Making Friends With Beholders, and Other Strangeness!

[SHARK]

Greetings!

Over the weekend, we played in one of the campaigns that we have going.

The party moved into this strange forest, and fought a dozen huge Manticores. The party then crawled through the thick forest, and scaled some high ridges, and reached a ruined city. Once they entered the ruined city, they made their way into a huge domed building, that was enshrouded in ivy and creepers. The vast domes that overlooked the gallery floor below were inscribed with richly inlaid mosaics, and the pillars throughout the vast chamber were finely worked and engraved. The marble flooring was scattered with ivy and growth, the detritus of dead skeletons and armor and weaponry of the defeated plain to see.

Then, at the far end of the hall, a Huge Beholder came into view, and was obviously caughing, and bleeding from wounds. The Beholder was being savaged by a large group of Drow Elves, who were dousing the Beholder in strange powder that burned his eyes, and stabbing him with halberds. The Drow elves began peppering the Beholder with arrows and spells, even as the Beholder killed three of them in the fighting.

The party was ready to attack and kill the Beholder. My wife looked at everyone, and said that we should help the Beholder. maybe we could negotiate with it, and become friends with it. The other party members were like, "what?" but they relented when they saw the Drow Elves. They decided that the Drow Elves were worse than the Beholder, so they attacked the Drow.

The slaughter was complete, and the party and the Beholder remained. My wife--who plays a Druid, healed the Beholder, and poured water in its mouth from her magic waterskin, to help him drink and to breath ok. The group then proceeded to talk with the Beholder, and discovered that the Beholder lives here with a few Minotaur servants. The Beholder helped build a powerful citadel in an evil city that they are trying to find, and he was betrayed by a younger Beholder, who was more in sync with the evil masters with his politics and religious theology. The older Beholder was told that he could retire to the wilderness, as an act of mercy on the younger Beholder's part, or he could remain and be eaten.

The old Beholder chose to retire into the dangerous wilderness, and has lived here now for some time, gardening, and proceeding with his own library and magical research.

The party helped the Beholder into the jacuzzi that he has in his audience room, and they sat down to have dinner together, sharing stories. The old Beholder has Pneumonia, and was quite ill until my wife healed him. The old Beholder was grateful, and friendly to the party. They have been having a good time eating and talking about history, and magical research.

Have you had these kinds of things happen before? Does your party spend effort to talk a lot and make friends with bizarre creatures, even ones that are infamous for being evil tyrants? How has it gone? Have you noticed where some players want to make friends with strange creatures, while others want to take no chances, and kill them quickly?

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

 

[Desdichado]

I once was in a game where the party made friends with a group of gnolls. I can't remember now why, but we were in their village. There was a little gnoll kid who rolled a ball to one of the PCs, who rolled it back. They played for a little while.

If I remember correctly, some of the gnolls then led the PCs to something we were looking for, then we came back to the village. Turns out drow had attacked while we were gone and taken them as slaves (those they hadn't killed, anyway.) The guy who played ball with the gnoll kid found the ball amongst the smoldering wreckage of the village and swore revenge. For the next session or two, we hunted down the drow like ravening wolves.

When we thought about it later, we realized that it was a little bit weird...

 

[mmadsen]

The party was ready to attack and kill the Beholder. My wife looked at everyone, and said that we should help the Beholder. maybe we could negotiate with it, and become friends with it.

This doesn't surprise me -- except for one thing. Beholders aren't cute. That breaks all the rules. Everyone knows you help cute species and exterminate ugly ones.

 

[King_Stannis]

my players are more in the "hack first, ask questions later" mold. i can't think of when they've ever befriended a fiend.....well, come to think of it, they called on the services of a duke of hell to get out of Rappan Athuk. does that count?

 

[justinsluder]

I can see it now.

The next time the PC's show up to talk with their friend, they hear the Mr. Rogers theme song.

 

[Rackhir]

Well a lot of parties that have been through the Sunless Citadel seem to have adopted Meepo the Kobold.

