Man when I’m not looking at Astarion’s actions through Calio’s eyes I see much more clearly what a manipulative jerk he is 😂 (Mostly because Calio is *also* a manipulative jerk in very similar ways)
I have been given the go ahead to info dump about my OCs by @the-ethereal-god so now it’s story time with Sky, featuring those weirdos who live in my brain.
So since they’re all Pathfinder characters they’re all heroes. Technically. Some more than others. Some a lot more than others.
On a sliding scale of ‘goodness’
At the top is Umbrolus, he is a pure cinnamon roll. Too good for this world. Ignore the fact that he’d beat a man to death with their own severed limbs if they so much as considered hurting his SO or his friends. He has a teeny tiny huge temper. It’s fine we all have flaws. But other than that he’s just a big puppy.
After Umber is probably Kiyo. They have been the local doctor for the poor district of Korvosa for about 50 years, and they’ve lived in the city for over a century. They care about the city and its people and want to protect them and see them become something better than the crime filled hovel it currently is. As such, they’ve recently taken up the mantle of the vigilante Blackjack from the previous wielder, to help protect the people and give them hope. So they use their talents to protect the city they love in two forms: as a doctor caring for the sick and injured who cannot afford care elsewhere, and as a vigilante protecting the powerless and the innocent.
I think next is probably Draven. She has a bit of a hero complex. Just a little. Just ‘throw myself in front of enemy attacks and use my body as a shield to protect the innocents or my friends, with no regard for my own health and safety’ levels of self destructive hero complex. She is basically indestructible though so she can get away with it. Literally. It took a demi-god level powerful Demon Lord and three balors multiple rounds focusing all their attacks on trying to kill her to take her down, and it was her only death the entire campaign (it was the final battle). She did one thing and that was tank and she did it well.
I think next would be Roland. He was not a good person in his past, but he’s long since moved beyond that. He’s generally a good person, the quintessential stressed healer wrangling a chaotic party. He believes strongly in the ideal of redemption and that most people have the ability to become better versions of themselves, they just have to be willing to choose to put in the work to become that better self. If someone is remorseful of their actions and shows the desire to change Roland will fight for them and do everything in his power to help them see their new path through. He feels sympathy especially for those who were turned undead unwillingly and have to fight against an innate evil nature—given that he is himself an undead known as a Graveheart—and he respects those who choose to try to do good. He has helped to set up a place within the Valoria faith for these undead who want to turn towards the light.
Next would be Ileark. He’s generally a good person and does his best to always act in peoples’ best interests. He is a follower of Desna and is a strong believer in freedom, not feeling comfortable with most governing bodies or other rigid social constructs that restrict peoples’ personal freedoms. He is deeply against slavery, and slavers are one of the few things that make him truly seethingly angry. He is widely travelled and has seen every corner of the continent Avistan, and some parts of the neighboring continents. His breadth of experience makes him very personable with people from all walks of life. Ileark has healer envy for the party’s paladin, who is better at healing than him (he is a cleric with a prestige class who lost a lot of his healing abilities due to the prestige class), and he is self conscious and feels like he is a bad person because he is better at doing harm than that healing. The only character death the party has had was caused by Ileark, as he accidentally killed the party psychic—who is basically Ileark’s surrogate brother—because he’d had an infection that required using negative energy to knock him out to cure, and Ileark’s negative energy spell ended up being too powerful and flat out killed him. So he has a lot of guilt over that. Oh and also his birth mother is the goddess of night hags (and said psychic’s former goddess before he told her to fuck off and threw his unholy symbol into the ocean), and she wants Ileark to give in to her power and come to the dark side to become a night hag like her.
Next up is Lucien. He is also a Desna worshipper, but he’s less concerned with freedom and travel and more concerned with luck. He’s a gambler and an adrenaline junkie and he bases much of his philosophy off the idea that any test of luck is showing faith in Desna. Lucien doesn’t necessarily avoid doing the right thing or actively do harm (usually), but he doesn’t necessarily go out of his way to do good deeds like a lot of the people above either. He mostly just goes with the flow, lets a coin flip determine his fate, helps if there’s someone right in front of him obviously needing help, but can also oblivious to people needing his help if it isn’t directly asked of him. He isn’t always a particularly smart man, he mostly acts on his own whims with very little forethought—in fact he actively avoids thinking as much as possible because self reflection just makes him depressed and he doesn’t want to feel those things, he wants to ignore them and pretend everything is alright.
