Need a motivation to a chaotic evil serial killer in Taldor


Lost Omens Campaign Setting General Discussion


Well, i want a Guiles de Reis like character, i have an adventure in mind, starting in Cassomir, but i have no ideas why he would kill dozens of cute little boys.

Can someone help me, please? Thank you.


A serial killer without a motive is like a villain without a plot. The motive tends to wrap around the adventure, you know? I don't know. It's like you came up and said 'The motive for the BBEG is avenging his father's death at a deacon's hands, but what's the adventure?'

For starters: A cleric of Pharasma who is being taunted by demonic possession into thinking that all children born after a certain date have been tainted. Need the girls to make more children-- Pharasma's circle of life in mind, you know-- but the boys are monstrous and have to go.


I'll use that. Thank you.

And it's like a minor adventure. Just to make de player characters used with the game, all of them are new to golarion and most are to pathfinder rules too.

The great plot will come later, now i only need start from somewhere.

Thx again.

Liberty's Edge

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Well, you could perhaps have a minor noble of Taldor eliminating those who deems as undesirables but using a disguise. Think Jack the Ripper. Throw in some magic, and also imagine that the villain is trying to blame someone else to throw off the authorities and harm a rival. (Sometimes destroying a person and his reputation is worse than killing him.)


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My suggestion is utilize the Taldor faction from Pathfinder Society as a basis. You could have a megalomaniac, like the sherlock holmes arch-nemesis. You could have the players come upon a room, or even a full house, with hundreds of yards of yarn running from one point to the next, all connecting like a branching web to political figures, family members, house servants, even vendors they visit regularly.

Whether you have him actually manipulating court politics or just some convoluted delusion that he's doing so, the serial killer's M.O. is always the same, and eventually the PC's can put together the flaws in his murders to track him down.

This will give you a chance to introduce golarion figureheads, your own npc's, and probably a few of the key elements of taldor, if you're not going to a larger scale intrigue.


Great...i love the idea of someone doing the nasty things only to disgrace a political rival.

Liberty's Edge

Elfo wrote:

Great...i love the idea of someone doing the nasty things only to disgrace a political rival.

Oh, not surprising. Taldor is known for a lot of political intrigue, so I imagine some people would be desperate to take down a few enemies. What might be amusing is that there could be multiple suspects for the real killer, as there are enough feuding families to give the players a tough mystery to solve.


reasons for killing young boys.

hates the boy scouts

was a substitute teacher

doesn't like spice?

he is chaotic evil and knew that would cause a stir


I like shadowmage75's suggestion. Except that it's all just an elaborate self-justification for the only thing that gives him a stiffy. Would make it more believable to me, since there are lots of other ways to manipulate politics than by child murder.

Dark Archive

He believes that he's stealing their vitality. Perhaps even their virility.

He's a garden variety depressive, and the only time he feels truly alive is on the hunt, during the kill, and for a few days afterwards, when he's still 'charged' by the excitement and fear-of-being-caught of his last kill. This, in practical terms, 'treats' his depression. As the 'high' fades, he slumps back into a low-energy self-loathing sort of state, which he has deluded himself into thinking is a sign of his life-force being drained away somehow (perhaps he has a complicated personal mythology about a curse, or something), and that the only way he can keep himself from dying, is by killing these boys and 'absorbing their life-force.' (He's not absorbing anything. He just isn't depressed before, during and after a kill, because of all the fight-or-fight stuff going on. Eventually the depression comes back, and he feels like he's 'dying' again. Time to kill another young lad...)

Adult-ish stuff;

Spoiler:
If his depression includes a dash of impotence, he might also find that the only time he's 'functional' is for a few days after a kill, thanks to the rush of confidence and excitement he gets from the act of killing. This ties into his delusion, and he thinks that he's not only stealing their life-energy, but also their virility. He targets boys, not men, because he feels that younger people have both more life-energy (to sustain him) and haven't used up all (or any) of their own sexual virility (preferring to target boys young enough that he can be reasonably sure are virgins, or, at the very least, haven't sired any children yet), leaving more for him. Because of this belief, he doesn't get the same sort of 'rush' from killing adults (or women), and he might even have a quirk about trying *not* to kill women, because he's terrified that he might accidentally absorb some of their femininity, which would make his condition worse! He might be killing these young boys not just for the rush, but because he himself is deperate to sire an heir, and the only way he can do this, is by killing these boys to 'absorb their energy' and then rush off to spend time with the wife before the rush fades. So far, she hasn't gotten pregnant, and so he feels that he must keep killing boys until she does. Woe to the boys of the region if he or his wife is infertile...


One idea that pops into my head is to use an alchemist. Doesn't the Master Chymist have multiple personalities or something?

With a little handwaving you could have a perfectly normal, perhaps even good character whose dark side comes out when it wants or when it is convenient.

The regular character might not even have any idea he is changing, if the dark persona wants to keep it concealed.

Kind of like a lycanthrope, but with more reasoning abilities and not constrained by the moon or silver or the like.

Do the children have any theme linking them? Like they are all the children of nobles or maybe prostitutes? If there is no theme, maybe the alchemist's dark side is trying to acquire reagants for some sort of process where he takes control permanently.

I think I could come up with something twisted with a cleric too. That would be... well what clerics do if they are evil. Well some kinds of evil.

Silver Crusade

as for Set, that sounds near freudian good work.

spoiler:

This being Talor, he may even be an aristocrat having to try and sire for his family name. Not to mention the varying degrees of Sexisim that is inherant in Taldorian culture if you read the entry. Women seeing Men as Playthings, Men bragging about their "conquest" of a woman. it's not total, but it might be somthing that playes into his mindset, and why he does not slay women.


So, until now:

A reward was offered, and they started to search for clues in the city. Not much o tracks as the last crime was six days ago. Some guardsman found the dead bodys of missing childs in a old tower in the outdoor, at north of Cassomir.

The player character know that some spellcasting was involved in the crimes, as the guards reported that some guard buddys where fulminated(?) by some kind of black magic when they saw a man attacking childrem at night.

With i have in mind, for now, is a sorceress or cleric working catching the alive young boys for a Taldan Noble.

I have some time to decide more about the killer...

Ah, about the boys, the majoroty of they are blond (Just like Guiles tale), not something sooo common in Taldan. (Maybe to many Ulfen Guard bastards?)

And sorry for my shamefull english.


They stole his sweet roll. Nuff said.


In one of the Jack Vance Demon Princes novels, the antagonist achieved immortality using an elaborate recipe.

excerpt From Jack Vance's THE KILLING MACHINE wrote:
From the bodies of living children, the hormagaunt must procure certain glands and organs, prepare extracts, from which a waxy nodule might ultimately be derived. This nodule implanted in the hormagaunt's pineal gland forfends age.

Greg

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