cosmiclovepats-blog

[cosmiclovepats-blog]

Zen, or: Those Players You’d Rather Didn’t

Let me tell you about a difficult player. 

This is the Chaotic Neutral PC who is more unpleasant than the Chaotic Evil party member. 

This is the player who, when they wanted to join, sold me a painfully generic weeaboo-san character, and when I tried to tactfully ask "hey, this is kind of out of theme for a game set in fantasy Silesia, is there anything else you're interested in playing?" went, "No." Let me tell you about Zen.

Zen's player was a friend of said CE PC's player. I rather liked her, so I when she said she had a friend who wanted to play (while I wanted one more player) I said sure, throw 'em at me. I'm not going to say it was a mistake, since I seem to have, you know, managed- but what a trip it was.

So. Zen. An exile from weeabooland, the obligatory asian-fantasy region on the other side of the world from the generic western-fantasy region(s). Forgotten Realms had one. Golarion has one. They exist. 

Born to a noble house in the depths of darkest faux-japan, he was the eldest son of a noble. But then, tragedy! The cruel emperor betrayed and murdered his father and his family, and Zen fled the burning castle with his father's sword, heading west and never looking back. 

This was at the tender age of 7, and in the following thirteen years he taught himself the BLADE and fought off the wicked emperor's assassins, fleeing until he wound up in not-Europe, where he conveniently joins the party. ...I don't remember how. It wasn't particularly inspired, probably winding up on the same side in a fight, or travelling in the same direction, or both. He was a little lacking in handles, but hey, player A and player B, who are friends out of character, surprise, surprise, their characters hit it off.

(The distance covered by Zen. Golarion World Map, the game took place within the left half of the red square.)

Not that I can tell WHY, since Zen was an ass to pretty much everyone around him. Generally, he had the modes of "killing things" (I believe he used the ninja class in pathfinder, but it's been a while) or "jerk", and these weren't really mutually exclusive. But, OOC friendship is a powerful force, and in this case, highly convenient one. Iomedae knows how I would have gotten them together otherwise.  I'll give him this, he seemed willing to tag along with the party without difficulty re: motiviations, which was good, since I had very few levers for making him want to. The only thing he’d given me was “Hey, the same-neighborhood nation of Brevoy has Aldori Swordlords, I could want to best one to prove how superior my katana powers are.”, which.. Well.

So, with an asian Tien murderhobo interested only in killing things and insulting people in the party, we step forward to tackle the brave unknown. And, having warned him that having a backstory that exclusively involves the other side of the planet is liable to make it a teensy bit difficult to include sideplots involving said backstory, I set out to try and cobble something together.

But before I get to that, let's discuss how to be an unpleasant person. Calling other people in the game names? Showing extreme lack of patience with fellow players? Combined with "I respond only curtly or with insults in character"? 

Let's clear one thing; I can understand an unpleasant character. Antisocial, uncharismatic, or otherwise unappealing - the hard-bitten, taciturn dwarf, the cruel and callous half-orc, whatever - though hopefully, still endearing to other players and the party to some degree. Otherwise, why are we letting this jerk tag along, you know? Otherwise, the rest of the party will probably get kind of annoyed when all interactions with you are painful and unpleasant. Otherwise, NPCs may begin to learn that too- justifiably in character, or unjustifiably because the GM is tired of spending effort on you. And sure, people know it's just a character, but when you're also abrasive out of character... It starts to blur, it stops mattering. People put up with your presence when you’re killing things for them, and ignore you when you aren’t- and because you’re an isolationist tool, you’ve got no excuse to go bothering them. 

When I run a game, I like to... well, for one, I'd like to be having fun. I don't want to be taking care of a class of kindergarteners. I don't enjoy watching a row, nor playing umpire to a fight between friends. (And honestly, I'd rather be friends with my players, severe though the consequences are.) I don't want to have to tell player A to stop picking on Player B. Yes, I know Player B makes that mistake fairly regularly, I know it's frustrating and slows the game down. Believe you me. No, I don't think that justifies calling him an idiot. No, I don't care that you're here to "play D&D, not be nice to retards"[sic].

