Sudden But Inevitable
Once upon a time, I rolled up the Exalted equivalent of a D&D ranger. He was the blond dude in the left-hand corner over here. And if you noticed the unicorn in the background of that image, you should know that this story is about her. Her name was Thuna. She was my familiar. She was also a black-hearted traitor, and it was entirely my fault.
Things hadn’t started out that way. Back at character gen she’d been a doe-eyed, innocent sparkle pony. It was only when we came into conflict with the Council of Black Unicorns that she changed. The Council were the big money behind the Burning Man-esque festival that our little band of deposed kings of the universe were investigating, and we assumed that they were a fancifully-named crime syndicate. It was only when they kidnapped poor Thuna that we learned the truth. They were literal evil unicorns, black as the Abyss and twice as mean. They spirited Thuna away to do gods knew what at their dark carnival, leaving behind only a snarky ransom note and a few sugar cubes.
At this point in the story, I’d like to clarify that Laurel was running this game. She was a horse girl as a kid. You do the math.
Any dang way, we did the only sensibly heroic thing and staged a rescue operation. By the time we made it through the evil unicorns’ opium den / whore house / illegal gambling operation, we were pretty well beat-up. We were also somewhat unobservant, because we stumbled right into the Council’s trap. The door of a soulsteel cage clanged shut behind us, and we could feel our essence begin to drain away.
“Hue hue hue,” came a familiar voice. “You foolth are twapped! Thoon all of your power will belong to the Counthil!”
Apologies for the dialect, but I want to be true to the character. Thuna lisped.
“Why?” cried my heartbroken Zenith. “Why would you do this?”
“For wuv of evil,” she whispered. And when she stepped into the light, I saw that my poor sparkle pony had become a piebald. They were corrupting her, and using our rapidly-draining essence to feed the change!
Thinking fast, I made the only play I could. It was a move that would live in infamy.
“But Thuna,” I said. “Wouldn’t it be more evil if you were to betray your allies on the Council of Black Unicorns?”
“Hmmm,” she mused, rubbing her hooves together. “Betwayal….”
I won’t belabor the story, but suffice it to say that appealing to Thuna’s new, worser nature did the trick. She released our circle from the trap, we punched a lot of unicorns, and everyone sang the Bad Horse song like jackasses. Happily ever after, right? Wrong.
The defeat of the Council was by no means the end of that campaign’s evil equine problem. Thuna was still a piebald, and I’d given her a thing for betrayal. My formerly useful unicorn companion had became something of a Catwoman figure, taking great delight in thwarting the group at every turn: “Hey guys? Where’s the MacGuffin? Why are we being driven out of town? How did the Death Lord find us again?”
In answer to each of these questions, a gleeful shout echoed across the face of Creation: “Betwayaaaaallll!!”
My circle-mates never forgave me.
So please learn from my mistake. If you decide to invite the forces of darkness into your life, be prepared for the consequences. Because evil will out, even if it’s an adorable sparkle pony.
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I wasn’t even at the session where it happened, but man did I hear about it. We had had a new character join us and he seemed to mesh really well with the party. I don’t know his exact build but he was mostly Swashbuckler. Well, about 2 months RL and several month in-game later, Swashbuckler stabbed Fighter and killed him. Fighter was brought back to life, but he complained about the literal backstabbing for what seemed like forever.
It turned out Swashbuckler was a green dragon using a polymorph spell to spy on us. I never did find out why he broke his cover. That session was an extra during the middle of the week so I couldn’t attend.
Was this green dragon swashbuckler a PC or an NPC?
PC. One of the players had a handful of characters that he would switch out for different party ‘missions.’ One of them was our Goblin actually.
Funnily enough, Swashbuckler’s bosses stopped paying him (because they’re evil dragons) so he agreed to spy for us later. Then he died.
