The Price of Evil
“But how!?” you ask. “How could Paladin never realize Snowflake’s true nature?”
I hear you, and I wonder about it myself sometimes. To be fair, the dude has been a little preoccupied. What with all the romance and ascension and solo commando missions, Paladin hasn’t really had time to cast detect evil on his on own horse. I wonder how many of you guys ever thought to double check your mounts? You really ought to you know. It’s in the bylaws for a reason.
There were other signs of course. There’s always been something wrong with that equine. What started as a little crush quickly turned into an obsession. The obsession turned deadly. And now Snowflake will stop at nothing to rid her elf/unicorn/horse love triangle of its humanoid component. Let us hope that Lumberjack Explosion has a good Will save.
In spite of everything, I must admit that part of me admires Snowflake. You see, she knows exactly what she wants. And that’s not an easy thing for any of us to achieve.
As gamers, we’ll write pages of backstory. We’ll go through endless character questionnaires, agonize over alignment, and invent any number of intimacies. But when the time comes for the ultimate decision, it’s always hard to know just how far you’ll go. It’s the question that Snowflake has just answered: What is the price of your soul?
This is a variation on the classic “what’s my motivation?” character question. But it’s also more than that. We’re talking about ultimate sacrifice. We’re talking brass tacks. Rubber meets road. Push meets shove. Does your character care about anything so much that they’d sacrifice literally anything? Is it love? Duty? Saving the world? And is there any price that’s too high? As today’s fiendish thought experiment, hit us with your own variations on the Mephistophelean bargain down in the comments!
This development… does not surprise me. I wish it did.
My soul’s not for sale. The end. :-/
Anyone looking to buy is never going to stick to letter and spirit, so better go down swinging for glory.
But can you imagine a character who WOULD make that bargain? What kind of person would that be? And could they make for an interest PC?
I can’t, offhand, think of any of my long-term characters who’d make that particular kind of sacrifice… they’re all either too noble to accept such a bargain, or too selfish to make the sacrifice.
Dying for a cause, though… I’ve got a few like that. In short-term games, I’ve had a fair number of characters die heroically, sacrificing themselves to save friends. And a few — paladin types, if not necessarily paladins — who wouldn’t throw themselves away casually, but would certainly do so in a “die to save the world” situation.
Any of those paladins willing to a do a “take my soul instead” type of deal?
Hard to say, but I’d guess not. It’s hard to trust the kind of people who put a price on your soul, you know what I mean? If they’re thinking in those terms, they’re not invested in your cause, they don’t have skin in the game and don’t want to, so they’re obviously expecting a *big* payoff from the deal…
Ruin is the obvious example for me. The climax of their heroic arc, and the backstory of their villainous one (the way I’ll probably end up using this character), are the same event. The woman they love captured, about to be reprogrammed (AI) into a weapon of mass destruction. Ruin, who has always fought “For love and for justice” wonders how much they’re willing to sacrifice for love… and finds their answer surprisingly easy. “No price is too high. No *atrocity* is beyond my reach. For her… for love. I. Would do. Anything.”
Notably, they still don’t actually cross the line yet. They try negotiating one last time, offering themself in their lover’s place. It’s only when this too fails that they decide they’re done fighting fate. “I am Ruin, last scion of Camavor. I declare the treaty between the Shadow Nebula and the Void Empire to be shattered, and in so doing name myself oath-breaker and forsworn. […] Let the Harrowing flow once more upon the solar winds. And may fate have mercy upon us all… for mine is *spent*.”
They then spend the next 15 years or so before the campaign starts unleashing the Harrowing (think solar system spanning hurricane of undeath) every few months against the Void Empire, whittling them down slowly but surely. If the PCs don’t intervene, the Empire will collapse in about 100 years, with far less loss of life than a traditional military invasion would cost. Of course, that’s still millions of civilians dead, and does assume that Ruin themself doesn’t completely lose their mind after a century of being stuck with a job that they find necessary but morally abhorrent. *And* the PCs don’t know any of this at the start, having been taught their whole lives that Ruin is just a Chaotic Evil necromancer trying to crush their home for the Evulz (rather than because of the Void Empire’s countless crimes against both its neighbors and its own citizens).
The closest I can think of is my Gunslinger, who sold himself into Avandra’s service for a 1-Up and the chance to continue redeeming his newly-mortgaged soul, but that wasn’t so much a surprise moment of character development as much as it was doubling down on the initial character concept
I think the one thing that my enchanter (whose campaign was sadly cancelled) would sacrifice almost anything for is, well, his life. He’s absolutely, completely terrified of dying, to the point where I willingly asked to make a saving throw versus fear before entering combat if it looked like he’d be in over his head. I think the only thing he wouldn’t sacrifice is the people he cares about, and even then his goal would be “save everyone” rather than “sacrifice myself for my friends.”
