Good afternoon, my fellow gamers. Always great to get advice from the minds of such creative people!
Ok, so we're playing in a homebrew world and they have been pounding their way through to 6th level. They've endured to reassemble a statue of a fallen angel. They are currently trying to get the last piece. When reassembled, the true storyline of the campaign will be revealed. The angel is a messenger from the heavens, sent to the world to deliver the message that doom approaches. A great evil is about to wake and bring forth the end of the world.
This doom: an ancient king of legend that discovered fire and stole it from the gods. He stole away the ember of that power and retreated with his armies into undeath to protect it always. I have the baddie built, the armies laid out, even a cult to lead up to it, everything ready to go!
Problem: I don't really know what his motivation should be. He was noble in life, so I figure it should be at least a twisted form of nobility to bring him forth. But damned if I can think of anything.
Suggestions?
I have some questions, and I hope that just by thinking about them you might find some ideas.
The angel is a prominent character, since it is the one that is the closest to the true story and is the herald that gets the PCs involved. What caused the angel to fall? Why is the angel a statue as opposed to, say, some broken man wandering the earth? What broke him into a bunch of different parts? Why does he want to impart the message of doom? Is the angel doing penance for the sin that made him fall by warning the world about a great fate, or is he instead given over to pure nihilism and just happens to be telling the PCs out of a combination of boredom or perhaps mild sadism, amused at the thought of what mortals would do if they knew the end times were nigh? Either way, is he grateful, and if so, how might he show his gratitude?
Who was this ancient king and how did he discover fire? How did he steal it and why? Did he steal it because he saw its potential to save mankind, or because he needed a powerful weapon? Or, maybe, was it stolen first with good intent and then, when he discovered its power, realized its capacity as a weapon and was then given over to his baser nature? How did he retreat into undeath? Was it by his choice, or a curse, or a property of the "fire" he stole? What are his armies like? How does the cult venerate him, as a savior or as a conqueror, or aspects of both?
Questions aside, the king's motivation can be as precise or as imprecise as works for your narrative, but it is best to adjust that for the enjoyment of your players. If your group gets annoyed by gray areas and thinks in black and white, you may be better served with a concise motivation such as "he craved power, stole it from the gods to have it, and has defied even death to hold onto that power for millenia; now that he has returned, he will finally have the chance to unleash that power to conquer all mankind". If your group is open to multiple interpretations, you could make his motivation less clear. For example, historical documents (oral tradition, if he is a king of legend) claim that he stole the fire to save his people from a great threat, like something threatening to bring an eternal winter, and in the process of using the fire he sacrificed himself to save them, leaving just normal "fire" behind for mankind to use. However, his the angel may know the truth: that the "threat" spoken of in legend was actually a threat of rebellion against his dominion that he could not tolerate, and it wasn't a foreign or alien power that he defeated but rather his own people, condemning his army and people to undeath. And the cult might be people who want this kingdom to return.
I am a big of fan of mixing modernism into my fantasy and parallel themes, so I would arrange this king's ancient kingdom and its virtues/sins with the world the PCs live in. Figure out which things are similar and which things are not and take advantage of those when the PCs deal with these "ancient" forces and try to reason and/or fight with them. Things like political worldviews, military tactics, views on race and interpersonal relationships, religions, even food and table manners can change so dramatically over this amount of time that the characters can be in for some unique experiences when dealing with a man and his army that have been locked away for so long.
Possible motivations:
- the king felt himself a conqueror but never got the chance to do so in ancient days, and now he has his chance again. (Possible development from this: he finds out he cannot conquer and his fire can only bring ruin, so he decides that if he cannot conquer it, he must instead destroy it utterly.)
- the king wants to use the fire to purify mankind. It is apparently no ordinary "fire" - maybe he (correctly or incorrectly) has assumed it is a force that empowers those worthy of living in a pure world and immolates the undeserving, and thus by exposing everyone to this fire, he creates utopia. His motivations are grandiose, but his methods horrific. The end justifies the means.
- the king stole the fire as a gift for someone, but the gift did not accomplish what he wanted it to (maybe it killed the beloved he gave it to). He then realized its danger and locked himself away in undeath not to protect the fire, but to protect the world from this fire. And now, in the millenia that has passed, the fire has consumed him, and he is some kind of awesome flaming undead that is only a burning shadow of the king he once was. The king's motivation is moreso the fire's motivation than the king's, and the PCs may have a challenge to try to restore the king's mind/soul/control over the fire that has consumed him.
- the king stole the fire to deliberately vex the gods, and is something of an antinomian/gnostic or just outright sacrilegious figure. He believed they hoarded this gift, kept man deliberately in the dark, and sought to be a Promethean figure. Thus his undeath may be a product of a curse from the gods; alternatively, it may be a development brought on by the fire he stole, or by his own hate, or by some darker force, and no matter the actual reason he may still blame the gods as though they cursed him all the same. This motivation may tie in very nicely with you using the angel as the herald because the assumption is that the angel may speak the word of the gods (or god, if it is a monotheistic setting).
- the king was a weak coward. He never stole the fire. He never ruled his kingdom, it was ruled for him by more influential people. His army was powerful, but since he insisted on leading them, he was a failure of a general and led them all to their doom even with the fire's aid. His fledgling empire collapsed with no glory, no immortality, and thus maybe the fire was a last ditch effort that paid off. Imagine that he never stole the fire himself, but had someone else steal it (the angel? was that the angel's sin?) and then doublecrossed the thief and killed him or her (maybe how the angel got to be stone?). And then as soon as he had the fire he "retreated into undeath" and has been there, using it to rebuild the army he led to its doom to bring it to bear again with renewed force. This would make an interesting campaign where the ancient king is hated and reviled by his own forces for his cowardice and treachery, but they are powerless to do anything against him for whatever reason (that being something the PCs can exploit to help them defeat the king).
There are a lot of other possible motivations others can dream up, I'm sure. Feel free to borrow, mix and match, use or not use any of the suggestions.