Post your best PC secrets!

[Jürgen Hubert]

Most campaigns and adventures assume that the PC are cooperating with each other to some degree, or at least don't try to actively stab each other into the back.

However, sometimes the PCs do have secrets from each other - and the most effective of those are unknown to even the other players (with the exception of the GM, of course).

So, what kinds of PC secrets were there in your campaigns? How did they influence the storylines? And how did the other PCs - and the players react when those secrets came out?

 

[Hand of Evil]

One of the PC was a member of a cult of the old ones looking for the book of the dead, at the beginning of the campaign he was given a set of clues; some runes, a picture, a name of a place (well of souls), during the game every now and then they would pop up and he would have to figure out how to lead the party to the next clue without giving away what he was after.

 

[Tinner]

My gnome bard PC has been secretly screwing the party over on treasure for 18 levels now.
Our DM is running a campaign where "magic shops" are available, and I can freely sell/swap/trade our loot for items we actually want.
The party he allowed the bard to become the "face" for the group and do all the haggling.
The DM just has me make a few rolls and then lets me scour the books for what I want.
As long as I make sure to get each other PC something they really want, they really don't bother to check my math and see what I have left over.
This allows me to pocket a few small, but pricey gems every time we do this.

The DM knows I'm being crooked IC, but none of the other players have caught on yet.

 

[der_kluge]

The character from my story hour is really a girl, who fled from an arranged marriage from her noble family, and operates under the assumed name "Thomas".

None of the players in the game caught on, but the dwarven cleric figured out eventually, and so that player found out by virtue of that. I eventually had to let the rest know.

 

[JoelF]

I once played a ranger who traumatically lost his wife to a (possibly magical) wolf, and in the process was gravely wounded. Unable to deal with the loss, his shattered mind came up with the belief that he had been infected with lycanthropy by the wolf, and killed his wife himself as a werewolf. The entire campaign he was secretly searching for a 'cure' to his condition, but remove curse never seemed to do the trick, since he had an insanity, not a magical curse.

Every full moon, he'd ditch the party at night, strip off his equipment, and stalk the nearest humanoids and kill them bare handed, then come to his senses the next day, clean up, get his equipment, silently bemoan his affliction, and rejoin the group. Between his dissaperances and the monthly stories of peasants horribly murdered, the group eventually figured out that he was a werewolf. Boy were they surprized when they finally confronted him on the night of a full moon and he didn't transform, simply started frothing at the mouth and leap at one of them using his hands and teeth.

He also always refused silver items and coins in treasure, and displayed a pyschosomatic rash/burning sensation whenever silver touched him.

Eventually, after 11th level, he finally got cured with a heal spell, since that could cure insanity, but up until then, he was the driving force of the party to accept new quests from various churches and wizards in order to earn a cure.

 

[wedgeski]

Eventually, after 11th level, he finally got cured with a heal spell, since that could cure insanity, but up until then, he was the driving force of the party to accept new quests from various churches and wizards in order to earn a cure.

Great one!

In a recent PBEM I was playing in, my character, a cleric, was killed off in a climactic confrontation with a BBEG, to be replaced by my second PC, a bard, who travelled with the party for several adventures (and two years of real time). Secretly I had arranged for my cleric to return to the game, and so for months our DM kept dropping hints, visions, corner-of-the-eye stuff about a black-robed figure stalking the party. This was really my half-corporeal character (still an NPC at this point) 'rebounding' back onto the Prime from the plane that his soul had departed to, however he bore an uncanny (and coincidental) resemblance to a previous BBEG who the party thought had been killed. Much paranoia and tension ensued.

In this campaign dragons were unique creatures (one of each colour), and it was during a fantastic pitched battle in a cursed forest where the Green was attempting to punch through into the Prime that my cleric finally returned fully to the party's reality. Several turns of confusion followed as they thought they were now facing a giant immortal serpent AND the reincarnated form of their old enemy... before the deception was revealed and my cleric rejoined his friends to... well, he didn't save the day, cos the dragon got through in the end, but he prevented the otherwise inevitable TPK.

