Origin Stories: Van Helscion
We’ve done a number of “Origin Story” comics over the years. That’s how we found out about Thief‘s pirate queen history, Team Bounty Hunter‘s boarding school days, and Pug‘s role as kobold tribal trap bait. Given our recent spate of new characters, however, we thought it might be a good idea to ask our Quest Givers over on Patreon which ones deserved a bit of backstory next. And so (with apologies to runners-up Ninja, Warlock, and Occultist) today marks the occasion of Van Helscion‘s debutante ball. Or at least, her first public comments on the sensitive subject.
Handbook-World reporters managed to get a few questions with the famously fashionable adventurer.
HoH: I understand it was intended to be a special occasion. Can you tell us about your hopes for that day?
Van Helscion: They were much the same as any young noble lady, I expect. I was to be introduced formally into society. Mummy and Daddy had spared no expense, what with the dueling harpsichordists and ice elemental sculptures. Delegations from every branch of Pinkskinnington nobility were in attendance. So was every minor war m’lord with a drop of Gildentusk blood to his credit. And there I was in the middle of it all, skinny young slip of a thing with a thoroughly ridiculous hair-do, just hoping not to embarrass myself in the cotillion.
HoH: But that dance never happened. When did you first suspect that something had gone wrong?
Van Helscion: The screams honestly should have given me pause. You must understand that I was very young then; very self-involved. I suppose I assumed that the traditional “great welcome” from the greener side of the family had got out of hand, as these things are wont to do. It wasn’t until Hildy failed to appear for my midafternoon corset-tightening that I realized something was amiss. As I hurried down to the hall, thinking to find the girl and scold her for idleness, everything was far quieter than it ought to have been. And that is when I first noticed the ghastly lapping sounds.
HoH: Lapping sounds?
Van Helscion: How should I describe it? Have you ever heard a long-haired lap smilodon eating caviar from the tin?
HoH: No. No I have not.
Van Helscion: Well it was exactly like that. Loads of canines clacking against metal. I’m older and wiser now, and I can tell you that a gorget, no matter how finely polished, is a feeble defense against a determined vampire.
HoH: Or a vampire-werewolf. What was it like meeting your arch-nemesis?
Van Helscion: Honestly? In the moment I was more concerned with my social standing. With my entire extended family dead in a sea of their own blood, I could hardly serve as the symbol of peace between feuding interracial nobility. It was a real blow to my self-image, I can tell you! Just like that, any chance at a proper intrigue campaign evaporated. Poof! Gone!
HoH: I see. So you decided to multiclass into vampire hunter in preparation for a more combat-heavy style of game?
Van Helscion: Of course not. I multiclassed vampire hunter to stake Gestalt. I am equal parts Elizabeth Swann and Wesley Snipes, and I have more than enough inheritance left to invest in silver-plated bitch stabbing implements.
Hmmm. Kind of lost the genteel demeanor there at the end. Anywhoodles, let us know if you’d like to see more cast interviews and fictional vignettes, or if you’d prefer to stick to the good old-fashioned gamer talk. And since we’ve got a pair of arch-nemeses on our hands, why don’t you tell us about yours? How did you meet your nemesis? Give us all the gory details of that first encounter with your hated rival down in the comments!
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I love how Van Helscion’s tone changed at the end, going from ‘socialite’ to ‘determined avenger’. 😀
I would LOVE to see more of these interviews when and if you have the time and inspiration to write them.
Arch-nemeses… I suppose the ones that stick out most to me were two Ravenloft villains.
One was a dread doppelganger Cleric of the Divinity of the Masters (evil doppelganger-centric take on the Paridon Divinity of Mankind). He set the tone by first inciting a Barovian village against the party through charm and trickery, and later by animating a lot of ghouls and taking the villagers hostage. He only got more evil as the campaign proceeded. He took utter glee in malice towards both individuals and groups of people.
The other was an Ezra-worshipping Blackguard on the team. When my caliban Wizard character caught him at something, he threatened to cut off her fingers and tongue and sell her to a brothel.
=_= I wish I’d gotten a decent chance to disintegrate him.