You know, I think there’s probably been more major campaigns with significant betrayals with my old gm then ones without them. In my first with them, my goliath ranger and the fighter captain canada were forced to betray the team via mind control magic, in the second, i betrayed the team with my aranea sorcerer due to a communication error, in part because i had thought we were doing an evil campaign and it turned out we weren’t, so things didn’t mesh well. In the third in dark suns, there was nothing that lasted more then a fight, so i don’t count those. In the 2 tiamat campaigns, half the party ended up turning evil, with the wizard going full out with signing his soul over to devils. In the elemental campaign, Alex Jones the 6 int water genasi conspiracy theorist sorcerer betrayed the rest of the party to the evil earth and water elemental cults. In the next evil campaign with alex jones as the leader, the rogue betrayed us by working with the fire cult, the barbarian betrayed us due to abolish mind control, while my man child necromancer betrayed us via childish tantrum after the rest of the party started killing each other. Tomb of annihilation actually went pretty well. Then finally in the city campaign, while there was no betrayal yet, my wizard did have mind control placed on him by the secret lawful “goodish” emotion instead of brain eating illithid illuminati controlling one half of the city, so things were set up for an eventual betrayal before i left for california. That and Mordred the blood crazed oath of conquest paladin was probably going to end up betraying everyone at some point if he hadn’t died due to fireballs from like 6 wizards at once due to his habit of charging in a few rounds before everyone else is ready.
Now see, I feel like mind control is a whole nother ball of wax. Finding out that your best friend chose to betray you is a lot different than finding out that they were compelled. It’s the same outcome I guess, but the flavor of the drama shifts in a big way.
True, but i thought you were sorta including those for this one since Thuna was magically corrupted. Oops.
Huh. I guess I looked at that as more of a GM fiat sort of thing. Thuna’s personality permanently changed due to a complex set-piece ritual. I guess that feels a little different than charm monster in my head, but you’re right: I’m splitting hairs.
Carry on then!
Don’t worry. Warrior is just helping Drow Priestess practice for that Chicago revival.
Somewhere in Handbook-World, Gunslinger feels compelled to reach for the gun, the gun, the gun, the gun.
So you’re saying you accidentally created a Cozy Glow, huh? Despwicable.
Hmm, with Warrior dead, does that mean Drow Priestess did the party a favor and ‘cured’ them of their bad luck?
Look man, if Fighter gets 40-something resurrections, I think that Warrior gets at least one.
And it goes out of his own paycheck.
Yup. I bet Warrior is in debt to the party now. That might not be a bad comic now that I think about it.
“He had it coming…” I mean, seriously, he was traveling with a Drow Priestess.
So, we were playing the “Hero High” variant of Mutants and Masterminds, meaning we were all lower power level heroes in a high school like training camp. I was playing a character with Mystique’s powerset but my own backstory. Now, I had convinced everyone save the Headmaster of the school (who was frickin’ batman!) that my shapeshifting powers were due to a technological belt that I was wearing. We’ve gone through quite a few little things together before our superhero team comes up against “The Chimera”, a shapeshifting mutant supremacist with Wolverine’s backstory and Magneto’s personality. He’s also a whopping Power Level 12 to our 8, so he’s doing a good job of trouncing my friends and we’re just supposed to be holding him down so that real heroes can arrive to save the day.
So the Mage has him trapped in a web of mental illusions, the speedster is doing his best to pile on some damage and the frost lord is reeling and just trying to catch his bearings after crawling out from under the bus he was just slapped with, and I notice that they all line up in a convenient circle. “I toss a Arc grenade here.” I gesture to the center of the group. “Wait, what? Why there? Aww…” So two out of three of my friends fail their damage saves, the Speedster and the Frost Lord going down. The mage turns to look at me. “Why did you do that?!” He demands, maintaining his spell. I slap him in the forehead with my taser. He flubs the damage save and goes down. The Gm lets him see the Chimera reach down and gently pat my character on the head and state “That’s my girl.” before his vision fades.
“Remember, Prom’s next week. NO Funny business.” I demanded. The GM laughed as everyone else suddenly catches on. “Your secret complication is that you’re the daughter of the Chimera?” It was fun, and we handled it mostly in game. Yeah, my secret was out, but everyone’s characters agreed that they were decided non-lethal measures and sending your dad to prison would actually really suck.
Now here’s the million dollar question: Did this come out of left field, or does the group have an agreed-upon PVP policy in place?
This group has an agreed upon PVP policy that basically “If they didn’t kill you or take your stuff and it had story significance, it’s okay.” We’ve ran far darker games than that one, and it was a more comedic, light hearted tone of game. I’ve gamed with these guys for a while, and we’ve had the “I declare allegiance to the dark Lord and stab my friends” guy before. We’ve even had a guy who basically wanted to build counter to the party after his first character died (due to the party not backing him when he decided to go full bore evil). I basically used him as a Story Arc boss with the explicit understanding that he was probably going to die.
