BESW's Spoil-Lair

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BESW

12:27 AM

See this guy?

He's gonna be in my campaign.

(It's Alexander Dumas, but the character design, man.)

@JonathanHobbs Reading it just now.

It's always unnerving to be reading panels right-to-left but text left-to-right in each panel.

BESW

12:54 AM

Okay, done.

doppelgreener

@BESW At the end of the 2nd chapter is where he pledges his loyalty to her, right?

BESW

Yes.

doppelgreener

Right. I wanted to link you that because (a) it's great (b) c'mon that first encounter with the clay man i mean holy shit (c) also he pledges to help someone for completely unconventional reasoning

"Sure I'll help you save the world, because afterwards you're gonna [spoilers]"

The saving the world thing in and of itself doesn't matter to him at all.

BESW

1:10 AM

Hmm.

So what has he promised the Lady?

Youth/beauty seems a little... Snow White's Wicked Stepmotherish.

@Lord_Gareth [wave]

doppelgreener

@BESW Life and wisdom? The fall of an empire or civilisation she detests? (And she's fine if she goes down with it.)

BESW

I guess I need to figure out who she was before she made the bargain, and how recently the bargain was made.

Okay, she's a Lady, the head of a House. She runs a school for turning girls into proper society women, credits to their Houses and good wives for noblemen.

doppelgreener

Also, I didn't mean to suggest beauty when I suggested youth: she's a mortal person, and she's old. It's not unreasonable to fear death. She might take youth in the form of being converted into some kind of Yuan-Ti, whether that actually makes her effectively young again, or only in comparison to the life span of the creature she'd become.

@BESW What is her greatest source of guilt?

BESW

1:25 AM

Hmmm.

I have basically nothing about her beyond her role in society, so I can make up anything.

doppelgreener

@BESW How was her mother killed?

(or, if it was not the result of any deliberate action: how did she die?)

BESW

Okay, first assumption: her House is not a Storm House.

Possible deaths: illness, old age, assassination, terrorism, accident.

It could be that Zagreus had tried to persuade her mother, who resisted and her death was 'arranged' so that her daughter would be more pliable.

(One thing that keeps coming to my mind is that the party may be able to turn some of Zagreus's servants against him if they can uncover enough of his plans.)

I think her primary character note is going to be control: self-control and the ability to control people and circumstances around her.

So how does her past instil that in her?

Obviously she felt out of control.

Options: love, death, and politics.

Ahah. Whatever happened made her House fall out of favour, and the finishing school/orphanage are her way to regain prestige.

Oh, easy. Her father ran away with a lower-class woman, making her mother go a little mad and lose control of the family's business.

Heck, we won't kill her mother, we'll have the mom play the part of Bertha Mason in the attic.

Our Lady Name-to-be-Determined took over the House and, finding that its merchant business was ruined and she was nearly broke, she went to the Hooded Man.

She has two dreams: to restore her family's honour among the Houses, and to fix her mother's mind.

For the first, the Hooded Man helped her start a finishing school. It kept her House in the noble circles and gave her influence over each generation of noble women. Now families fight to have their daughters enrolled in the school, and the Lady is a Very Important Person.

....meh. I'm writing myself into a corner.

Will ponder, back later.

Okay, flash of idea: "Bertha" mom is one of Zagreus's test subjects. He's using his alchemical processes to turn her into a yuan-ti, which (he promises) will fix her madness.

The price of this is that our Lady also uses the chemicals on the kids in her care, but she--seeing her mother improving--can easily justify this as being good for them.

Hmm. Scratch the first bit. She came up with the finishing school and orphanage idea on her own, and went to the Hooded Man for the fix-my-mom's-brain bit.

1 hour later…

BESW

3:23 AM

Now, I need a name.

I guess this is where I settle down and decide on a linguistic theme for my Knave Port elves.

Persian would be obvious, but I don't want to go there for a number of reasons, including getting my players to pronounce them.

doppelgreener

@BESW This sounds good; I do like the idea of her having a destructively mad mother

BESW

3:38 AM

I think it fits with her role as mother figure for generations of girls.

doppelgreener

3:48 AM

I also do think it's important that she came up with the finishing school on her own.

BESW

Aye, gives her more of her own agency.

Now, for the yuan-ti I'm going to use Mayincatec names. I'll choose the ones easier to say, but I want them to feel alien and weird.

I want the elven names to feel more familiar.

That means... British, American, and Spanish, really.

(For my particular audience.)

doppelgreener

Storm Houses should be Spanish :o

That feels like a good association to me anyway

BESW

Well, remember the Storm Houses are a recent religious affiliation, without any previous connection to each other.

So they won't be linguistically related.

However... how about the noble families have Spanish names?

doppelgreener

@BESW Yesss.

BESW

That'll include the Storm Houses which didn't rise up from the bourgeoisie.

doppelgreener

3:54 AM

For myself at least, Spanish is associated with some countries known for their passion.

BESW

Then I'll give the rest of the elves generally New England-y names.

And the sewer elves get British names.

doppelgreener

@BESW New England? Like, northeastern America?

BESW

Yes.

I'm specifically thinking of a few books/series that I can draw names from directly.

Lovecraftian character lists

Names like Hannah Bixby and Albert Wilmarth.

Thoughts?

doppelgreener

4:12 AM

@BESW Oh, goodness. I haven't read many of this variety of books.

Seek ye out classic European literature of the past centuries. Things like Sherlock Holmes, and all the depressing novels where people die in the end.

BESW

Yeah.

Do you think it's a decent fit, though?

It's definitely not very elf-like in any standard way.

doppelgreener

4:42 AM

@BESW These elves aren't elf-like in any standard way, I suspect.

BESW

They don't seem to be, no.

I think they still have pointy ears?

doppelgreener

You could go with another culture's names. Like Russian.