A Motive for this Villain?

[Adamaro23]

I'm somewhat re-designing an adventure, the "Mark of Prophecy" one from the back of the Eberron Campaign Guide for 4e. Upping it eight levels, and relocating it to the city of Gloomwrought in the Shadowfell. Anyways, I've been typing up a conversion of it, and long story short I have a large city and an artificer-BBEG who has a skeletal dragon mount who's made an eldritch machine in a townhome on the waterfront near the docks that when exploded will take out half of the "Drowned Quarter" (killing about 750 citizens), destroy the docks, all ships docked, and most likely cause a massive tidal wave that will do tremendous harm to most ships out in the harbor. ... ...

But that's all I have of him. Insert Race Here, Artificer, has a mount, and plans to blow up a half mile radius of city. But I'm looking for inspiration on why he might do such a thing. The first thing that came to my mind is that he has some vendetta of a naval or seafaring sort. My idea at the moment is that he was perhaps the captain of a small fleet of vessels (5-6), and when they stopped at the port city of Gloomwrought, his crew abandoned him there. He's grown to hate the city, betrayed by who he thought was his friends, and with nothing to go on. In recent days, word's blown in on the docks that the very same fleet will be stopping in for supplies (3 years later), and in an attempt to exact revenge on the fleet he prepares the machine/bomb.

Any other ideas? Is this reason enough for someone to set off such a drastic event? lol

 

[Colmarr]

My first thought is that the sacrifice of that many souls at once might be fuel for some other ritual he has planned.

Or it might even just be a decoy, and his real target is elsewhere - the chaos caused by the eldritch machine's explosion is just to distract attention away from what he's really up to.

 

[Ryujin]

The two big motivators are power and revenge. You can't really go wrong with them, but they become expected.

What about the "Oops!" factor? Artificer, who is trying to tap into either the Elemental Plane or Far Realm in order to power his latest magical tool of world domination, under estimates just how much power he's pulling through the rift. Of course he saves himself, rather than doing anything to help the pitiful little creatures he hopes to rule, and the result is the smoking crater. It's not that he wanted to kill anyone. He just didn't care.

Perhaps also a few unintended passengers could have hitched a ride too, just to make things more interesting?

 

[Saagael]

You could use the classic "Destroying the city because its corrupt and full of evil, and I'm making it better" plot. I also like the idea that its a decoy, or that if the players stop this, it somehow furthers another goal he has. But I'm a dick DM like that and enjoy when the players realize they've been causing all the problems they try to solve.

 

[contraserrene]

Randomly riffing...

He spent his first year of exile learning new ways to hate. This city didn't like him, and worse, it didn't fear him. Formerly a power to be reckoned in his own little pond, he was barely more than a joke to Gloomwrought.

He spent his second year of exile learning to let go of the hate. He found a mentor and friend, a jovial vampire who had already learned this lesson and, in so doing, profited in body and soul. "Accept this world for what it is; you'll never change anything unless you understand it." Once the epiphany had come, he killed his friend so as not to be distracted in the coming work.

He spent his third year of exile building the Device... stealing chains and other mutable materiel from the Fettered Ward for the workings, smelting links and sintering crushed decorative pieces into new shapes, forming something both complex and ephemeral- like the architecture from which it was derived. The Device has over ten thousand moving parts and most of them will barely withstand a single revolution- they are fragile at best, hazardous at worst.

The Device isn't exactly going to explode, though there will be many explosions. It's going to weave and fold lines of arcane, shadow and elemental force through itself and turn its own self-destruction into a rite of sacrifice. Four tons of steel and stone will reform into eight thousand Devices, each with fifty limbs that can scramble and stab. Each new Device will seek out a brain, or a heart, or a mind, or a spirit- whatever is appropriate to the victim's type- and extract its knowledge and essence, then instantly relay it back to the pulsing nexus of energy where the original Device used to be.

He will circle the floating nexus on his great frightening steed, performing a ritual to sort and filter What Is Important from the pseudo-random babble flashed into the center by the new Devices. The ritual will impart upon his own mind a full understanding of the thousands he kills.

When he understands enough, he will be ready to build the third stage Device, using all the matter and energy and thought in Gloomwrought, and his escape will begin the conquest of... well, anywhere he happens to choose. He hasn't decided yet. His new perspective is lofty enough, even now in the grip of the Work, that he no longer cares about the fleet which rebelled and abandoned him. There are bigger fish in a much larger Sea.

 

[Ryujin]

You could use the classic "Destroying the city because its corrupt and full of evil, and I'm making it better" plot. I also like the idea that its a decoy, or that if the players stop this, it somehow furthers another goal he has. But I'm a dick DM like that and enjoy when the players realize they've been causing all the problems they try to solve.