We’ve had various levels of reaction to it, which is why the general rule has become “if you didn’t die, lose stuff or lose a plot significant NPC, it doesn’t really matter.” We also apply it on a per game, per system basis. Usually the GM will point out “This is Shadowrun, betraying your fellow Runners is commonplace.” So that everyone knows “This is a PVP friendly game” as opposed to “You are each other’s only hope now that the gods are dead and the Dredge are coming.” The decidedly Non-PVP Banner saga.
Good on ya. Sounds like a great twist, and you managed to pull it off even with fair warning. Kudos!
My tale of betrayal is likewise from an exalted campaign, through one I was STing.
This veteran player wanted a mentor who was a monk that had raised them from childhood, taught them martial arts and medicine and who was secretly a Bronze Faction Sidereal (for those unfamiliar this means he was part of the secret conspiracy to kill solars like the player because they believe that solars are a danger to the world). Cool thought I great potential for drama as he gets torn between his personal loyalty to the player and his ideals, plus I can use him to justify a slow response from the Wyld Hunt/Heaven until it is time for his betrayal.
Things goes well for the first long while, the PC ask and gets useful advice from his mentor from time to time and some warnings about the local dark powers and how to handle them, all is well.
Then one day the PC find this extremely powerful and dangerous artifact and takes it with him to his next meeting so to ask for advice as is his habit.
This is it, thinks I the moment where the mentors duty demands that he acts, but since it has by now been more than a year since the Player said he wanted him to be a member of the bronze faction, I make sure to ask him to confirm that this is still his preference before the session, which he confirms.
So session start, they talk for a bit and then as the player turns to leave the Mentor strikes from surprise, tells the PC that he is sorry before knocking the PC out stealing the artifact and using his funky powers to remove the memory of the entire meeting from the PC (through the PC has back up memories that might reveal what happened for unrelated reasons). The scene is quick but great, and I’m happy with how it came through, and since it’s a scene shift anyway I go to get a soda.
When I come back I learn that the players discussed what happened while I was gone and that the veteran PC had mixed up the bronze and the gold faction (the latter being the pro-solar one) which means that the betrayal came as a total shock to him too.
Luckily he enjoyed it anyway so everything ended well, but I had a moment of panic afraid that I might have inadvertently crossed some boundaries.
lol. As it turns out, knowing your setting lore is a very important skill in Creation.
OMG, mixing up the factions is so important. So glad I wasn’t running that, cause my immediate thought for Solar with Bronze Faction Mentor was to send him to sabotage other Solars and set up this long thing of him doing everything to help the Realm and stop other Solars from getting a foothold until he is finally either confronted by a Solar in a Deathmatch style reveal or his mentor tells him his friends have to die.
Wasn’t quite an evil betrayal … though I think it did sting and surprise them a little
It was a Fading Suns game that had been going for nearly two years, several of the players were known and registered psychics (which is highly regulated in that setting, and the church don’t like them much, as a lot of them end up turning evil), my character was the pilot and member of the guild, used a lot of technology, had sortof of ended up picking up a stealth suit and stuff over time
After about two years of play, running up to the final session, they finally found out that my character had also been a psychic all along.. an incredibly strong one at that.. at least one of them was very hurt that she’d been keeping it secret from them the whole time, and that she didn’t trust them enough to tell them
Wasn’t so much that she didn’t trust them, so much as she didn’t really trust anyone, as the reason she had psychic powers was because she was a member of the incredibly illegal and hunted across the galaxy cult that can gain psychic powers from travelling through the special gates in the setting. Anyone with psychic powers in her career would be incredibly highly suspected and checked into
Their entire character personality was a lot built on the fact that she was a psychic and disliked and feared by normal people .. so having one of her supposed friends be one and just managed to hide it with no real repercussions so long probably didn’t go down to well
How did you manage to hide it from the other players? Or was this a metagame sort of thing where everyone pretended not to know in-game?
