Female Eladrin Vekeshi Mystic - why in the RHC?

[Siberys]

One of my players has decided she wants to play a female Eladrin Vekeshi Mystic. Fine by me; Seems like it'll have plenty of RPing potential. We're having trouble figuring why she'd be loyal to Risur, though.

I suggested having been the trophy of a Danoran living in The Yerasol Archipelago during the war and freed by the Risuri, but she wasn't too thrilled with that idea. Plus it's pretty close to Gale's backstory.

I mentioned offhand something about 'maybe a prophecy from an archfey in the unseen court', though I don't really wanna deal with a prophecy as such. She likes that idea; I'm thinking she could have been commanded to join the RHC, for whatever alien reasoning the fey had, and that could have been one of the tributes demanded by the fey recently.

Whatever the case, I'm going to show her the thread before the first session, where things like this will be finalized in a sort of QA ssession.

Any suggestions or ideas?

 

[RangerWickett]

I kinda like the "Your tribute to the Unseen Court this year will be accepting this woman as a member of your royal constabulary. And we also demand three fully-grown cherry trees, to be delivered in wagons with no metal parts."

If not that, there's always the "I've lived here my whole life" background, where she's a descendant of one of the relatively few eladrin who were living in Risur and survived the Great Malice. She might be loyal to Risur, but that doesn't mean she can't also have loyalties to a vendetta cult. Think of all the crazy things kids do in college; getting branded with the memory of a dead god's fire ranks pretty high up there, but it's not unthinkable.

She could even be from Elfaivar, and just need to come up with a reason she feels a strong loyalty to Risur. Perhaps her enclave was saved from Crisillyiri zealots by some Risuri adventurers.

Or maybe she's a double agent, given exceedingly powerful misdirection magic to let her pass the loyalty tests.

 

[Colmarr]

Or maybe she sees the RHC as a way to help the eladrin survive. After all, if anyone is going to stumble upon schemes that endanger the fey and the eladrin, it's the RHC.

I see Vekeshi mysticism as the theological opposite of eschatology. The latter assumes that everything will end one day and the only important question is how. The former is about staving off that end whatever it takes. Being a member of Risur's constabulary puts the PC among powerful allies, which is good for her and for the eladrin race as a whole.

Maybe duchess Ethelyn put in a good word for her ...

 

[selkirk89]

I am having a similar issue in my game, one of my players is a female eladrin vekeshi mystic from Elfaivar. She liked the idea of being a double agent, so we decided that her memories concerning the vekeshi mystics and her true allegiance have been magically locked away in an artefact, and that she was then placed in Risur and prompted to join the RHC as a sleeper agent. That produced the problem of her 'memoryless' character not having any real motivation to join the RHC as such, we'll have to work on that a bit.

We are two sessions in now and the party has just saved the ship. I've decided that in the week that follows, she'll receive the artefact where her memories are locked away, and that she'll be able to gain access to them bit by bit from now on.