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Zeitgeist PCs: the Created
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<blockquote data-quote="RangerWickett" data-source="post: 8322703" data-attributes="member: 63"><p>In the original pitch for Z, I had Grappa put Borne's mind into a physical object (a golem's eye, I think), and send it away by boat, but then that boat sank. There was going to be an effort to recover the mind, maybe in adventure 7 or 8.</p><p></p><p>But I changed direction, and made it so Grappa just locks away memories, rather than extracting them. So Borne just gets his memories back when he's exposed to the Arc of Reida.</p><p></p><p>---</p><p></p><p>It is kind of odd to have so many characters who were created. Ideally they'll have been alive and kicking for a while before the campaign starts so they can actually care about society and have friends and such. </p><p></p><p><strong>Stitched Together</strong></p><p>By the soon-to-be-canon timeline of the upcoming <em>Death of the Author</em> adventure, Wolfgang's family made their wealth because their manor sat over a natural 'well' to the Bleak Gate, from which they could extract and sell witchoil. His father came to regret it, but Wolfgang realized it offered a path to rejuvenate and resurrect. He was making some headway when his son died of an infection, and he tried to bring him back from the dead. It <em>sorta</em> worked, creating a near-mindless monster which he locked up for a few years while he tried to perfect his technique and restore his son.</p><p></p><p>During that time, his wife would kill any of the house staff who asked too many questions, and the witchoil in her resurrected son's blood absorbed the murdered souls, who longed for vengeance. Eventually Wolfgang - who was pretty aggressively ignoring his wife's crimes - managed to stitch together his perfect man, and bring him to life as Andrei. Andrei lived as a 'guest' for a while, while Wolfgang studied him to see if there were any side effects, but Andrei managed to learn about the monster boy being held in the basement. He released the child, set fire to the manor in hopes of destroying the well, and fled. Wolfgang watched his son murder his wife to grant vengeance to the ones she'd killed. Then Wolfgang fled too.</p><p></p><p>But sure, he may have recovered his wife's body. Dude's always trying to avoid dealing with death. He <em>really</em> didn't like Heid Eschatol. </p><p></p><p>(His wife's name in life was Shelly, as a hat tip to Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly.)</p><p></p><p>Or it could have been another attempt at reanimation to make a sister for Andrei.</p><p></p><p><strong>Construct</strong></p><p>For the automaton, I don't know if it made it into the adventure path, but I always envisioned Grappa serving in the third Yerasol War, seeing a bunch of his friends die, and deciding he wanted to create metal soldiers who would fight instead of the living. His constructs weren't particularly impressive -- we're talking C3-P0 levels of dangerousness here -- but he was excellent at designing synthetic minds. Eventually he realized that killing these synthetic people would be just as immoral as killing biological ones.</p><p></p><p>But perhaps the construct PC could have been an early creation of Grappa's with a mind that wasn't <em>quite</em> conscious, and got put in storage or something. Later some nefarious figure stole the mothballed machinery and reactivated a few. The process of dying and coming back jostled its sense of self, sort of like Johnny Five in <em>Short Circuit </em>(ah, that brings back good memories), and she started to develop a personality.</p><p></p><p>Or perhaps the automaton was made by Pemberton, wholly unrelated to Grappa, as a prototype long before Pemberton figured out how to control the bodies via witchoil.</p><p></p><p><strong>Alchemical Man</strong></p><p>You could dig into some of the older or more obscure elements of the setting that aren't directly linked to the plot. Like, he could have been a back-up body made by some wizard in Nalaam (the city which shows up in adventure 4), but the two were separated by too much distance and so he got his own new soul. Maybe he's tied to the Demonocracy, or some research by a Clergy priest to try to create an angel. Perhaps a dark fey was banished from the Unseen Court, forced to live in the Bleak Gate, and it made the alchemical man to be its servant in the Waking world.</p><p></p><p>The normal rules for simulacra involving making a body out of ice, and at one point Grandis Komanov shows up as a simulacrum. Maybe the character was created by one of Komanov's allies, or a servant of the Voice of Rot. Perhaps that mage is an arctic elf from the lands north of Drakr who saw his homeland destroyed in an act of genocide by the Drakrans a century ago, who fled as a refugee to Risur.</p><p></p><p>Maybe the simulacrum was made by the request of Governor Stanfield, who is curious if he could take his multiple past lives and spread them across physical bodies. </p><p></p><p>Maybe the simulacrum was commissioned by Nicodemus, and the PC actually looks just like the main villain did originally. It was a failed experiment, but maybe the PC will expect to get his body snatched, and will feel some kinship to Andrei when Nicodemus decides to possess him instead. After all, Andrei's got cooler regeneration powers.