I'm looking for more fluff than crunch here. I run a group with some players obsessed with racial alignments and inspire of the curve balls I've thrown them, they still get stuck on the Bestiary alignment descriptions.
I need a real good backstory/origin concept.
Any ideas?
I'm looking for more fluff than crunch here. I run a group with some players obsessed with racial alignments and inspire of the curve balls I've thrown them, they still get stuck on the Bestiary alignment descriptions.
I need a real good backstory/origin concept.
Any ideas?
If your group is not against using 3rd party, there is a Raging Swan publication, Aasimar: Heirs of Glory. One of the options in that book talks about the various bloodlines that could create an Aasimar, and among them is the Jyoti. They are not evil but are Neutral outsiders native to the Positive Energy Plane, and known for assuming the worst and attacking before they can be attacked. According to that book, Aasimar who come from Jyoti are the most likely to be nongood.
Think the OP wants to get away from the whole Bloodline = alignment thing.
Anyway, I had an Aasimar anti-paladin I used for a while. He took advantage of the good reputation of his race quite a bit (good bluff skill), and actually had some people who lacked access to Detect Evil thinking he was a paladin. Spent a lot of time trying to steal Celestial artifacts and claim the power that was "rightfully" his.
An evil knight covered in spiked armor as black as night terrorizes the countryside, brutally killing those he comes across after days and days of torture. No one knows what race he is, so everyone the same size is a suspect, causing tension to build as well as fear.
Why is an aasimar doing this? Because he's gone mad and is hell bent on ending corruption. The torture is an attempt to get people to repent. Too bad he doesn't believe them.
Maybe is has something to do with the imp/quasit whispering in his ear at every turn, pretending to be the voice of an angel...
Wow. All excellent ideas. I actually think there might be something to the Jyotl bloodline thing ( as much as I hate to admit it) . Possibly combined with Azten's suggestion. Make people paranoid.
A great start. Thanks.
Wow. All excellent ideas. I actually think there might be something to the Jyotl bloodline thing ( as much as I hate to admit it) . Possibly combined with Azten's suggestion. Make people paranoid.
A great start. Thanks.
You could combine the "Secret Identity bad guy makes everyone paranoid" idea with the "Aasimar villain pretending to be a good guy" idea for extra fun. You'd have the party suspecting absolutely everyone except the real killer.
I am really liking the paranoia aspect more and more, Chengar.
I just used an aasimar villain in my pseudo-kingmaker campaign. He was an undead lord cleric obsessed with his own mortality. He was desperately seeking a way to prolong his life, as he was truly beginning to grow old. Despite his longevity, he knew that he could not escape death forever, and so he turned to necromancy hoping to find the secret to immortality.
Though he wasn't evil to begin with (indeed, he was a goodly cleric), his research eventually corrupted him. He was convinced that the soul could be located within the physical body, though after many countless nights examining corpses, he came to believe that the only way to progress in his studies was to experiment on live specimens.
After locating a community far enough removed from civilization and vulnerable enough to service his needs, he set his plan in motion. Taking residence in the nearby foothills, he rounded up the local goblin tribes to do his dirty work. With goblins to blame for the raids, the villagers would never suspect anything to be amiss (or rather, much out of the ordinary). The kidnapped victims were presumed dead by their families, but little did they know the fate their loved ones endured as subjects to the necromancer's experiments.
He would keep them alive for days in search of his prize, but none could endure. Their bodies did not go to waste, however. He collected many undead in the process.
When the party managed to track the goblins down, cut through them and into the lower chambers, they found the mastermind behind the abductions to be none other than a fallen aasimar. Not a monster, but a man. A man descended from angels. Capable of more depravity than the worst of fiends.
Fun times, and the wizard even kept the guy's research notes (I told him they were in a volume resembling DaVinci's anatomy notes and sketches.)
The serial killer from 7 was bent on finding, exposing and punishing the 7 seven deadly sins. He even set it up for him to be one of the victums of his plot.
A deadly sins killer could make for an interesting aasimar villain.
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Something terrible is going to happen. The greatest evil in the world (Rovagug?) is gonna be released, and he is the only one who can stop it. He knows how to stop it, he just needs the help of some young heroes. So he sets out to find some. He orders some goblins to raid a village. From the surviving villagers he picks the most heroic ones to follow him. He puts them to the test, over and over again, until they're ready. Then, they head for the inevitable doom, and he releases it so they can defeat it.
Wow, I just wrote a synopsis for an entire campaign. Ofcourse, I did steal it from Unbreakable.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Cleric/Rogue or Rogue/Cleric. Choice a neutral or evil god as a patron, he'll conceal it if needs be. Load him up on social skills to use his Charisma. Play up his priestly side, don't let them know of the rogue stuff.
Have him become a core member of the community and someone the PCs would even trust. A little free healing, some advice, some bogus blessings, stuff like that.
Then have him selling valuable information on the PC's, maybe even orchestrating a theft on a PC base when they are out of town. Get this guys fingers in the local politics some, but even more so in the underbelly of society. He could cause the PC's grief for years before they realize if ever he has been at the center of some of their woes.
Have him tag along on a few adventures to establish some credibility. Imagine though the look on their faces when facing the BBEG and he stabs a caster in the back and switches sides at such a crucial point.