I know what you mean. At one point my players took to killing every NPC that joined them, for fear of the ultimate betrayal that was coming

I like the 'villain thinks he's doing greater good by doing evil' angle. An 'ends justify the means' type can make for a very interesting villain because the players can sometimes even see the point, if done right.

 

[fba827]

several of the thoughts that came to my mind have already been said (and said much better than i could say it).... but here are my thoughts anyway.

* revenge... maybe similar to what you were tinkering with as an idea, but the idea of his crew abandoning him seems very off to illicit that sort of response. so either there is a major reason for that sort of mutinty, or maybe he wasn't abandoned so much as "dismissed from the fleet / forced into early retirement" (maybe because he was too busy tinkering with things back then. or maybe it was his dismissal that led him to start tinkering with things)

* salvage -- it's not the explosion and destruction that is his goal, but rather -something- on the ship(s) that he is after and the explosion is meant to get the item(s) to sink. and he has some artifice/construct/something at the bottom of the water by the docks that is walking around waiting to collect it

* delusions of grandeur -- he has been trying to convince people that his devices and such are needed (perhaps from the perspective of a merchant, or perhaps from the perspective of a prophet -- both have strong implications and could make it play dramatically different). So he was trying to cause the very catastrophe that he was warning people against. of course, he expected it to be a bigger thing. (if from the perspective of a merchant, he would have been trying to sell his own boat/underwater device; if from the perspective of a prophet think noah's ark)

* "the lesser evil" -- he knows (or at least believes) that something worse is going to happen and this is his way of stopping it. Maybe there is a kraken coming this way or that has made a home in the reef nearby and the artificer's thought process is that the disturbance in the water would be enough to cause the creature to go elsewhere

* power through death -- he wants people dead not for revenge's sake but he wants the spirits of the dead souls to power some device that he is working on. so he has a 'soul magnet'/collector of some sort that is waiting near the docks as well as catch spirits of people that die in the event. which he plans to use to augment some other creature of his.

* i don't know eberron -that- well, but i seem to recall taht the lightning rail has an elemental spirit bound to it. is that same sort of thing POSSIBLE for a boat or a new boat prototype? Maybe the artificer doesn't like that and is trying to detsroy a speicifc boat (or set of boats) that use that sort of elemental spirit, thus freeing said creature

* show of power / ransom - "look what i can do. pay me or the next one will be bigger and not half in the water like this one was"

* accident - maybe the machine was supposed to do something else (like calm the waters so that ships could more easily come in and out. But instead it explodes (this presumes the PCs are there to clean up rather than stop it). OR someone gets a prophecy/vision that it is going to explode OR there is suspect that someone tampered with the device to make it explode instead

* decoy - he wants something on the other end of town. this is a distraction in order to get that other thing.

* a favor - some sea creature or sea cult or sea goddess or some such wants the destruction (for food or tribute or to show that the artificer is worthy of some boon)


anyway, those are just random rambles off the top of my head. not all of them are great but maybe something in there will provide a nugget that sparks a better idea.

 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Another "ends justifies the means" motivation might be that the machine creates a large planar distortion. He is attempting to dump Gloomwrought back into the prime material plane, and the explosion is either an unintended consequence or an acceptable loss (or both). He is seeking to dump it out of the shadowfell both the kill many of the undead in the city (as vampires and such may not be able to survive the sudden presense of the sun) and to weaken the power of the undead in the shadowfell. If it works, he intends to go on to other cities in the shadowfell and do it to them too.

Now, however good/insane his intentions, the powers of good want to prevent them - while dumping cities of undead into the prime material plane would likely ultimately destroying the undead, it would also launch the kingdoms into which the cities are deposited into a sudden and devestating war with the surviving undead. So, even if the forces of the living are ultimately successful (which is by no means certain), the costs are high and they are not costs the rulers of the various kingdoms are willing to pay.

You might want to have the PCs sent to the shadowfell after one such city has already appeared, trying to discover what happened and to prevent it from occuring again.

 

[Unwise]

As Ryujin said, I would go with the Oops factor. He is power hungry and more importantly a meglomaniac. He thinks that he can succeed in an experiment that Eliminster himself failed at. He has already killed a fellow mage that tried to stop him and now believes that his rivals are afraid of his power and trying to stop him ascending to his full greatness.

 

[Seraphine_Harmonium]

Going with the more naval side of things, here are some possible motives:

1) Friends or family were press-ganged into serving on a ship of the fleet, and they were later killed in action. He wants revenge on the Navy.

2) To frame someone with a grudge against the navy (freeing him to concoct or carry out an even WORSE scheme)

3) It will cripple the military capacity of someone in power who he hates

4) Gloomwrought is on the verge of war. A diplomat from the enemy is in the harbor, setting off the explosion (destroying ships of both sides) could be a very drastic means of trying to unite the two sides against a common enemy (which he will direct them to)

5) To destabilize the local regime, or to cause them to commit so many troops to fighting someone else, that his own forces would be free to capture what remains of the city.