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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Whizbang Dustyboots" data-source="post: 6686368" data-attributes="member: 11760">Sorry, it was late when I posted. The setting they're in is as close to baseline D&D world as possible in this aspect. Technically, it's a pseudo-medieval empire with Roman overtones sliding into a dark age after flirting with steampunk "modernity." (It's the Tarsisian Empire from Monte Cook's "Ptolus.") The paladin serves Lothian (and has even served as a town priest in the past), the setting analogue for medieval Catholicism. Him wrestling with his faith and his relationship to the church -- the local bishop frowned on him palling around with a cleric of Garl Glittergold who explicitly sought to break the stranglehold the Church of Lothian had on cultural life in their part of the empire -- is a big element of his character. He has been getting more "badass" as the campaign has progressed in level and they've faced successively bigger threats. (This is their first adventure after saving the barony from a kobold army that summoned an Aspect of Tiamat as their doomsday weapon, for instance.)Yeah, I'm not a fan of "gotcha" moments of that nature, either. And I'm not sure that I agree that the deal is voided if her brothers overpowered her -- and there's dead ogres all over, which the player characters have seen, which suggests she was telling them the truth -- and tied her up. But in any case, my focus is on a bound and helpless captive getting her head chopped off in lieu of anything else. I'm not sure untying her for a "fair fight" makes a lot of sense, either (and she had dormant skeletons and zombies laying under the snow that she hadn't called into action when she was executed, so it wouldn't have been as fair of a fight as it would have seemed if she had been untied anyway).The party was returning a year after the deal was made, just when they were due to show up. They expected the village of Bootblack to be standing, if likely heavily armed and partially vacated -- and in fact, the women, children and elderly were evacuated before the ogres lost their patience and attacked -- but not to see it mostly smashed to pieces and many of the surviving militia members dead or carried off (most of whom have been eaten along the way by low-impulse-control ogres).Yes to all of that. She's one of those villains that I favor who uses the actual truth as a weapon and told them flat-out this was the case.Hmm. They acted out of expediency by making the deal -- the sword's pretty powerful and they might have needed it against the kobold army, but ironically, since it is the creation of a hag coven, they've been scared to use it. But obviously, paladin-hood doesn't view that as a good reason to make such a leap.Yeah, that's my hang-up. I mean, for sure, she's a CE/NE half-ogre wizardess explicitly intent on waiting for the return of her hag grandmothers at some point in the coming decades to bring about some imagined humanoid invasion of the region and to drive out (or more likely wipe out) the human and dwarf presence in the region. But at the moment, she was a smart-mouth tied to a stake.Hmmm.</blockquote>

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