Also, in this game our DM gave each major turn/event a 'Chapter Title', and to further rub it in, he had named the previous six turns so that the first letter of each title spelled out my character's name, T-R-A-P-I-S. That was a gamble on his part but no-one spotted it before the big payoff, so that was okay.

Good times.

 

[Ambrus]

My favorite character secret was from one of the players in the group I ran; I didn't even know about it until the big reveal. His character was a hold-over from a previous short campaign in which he and some other characters unintentionally freed a powerful lich who then began to decimate that characters' small village while consuming the souls of the living. When the next campaign started he resumed playing this old character as an undead slayer bent on finding and destroying that lich who had unknowingly reformed after having been seemingly destroyed. The party latched onto this worthy goal and it soon became the major focal point of the campaign as the party began tracking down the elusive undead. He didn't hide his involvement in the tragedy that had destroyed his village from his fellow party members. He played his character as very grim, smart but driven. He kept a list of all the names of those from his village that had died and would carve their names one by one onto little sculptures he would make and then leave one behind for each undead he slew throughout the entire campaign. Finally after a few years of game play he had only one such sculpture left which he saved until the party confronted the lich as an allied wizard cast Imprisonment on it. A crystal prison formed around the lich and then sank down into the ground; the party had succeeded!

The PC then dropped the remaining sculpture and very quietly began to laugh; something which was quite out of character for his usual grim demeanor. As the other PCs and I watched he continued to laugh louder and louder in a manner that was quite disturbing. As his maniacal laughter died down the PC grew quiet, sat down and never spoke again. It was only then, after looking back on the PC's single-minded obsession with stopping the lich over the course of the campaign, that it began to dawn on everyone at the table that their fellow PC had never really been quite sane. Once his quest was over he regressed into a peaceful vegetative state from which he never returned. The player then immediately retired the character. It was a strange and unexpected development, but everyone agreed that it made perfect sense for the character in hindsight. Most disturbing PC reveal ever...

 

[Digital M@]

A player in my game was played an evil cleric who was saved from some ancient cult and had repented from his evil. Really, he was working hard to rebuild his destroyed church and imprisoned god. I set a few ground rules about not being able to kill other PCs and about inter party theft, but it did lead to some great quests and a nice surprise before he was killed by the rest of the party when he revelaed his plan and unleashed a massive trap. It was a nice twist ending to a major champaign. The BBEG had never been a player before.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

My PC (a Sherlock Holmes-ish Urban Ranger) in a Victorian England D&D campaign is the illegitimate son of Dr. Moriarty. According to some of the NPC's he's met, he looks rather like him.

 

[wedgeski]

I have another one as well, actually, from the same campaign (crikey that was a great game).

In said party, there was a woman-pretending-to-be-man character named Miken who had joined one of the most esteemed Knighthood's of the land - utterly against one of its founding principles, in that only men were allowed (long story). Anyway, my second PC was actually insinuated into the party (unknowingly to him) by his patron, one of the high-ranking members of the Knighthood in question, to spy on the Knight and report back. This ranking Knight had his suspicions about Miken in just about every way except the actual truth, and wanted to use my PC's reports as evidence against him/her in a show trial.

So anyway I duly report back on the activities of the party, putting a heroic bent on everything, admiring their every move, completely unaware that I'm sowing the seeds of my own fate. In time, Miken's secret comes out (which by the way my bard kept to himself, at most egregious risk to himself), and the inevitable trial occurs. My PC prepares his most eloquent testimony... but is trotted out before the judge, publically congratulated on his services to the Knightly Lord who called the trial, and handed the deeds to the grandest theatre in town as a reward! (This by the way, a complete surprise to both myself and my PC.)

Anyway, despite his best efforts to be heroic and turn them down, this is the equivalent of a lottery jackpot to a poor street-entertainer like him, so he takes the deeds and walks out of the Courtroom, all the while promises of bloody revenge being spat at him from his former party members who now erroneously think this entire proceeding is down to his betrayal.

It was brilliant, incredibly well played by everyone and very memorable. I miss that game.