NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Erik Mona" data-source="post: 5007479" data-attributes="member: 2174">I was disappointed in the justification given in Rary the Traitor. The idea that the wizard in the Circle of Eight with the highest intelligence score would study the lives of the Great Kingdom and Iuz, who were basically failures, and decide to emulate that struck me as out of the blue and uncharacteristically stupid.I actually like the stuff about Rary and the scorpion crown, but that comes later, after the betrayal. My own sense is that Rary, being a genius mastermind, was able to suss out some of the true schemes of Mordenkainen and decided that they were not exactly charitable. When first thinking about this seriously years ago, my mind lingered on an old Gary Gygax "From the Sorceror's Scroll" column from the double digit era of Dragon, in which he listed off the various armies of key Greayhawk campaign characters like Erac's Cousin and Tenser. Rary wasn't mentioned in the article, but Modenkainen was, and an off-handed reference suggested that he had just returned to the Flanaess after giving succor to an evil ally in the west. Given that Rary was described as a native of Baklunish Ket, I figured that his network of informants and regional interest might bring Mordenkainen's nefarious activities to light, which was probably the first chip in the rock of Rary's loyalty.I certainly can understand why people would blanche at the "evil twin" Robilar sub-plot, but that was largely done as a nod to Robert J. Kuntz's views on his own character, and it allowed a chance to riff on the mutl-dimensional nature of Oerth as posited by Gary Gygax, the "evil twin" theme of the mirror of opposition, and the madcap nature of Castle Greyhawk. Plus, I got to call the evil twin Bilarro, which appealed to my impish sensibilities. --Erik</blockquote>

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