Online game, so easy enough to do stuff behind the scenes when needed
To an extent I also think they just naturally wanted to believe she wasn’t… several weeks before that, when things got really hairy, she had resigned to outing herself, and used a rare psychic focus to boost her powers.. to the extent of chucking APCs at a tower with telekinesis
The other players thought she’d found some kind of magic artifact that just happened to give her amazing powers. Ended that adventure expecting the inquisition and recriminations, and they mostly just shook it off and we’re like ‘Cool magic rock, where did you find it?’
.. just ran with that really
Honestly, I have no idea how the secret got kept that long, there were several similar incidents which also could have given her away at various points, though none as obvious as that. That’s perhaps why I think it felt like a bit much of a betrayal at the end there, think they felt a bit shocked by it OOC too, so felt a bit bad about that
Yah. I always come back to the “cloak and dagger” vs “metagame pvp” thing:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/intra-party-romance
Gotta establish that mess up front! And if you did, then it’s on the other player to deal with it and not get upset OOC.
its like the other player was an xmen mutant and you’re just literally any other franchise’s metahuman in the marvel shared universe 😉
Ugh, this feels like my 5e party right now. Funnily enough in the fiend pact warlock and I’m not even the one ripe for betrayal. The party wizard and rogue have both made secretive deals with a sealed wolf god who angered the gods, without ever discussing it with the party. We can’t metagame about it but damn if I walk into my death because two of the party members got greedy. At least my deal with the devil is clearly stated in our contract, as oppose to the whimsy of two chaotic and stupidly curious adventurers.
lol. I’m guessing you made a deal with a lawful evil entity. Of course you’re annoyed at chaotic power-ups!
Well, Unicorns are evil. If not while they would need powers to find virgin maidens? I don’t know that other else were you expecting. Even more in a Exalted game run by Laurel o_O
You know, today comic made me laugh, it remind me of that time the Party’s pet ghoul eaten some peasants 🙂
Also: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D9-Th5gXUAAc9BJ.jpg
That bit has always made me wonder about Fighter. Why exactly is Lumberjack Explosion hanging out with the big lug anyway?
“Why exactly is Lumberjack Explosion hanging out with the big lug anyway?”
I don’t know. Let me search for answers in the good book:
“Find thee a unicorn and secure ye its friendship. For unicorns are unparalleled wingmen, and may save thee from the clap.”
The Handbook of Heroes, Fighters 05.
Online version for proselytism right here:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/the-handbook-of-heroes-05
May cleric be with you 🙂
Damn. The Handbook of Heroes is full of all kinds of smart advice! Come friends, let us throw Patreon money and social media reposts at it! >_>
I knew it you would like it. It has several good advice and art, is very funny too. The guy who make it is really smart, you surely would like him 😛
My God… I’m a marketing genius!
iirc in exalted arent unicorns eldritch souleating monsters?
I dunno, maybe some Fair folks use unicorns as mounts so, yeah, kinda maybe. But in fact i didn’t even remember when you can find a entry for unicorns on any Exalted book… ¯_(ツ)_/¯
“Betwayal….” has me in stitches. =)
I don’t have anything really relevant to say…. except that I’m overdue for re-watching Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog.
“Betwayal” remains one of my group’s go-to catch phrases. I will never live it down.
“Dark Carnival”? Were the Council of Black Unicorns also Juggalos then?
Naw. They were just L4D2 fans: https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/left4dead/images/6/6c/Dark_Carnival02.png/revision/latest?cb=20091018130146
Due to absences (only myself, another player and the DM were able to make it) we decided to player a one-shot, in which I player a Good ranger with the other player rolling up an Evil yuan-ti pureblood sorcerer. We were hired to find and kill a white dragon, and so we went dungeon delving, being harangued by hags all the way. Eventually, we managed to track down and kill the hags, with the battle ending with me at three health. Then suddenly, my yuan-ti companion betrayed me, knocking me to zero and preparing to kill me!
Me, out of character: “Um… you remember that the hags weren’t the final villain, right? We still have to kill the white dragon?”.
Yuan-ti’s player: “Oh… forgot about that”.
So then he fed me a healing potion, we took a short rest to heal and we carried on.
And so then we fought by some more monsters, and eventually defeated the dragon, and the fight ended with the sorcerer at low hp and out of sorcery points and spell slots, while I used some self healing (I was a ranger). The I turned to the sorcerer and said, “So… about that you betraying me thing? You’re out of spells, right?”.
And so that’s how it ended up that the Good party member ended up betraying Evil.
