Dark Messenger
It was an Exalted 2e game, and one of our party members was a renegade deathknight. For those of you who don’t feel like clicking through, suffice it to say that deathknights are demigods of death, and that the renegade version is all about rebelling against your evil overlord. Understandably, those evil overlords don’t take this shit lying down.
If you have the misfortune of being a renegade deathknight, you are going to wind up dealing with an unpleasant consequence: resonance. Basically, for the sin of mutinying against the forces of evil, you get THE BAD STUFF. Sure there’s the standard bleeding from the eyes and animals dropping dead in your unholy presence, but if your storyteller is anything like mine (hey, Laurel!), THE BAD STUFF gets creative.
So as I was saying, our band of deposed kings of the universe were tromping through the wilderness, trying to stay a step ahead of the BBEG. The group’s aforementioned deathknight was hiding his shame, so none of us other PCs knew we were hanging around with an avatar of darkness. The dude had slathered his armor in gold, downplayed his nefarious tendencies, and was (apparently) waiting until he’d earned a little trust among the party to make the big reveal. He also happened to be our survival expert, meaning the rest of us dumbasses were trusting him to orienteer around the armies of darkness. Said armies were (again, unbeknownst to the rest of us) in the employ of this deathknight’s former boss.
The Survival rolls were good, but our enemies hemmed us in on all sides anyway. Super-powered hit squads were waiting in ambush behind every tree. Legions of mortal warriors marched to block our path. And when at last we stumbled unwittingly into the camp of our nemesis, this smug Deathlord greeted his ‘loyal servant’ with a smile. “I see you found your way home. But of course you did. You will always find your way back home. I guarantee it.”
It was great fun escaping with the help of a giant space snake who flew us into low orbit (lol Exalted), but it was even more fun having the recriminations scene with the deathknight. How could you! We trusted you! Etc.!
Out of character we all sympathized with the guy. Who hasn’t been there? When you’ve hooked your character to an evil deity, archfiend, or inscrutable cosmic force, you’re not only dealing with the cosmological concept of Evil. You’re also dealing with the far more insidious evil of micromanagement, and there’s no escaping that sinister malarkey.
So how about it guys? Have you ever played an evil character with a “hands-on” boss? Did you manage to escape their baleful influence, or were you stuck in the role of demoniac yes-man for the duration of the campaign? Let’s hear about your encounters with evil upper management down in the comments!
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So as it happens, you have pinpointed the character that I am most invested in right now. That is to say, that ‘Buddy Cop’ wizard that has been spoken of in comments before is the central character in a book that I am writing. The recently changed prologue specifically shows the moment where this wizard found himself beholden to a higher power. I will share this if you like!
The Inquisition borrowed the help of my wizard’s god, and made sure this boss demon was good and dispatched before they continued their punitive measures. Avoiding spoilers, some pieces couldn’t be erased, and will be a pivot point later on when wizard gets his PrC.
Have you seen Venom yet? Fun movie, and perhaps the most literal version of this whole “hands on evil boss” metaphor. Sounds like your wizard is heading in a similar symbiote direction.
I have not, though I think I will with your promotion of it. The trailers did look compelling.
There are script problems, but the banter between Venom and Eddie is enough to make it a thumbs up for me. Good popcorn movie, doubly so if it doubles as character research for you.
“Don’t Clean up After the Dog”… truly, Anti-paladin has been sinking to ever lower levels of depravity. Maybe soon, he’ll bet able to annoy people at the Illusi-plex all by himself! Or worse, he may continue to slaughter his grammar…
It… It says “didn’t” though…?
So the puppy was evil all along… of course i knew it. I saw the evil endless pit of evil in his evil eyes of evil. Which are the two hidden evil deeds? I ask just for fun.
This kind of situation is why my death-knights try not to have too many points on Liege. One or two points are good, but when i hit three i try to screw things just enough to descend to two points again. Failure can be painful, but the liberty of a two points Liege background they’re worth it, and more if my pc manages to conserve most of his skin. Now i think about it many times, after deposing the previous boss, the kind of hands-on evil boss of evil is the kind my character end being. I like to put evilness under new management. That climbing up the ladder in the evilness companies, and another things, is why i don’t like the infernals. They are interesting, but not an “interesting” interesting. Contrary to the Deathlords, which can, and the game asume you will try hard for it, be defeated, deposed, replaced and forged into soul-steel furniture, the Primordials can’t be defeated, not without heavy effort, even more than for a death-lord, and that can have heavy consequences. The infernals are designed to rebel against an undefeatable opponent. Like in so, so, so, so, so many much things infernals are screw, very, very, very screw. Even my pc are better bosses than a bunch of enraged primordials. I think the only time my party didn’t slay our boss was when we played like Sidereals exaltes, and i don’t mean the only time in an Exalted game, i mean in general, i am not the only bloodthirsty sociopath of the group. Still, while it last, the relationship can be fun.