Across the genre’s I’ve had several characters who have laid their lives down for others. A couple Top Secret characters getting blown up to save the group, a Marvel Superhero who held up an entire building until it was evacuated, then finally had to let go and let it fall on her. She was strong, but not invulnerable.
A lot of that has to do with me being basically Lawful Good down deep. There are a LOT of scenarios in the real world where I would have no issue dying for someone or something else and that gets translated over. Now, giving up something for a purely selfish thing? Not so much.
I’ve never been big on backstories either. I develop my characters personality and quirks as I play them. In my homebrew, your background is generated at the same time you roll up your character. Things like family background, how many sibs you have, how many are still alive, are your parents alive, mentor, etc. You can be anything from the lowest gutter rat, with only a couple coppers to your name, to the heir to the throne. So you have the framework and flesh it out during the game.
Heck, didn’t see this development! At least, not in this form. Odd that Snowflake managed to avoid the ‘cybernetics’ part of the arrangement though.
She also seems to be lacking in fangs – which will present a problem when it comes to the whole ‘drink the blood of the innocent’ part.
Naw. She just needs to trample her prey until it … pops.
Besides, shape-shifting can get her a mouthful of fangs in wolf mode.
As for cybernetics – the technovamps may have been pressed for time.
I’m starting to think some one sank a lot of point in their mounts acrobatics skill to have them constantly on rooftops.
Look I have played Norscans in warhammer fantasy and mortals in Vlack Crusade, selling my soul for various things has been not only on table but directly an aspect of the character. On the other hand the inqusitorial acolytes were tempted by all manner of chaotic or xeno items/knowledge.
As far as “normal” fantasy goes, yeah I have played both “Duty/Honor above all” characters as well “I’m in if therew profit for me” kind of characters. But I do prefer going by my own nature most of the time, a heart of an mercenary, so wave big wnough money bag and most of the characters I’ve played would have sold their souls, thwir team and probably in cpuple cases the world. Or in case of the Norscan just promise power and he does your bidding
…is a horse gonna try and bang everyone?
*everypony
EveryONE. Centaurs have to come from somewhere.
So, there’s an interstellar campaign I’m in where I’m currently the captain of the ship. His name is Venari and his ultimate goal is to own a planet. (The fact that this character is more politically and diplomatically inclined as opposed to being a fighter is occasionally a conflict.)
But I KNOW the GM of this game has had to go out of their way to account for this character’s goal. The one planet we’ve stopped at so far is something of a worthless desert.
“I have broken every code of practice,
But for my love, I’ll shift the planet’s axis!
She’ll return to me when she’s been repaired.”
– The Clockwork Quartet, “The Doctor’s Wife”
For Doktor Krauss, the answer is trivial: “My life and soul for Leah.”
As far as he’s concerned, his soul is a lost cause anyway, no matter which lens he views it through. As a sworn officer of the Empire he once served, he was damned thrice-over the moment he began consorting with anarchists and separatists. If he views himself as a rebel, he’s still damned, because he never really embraced their cause with his full heart…he fights alongside them because it’s What Leah Would Do. As a physician he’s damned, because ultimately he would place one patient above all his oaths and all the world…and even that one patient, he has failed. As a scientist he’s damned, because he has lied, plagiarized, stolen data, and FAILED TO PROPERLY DOCUMENT HIS FINDINGS! And in his deepest heart he’s damned because despite all his willing transgressions, his beloved Leah is in her ninth year of alchemical suspension, and still he has failed to cracked the puzzle of bringing her back.
Fortunately, Krauss views the state of his soul as a negligible matter. He intends through sheer will to keep his own alchemically overclocked brain functioning for precisely long enough to restore Leah. Her legacy will eclipse his own, and his crimes and failures can be consigned to the dustbin of history.
Hey, Snowflake could give dating the aughisky (https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/witness-me-blood-bag) another chance. Their diets are a lot more similar now.
Ship it.
It’d make a neat twist to the whole triangle going on.
VampSnowflake: “Whyfore did I forsake my soul, WHEN I NOW NO LONGER DESIRE THE PRIZE I SACRIFICED IT FOR~?!!!”
Aughisky: “… Would you like to go terrorize a town to cheer you up?”
VampSnowflake: “Man, why did I never see how perfect you were before?”
“I want nothing more than to be a bayonet; a bayonet wielded by the hand of God. I would have been happy to be born a storm, or a divine threat; a mighty explosion or even a terrible hurricane. A divine force of nature without heart or pity. And if this relic can transform me into such a thing…then I am happy to abandon my humanity.”
Yeah while, I should have been a pair of claws scuttling across the North Atlantic.
…
Actual line is, “I should have been a pair of ragged claws / Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.”
Thanks, Eliot!