That part was in response to him getting testy with another player and me trying to ask him to calm down and be a little more polite. I'm pretty confident the quoted part is verbatim, despite the logs, because that sorta stuck out in my memory. What the fuck? In all honesty, I should have given him the boot there, but I was patient and forgiving and fond of his friend who had recommended him- I didn't want to lose her, and I let him get back to mostly behaving himself. Weak? Probably. Maybe I'd do it 'right' next time, or maybe that was kinda close. Got me. 

The other most significant memory was... now that I think about it, relatively early on in the game, maybe? 25%-33%, I'm thinking. Session ending early mostly because I have no more material/no time to get the next combat finished if we start now. Since everyone is here, and we have time left in our slot, party members split off to chit-chat IC and otherwise roleplay with each other. Zen’s player complains about not having any RP to get invovled in or anyone to RP with. 

This is a fair complaint, albeit from the bottom of a pit he dug. Of course nobody wants to talk to him- everyone's learned that he's an asshole any time they talk to him, and who wants to expose themselves to that!? But Sara, our CG wizard- I'm told the technical term is a 'beautiful cinnamon roll too good for this world'- decided that someone being unhappy (OOC, admittedly) was something SHE could SOLVE. (This was early on before she got going on her "Oh, yes, I'll polymorph the bandits into cows, that way they can repay their debt to society and we don't have to kill them..."-kick. Just a little creepy.)

So she heads down to the bow of the ship they're on to say hi, chat him up, ask him about plans and goals and engage in general RP with him. Remember, Zen has no goals other than "be the best like no one ever was" and "brood angrily", and after successfully making zero friends (the PC he’s friend’s with OOC doesn’t count) he has nobody he can plausibly go and strike up a conversation with without breaking character- he needs someone to initiate with him.

Sara, however, loves everyone, wants everyone to get along and be happy, and though her optimism has no doubt been abraded somewhat by prolonged exposure to Zen, she's still eager to try and HELP.

I'll give you three guesses to predict how Zen reacted to her, and the first two don't count.

My backstory lies over the ooocean, my backstory lies over the sea...

So how the hell do you get the backstory above involved? Refresher: Muh honorable father, muh evil emperor, muh betrayed and murdered, muh father's sword. Tien, other side of the world.

How?!

Well, I'm not saying it's good- it kinda depend on subverting entirely what I thought was an offensively bland and typical backstory, while technically not contradicting any of it. I thought it was a wonderful solution, rising to the challenge, cleverly making it different, and somehow still managing to involve it- but it wasn’t my backstory; it might not have gone over nearly so well, and I’m still a shade salty about not getting to find out. I'll lay out the broad strokes here, and you can judge;

Demons are bad. Reincarnating demons are the worst. In Golarion/Pathfinder, Rakshasa exist in the setting and reincarnate. Well, they can, though it’s not their primary method- still, there’s no indication that they don’t all do it. Maybe I added that bit, artistic liberties, etc. Maybe so. Still, imagine an evil spirit with the capacity (and intent) to cause massive harm, born at random among your population that reincarnates when killed. 

What do you do with them? Kill them? That'll buy you a bit of peace, but only until they get reborn and grow enough to raise metaphorical Cain again. Imprison them? That's just asking for trouble, isn't it? You know what happens to those sealed evils in a can(note: so many examples that it links to a page full of subfolders and list of sub-pages). Might as well name it Arkham Asylum. So, maybe there's a better way...

Zen's mother, was a demon cultist. The emperor/shogun found out. His father was called to the capitol to explain that, no, this was an honest mistake, yes, he was very sorry. Being faux-Japan, this involved seppuku. That matter dealt with, the emperor's legions showed up on the doorstep to demand the surrender of the citadel. Mother- ranking family member remaining- was bright enough to realize the jig was up, and refused. Not exactly a winning proposition, but better than just turning herself over! Vicious battle, maybe modest demon summoning, Zen escapes with his Father's Sword (presumably returned as part of the entreating/parlay from the Emperor- or maybe his father just left it at home. Stranger things have happened.)

Zen, having seen his house attacked, his mother slain in the courtyard, his sister rounded up by soldiers who'd just finished murdering the rest of his household, decided that it was the WICKED EMPEROR who had taken everything from him, and ran away intent on surviving and maybe carrying on the family name, vengeance, or other loser things like that. He's seven years old, right? He assumes everything his mother and father told him was true, and certainly isn't sticking it out to hear the Emperor's side of things.