The problem with making friends with things like Beholders is that they are evil. This usually means they are tretcherous, arrogant and driven to dominate "lesser species". If such things aren't set in stone in your campaign, then making friends is a valid approach. Witness the famous "Lady Despina's Virtue" thread

http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=762

More typically, this is not the case which means that the beholder could easily turn on the party despite what ever they may have done for it, much as a man might eat a favorite animal despite all it has done for him. It might regard them as useful fools, or tools that it can exploit. More than one person in history has been betrayed by a "friend" despite all they have done for that person.

It's an interesting topic, but also one that could easily be over used and could raise a number of complications.

Somebody once pointed out for example that Spike is extremely problematic for Buffy the Vampire Slayer. If he can be "redeemed" without having a soul (the reason Angel is good and not evil like most vampires) then Buffy is essentially a murderer and the vampires should simply be locked up like any other criminals.

Likewise it would raise a similar level of complications if all "evil" creatures were "redeemable", then PCs as they typically operate are much more akin to marauding barbarian hordes, than shining forces of goodness.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Hm...

I can see an exception to the rule, but I would have had the beholder call the PC's foolish, weak-hearted bastards, run away, and then come back and pester them another time when he had reinfocements for intruding on his private estate.

But then, I like to think that the circumstances for a beholder to *not* do this would be extreme, indeed.

Gratitude? Thanks? An eye tyrant knows not these things. They are for the weakhearted, those who feel that one shouldn't take what they can and to hell with the rest.

Plus, these humanoids are so *disgusting* what with their limbs everyplace and their pulpy flesh......eeeew...

Exceptions to the rule can be cool, though. I would've had a PC adopt playing it, give it classes, etc. It'd be fun.

So, I don't usually give PC's much of a chance to make friends...there's a *reason* people kill these things on sight. That said, I do occasionally introdcue exceptions, but they have to be rare in the extreme (one non-evil Mind Flayer in my entire campaign is quite enough, thankyouverymuch! )

But I am adopting a class from the Druid, one of whose powers would be to use Animal Friendship to have companions of any creature type. Hehehehe.

 

[the Jester]

Hello there SHARK! Always a pleasure to see your posts...

For a while not too long ago the party in the game I run worked for the evil forces in Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil. As part of that they had to carry big rocks for a beholder doing some excavation. That was pretty funny... They also briefly traveled with an ogre, made friends with a boggle, and stayed with a bugbear. Previous groups I've run or played in have befriended everything from vampires to giants to dragons to, yes, a beholder.

Baldemar the blind beholder worked for Juiblex as part of the slime-mold mafia. He was a really fun npc to have with the party; we were a bunch of evil criminal types ourselves (such as a doppleganger, a crabman, a zombie vegepygmie, a faerie dragon, an undead, an evil nymph, etc.) That was a fun campaign; the dm had a really bizarre sense of humor and a fiendishly creative streak (he's since moved to NYC). He drove our wagon.

 

[MeepoTheMighty]

Have you had these kinds of things happen before? Does your party spend effort to talk a lot and make friends with bizarre creatures, even ones that are infamous for being evil tyrants? How has it gone? Have you noticed where some players want to make friends with strange creatures, while others want to take no chances, and kill them quickly?

Lemme get this straight....

It had stats, and they didn't kill it??

Wow. Your party is a lot more mature than many.

My party adopted Meepo for a while (until he got killed) and they had a hobgoblin swear a blood pledge to them after rescuing him from his petrified state.

In another group, we ended up staying in an army's camp for a while, and the page we had assigned to us was a 9 year old boy named Tad. Each of us took turns trying to teach him kewl things like how to cast spells or kill a man with his bare hands, but he just seemed interested in playing marbles. Damn kid.

Oh, and in an earlier group, a party necromancer used the reanimated body of a hippogriff as a mount. Not sure if that counts or not

 

[Cedric]

When my last party was approached at night by Goblins...my character who spoke Goblin heard them.

I ventured to the edge of the fire, they were blustering and brassen, making demands, I acted like I was respectful of them, but could see they just wanted food.

So I had the rest of my party give them food, along with giving them half of my own supply.

When that whole party later died...at least Goblins had nothing to do with our demise.

Cedric