Samnell
Explorer
Players of Tethyr_Game who might be reading this are to cease. You know how terrible and swift my anger is.
[sblock]So I need a divine or semi-divine patron for a conniving cleric. The situation:
I'm running Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil as a PBEM, set in FR. The party got to be friends with Rerrid Hammersong, the handy dwarven cleric in Rastor. I've put Rastor in Tethyr, on the Starspur Penninsula. Over the course of the game, they inspired him to call together the local dwarves to help retake the Stalagos from the Elder Elemental Eye.
The area used to be home to a component of one of the great dwarven kingdoms of the long past and once the party really started making progress, Rerrid went from being the beaten-down survivor of the fall of the last hold of his people to getting inspired to call in all his far-flung kinfolk to help out. Moradin liked that and shaved a century or so off his age and turned him into a sort of dwarfy Moses figure. His kinfolk and other sympathetic dwarves have been filtering in for some time and establishing themselves in the party's wake.
The party loves Rerrid pretty well and he's given them a lot of help. The temple cultists really hate him and have tried to assassinate him twice.
So that's all too easy. There has to be some complication, and there is!
Rerrid is descended from commoner dwarf stock, but it turns out that there actually is a possible heir to the old dwarven kingdom, who maintains that it never falled in the first place and thus Rerrid is a dirty usurper. The guy has a pedigree and his ancestors have continuously held an area off a ways to the east. The only issue is that the claimant is descended through in-laws. He's not a direct lineal descendant of the old royal house. He also has a lot of armed supporters.
Rerrid's in a bind because he's supposed to respect dwarven law and tradition. He was honestly unaware that the claimant existed, but he's also on a mission from Moradin to retake the Stalagos. So he either breaks a commandment and becomes a real usurper or or he breaks a commandment and abandons his quest.
The claimant (Arduke Obar), is pretty much a jerk. He wants what's his, and he's cantankerous like a old, beaten down dwarfking can be. Rerrid's presence is a huge affront, made all the worse by a rather public sign from Moradin that he does indeed want the Stalagos retaken by the dwarves. So now Obar sees it as his birthright and his religious duty to be in charge.
The two camps of dwarves are mutually hostile and Obar has threatened Rerrid's and the party's lives more than once. Just recently, one of his lieutenants was killed. Obar's priest spoke with the body and found out that Rerrid's right-hand dwarf did the deed, excepting the small fact that he has an alibi. He hasn't left the mountain in days at the time of the murder, other dwarves have seen him, and he passed magical lie detection with flying colors.
They marched him down to town and had Rerrid and Obar's priest detect lies on him while he told his story. Rerrid said he passed, but Obar's priest declared him a liar. They both cast the same spell. The party knows that Obar's priest is a liar, but they don't have any way to prove it that Obar would accept. The paladin checked under his skirt and Obar's priest detects as evil. Obar does not. He's just an aggrieved old dwarf who has a legitimate beef which is being deliberately fed and stoked by his priest, who is only pretending ot follow Moradin.
Initially, I was going to make the guy a priest of Abbathor but since I have discovered that in FR Abbathor has rules against taking stuff from other dwarves. This scheme would run afoul of that and I like that part of the deity's personality, so I don't want to just overlook it. This leaves my conniving, evil-radiating pretend-Moradin, dwarf murdering priest without a patron. I'd prefer a divinity (or arch-fiend or something like that) that has some kind of genuine preference for this sort of affair and an interest in the dwarven reconquest or what may come of it, not just some guy that's evil and sees this as a chance to do evil.
Any ideas?[/sblock]
[sblock]So I need a divine or semi-divine patron for a conniving cleric. The situation:
I'm running Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil as a PBEM, set in FR. The party got to be friends with Rerrid Hammersong, the handy dwarven cleric in Rastor. I've put Rastor in Tethyr, on the Starspur Penninsula. Over the course of the game, they inspired him to call together the local dwarves to help retake the Stalagos from the Elder Elemental Eye.
The area used to be home to a component of one of the great dwarven kingdoms of the long past and once the party really started making progress, Rerrid went from being the beaten-down survivor of the fall of the last hold of his people to getting inspired to call in all his far-flung kinfolk to help out. Moradin liked that and shaved a century or so off his age and turned him into a sort of dwarfy Moses figure. His kinfolk and other sympathetic dwarves have been filtering in for some time and establishing themselves in the party's wake.
The party loves Rerrid pretty well and he's given them a lot of help. The temple cultists really hate him and have tried to assassinate him twice.
So that's all too easy. There has to be some complication, and there is!
Rerrid is descended from commoner dwarf stock, but it turns out that there actually is a possible heir to the old dwarven kingdom, who maintains that it never falled in the first place and thus Rerrid is a dirty usurper. The guy has a pedigree and his ancestors have continuously held an area off a ways to the east. The only issue is that the claimant is descended through in-laws. He's not a direct lineal descendant of the old royal house. He also has a lot of armed supporters.Rerrid's in a bind because he's supposed to respect dwarven law and tradition. He was honestly unaware that the claimant existed, but he's also on a mission from Moradin to retake the Stalagos. So he either breaks a commandment and becomes a real usurper or or he breaks a commandment and abandons his quest.
The claimant (Arduke Obar), is pretty much a jerk. He wants what's his, and he's cantankerous like a old, beaten down dwarfking can be. Rerrid's presence is a huge affront, made all the worse by a rather public sign from Moradin that he does indeed want the Stalagos retaken by the dwarves. So now Obar sees it as his birthright and his religious duty to be in charge.
The two camps of dwarves are mutually hostile and Obar has threatened Rerrid's and the party's lives more than once. Just recently, one of his lieutenants was killed. Obar's priest spoke with the body and found out that Rerrid's right-hand dwarf did the deed, excepting the small fact that he has an alibi. He hasn't left the mountain in days at the time of the murder, other dwarves have seen him, and he passed magical lie detection with flying colors.
They marched him down to town and had Rerrid and Obar's priest detect lies on him while he told his story. Rerrid said he passed, but Obar's priest declared him a liar. They both cast the same spell. The party knows that Obar's priest is a liar, but they don't have any way to prove it that Obar would accept. The paladin checked under his skirt and Obar's priest detects as evil. Obar does not. He's just an aggrieved old dwarf who has a legitimate beef which is being deliberately fed and stoked by his priest, who is only pretending ot follow Moradin.
Initially, I was going to make the guy a priest of Abbathor but since I have discovered that in FR Abbathor has rules against taking stuff from other dwarves. This scheme would run afoul of that and I like that part of the deity's personality, so I don't want to just overlook it. This leaves my conniving, evil-radiating pretend-Moradin, dwarf murdering priest without a patron. I'd prefer a divinity (or arch-fiend or something like that) that has some kind of genuine preference for this sort of affair and an interest in the dwarven reconquest or what may come of it, not just some guy that's evil and sees this as a chance to do evil.
Any ideas?[/sblock]