His sister, on the other hand, is. Tsubaki (I don’t consume enough Japanese media to be certain whether that’s painfully generic but I definitely suspect it is.) is taken in by that Imperial State, it is explained to her exactly what got her family killed and why it was necessary, and then- stripped of title and nobility- she's offered a chance to work to redeem herself. Maybe not her family name, but to earn another one. She trains under the supervision of the Emperor's Witchfinder General equivalent to combat various supernatural beasties that occasionally make a nuisance of themselves to an Imperial State in high fantasy (including, say, Rakshasa...) and eventually is sent out to learn from one.

Specifically, sent to the other side of the world to learn from a Rakshasa her boss, said Witchfinder General, battled and banished/bound- instead of killing them, employing them is so much better; send them somewhere far, far away. At best, they're no longer plaguing your people, but on top of that you can use these shapeshifters as spies, surveillance, agents!  Provided, of course, you have the magical mojo to shove them around.  And, hell, that's a cool final test for one of your agents, right? Go hang out with/serve/observe one of your 'tame' ones and make sure you have a feel for what these evil outsiders are like.

(Witchfinder General, incidentally, was a white guy. It felt right. Zen, after all, was a faux-asian guy insofar as he used a katana, liked tea and silk kimonos, and... well, nothing else, really. He wasn't polite, honorable, or particularly samurai-like. And high level adventurers tend to get around- why not make him a foil for Zen here, Occident-to-Orient, rather than Orient-to-Occident. He'd adventured a bit, done some deeds for the emperor, been rewarded with status and wealth, and kind of settled down into the role of demon hunter prime for the Empire. Maybe Director of Demonhunting. Witchfinder General. I thought it was cute.)

So What  Happened?

So, to involve the party? They stay a night in a fey court at one point, and Zen spots a statue of a Tien woman standing around the hall. He heads over to investigate and starts to chat up some norns nearby. Fey subtype, fate-themed... Oh, shit, those are actually kind of high CR. 

Well, he wasn’t supposed to fight them- they were attending a faerie court after all- but at the same time, oooh. Anyway, he asks who she is and why they have her petrified (since it’s a bit too nice to be a statue, and he’s overhearing them talk about ‘her’) and they give him some oblique answers and chatter among themselves about the portents, the fates, and blood. Spilling of and bonds of, specifically. See, one of them is a little malicious (or maybe he was particularly rude, but I think it was the former) and thinks that manipulating events to cause brother or sister to kill each other would be wonderful. Simply delightful. The way I was thinking about fey was that they couldn’t quite feel normal human emotions- but exaggeratedly tragic (or romantic, or contented, or dramatic,) extremes were so close it was practically an art form to them. And who can say no to a little bit of tragic kinslaying based on a misunderstanding? 

So he bargains for them to unpetrify her- because Zen is certain she’s an imperial agent sent to kill him! And rescuing her is the best way to... be safe? Alright, fair’s fair, dat meta knowledge that the one random schmuck from Tien is probably related to his backstory, and it was very convenient and useful. 

Tsubaki, of course, is a little less than pleased to find herself suddenly (apparently) rescued by some rude gaijin. Sure, he looks Tien, but he clearly doesn’t act it. He’s also nosy and demanding to know her business. She gives him the cold shoulder, needles him back a bit when she can (this is clearly some honorless dog who has abandoned his rightful station beneath heaven) and they leave together. Sort of. 

She heads off to the rendezvous with the ‘bound’ Rakshasa she’s late for a date with. The party briefly encounters and fights him a bit later (but don’t kill him, he’s nice and cowardly). 

And then Io dies, and Zen’s player drops out of the game when his friend does.

R.I.P.

See, a little more was intended, but I didn’t get a chance to do it- I tend to take things pretty slow and comfy. [sideplot A, step 1], [mainplot], [sideplot B step 1], [mainplot], [sideplot C step 2], [sideplot B step 2], [mainplot], [sideplot D step 3], [sideplot A step2]... 

This implies a crosstie-like control over the plot, but doesn’t necessitate railroading; even when I’m just trying to figure out what to do in game next week in the shower during the week, I tend to focus on swapping threads so they all proceed at a sorta even pace- You don’t want the PCs to blunder from week to week foiling the same villain’s schemes, by accident or design, every single time. (Actually, that sounds pretty amusing, but it’d have to be played for a gag, not seriously.)

