D&D 5E How does an oath of the ancients paladin fall? NPC / story-building question

In adapting Night Below, I'm tying lots of "throw away" places/NPCs/details to the PCs. One of these is a ruined woodland keep run by generic bandits and death cultists. Because you can never have too many death cultists, right?

Instead, I'm tying this keep to the paladin PC (soon to be Oath of the Ancients) as his order's former keep. Part of his gaining the Oath of the Ancients sub-class will be facing the villains now occupying the keep. And if the PCs clear it out, it could potentially become their stronghold!

What I'd like to have is a fallen paladin of his order - a fallen green/horned knight - who is leading the ruffians.

An important detail from the Night Below storyline is that the ruffians are capturing slaves to be sent to the Underdark, ultimately to the aboleths for a grand sacrificial ritual, but using intermediaries like alienists, cultists, derro, ixitxachitl, kuo-toa, merrow (kopru), mind flayers (and their grimlock, ogre, quaggoth, and troglodyte thralls), orcs, skum, and mutant trolls to transport the slaves to the depths of the Underdark.

So that leads to my question... just how does a green/horned knight fall into the service of the aboleths? Any and all ideas welcome!

Btw, the easy answer is "aboleth enslavement", but if that's what you want to reply with, maybe spice it up a bit? How did the paladin encounter the aboleth that enslaved him/her, for example?

One of the tenets of the Oath of the Ancients is to be merciful. Perhaps this fallen green knight made the mistake of offering mercy to the aboleth. Perhaps it convinced him that it would change its ways if only he would let it live. And then it enslaved him.

Or perhaps he just gave in to despair for some reason.

Any sort of corruption could work. Possibly an evil sort of dryad seduced him. Or, if the bandit thing isn't absolutely needed, you could have him simply in league with a regular neutral dryad who's home is where the keep was built, sort of hell-bent on doing everything in his power to ensure nature "reclaims her beauty" in the region (of course he's really just lost sight of right and wrong). Something like that seems pretty cool. Bring in a lot of the old germanic fey stories for inspiration, where such creatures were more wicked and duplicitous rather than cute and pixie-like.

pukunui said:

One of the tenets of the Oath of the Ancients is to be merciful. Perhaps this fallen green knight made the mistake of offering mercy to the aboleth. Perhaps it convinced him that it would change its ways if only he would let it live. And then it enslaved him.

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You reminded me that it's important there is the possibility of some kind of mercy or redemption the paladin PC can grant, since Mercy is one of the tenets of the Oath of the Ancients.

So the fallen paladin doesn't have to be unremittingly evil.

Or perhaps he just gave in to despair for some reason.

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Hmm. Maybe a number of other paladins/rangers in his order were dominated/enslaved by a traitor hidden in their ranks? And in exchange for their release he agreed to be complicit with the evil? That's a pretty bleak position to be put in. So originally he was working from within the villainous slave-taking structure to undermine it, but he's been caught up in the overwhelming power/efficiency of it and so has lost any real hope of changing things...

Not sure if that's evocative enough, but it could be a start.

The cultists kidnapped the Paladin's son, abused him, maimed him, and drove him mad. When the Paladin rescued the boy, he wasn't able to cure him - the most merciful thing he could offer was a clean death.

Then the cultists took the Paladin's wife...

This went on for a while, with the cultists gradually reducing the harm they inflicted. The Paladin, as he sank into madness and despair, gradually gave a 'merciful' death for less and less cause, until he fell into complete despair and concluded that life is pain and that, ultimately, death is the ultimate mercy.

Quickleaf said:

So that leads to my question... just how does a green/horned knight fall into the service of the aboleths? Any and all ideas welcome!

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Well, perhaps he isn't enslaved by the aboleths...a moral dilemma that in hindsight was a lose-lose proposition. The classic drop the rock onto the people on the tracks (killing them) but preventing the train from slamming into the more people further down killing more. The only way out is to reject the boundaries of the dilemma and do something else. He didn't.

Going wit Mercy:

The Aboleths sent their enslaved into the world to abduct people. The Knight fought his way to the Aboleth lair and discovered that if he killed the Aboleth a contingency spell would dispel the magic of a wall of force "bubble" where the enslaved lived, and thus would kill all the enslaved. Showing mercy to the Aboleths ensured the enslaved would live.

The Aboleths let the enslaved free in return for their own freedom. However, returning to the keep, the knight discovered the place enslaved by the Aboleths, and these minions sent out to the world to wreak havoc. The people (and other heroes) rose up against them, killing them, and finally besieging the surviving knight in the keep and the freed (1st group) enslaved. In his hubris, he refused the "justice" of the besiegers not trusting a fair trial, and fought them, many of them no more than peasants with pitchforks. this is how he fell.

He and his fellows followed the path of mercy, believing that repentance would inspire the criminals and ne'er do wells that crossed their paths. Including some derro that they encountered. But the derro are crazed, and have no concept of repentance.
In letting them go, all the order did was bring the derro and their drow masters back to the place, where they murdered, mutilated and kidnapped all the inhabitants.
He saw his fellows die, but they fought well and eventually captured the drow leader who appealed for mercy. The Knights fellows, sore at heart, we're going to deny this to him but the knight interceded, saying mercy was the quality that showed the difference between good and evil, and on so doing convinced his fellows to not kill the drow.
The drow then plunged the keep into magical darkness and the derro squadron descended and hacked them all to pieces apart from the knight who was captured and taken to the underdark.
As a vicious mockery of his previous status as a justice, they made him preside over plea after plea, where they showed him that his mercy only resulted in worse happenings, more barbarity. Eventually he broke and sentenced every accused to death. This he did for a year and a day at which point, throughly distraught and lost to he tenets of his old order, they sent him topside to act as an agent for their slavery. They needed daylight eyes and his, dried of tears after so much forlorn despair, were perfect.