At least we managed to see the doppelganger die…
In addition to Snipes and Swann, there may be a bit of Sybil Ramkin in the mix as well.
https://discworld.fandom.com/wiki/Lady_Sybil_Vimes
Did the campaign peter out? Or did they just get away with all their villainy?
He just got away. =_= Grr.
We were preoccupied with the doppelganger unleashing the Vestige of an archfiend.
I know about Lady Ramkin. She rocks. ❤
Gestalt has been really proving she belongs on the side of Evil in her appearances this year.
To think, she probably did this even before she took a job with Beegs…
Beegs is a more business-like villain. Gestalt is obviously the kind who does this for fun.
So… working for Beegs may be reigning in the amount of evil she does?
…
Yikes.
Honestly, she’s the villain I’d rather play. There’s nothing more fun than chewing a bit of scenery (along with a healthy side-order of neck).
Hmm, closest thing one of my characters has had to a nemesis was Jaun “Aegis”. Having just gone through an… unorthodox resurrection, he was missing an indeterminate amount of memories. So when a beautiful redheaded girl showed up claiming to be his fiancé, I played along, showing her around the tribe’s encampment and partaking in festivities together both as an opportunity to get to know her (again?) and to keep an eye on her in case she was utilizing false pretenses for nefarious purposes. Sadly, my caution was for naught, as when the party joined the feast she sprung her trap. She’d modified the food somehow, and I was the only party member to make the save to avoid turning into a nicely portable and utterly harmless ball of flesh. I lunged at her, but it was too late; she returned to her true form as a red dragon, scooped up her prizes, and flew off, complete with flirtatious one-liners. Sadly, the campaign ended shortly after, but it was an excellent start to a nemesis relationship.
Then you’ve got Locus, whose whole deal was that he’d already tracked down and killed every single person even tangentially responsible for his tragic backstory. He started the campaign with his story of tragic revenge already complete… only he’d survived the finale, and was now purposeless and bored. This lack of any deep investment actually made him very fun to play, as it mitigated the main drawback of being a token evil teammate: he had no incentive to cause intra-party conflict, since he was perfectly happy to go along with whatever the party was doing. What did he care, as long as he was going to new and interesting places, meeting new and interesting people, and (when appropriate) killing them in new and interesting ways?
Is that a My Hero Academia reference? Yikes.
Sounds like a good start to a rescue mission as well. Too bad that campaign didn’t work out. Sounds like fun.
“Every minor war m’lord”. Nicely played, Van Helscion.
Wordplay is the best play.
The thing about coming from a very powerful family is that having very powerful family members who could help solve problems for you is something some writers/DMs like to avoid. So what they’ll likely do is make sure your very powerful family members are either dead or antagonistic, and thus unlikely to help solve problems for you.
You’d think having very not powerful family members who are not able to help solve problems would stop this, but a lot of writers will kill them off too.
If you’re the head of a local family, then sure. But I quite like the way 5e handles the noble background:
That doesn’t mean you can order Mummy and Daddy to lend you a dozen men at arms if you throw a tantrum. It just means that you’ve got access to another set of NPCs who may or may not be in a position to render aid.
Having a noble family is also little different in practice to having any other form of contacts… membership in a guild, the city guard, or a major criminal faction.
In all cases, the general ability to call on organisation resources tends to come with a general obligation to act in the interests of that organisation — and any specific request will come with some immediate cost. You’re expected to earn your privileges.
I refer you to the case of Tyrion vs Lannister.
A noble family isn’t necessarily a close and loving family. It’s also a governmental agency. Treat it like that and you avoid the “special privileges” problem.
Thinking about this just gave me a really fun character idea. Imagine a character who’s actually the princess of the realm (this character feels female to me for some reason) but who snuck out from her castle to have adventures and has to keep undercover to keep from getting dragged back before her parents and grounded for the next decade or until they find someone to marry her to, whichever comes first.
That could make for all sorts of fun dynamics, particularly if the only two people who know the full backstory are the princess’s player and the GM. That would leave the rest of the party to wonder who this mystery girl is who knows all sorts of noble secrets and has some very shiny gear, yet goes out of her way to avoid coming face-to-face with nobility or the law. And of course you have the mandatory scene where the fate of the realm hangs on getting some stubborn noble to listen to the party, and the Princess reveals herself and invokes her rank to demand the noble do as told, knowing that it will get her dragged back before her parents.