Sai is…where things start getting morally grey. Sai believes she is doing good. Her goal is to punish bad people and to protect good people. But she is very black and white in her thinking about ‘bad people’ and ‘good people’, and her methods of punishment for ‘bad people’ can range from what you’d expect from a regular adventurer to exceptionally cruel things. For example she turned a gargoyle into an insect permanently with his mind still intact and then released him into the wild to live out what he could of his inevitably short and terrified life after he killed one of the other members of the party—despite the fact that said party member came back to life afterwards.
Kaius will do anything to protect his family. And that’s a sweet nice thing that you’d expect from a hero right? Except no—he will do *anything* to protect his family. If aiding a villain is what it takes to protect his wife and daughter, he’d do it without hesitation and feel no guilt over it or any repercussions from it so long as it didn’t harm said family. He was a hair’s breath away from betraying his party when the group’s cleric turned out to be a cultist and she told him to join her and shoot one of the others. If she hadn’t shown her hand and revealed how her plans were going to affect his daughter, he would have done it, because she was the one member of the party he’d actually opened up to. As it was, he ended up fighting for the heroes side—but only because that’s what benefitted his wife and daughter the most, and because he felt betrayed by Gabby, not because it was the right thing to do, or because he had any moral objections to a cult subjugating everyone in the world and killing every deity but their own. Although he would have some objections to *himself* being subjugated so he’d probably fight against them on that alone.
Calio is my most morally bad character. He is, at his core, selfish. He doesn’t do anything for altruistic reasons, ever. There’s always an angle. However that being said, he is better than he used to be. His selfishness extends to the people close to him now—so if there’s something one of the other party members wants, he’ll want that for them as well. Unless their wants directly contradict one of his wants, in which case his wants still take precedent. Calio has been getting better ever since he met Greta. Before her, he wasn’t close to anyone and he didn’t take anyone’s thoughts or feelings into consideration ever. Since meeting her, he’s mellowed out a little and had began actively considering the people he cares about. However this consideration does not extend past the bubble of people he cares about—everyone else can go die in a hole for all he cares. He talked a man out of committing suicide recently—and if the other members of the party hadn’t been there he wouldn’t have bothered and would have just let the man die. Because he only did it because the others were the ones who would care if the man died. So, to reiterate, Calio might do good things sometimes, but he is not a good person.
After watching Hadestown my friends and I were talking about our Pathfinder characters and whether or not they’d manage to not look behind if in Orpheus’ position.
Roland: he would not look behind, he is a person of faith and a very calm rational person, he would trust that his loved one is behind him.
Kiyo: There is some debate on this, but I think Kiyo would not turn around, purely because Kiyo is too stubborn to let a god win.
Kaius: Would not have made a deal with Hades, would have attempted to shoot him in the head. But in the universe where that’s impossible and he has to, he would turn around. He wouldn’t be able to stand the uncertainty and the quiet, not knowing if Esmalda was actually with him and okay.
Umbrolus: Is too protective of Kleio, would turn around almost immediately. Assuming he doesn’t turn to violence immediately to save Kleio a-la Kaius above.
Draven: It would be difficult, but she would not turn around. She is too stubborn to fail at a trial set before her, especially one involving Leto.
Calio: He is determined and intelligent, but he doesn’t trust like that. He would make it almost to the end, but would turn around if he didn’t have some way of being certain that Hades had been telling the truth that he was letting Greta go free with him.
If your necromancer had to be turned into an undead, but they got to pick, what undead would they choose?
Thank you for the ask!
Lich is a cop out I feel so I’m going to rule out him being allowed to choose lich.
He’d go vampire. He’s into the whole idea of the elegant aristocratic vampire who lures in a victim with their charms and then kills them when they aren’t expecting it. Also fangs are sexy. His words not mine (*blatantly lies*).
He is actually going to get a spell in the future that will let him temporarily turn into an undead creature and vampire is at the top of his list considering Irrisen is generally not a particularly sunny place. He’s going to have a whole intimidation tactic worked out in his head where he pretends to be a Ustalavic vampire noble and will threaten someone for information…unless they’d rather be drained dry, of course.