@ the David: The Unbreakable? Doesn't sound like the Bruce Willis movie... so, never heard of it! Sounds good though! I like it. Actually, I like it a lot. I think this may just be the hook for my next campaign. The backstabbing master archetype is rather awesome.
|
|
@ the David: The Unbreakable? Doesn't sound like the Bruce Willis movie... so, never heard of it! Sounds good though! I like it. Actually, I like it a lot. I think this may just be the hook for my next campaign. The backstabbing master archetype is rather awesome.
Actually, it is. The Aasimar = mr. Glass. He sets up horrible encounters just to find the chosen ones, and then he continues to put them to the test. He'll probably reveal his actions to the party after they defeated the evil thingy. There's some Watchmen in there too.
Huh, I guess I need to re-watch the movie! I remembered the superhero angle, but totally forgot about Mr. Glass (I don't know how - he was awesome, and absolutely a match for the NPC you proposed).
Don't I feel silly.
|
If you really want to drive home that getting stuck on race alignments according to the book is a bad idea, have that aasimar make those same assumptions and dial them up to eleven.
Have him/her be absolutely certain of their own goodness, and absolutely and undeniably monstrous in how they set out to remove the "problem" of usually-evil races. And when it comes time to confront this NPC, have him/her throw that alignment-in-the-book logic in their faces as if it were absolute cosmic truth.
Having sympathetic members of typically evil races present and probably targetted by the aasimar would help in that area as well. Have those characters prove the aasimar's logic wrong.
This is of course if they're even open to the sort of game you seem to want to run. If you want to have a game where alignment isn't simply set in stone and the players for whatever reason absolutely don't want to play that way, you may need to find other players. Different strokes and all that.
Lets say he's lived his entire life laboring under the misapprehension that he has a mortal soul (well, mostly anyway) --and that one day, when the part of him that is human dies, he'll go, like all other mortals, to his eternal reward in the paradise/afterlife of his god -- whom he has loved and been more deeply devoted than any mere human could, all the more for his feeling a kinship with that god -- for how could he not be special to have been graced with the blood of Celestials? The blood of angels runs in his veins, surely he will have a special place at the side of his creator, no? no?
...No indeed. At the culmination of his near-death struggle to bring final justice to a horribly wicked and sadistic villain, he finds himself laying beside this arch-enemy, with both of their life-bloods pouring from their bodies. He feels his life ebbing away, but he regrets nothing -- for he knows he will be at the side of his lord soon. As the cold takes him, and his hearing fades, he watches his long-hunted quarry breathe his last breaths. He smiles knowing that neither he nor his enemy will rise again, and laughs as the pathetic butcher, with his end finally upon him, now crying for absolution and bleating for his god's mercy. Surely his existence will be one of eternal toil and suffering, or endless grief and unfulfillment. his vision fades, and he prepares for glory that is his very birthright...
...And when he feels the first true grasp of the afterlife, his soul feels practically flayed from his dead bones screaming -- He senses the infinite truths and hidden knowledge of his Celestial Nature, and realizes that true souls, whole-souls, are the sole domain and privilege of his god's seemingly favored creations, not the devices he bids to herd them. His eternity is to be one of eternal labor and service, and he knows in the core of his being that his lord's heaven was never made for him, never truly meant for any Angel -- before him is an eternity in the absence of everything he aspired towards and thought he was entitled -- there is no eternal reward for him, only duty and listless calm. He feels his pureblood cohorts in the afterlife look upon him as an alien -- they know in a moment his weakness, his incompleteness, his resentment. He feels the supplicating spirits of other assimar who have died before him, and recoils at their cowed role beside the true celestials, and reviles and recoils at what is surely, to him, their grotesque second-class citizenship in the after-now. Then it hits him...
...Impotently, without voice, without will -- he exercises, NO, Pantomimes his purpose as an agent and tool of a god he now knows he will never meet, and be nothing more to than the crudest of tools. At the same time it dawns on him... He's walking that vile cur he just squandered his precious life to slay, before the altar of judgement he waited his whole life to stand before... and his eyes are cold as what is unfolding washes over him... he can think of nothing but rage and terror, but he can feel literally nothing in the mephitic yet antiseptic null that is his once-beloved creator's spine-numbing graaaaace. A name he knows surely as his own is in that heavenly book of judgement... but just as surely it is NOT his own...
...That MONSTER... that ANIMAL that did so much wrong, who laughed as he killed, who wrought nothing but sorrow and indignity and evil... he's going to be absolved. He repented at the last moment, albeit sincerely -- and both of them know -- before the book even opens, that Pharasma will judge him lenient. His nemesis is ecstatic -- and the rapture at his realization puts him beyond the vaguest care or even awareness of his escort... who can feel all that was human and good in him begin to disincorporate, and all that is Celestial in him begin to fall... fall... fall.
He gasps an almost mortal breath once more. Choking on his own blood, now dry on his lips, he paws at his broken and prone body in the newly familiar darkness. His body is cold, his blood is cold. His very heart is cold. As cold and conscience-less as the corpse of that piece of scum laying just feet away -- it's face twisted in a rigid and rage-inspiring smile of relief... He will not live another second in delusion, as he hatefully and blindly rejects an eternity of slavery to an uncaring and traitorous god. If the heaven he deserves is not to be, he will VOW to make a sport of forcing his god to DAMN his faithful and trick the penitent to snatch for hell at the well-deserved cusp of heaven. And he will break the bodies and wills of any who would think to stop him.
...In a single fluid motion, he leaps to his feet -- his mind spinning with thoughts of artistic punishments and the unforgiving technicalities of his former master's doctrine... a new sport, a new calling, becomes his alone...