Well, between the delay in getting to phase one of Zen’s sideplot, and (in hindsight) not handling it as well as I might have, he’d waited a while, finally gotten the barest hint of it, then bailed not too long after. If I could go back, I’d probably have Tsubaki recognize the seal on his sword and give him a condescending lecture about how he was probably as despicable as the demon-cultists whose body he’d picked the blade off of. 

But I didn’t. What I meant to have happen was for the Rakshasa finishing her training to suss out the connection between them (perhaps even be related to their mother’s corruption and cult) and manipulate Tsubaki into ‘choosing to clear this blight from her family name’. A wicked outsider causing what trouble he can in the remit of his bindings. An assassin chasing Zen, one he couldn’t just up and kill (Okay, he probably could...) because she was his sister and only surviving family. RP opportunity and eventually, perhaps, making up with one another and a grudging respect.... Even if it maybe necessitated her boss Teleporting over to go, “Oh, by the heavens, this was not what you were supposed to be doing Tsubaki-chan...” 

Alas, these things that cannot be. I’ll never know if “Hah, I took everything you said for your backstory and reinterpreted everything without changing any of the things you said, aren’t I clever?” would have gone over well.

Months- like, more than six- later, in the wee hours of the morning as I was giving the off-the-top-of-my-head Fallout-style “all the places you’ve been and all the people you met” epilogue-montage for the game, I mentioned offhandedly that Tzoren, Tzica’s healed brother, wound up settling down with Tsubaki. In hindsight, while it obeyed the law of NPC conservation, I don’t think it was the right choice. Besides, Tsubaki, without closure, would have wandered off back to Tien when her training was done. Ah, well.

#weeaboo #pathfinder #D&D #problem players #ninjas

[cosmiclovepats-blog]

Tzica and Tzoren

Herald to the Dragon, Magistrate of the Duchess, Seneschal to Her Will. Friend.

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Then be prepared for life to knock over your pitcher and break all your glasses. 

Tzica and Tzoren were a pair of NPCs I used in a game a few years back, one I’d refer to as River Kingdom Rambles. I liked them. She didn’t come to a very nice fate, but that’s just how things go when you let your precious NPCs intersect with your Players. 

When they first met with her (rescued her,) she and her brother were escaped slaves, ‘living’ in the half-flooded bilge of a small pirate ship. Escaped slaves being returned to their owners.  A little geography might be necessary. 

You see that river just north of Loric Fells? Below the ‘M’ in River Kingdoms? That was the river this scummy band of freshwater pirates sailed. The two tieflings had escaped from Numeria beforehand. They’d made it to the River Kingdoms, tasted real freedom, then gotten abducted by pirates who may have been contracted by their previous owner and sent to retrieve them, or may have just figured a pair of escaped slaves would be easy money. Doesn’t really matter; their return voyage got interrupted by the PCs and a whole lot of violence.

Now from the player’s perspective, what you’re encountering is a pair of sodden, bedraggled tieflings who don’t look related to each other outside of, you know, tiefling, emerging from the stinking, fetid bilge of a river brig. Both of them look half-starved and mistreated. The guy’s a bit bigger, and he eyes you up with the wariness of someone who considers ‘good luck’ to be inherently suspect. The gal is a little shorter, a little younger, looks you over and smiles broadly, then goes “Ah, yes. My book. Thank you. Needed that, yes.” and takes the odd book the wizard found on the pirates and was trying to figure out. 

Over the next day or so and further interaction (It’s been a few years; I think they were using the pirate ship to head down river. Likewise, her words are definitely not exact quotes, but approximations.) they determine a couple things; the tieflings are, naturally, pretty grateful for having been rescued; life didn’t look too great where they were headed. She, Tzica, smiles a lot, speaks peculiarly broken common, speaks a lot, and seems to lie or exaggerate or just embellish constantly and habitually. She’s a sorceress of some kind (Pathfinder. I’ll save my bitching about the system for some other post) and generally a pleasant but odd individual. Her ‘brother’(?) is mute, seems intelligent but doesn’t seem to know common, and is fairly protective- but can’t understand her any better than you, so...? She says he’s fine, he was born that way, then amends the next day that, no, he was injured trying to save her, then rescinds, no, he’s just very shy. She was grinning that time, she’s probably joking? Whatever. Not much she can repay you with- her ‘spellbook’ isn’t, though it’s clearly gimmicked to look like one. Presumably so that if someone wants to disarm the “wizard” she might be able to convince them that they can do it by taking away her spellbook. 