In 5E at least vampire horses wouldn’t work by RaW: If a **humanoid** is killed by a vampire’s bite and spends 3 days in the grave it rises again as a spawn under its master’s command. If a spawn drinks its master’s blood it ascends into a full vampire. If their master is killed they’re stuck as a spawn forever. This does mean that werepires are RaW since werebeasts have the Humanoid type.
To pile on, the **Find Steed** spell summons a Celestial, Fey, or Fiend in the shape of a steed. If it is reduced to 0 HP it poofs instead of dying, so there’s no corpse to bury.
Rulings, not rules. 😛
Now all she needs is a villain song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNhhz1yYk2U
It’s been too many years. I actually did that cosplay back in the day, lol. I look a little like NPH:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/309504_2569261351823_1429966405_n.jpg
Mad science party was a good time. Got a big laugh from the other evil geniuses when I revealed the cake to be styrofoam with frosting on it. 😀
Next on the docket, the other NPC I’m currently obsessed with, Kabalin Tunaan. Her story actually began with a whole lot of her deciding that her life was more important than whatever else was going on. You could call this refusing these sacrifices, but you could also look at it as sacrificing more and more of her honor and place in society for the sake of survival. But rather than run through another tragic backstory, let’s take a look at what the future has in store for my favorite genderfluid demon.
And with the story beats I have floating around in my head, two of them do see them sacrificing themself for the sake of their son and his band of heroes. Once just sacrificing their life, throwing themself into a fight they can’t win to buy time for the others to escape. Once sacrificing their very existence, which is more in line with todays discussion, renouncing a prior bargain, which will cause reality itself to swallow them whole… but not before Kabalin gets back everything they had traded away with that bargain, giving them the power they need to go toe-to-toe with the Big Bad for the 40 minutes or so it will take for the universe to consume them.
Funnily enough, Kabalin actually survives *both* of these. The first one, making a dramatic return at the climax of the arc to (hopefully) the delight of the party. The second, the Big Bad still needs them alive for now, and is powerful and skilled enough to literally carve the broken contract out of Kabalin mid-fight, saving their life but taking them captive, and forcing the party to come up with a clever way of defeating the Big Bad if they want to rescue the demon.
I’ve only had one character ever sell their soul. There were a bunch of basically-vampire-salespeople trying to sell entry into their vampire cult for the low, low price of destroying your soul and becoming a vampire yourself. It was just a chance encounter that the party obviously declined, setting them up to be a major faction later on. Unfortunately, the dungeon we explored afterwards contained a MacGuffin that changes the user’s alignment temporarily. My character happened to hold it, and the MacGuffin happened to be the one that changes the user’s alignment to Lawful Evil.
The DM was caught off-guard when my character doubled-back after we left the dungeon to see if the vampire cultists were still offering entry. After all, what’s more evil than selling your own soul for power? It ended up being a significant power boost, which in turn allowed my character to lean into her new evilness (up to and including gloating about her own power, and then immediately dying due to her own hubris).
Bad Horse
Bad Horse
Whatcha gonna do?
Whatcha gonna do when the sun rise-s?
Bad Horse
Bad Horse
No-one’s gonna mourn
No-one’s gonna mourn when you turn to dust
Bad Horse
i feel like the lyrics to the “bad horse chorus” in “Dr Horibble’s sing-along blog” might be adaptable here..
By the Unconquered Sun, it’s Thuna all over again! “BETWAYALLLLL…”
The character whose picture I use a pfp died at level 10, after turning chaotic evil, taking excessive risks, and generally losing sight of the goal of the campaign.
And she’s one of my characters whose retirement gave me the most satisfaction.
The thing is, she had started as a weak and vulnerable chaotic good character running away from her previous life. And throughout the campaign, I was on the lookout for something that gave her a push, a personal goal to give her full focus to. And through simple happenstance (and calculated bad choices), she found that – by being cursed and turning evil.
Having an evil character can be very fun, but I find it far more enjoyable when it is not planned. You’re pursuing a goal, and some sudden event gives you an opportunity to turn to evil, which happens to fit that goal. It was the case for her; when I looked back on the character after she died, I thought that it was better for her to die chaotic evil than to live chaotic good.
I have three other characters who became or sided with Evil (there could be a pattern there), and in all cases, it was unplanned and I just went along certain events in the story as well as my character motivations, and it was very satisfying. Although one died and one became an NPC shortly after.
I will say this now. Me and all my characters would jump at the chance to become free-willed vampires. As for the ultimate sacrifice, most of my characters have one of the following possible reasons for selling their souls/dying/ultimate sacrifice: Destroying the Deities of Sun/Day/Light/Good, Creating and supporting a religion that idealizes endurance and death, Protecting two or three specific individuals, or simply Burning down all of civilization out of spite.