MORE CAST INTERVIEWS
What, are you hoping to hear from someone in particular?
Give us MR. STABBY!
This is a writing challenge.
I get the feeling Mr Stabby will just chant Blood in morse code
The interview was exquisite, especially how it fleshes out Van Helscion’s history as the product of a political marriage.
Cheers! I quite like the idea of the Gildentusk tribe. When it turns out that your ancestral cave system is a gold mine, you get fancy airs in a hurry.
Shit, I’d love to see Beverly Hillbillies with orcs in a fantasy setting. That sounds like a sitcom I’d actually watch.
Love the “interview” format!
As to arch nemesis, until my most recent (over the last two years) game, I never had one, but this DM seems to like them, because I am not the only one with one!
So far in our group, I had an arch nemesis living inside of me! (not any more… we took care of that pretty early in the game) A lich that was trying to use my ‘Forgeborne’ [Warforged] body as his vessel, but it didn’t go well, and he got trapped inside, where he started trying to come out when things got aggressive (when I rolled initiative, I also had to roll a wisdom save and if I failed, he would take over!). It all culminated in a battle between myself and him in an astral prison inside my own soul and it was pretty epic!
Then our Tiefling bard encountered her arch nemesis. A fiend that is dragging her and her family through a devilish legal battle for her soul! (That “fight” is still going on currently, tho we have every indication that she is winning… legally speaking XD )
Our Drow cleric’s family (three sisters) tried to abduct her once, but we prevented that, and then later they came back when we were at our weakest and tried to kill her! They brought her mother along that time… a drider! We killed them, but they ALSO killed her (in an extremely epic final dice rolls of death scene). So that is taken care of.
And then there is the cultists that have tried to kill us twice now (and almost succeeded the second time)…
We also happen to have made a lot of friends and allies along the way, but I have to say, having an arch nemesis is a fun side story for some character growth!
That being said, might be nice to not have to look over our shoulders all the time XD
Cheers!
Very cool. I once upon a time had a similar showdown with a couple of curses. Because I’ve always found “remove curse” to be anticlimactic, I allowed the local anti-curse spring to send the hero inside his own head, where he had to fight the personification of his curses solo. That sort of mind-scape showdown is always satisfying. Nothing quite like (literally) fighting your inner demons for character development!
So, will Vampire Huntress have a new poofy dress for every strip featuring her? It would be irresponsible not to have an extensive wardrobe, given her levels of wealth and posh.
That’s a tough call. Van Helscion’s wardrobe is exactly the sort of thing Laurel would want to play with. However, homegirl also has a day job, and designing new costumes is a bit more time-consuming than reusing an existing idea.
You guys could hold a contest.
“Submit dress designs for Van Helscion! The best ones will be used by Lauren in the comic!”
It could shave off some time.
Damn, Gestalt is either wearing a Comfort-Enchanted cloak, or she’s very good at not getting red on her outfit. Or she licked (scraped? sucked?) it clean.
That would be her werewolf half at work. Self-grooming is instinctual.
So you’re telling us her clothes reek of dog drool all the time…
That should make it more difficult for her to sneak up on victims, at least.
Miss Gestalt is not hypoallergenic.
Loving the vignette / gazeteer style of comment writing! Let’s us see into the Handbook-verse more.
We’ve been doing quite a bit of this stuff over on the HoEF side. Thought it might be time to try it out here.
Of course, the trouble is that long-time fans who know these characters will want more story. I suspect that a generic “Fighter” and “Druid” and such are more appealing to newcomers. Low barriers to entry and all that.
So did Gesalt kill like, a Ballroom of people or did Van Helscion’s parents just have ballroom floor worth of Blood in them.
Note the bonus boots in the background.
Also note the line, “With my entire extended family dead in a sea of their own blood….”
I’m curious as to why exactly Gestalt murdered a random ballroom-worth of people (some of them of the orcish sort). Or spared a witness/future revenge-hungry liability. Or who invited her into the premises.