There, an odd, quirky character, just strange enough to be memorable despite being the beneficiary of one of their good deeds, and that’s about it. Well, that’s fine. Not everyone needs to be more important than that- but oh, she was. To begin with though, where did she come from? Well, of course all NPCs have somewhat ephemeral backstory before encountering the PCs, but the broad strokes I had in mind were;

Slaves born in Numeria, owned by a magos of the Technic League.

(Millenia back a “star” exploded in the sky over Numeria and rained down in pieces. These had everything from androids to roboscorpions. The technic league are a bunch of natives of Golarion trying to gather scraps and pieces of this wondrous knowledge and power. Frequently, this takes the form of poking things until they do something. Sometimes something is useful. Sometimes something is ‘irradiate everything in a mile of here’. Very Conan the Barbarian vs Giant Roboscorpions vs The Adeptus Mechanicus)

Involved in the general unpleasantness the Technic League engaged with, usually with slaves and bizarre unintelligible magitek spaceships debris. 

Not actually siblings, but hey, tieflings, slavery, similar sob story, etc. Perfectly chaste allies/friends/as close to family as either had.

Because I’d been re-reading David Brin’s Uplift Storm Trilogy (Brightness Reef, Infinity's Shores, Heaven’s Reach), in their slavery to a high-ranking member of the Technic League, Tzica had tried to escape (or backtalked one too many times) and gotten in real trouble. Tzoren helped her escape, in exchange got punished with a partial lobotomy; he’d lost the speech center of his brain. Again, this is based on the character from the books; he can do math, he’s a trained engineer, but he can’t even think in words, much less actually use or understand them. Tzica went back for him, they managed to both get out and flee south. 

Well, Okay, That’s An Involved Backstory, But What Do They Do?

I’m so glad you asked. You see, they do come back. Much later, (maybe, four to eight months...) when the party happens to be fleeing a fey hunt with faerie riders hot on their heels, they reach salvation; a big river, a branch of the Sellen river. The boundary of the forest, the limit of the fey domain. They dive in and start swimming for the passing ship they see... and someone on board recognizes them. Waves, orders the ship to stop, and gets sailors to throw them a rope and help them up, all while the faeries mill on the shore, unable to chase them beyond the bounds of their realm. Who is it, but...  Tzica and Tzoren, dragonslayers!

No, not yet. But the main ‘background’ to the campaign involved a dragon showing up in a city state towards the north of the River Kingdoms (whose king ruler had mysteriously vanished recently while travelling) and declaring herself Queen of the Realm. “Any objections?” the dragon asked pleasantly, daring people to raise their hands... But the long and short of it was that there were secret calls for heroes to come, for dragonslayers to arise from obscurity and save the  world city duchy. Well, what does that have to do with a pair of ex-slaves? Tzica, it turned out, had managed to bluff free passage on the ship (towards the city in question) with claims of being great dragonslayers, answering the call and travelling to deliver the people of Wyvernmark! And when the opportunity to do a solid to some people who had done her a really good turn earlier arose, well... Can’t skip on that, can you? She was very smug and pleased about being able to return the favor. 

Of course, the PCs weren’t dummies, and looked at a single sorceress and a single fighter, apparently off to fight the BBEG being set up in the background for the whole campaign, and quietly concluded that they’d never see her again. But of course...

When they next saw her, they were actually going to Wyvernmark. City the campaign had actually started at, sans dragon queen. There’s a public execution as they arrive- a spy trying to sneak into the royal lair palace (dragons particularly dislike thieves, after all)  and it’s done by sealing him in a large brass bull, (for real, you might not want to click) and then melting that to slag in about thirty seconds with dragonbreath.

It leaves an impression. Pretty humane compared to the original, but it still leaves an impression. And then the players, who’d arrived just in time to witness that, receive personal invitations to the palace later that day...

Oh. Oh Shit.