Some good ideas here! Thanks
[MENTION=22424]delericho[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6788652]G. Barrelhouse Esq.[/MENTION] while I think your ideas of "tortured until he broke" are solid, it doesn't quite work for what I'm looking for, since "death is the greatest mercy" seems a nihilistic and unredeemable stance. Also it doesn't give me a credible tie-in for "why deliver slaves to the aboleths/Underdark?" But I've got your ideas on my mental back burner, since the idea of the aboleths being ultimately behind his corruption is appealing, thematically showing the power of the Old Deep Ones' mental dominion...which nicely foreshadows elements in Night Below.

discosoc said:

Any sort of corruption could work. Possibly an evil sort of dryad seduced him. Or, if the bandit thing isn't absolutely needed, you could have him simply in league with a regular neutral dryad who's home is where the keep was built, sort of hell-bent on doing everything in his power to ensure nature "reclaims her beauty" in the region (of course he's really just lost sight of right and wrong). Something like that seems pretty cool. Bring in a lot of the old germanic fey stories for inspiration, where such creatures were more wicked and duplicitous rather than cute and pixie-like.

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I really like taking him the "creepy, amoral fey" direction thematically. It actually reminds me of an old Marvel graphic novel called The Raven Banner: A Tale of Asgard which had a villain who sold his honor to Nordic fey trolls and so he started to become trollish himself.

I was more focused on the Mercy tenet of the Oath of the Ancients, but there's another tenet that would be interesting to play off of and could feed into the "dark fey" vibe...

"Where Life flourishes, stand against the forces that would render it barren."

Maybe there's a sacred tree that is dying and that's what prompts him to start dealing with creatures of the Underdark seeking a cure at the roots? Maybe investigating the sickness of the tree/dryad is what leads him to confront an aboleth?

Maybe he was confronted by the classic adventurer dilemma: a pregnant mother monster, or a nest of unhatched/young monsters? And his decision to spare them put the paladin increasingly at odds with local villagers or other paladins?

Just brainstorming. I have a feeling once I hit something that sticks, I'll know it.

jrowland said:

Well, perhaps he isn't enslaved by the aboleths...a moral dilemma that in hindsight was a lose-lose proposition. The classic drop the rock onto the people on the tracks (killing them) but preventing the train from slamming into the more people further down killing more. The only way out is to reject the boundaries of the dilemma and do something else. He didn't.

Going wit Mercy:

The Aboleths sent their enslaved into the world to abduct people. The Knight fought his way to the Aboleth lair and discovered that if he killed the Aboleth a contingency spell would dispel the magic of a wall of force "bubble" where the enslaved lived, and thus would kill all the enslaved. Showing mercy to the Aboleths ensured the enslaved would live.

The Aboleths let the enslaved free in return for their own freedom. However, returning to the keep, the knight discovered the place enslaved by the Aboleths, and these minions sent out to the world to wreak havoc. The people (and other heroes) rose up against them, killing them, and finally besieging the surviving knight in the keep and the freed (1st group) enslaved. In his hubris, he refused the "justice" of the besiegers not trusting a fair trial, and fought them, many of them no more than peasants with pitchforks. this is how he fell.

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Oh man, I love this!

It does leave me with the dilemma of why he would then deliver people into slavery to the aboleths...if anything he would be fighting against the aboleth slave masters...

Hmm, maybe there was something in particular that the villagers did that he found particularly abhorrent? Maybe they recognized (or just feared) that the people the paladin liberated from the aboleth were "changed". Even though it wasn't complete, they had begun to assume slight characteristics of skum (or some other mind/body warped servitors of the aboleth). Maybe there was an innocence to the Returned Ones / Changelings (due to mind-numbing aboleth magic) that he cherished and protected. When villagers started burning the Returned Ones / Changelings at the stake, he was outraged.

So maybe due to his code of honor he wants to avoid killing the villagers, and instead he condemns them to slavery to the aboleth. It's poetic justice. They get to experience what the Returned Ones / Changelings endured so they will have empathy for them (when they're hypothetically freed).

The "bandits" then include a large number of Returned Ones / Changelings who he is "sheltering." Though the truth could be they are manipulating him...or maybe some of them realize they're "changed" and wish to die...others wish to find a way back to what they once were (by killing their surviving families...or something equally twisted).

Tying this in with the "dark fey" theme, maybe the fallen paladin calls on ancient pacts with amoral fey who were tamed by his Paladin Order, knowing that he'll need extra strength if he intends to holds the ruined keep against organized militias or his former scattered brethren. Things like satyrs, bestial CN centaurs, "briar witch" dryads, possibly a shadow fey take on the death dog.

As years have passed, maybe his initial outrage has tempered and he is starting to have misgivings about sending folks to be enslaved...