Patches the Unkicked isn’t evil. He’s just a telephone. 😛
Yeah, right, just a telephone 😉
I don’t know if this count but once after i killed a NPC for the fifth consecutive time the DM has enough and make the king wizards put a Geas spell on my character, so my character needed to do as the king command until he found the way to remove the Geas. Protip: “If the king wizards put your character on a Geas that compel him to obey the king command just hasten the succession of his daughter, she will be a queen after all”. The king meanwhile was very careful with hos words around my pc, very bossy and always meddling in the orders he give my pc. “You can’t impale bandit on a tree”, “You can’t burn a tavern to the ground just because you saw a spider”, “For the last time, stop using my daughter’s skirts in front of the foreign dignitaries”. I try to get support from my companions against the DM just for them to say that i deserve it and they were having a really good and funny time. Traitors, all of them, traitors >(
Well hey, if “evil” is synonymous with “thing I don’t like,” sounds like you know what up. You friggn’ murderhobo you.
Things i like = good, things i don’t like= evil. Yeah, i looks correct to me.
Just… Why i am a “friggn’ murderhobo”? In fact that is a archetype i pretty much dislike. I like to play, if the game is worthwhile i don’t mind to loose, if it’s not worthwhile and on top of that i loose is a double loose. A murderhobo is just a weapon with a human form, it is bloodthirsty, mad, savage and lives for the kill, like some sort of demonic weapon, or an anthropomorphic Mr Stabby. I don’t talk… well write about that much, i already make letter size posts, but in fact i like characters connected to the world, i am not that much into the roleplay part but still i make my part, and while i like to kill things it’s difficult to not kill things, evil things in most games. Sociopathic scheming loony is a more appropriate term for me.
Sorry for the letter-size long rant but this sis something i really dislike. Murderhobo = evil, unlike “arson, murder and pillage = good” 🙂
I would list the following items:
I guess one man’s murderhobo is another man’s “sociopathic scheming loony.”
First of all, it was just one very annoying NPC that the DM resurrected four time. The bandits were a real problem, the king give my character, under a Geas spell placed on him by order of the king itself, to stop them. That is what my character did it, permanently, and in any case the king was going to execute them. Third, i don’t like spider, that was a complete sane and rational reaction, also i didn’t burn the tavern to the ground, i cast a fireball to kill just one spider and the same DM who controls the king decrees that just like that the whole place in on fire. It was a tavern there was alcohol everywhere, it is not my fault. Respect to the skirt, well if the king insisted in having my character under a Geas and in the throne room controlling everything he does. My pc would get grumpy and using any and all the tactics at his disposal to make the king ordering him to get away, or even better to release him from the Geas. Yes it was desperate and the shame of the court and that was the idea. Also they were a really nice, fitting and silky skirts.
Trying to read Anti-Paladin’s list upside down is giving me a headache, anyone want to translate for me?
The closest experience I’ve had is that in the D&D game I’m running, the warlock is pacted to a great fire elemental power of some kind. By their own request, we set things up so that it has a number of demands it can impose on the character. But to be a non-jerk GM I also have it so that it will ask favors that can count against those demands more often than it will actually make said demands. Because I don’t really want to be telling a player what to do with their character more than absolutely necessary.
I was definitely thinking of 5e warlock patrons while writing this one. How often does your fire elemental talk to the PC? Every other session? Once per arc?
Well given the game’s extremely slow pace the game really hasn’t progressed far enough for me to give a real answer to that. But I’d still have a hard time answering that question. It’s really just “when I’ve thought of something interesting for it to care about”. It certainly doesn’t just reach out randomly.
The last interaction they had with it was during a ritual they did that granted them a bit of extra power through a connection to an ancient magical city in exchange for transferring on of the demands from the control of the entity to the person who performed the ritual. They were actually left out of the part of the inter-planar conversation where it was discussed what the entity got out of the deal. grins
I should note I really like this character. She’s a water genasi warlock that pacted herself to a fire elemental, basically because she was too lazy to learn magic the “proper” way.
Can we be real for a sec? Antipaladin looks hot in glasses. Like hot as hell. I’m a dude but I’d like to roll up to this guy and chat him up about heresies and just stare at his face. He’s like an sexy evil accountant. Or a sexy regular accountant with a much looser dress code.
Man glasses in fantasy games are sweet af.
“Sexy evil accountant” sounds like an oddly specific halloween costume.
It’s involve semi rimless glasses, a open chest shirt, and a urgent notice from the IRS.
Quarterly reports seems antithetical to [b]Chaotic[/b] Evil.
You ever work in an office?
Yes. My socialization was severely impaired by my not smoking causing me to not join in on smoke breaks, but that’s besides the point.
My point being that quarterly reports are a product of Law, with Good or Evil being an option, but not Chaos.
Corporate need not be lawful; it can be chaotic much like how having tens or even hundreds of middle managers making conflicting orders and commands will suffocate thousands in beircatic red tape. This is all while in an attempt to pursue the lawful action, but in the end only creates a chaotic result. True cause is not without a sense of law or stability; it is madness in spite of the bounties meant to