Ever read any Neil Gaiman? I’m getting strong overtones of “The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains” here.
Excerpt over here: http://www.fiftytwostories.com/?p=1338
We’re at Kir Sabal in Tomb of Annihilation, Yuan Ti and Garoyles attacked, and one of our party members was a Yuan-Ti conspirator. We captured her and a Pureblood, and I set up a Zone of Truth.
I tried to interrogate the traitor in the Zone, but she tried to escape by Wildshaping out of her bonds, only to be smacked unconscious. As such, I decided that she would have to be executed outright. So I wrapped the Chain of Command (Dwarven military concept, it’s the chain that you get beaten with if you don’t follow commands) around her neck, and laid on hands for 1 HP while I shoved her off the side of the mountain.
While this is happening, my party is fruitlessly trying to interrogate the Pureblood in the Zone of Truth. My execution completely visible through the window.
I walk in holding a chain full of bloody Goliath neck chunks. “You’re gonna wanna cooperate.” I then rolled intimidate.
Not bad. But you could have saved yourself a whole lot of fuss on the body disposal front by using a midbulk transport engine. Say something like a classcode 03-K64: https://giphy.com/gifs/rzrUmExS998By
Honestly, if every single NPC the party meets ends up betraying them at some point in the campaign, I mentally and emotionally check out. I cease trying to build bonds or interact with the world because I did not sign up for a long-form Mario Party.
I give you my word, there were NPCs in that campaign who were not lisping unicorns.
you paid bg dots for that unicorn, familiars shouldn’t be used against you any ore than artifact armor suddenly growing ironmmaiden spikes to feast on your blood out of nowhere
Meh. She was still generally useful. Just with a side of betwayal.
Also of note, I’d be down for the iron spikes thing. That mess is crazy powerful: https://berserk.fandom.com/wiki/Berserker_Armor
Coming up on level 20, (+1 level per session moved things rapidly) we were prepping for a face off against Lloth herself. A bad encounter with the DoMT left my RQ Warlock Lore Bard trapped in the abyss somewhere, conveniently also in the possession of the same demon who had the mcguffin artifact we needed for prepping to face Lloth. I was currently playing an older incarnation(Goolock Lore Bard, fraternity sisters) from earlier in the campaign (the only survivor of a near TPK at level 10) and the demon made the offer to trade my imp familiar for getting my current character back.
Now, admittedly, mechanically I should have just been willing to dump anything from this character to get my RQ character back, but this Imp familiar had served well, and it didn’t feel right to throw him under the bus for my own gain, however selfless the intention might be.
Instead, our Barbarian put himself up for the sacrifice, he was always trying to fight the strongest around, and the Abyss could allow him ample opportunity for those fights.
Skip forward to the final conflict. Lolth had apparently been making preparations of her own, and called on the services of that same Demon, who sent that same Barbarian as an ally to use against us. We all were freaking out just a tad, he was a hefty powerhouse and needing to split our attention between Lolth and him was just not something our action economy could sustain for long.
So I used what I knew and cast suggestion. Physically he was hardy as heck, but not so much so with Wisdom Saves; “You want to fight the strongest, and what could be stronger than a god? You should fight her and not us.”
Now as a Berserker Barbarian with Frenzy access, several loopholes, and possibly the bad kind of rules lawyering were exploited to get this suggestion to stick.
Frenzy makes the Barbarian immune to charm, and ends charm effects. Suggestion states that if a creature is immune to charm are immune to the suggestion effect, BUT the Barbarian wasn’t frenzying when the Suggestion was applied, and the suggestion spell doesn’t actually APPLY a charmed condition to be ended when he did frenzy, as Frenzy doesn’t state that it ends mind influencing spells already in place, but only the charmed/frightened effect.
Though it was forced, he betrayed us, and in that lovely moment, I got to play the magical equivalent of the uno reverse card so he betrayed her instead.
“By the time we made it through the evil unicorns’ opium den / whore house / illegal gambling operation, we were pretty well beat-up.”
No big huge comment, this is just one of those phrases that’s a real happiness charm. I’m so glad you got to experience the magic of this – powerful, powerful sentence.
Sometimes, when work is stressful and even gaming feels like a chore, it helps to remember the good times. For serious: thanks for reminding me of this one. Put a smile on my face.