Boredome is the greatest enemy of undeath. I have no doubt that Miss Gestalt was going for an intentional Batman scenario here. If a mortal inherited all that wealth and had all that revenge motive, perhaps she would make a worthy opponent? Or at least an amusing diversion.
The twice per week jokes and gamer discussions are the encounters of the Handbook of Heroes. The parts where you expand the characters and story are the main quests and encounters of the game 😀
Also i am starting to see how things are going. You make BBEG hire Miss Gestalt to be his Dragon. Then you establish her as treacherous and murderous, she is the Starscream. Van Helscion is set to kill her while team bounty hunter is working for BBEG. Then Van Helscion with the help of the anti-party tries to fight BBEG who gets betrayed by Gestalt while Team Bounty Hunter is busy and just when Van Helscion is about to get her revenge BBEG reveal all that was part of the plan and kill Miss Gestalt before the eyes of Van Helscion stealing her revenge . He calls Team Bounty Hunter by his side and let the Anti-Party alive if wounded that together with Van Helscion wonders what to do next. Then Paladin says that to face BBEG they will need reinforcements. Then on the post credits scene we see Cleric’s hammer shining as the request for helps reach its destination 😀
Well good news! The next arc starts on Monday. We will get to see whether you’re right.
Colin right after writhing that: Laurel!!!!! Quickly!!!!! That one got the whole argument spoiled we need to redo the whole arc!!!! 😛
Man, I don’t know what I love more, ‘lap smilodon’ or ‘silver-plated bitch stabbing implements’!
Sometimes I get to have fun. 😀
I can’t think of too many instances where we faced an especially dastardly villain. It’s something I was planning to address with the next arc of my campaign. But I can think of times where a GM was hellbent to tell their story at our expense.
I hate captive sequences. They are singularly awful to do to players-you strip players of all of their agency and all of the cool things they’ve been gaining. And a little over half the time, GM’s go further than that. In a Champions game one time, the villain was essentially the GM’s personal Metal Gear Solid fanfic self-insert. No matter what we did, he held all the cards. He forced us to surrender threatening to blow up civilians in five cities across the world if we didn’t.
Then, once we were in his custody, we had all of our powers suppressed, we were tied up to the extent that we weren’t even allowed to make Escape Artist checks, and threatened with our lives as well as the lives we had ‘saved’ to force us into compliance. Oh, and the power inhibiting collars were bombs because of course they were. I think that the only thing we were allowed to choose was to submit to this whackjob’s mind wiping perfect soldier creation program.
I think a scenario where everyone has to play without their powers for a bit can be interesting, but to be successful, we need to believe that we have some agency. Further… my character was already relatively unpowered. He was more of a weapons guy with some personal support abilities, like minor regeneration and being smart and sometimes brave.
A good villain should rival the heroes. Fighting against them should seem like a struggle where nothing is certain. If the loss of either side is certain in the opening moments for any reason short of a stray monster crit or a truly well executed plan that was completely unaccounted for, there should be all kinds of great opportunities to get a few quips in and a couple shots off. I just wish I had a few more positive experiences with effective villains outside of my own games.
I always thought that the Batman: The Animated Series episode “The Forgotten” handled this well:
https://dcau.fandom.com/wiki/The_Forgotten
Of course, it’s easier to pull off with street-level heroes. You can get beaten for sassing the guards, put into the salt mines, and forced to endure until you come up with a smarter solution. It’s notable too that “messing with Batman” isn’t the villain’s objective. Bruce is just another enslaved worker, not the special project of some mad genius. That leaves him with the freedom to explore his new, limited environment and come up with an escape plan.
When you’re dealing with high-powered supers, you’re obliged to go in for the Thor: Ragnarok shenanigans. “Control collars” are the go-to here, but as you say, you’ve got to leave some room for agency. It works in Thor because there’s an incompetent villain, an outside sort-of-ally in the form of Loki, the possibility of overpowering a prison guard and stealing her collar-control device, murmurings of a full-on slave revolt, and of course the default of winning gladiatorial games and earning freedom the old-fashioned way. These are ways that you can get out of a jam and still play your character, even if you’re being coerced.
“Catpured!” scenarios stop working when you’re left at the mercy of a hyper-competent villain. That way lies the land of GM fiat and “you lose because I say you lose.”