But no- it’s not the dragon who spotted them in the crowd. It’s her right hand and number-one minion, Tzica. Tzica, who arrived in the city about as destitute as they last saw her, through sheer chutzpah and bluff managed to secure a meeting with the dragon and... hit it off. For real. She’s brave enough to talk to the dragon, to be funny and flippant while she’s doing it, wise enough to flatter and praise where necessary, willing to “act” impressed when appropriate. She’s from out of town and unlikely to betray her only ally in Wyvernmark- and hell, the idea of having to treat some tiefling, and a foreign ex-slave at that, as their equal or superior sent the local nobility into fits, a feature they both found hilarious. The red dragon kept her throne room absolutely sweltering, 120*+, because she liked fucking with the humans who came to whine at her, keeping them uncomfortable and so on- Tzica and her brother, being tieflings, had fire resistance such that they could not only tolerate such unpleasantness, but wear heavy clothing while doing so without breaking a sweat. 

So. Tzica finagled herself a position as the dragon’s seneschal. Magistrate. Personal herald and emissary, minister of the Duchess. And spotting her friends in the crowds (or perhaps being informed by servants) decided she wanted to wow her friends with her new status, and do them a solid; she invited them to dinner, introduced them to her boss, and tried to toss some work their way. That’s not quite “Thanks for saving me from captivity, torture, and death”, but it’s pretty good and the thought is in the right place.

It went over pretty badly, no lie. Two of the players... well, let’s just say Kalythierixa Vel’darathys, She of the Crimson and Carmine, Duchess of Wyvernmark and Blazing Judgement nailed two PCs. Some people don’t know when to be diplomatic, and some people would rather die than cower, flatter, or beg. 

But really, they were the most difficult players, and neither of them was the Ex-Numerian-slave PC, who Tzica was probably closest to. So, to the survivors, she repeats her efforts to throw them work; Dragon Queen wants Artifact, go and get it, you’ll be rewarded nicely for your efforts. (And privately, Abadar’s blood, I’m just trying to engage in a little remunerative kickback, why are you throwing a goddamn fit about it!)

Still, it got them out of the city for a bit, and they went questing, yea, even unto Numerian lands, found the tomb of a hero (Mesa Hack or something, I was cribbing pretty heavily off the plot of Shadow of Death- the Artifact they were after was the Elixir of Life) and came back- all the while more rankling at the fact that they were working for an evil dragon (Red, Chromatic) than grateful for the work their friend had managed to secure them. They also had real reservations about giving a heavy-duty Artifact to said evil dragon. (I think they eventually found out- Kalythierixa didn’t give a damn about the Vial, other than “hey, artifact, nifty thing for my hoard”- It was all being done as a favor to her favorite minion, maybe even friend Tzica, who thought that it could be used to cure her lobotomized brother.)

The PCs got rewarded with funds and a small fort to the south of the city- Kalythierixa even cleaned it out of hobgoblins for them. (The PCs were upset about that, which I found really weird. “No, we want to be gifted somebody else’s home and have to clean it up ourselves.”) One of the PCs was fallen nobility from Brevoy, so a small title and deed was exactly the kind of thing they’d been aiming for all along. However, he really didn’t like the dragon. I’m not sure why- my impression was that he went “Red dragon -> chromatic -> evil -> must kill”. Spindly, if you ever read this, feel free to set me straight.

Which was somewhat frustrating for me; the whole point of the campaign had been to have the players thrust into the position where they got to decide between restoring the mortal nobility or siding with the dragon. Tzica represented a major in with the dragon, and they were well placed to end up the most significant nobles in the city, with the ear of the dragon herself (and especially her seneschal). Who would dare attack a city ruled by a dragon, what games of nobility would see commoner pawns sacrificed for sport or intrigue? She wasn’t being that bad of a ruler....

 Or, they could decide that, sure, a young dragon might not be that awful now, but what if she gets bored in ten years? A century? Two? Dragons go up in CR with age, right?  What if she decides she’s tired of playing the long game in thirty years and decides to up an raze the city, hauling off everything valuable and killing everyone for the lulz? What if Tzica has nowhere near the influence on her she seems to think, what if she turns on us next?

It was supposed to be a balanced grey-on-grey choice with no particular ‘right’ (or wrong) answer; think about it, make the best guess you or your character can make, and profit from the results whichever way you turn. There was no wrong answer, and it kind of felt like they still failed, because with one player dead set on “dragon bad, kill dragon”, the amount of  weight I’d have to place on the other side of the scales to make it an actual quandary for him meant it would be a no-brainer for everyone else. 

