What Happened to Torch?

[Kyrie Ebonblade]

I don't know..

Spoiler:

The outright murder of Spider in front of a party of Pathfinders with a smirking thanks to his 'minions' if any were around seems pretty INTENTIONAL.

Kyrie polishes a little adamantine bullet with a lot of names on it. All known aliases of one man...

[BigNorseWolf]

Spoiler:

It seemed deliberately villianish, which could arguably fit torch, but also completely pointless, which doesn't.

He could have waved, said "see you guys in the morning, Kyrie, your turn to bring donuts to the union meeting meeting" and THEN started questioning her. I don't think anyone would cry a river if we never saw her after that, and there's ZERO risk, rather than little, of his getaway being stopped. Torch's morality is questionable but he's never been stupid. The +40 to bluff and 5 kinds of teleportation are good. Leaving a note that says "I'm off investigating something. Look out for each other while i'm gone" while you're halfway around the world would be even better.

But thats not what he did. Either he's being written badly out of character JUST to make him a bad guy, or he has some hidden plan here. He's covering for the pathfinders by turning on them or.. thats realy all i can think of. The longer that's unresolved the more i think it's the first one.

[LoPan666]

Spoiler:

I don't agree that his actions in Rivalry's End were badly written and out of character. I think that he's always been portrayed as a pretty shady individual who posed for a time as a good guy to the rank and file Pathfinder agents in order to get their assistance in pursuing his agendas. When he no longer needed to maintain that cover, he burned it. I agree that there was no need to commit murder in front of the agents who brought in the captive, so it was intentional. What did he seek to gain by it? To further sow dissension in the Society that he hates. Obviously, those who liked Torch believe otherwise.

[BigNorseWolf]

Spoiler:

There's little reason to burn the identity and NO reason to burn it while in front of a group of heavily armed and notoriously paranoid pathfinders. Removing her jaw for speak with dead was one thing, but the party could easily haul her body to sky reach, cast raise dead and just ASK her what happened if she's willing to come back. She might refuse, but that's still a pretty big risk.

[nosig]

At this point we have descended into "Politics" or maybe even "Religion".

With Catholic Free-Willers duking it out with Progressive Predestinationers... and the Unitarian Fundamentalists know they are both wrong.

Yeah, clearly there is more than one NPC being discussed here. All who go by the name "Grand Master Torch". Most likely the differences grew out of how the write-ups (done by different Authors) have been filtered thru different judges, presented over many years, and received by players who often have pre-conceived notions of how the NPC is/works/feels/views things.

Sitting here saying, "Well, I KNOW what he's thinking/doing/like..." doesn't work when we are talking about REAL people. It sure isn't going to work when dealing with fictional people, interpreted third hand thru a medium of four hour adventures done by different groups of people. Everyone puts their own spin on him, even when they don't try to.

MY GM Torch is not the same as YOUR GM Torch. Heck, MY "BigNorseWolf" isn't the same person as YOUR "BigNorseWolf" and he's even here to disagree with BOTH of us. (And I think his mother would disagree with everyone else, too.)

Just my 2 copper pieces - I'll try to go back to lurking now.

[BigNorseWolf]

nosig wrote:

(And I think his mother would disagree with everyone else, too.)

Pretty sure the difference is she knows better swear words...

[Jayson MF Kip]

BNW's Mom is Torch?

That explains so...little, actually.

[nosig]

A bit of history - and an interesting view on GM Torch...

Silent Tide GM Discussion from Nov. 2008

And of course, "The Question"....

[UndeadMitch]

*Enters thread.*

*Looks around.*

*Drinks heavily.*

*Passes out.*

[nosig]

Mitch Mutrux wrote:

*Enters thread.*

*Looks around.*

*Drinks heavily.*

*Passes out.*

Yeah, time travel can do that to you.

2008 was back when PFS was... not yet PFS. They are talking about "new" stuff like Spiked Gauntlets, and running "Slot Zero" games... and judges didn't get chronicles for running games. Which were all called Mods.

;-)

[TriOmegaZero]

Heady times, when I was but a 1st level halfling rogue trying to not die in Murder on the Silken Caravan.

[DM Beckett]

We knew that the Pathfinder Society and it's leadership stabbed him in the back and left him to die from early on. What we didn't know is

Spoiler:

that they literally pulled a Sheila, intentionally sending him in to a suicide mission that left him permanently cursed with painful burns that also got his close friend and also his lover murdered and wrote him off afterwards

. He just happened to survive, albeit in pain.

It's actually kind of funny, because he is the single most important change to the Pathfinder Society, both in and out of game. It was only because GMT was so much better a "mission giver" that "Promoting her to merely incompetent, rather than incompetent and possibly malicious" was simply mandatory.