D&D 5E Help Me Mess with the Warlock

[Cognomen's Cassowary]

I've got a player playing as a warlock of the undying light, from the underdark UA. He's playing the character as a bit naive and unaware of the source of his powers. When I said that I find the fluff for the sub-class pretty pathetic (They made a pact with an entire plane? Uh, wut?), he said that he was fine with me coming up with a more nuanced explanation for his character's powers and origin as a tiefling born to human parents, as a jumping-off point for role-playing and adventures.

This week, I'm planning to split up the party for some small quests around town, and I think it's the right time to get him started on his warlock chain. I have a rough idea of his patron being a sort of cross between Lucifer and Prometheus, i.e., delivering the powers of light to the PC in order to slowly steer him toward the patron's devious ends.

My question for all of you is, what are some potential end goals for the patron, and what are the (progressively worse) requests he might make of the PC to get him to help achieve those goals?

 

[Dualazi]

I agree, the Undying Light patron is incredibly uninspired. I'd avoid the Lucifer angle, as that's definitely stepping into the territory of the other warlock paths. I would flavor it as a Star-pact warlock from 4th edition, a central theme of which was the harnessing of cold, alien light from distant unknowable stars, and the terrible portents and information that it held. To this end, anything to do with the eldritch, abominations, or otherwise frankly alien life forms would do wonderfully. My initial two candidates would be either an Elder Brain of the mind-flayers, or a powerful Aboleth. Both of these are powerful enough to be foolish to challenge, and are also conveniently found in the Underdark.

As for quests, the more common goals of such beings are either the spread of their influence, or the release/entry of dangerous and unnatural beings into the world. You can frame the former as defending adherents of a new faith against persecution (later learning that the fear of these new prophets was well founded), or fighting against unjust containment for the latter.

 

[mellored]

I agree with the aliens/far realm. Which means slightly odd quests that slowly get more insane.

Which is when you pull out the big random tables until you get him feeding cats to a rat and offering them as a gift to the fifth kobolds servant of a white dragon.

 

[The Grassy Gnoll]

Not familiar with Undying Light fluff but if it's meh anyway, and the character is underdark-born, couldn't the patron be some sort of myconid being, letting the PC exhibit a growing collection of toadstools growing upon their person? In terms of goals for such a being, spore distribution would be key so perhaps infecting others via ingestion? Also darkness, as if an underdark race are to thrive above ground, ultimately there needs to be a terrible darkness befall the overlanders, or the underdark needs to grow upwards and swallow the overland. Just a thought.

 

[Fanaelialae]

What about a renegade angel (as opposed to a fallen angel like Lucifer)? Perhaps the patron believes that the powers of good aren't doing enough to combat evil, and therefore he has chosen to begin his own holy crusade. The PC could be the angel's Chosen (or perhaps merely one of several Chosen). The PC's fiendish appearance might be due to the angel's meddling, to make him into a Trojan Horse of sorts. In this scenario, the patron would send the PC on missions to combat evil, but the fallout from these missions could end up doing as much harm as good. For example, he might send the PC to kill a vampire without warning him that the vampire has gathered innocent hostages for just such a contingency. As far as the Patron is concerned, those hostages are merely casualties of war.