All good things must come to an end, or if you’re an NPC, eventually the PCs show up to knock over your lemonade, smash all your dishes, and accidentally break your table in two. The party split, and a player shuffled PCs- Crafting-bitch ex-slave wizard (pregnant...) stayed behind in Wyernmark as a genteel hostage (this happened because player wanted to swap out PCs for a new one) while the party was sent to go deal with some rabble-rousing war-talk in Daggermark. Daggermark being the preeminent city of the River Kingdoms. So remember; party of four. One hates her boss, Ex-slave Wizard (Sara) here is good friends with her, and the other two died shortly after meeting the dragon. Suddenly the party has zero people who are ‘good friends’ with Tzica, and the only one who is still a buddy is NPC’d and offscreen, serving as a hostage for good behavior. (Admittedly, the dragon was aware that they had been plotting to betray her- the hostage was probably necessary.)

Despite that all, Sara the Wizard makes some good work. She is, and has always been, all about getting along with people, making friends, and trying to do right by everyone. She hangs out with her good friend Tzica (even helped Tzica cure Tzoren) and slowly ingratiates herself with the dragon- doing her best to turn the Chaotic Evil red dragon (and really, it was a kind of bemused, sedate CE to begin with) towards Neutral. Show her that the maximum wealth derives not from tyranny, but from wise, lasting rulership. Tzica had already started down this path, to be honest, but her concerns were much more limited in scope- Don’t torture. That was about the only limit she’d placed on her boss, and through her prudence in not actually ordering the prideful scaly teenager around, she’d managed to achieve it in effect without it ever being acknowledged. (Yes, brazen bulls are pretty horrible torture implements, but again, they were being used for rather swift state executions- being reduced from ‘intact human’ to ‘bubbling metal with a high carbon content in under thirty seconds isn’t exactly drawn out.)

But the party comes back oblivious to all that effort. They show up loaded for bear, throw down with their sworn liege, (Promises made to NPCs don’t count.:^)) and Wizard is indisposed during the fighting. (Player is only allowed one character at a time.) Tzica, sorceress, seneschal, herald of the dragon, fights in her defense- after all, given her public role as servant of the tyrant lizard, she’d be dead woman walking if the dragon was replaced. On top of that, the dragon is her friend. Friend. Simply through friendship and getting along, the dragon gifted her power and wealth quite literally beyond a poor slave’s imagination- And damned if she was going to let a bunch of ungrateful vagrants (even ones she didn’t want to dislike) tear down all she had and slay her best friend. 

Tzica didn’t survive that fight. Sara the Wizard’s player was playing a Paladin in that fight, who zeroed in on the caster supporting the dragon with PC levels and (quite sensibly) killed her despite Tzoren’s best efforts to do anything to stop her. It was a pretty nasty and effective build, not that I can remember it in detail beyond a stupidly high AC. 

Sara tried resurrecting her when she found out what had happened. It worked... sort of. Tzica came back... a little wrong. Or maybe that was just natural bitterness at having everything going for her in life turned upside down and shattered. What she thought had been some of her closest friends had betrayed her (Sara was married to one of the slayers, the other PC who’d been there since the start) and they’d done so by killing her actual best friend. 

She took a bone and some scales from the dragon’s body and left without looking back, seeking a way to resurrect her only friend. A lot of her charm and levity was gone; you could hardly tell her common was weird and idiosyncratic with how little she spoke. 

Tzoren, healed by his sister (but never quite so fond of the dragon as she was) loved her but felt like she’d changed a bit too much to really follow. There was no point in avenging her death when she’d been resurrected, and besides, it didn’t seem like it was her death that had made her so much colder. He moved to another city, and settled down semi-happily with another NPC; He’d just been a bodyguard, after all, servant-of-a-servant, not the chief quisling who’d served as the dragon’s enforcer himself. 

Much, much, much later, in a different campaign in a different system (but still Golarion because I’m fond of the setting), the party came across a wizened old hag busy plating a dracolich in necromantic metal. A jaded, heartless caster with a dragonbone staff, empowering a horrific undead beast that was never a pleasant creature in life much less death. With a strange rapport, always punctilious and polite, infinitely respectful of the draconic titan, but rather closer to ‘peer’ than anyone would expect a dracolich to tolerate, even if she was doing a great service for him. 

They never got her name.

#tiefling #rpg stuff #why npcs hate pcs #pathfinder #d&d