you've heard of him (doubtful). He's not looking to join the group but rather, investigate odd goings on, brought to his attention but someone he trusts.

He would have heard about your group's arrival and offered his assistance or at least that he and you seemed after the same short term goal. A partnership or collaboration. Maybe you could use a local guide.

He'd have to earn your trust. Should he prove himself in-game as wizard, golden tongue or combatant may have you considering his joining.

He'd learn that you are agents of Eutropia, what you've been up to - if you're so inclined to share. I can imagine he'd share his own feelings, views and aspirations (possible seat on the senate). Perhaps how his adopted father's ancestors freed conscripted halflings.

How he's noticed (in history) the rise of power and maybe corruption of the Mercantile Council, the plight of women (his mother's and Eutropia's examples), relations/tensions between Taldans and foreigners he's witnessed in the tent city outside of Yanmass.

It's all metagame until they interact. Until then, you're right. He's a stranger (unless someone wants too have known him in the past and lost touch).

That all kinda has to happen no matter which character is chosen. The question as I see it is, which character would you want that to happen with?

The main reason I put Krowys as apolitical, metagame-wise, is because we don't have much information on Yanmass other than that it's a trade city. In-character? It's because the guy has never had a chance to politic. He's been toiling away gathering information via the documents, conversations, and literally anything he's been paid to translate [I updated the guy's skills to have some Knowledge (local) to facilitate this], so I could see him acting as some kind of guide?

He's in the same boat as Kaliban... he'd be an utter stranger to the party, there's no way around it. I imagine you might have heard about him (if not him, then Liber for sure... since it's hard to ignore the singular Arbiter in all of Yanmass), since I imagine he'd translate for anyone he can take a job with, from the foreigners in the tent-city, to the caravans that constantly go through the city, to the purchasers of any kind of foreign artifact with text on it, pushing the culture of the country to have less "pointless extraneous restrictions," and the like.

Again, he's largely in the same boat as Kalidan. If he hears about your group's goal, he's likely to offer his services, even if it's at first to help with Yanmass... he'd be pushed along by the promise of changing Taldan politics at large, helping with the foreigners in the tent city that he'd most certainly have worked with/on behalf of.

He's, in general, just a guy who's seen quite a lot from his line of work and wants to change everything... but never had the chance until now. He'd be elated to work for Eutropia. But yeah, in general, I'm having the same feeling as Kalidan's player: it's all metagame until they interact.