</p><p></p><p>Good luck!</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="RangerWickett, post: 8322703, member: 63"] In the original pitch for Z, I had Grappa put Borne's mind into a physical object (a golem's eye, I think), and send it away by boat, but then that boat sank. There was going to be an effort to recover the mind, maybe in adventure 7 or 8. But I changed direction, and made it so Grappa just locks away memories, rather than extracting them. So Borne just gets his memories back when he's exposed to the Arc of Reida. --- It is kind of odd to have so many characters who were created. Ideally they'll have been alive and kicking for a while before the campaign starts so they can actually care about society and have friends and such. [B]Stitched Together[/B] By the soon-to-be-canon timeline of the upcoming [I]Death of the Author[/I] adventure, Wolfgang's family made their wealth because their manor sat over a natural 'well' to the Bleak Gate, from which they could extract and sell witchoil. His father came to regret it, but Wolfgang realized it offered a path to rejuvenate and resurrect. He was making some headway when his son died of an infection, and he tried to bring him back from the dead. It [I]sorta[/I] worked, creating a near-mindless monster which he locked up for a few years while he tried to perfect his technique and restore his son. During that time, his wife would kill any of the house staff who asked too many questions, and the witchoil in her resurrected son's blood absorbed the murdered souls, who longed for vengeance. Eventually Wolfgang - who was pretty aggressively ignoring his wife's crimes - managed to stitch together his perfect man, and bring him to life as Andrei. Andrei lived as a 'guest' for a while, while Wolfgang studied him to see if there were any side effects, but Andrei managed to learn about the monster boy being held in the basement. He released the child, set fire to the manor in hopes of destroying the well, and fled. Wolfgang watched his son murder his wife to grant vengeance to the ones she'd killed. Then Wolfgang fled too. But sure, he may have recovered his wife's body. Dude's always trying to avoid dealing with death. He [I]really[/I] didn't like Heid Eschatol. (His wife's name in life was Shelly, as a hat tip to Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly.) Or it could have been another attempt at reanimation to make a sister for Andrei. [B]Construct[/B] For the automaton, I don't know if it made it into the adventure path, but I always envisioned Grappa serving in the third Yerasol War, seeing a bunch of his friends die, and deciding he wanted to create metal soldiers who would fight instead of the living. His constructs weren't particularly impressive -- we're talking C3-P0 levels of dangerousness here -- but he was excellent at designing synthetic minds. Eventually he realized that killing these synthetic people would be just as immoral as killing biological ones. But perhaps the construct PC could have been an early creation of Grappa's with a mind that wasn't [I]quite[/I] conscious, and got put in storage or something. Later some nefarious figure stole the mothballed machinery and reactivated a few. The process of dying and coming back jostled its sense of self, sort of like Johnny Five in [I]Short Circuit [/I](ah, that brings back good memories), and she started to develop a personality. Or perhaps the automaton was made by Pemberton, wholly unrelated to Grappa, as a prototype long before Pemberton figured out how to control the bodies via witchoil. [B]Alchemical Man[/B] You could dig into some of the older or more obscure elements of the setting that aren't directly linked to the plot. Like, he could have been a back-up body made by some wizard in Nalaam (the city which shows up in adventure 4), but the two were separated by too much distance and so he got his own new soul. Maybe he's tied to the Demonocracy, or some research by a Clergy priest to try to create an angel. Perhaps a dark fey was banished from the Unseen Court, forced to live in the Bleak Gate, and it made the alchemical man to be its servant in the Waking world. The normal rules for simulacra involving making a body out of ice, and at one point Grandis Komanov shows up as a simulacrum. Maybe the character was created by one of Komanov's allies, or a servant of the Voice of Rot. Perhaps that mage is an arctic elf from the lands north of Drakr who saw his homeland destroyed in an act of genocide by the Drakrans a century ago, who fled as a refugee to Risur. Maybe the simulacrum was made by the request of Governor Stanfield, who is curious if he could take his multiple past lives and spread them across physical bodies. Maybe the simulacrum was commissioned by Nicodemus, and the PC actually looks just like the main villain did originally. It was a failed experiment, but maybe the PC will expect to get his body snatched, and will feel some kinship to Andrei when Nicodemus decides to possess him instead. After all, Andrei's got cooler regeneration powers. Good luck! [/QUOTE]
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