::A Geek in Korea::

My Orc Paladin character in D&D had been sent out on a vision quest of sorts and told to steal a book from the benefactor that had been paying for the party’s haul of art materials from an abandoned crypt. The vision was from my homebrew god that I created for my character to worship. The DM told me to find this particular book, then burn it in a fire with a hero’s ashes. Seems easy enough, as long as someone in the party died along the way.

It turns out though that the big battle I unintentionally broke rules in left the evil book as loot, but no hero’s body to burn. The Warlord that  had been following the party to help with healing sacrificed himself to seal a portal shut, likely dying in the process. He didn’t leave a body behind! After lots of role playing, and some Orcish poetry of mourning, we went on back to the evil baron and tried to pawn off our art haul. My character can’t lie or steal to save his life in most social situations. He has the big and tough thing covered, but lying and being tricky? He’s an ORC. That’s not what they do.

I actually role play my dice affecting his thoughts when I fail to get a good result on checks outside of combat, so I just chaulked that up to his paladin morals. He felt guilty stealing something, even if his god told him to do it. He lost a battle of wills and acted brashly so that everyone saw what he was up to. Luckily the rogue of the party is quick witted and saved him. We got through the encounter without the Baron suspecting we were hiding anything.

All was going well, and the Orc and a secondary character I rolled up as an Invoker set off after another vision quest. The party has split up after my character got his vision telling him where to go to dispose of the book. The rogue has been trapped by the baron and is forced to tell the truth through some sort of magical means by some people trying to hunt us down. He’s doing more role playing at the moment on his own, while I went into a combat scenario not long after the stories diverged.

My Paladin got a badass Obsidian Horse as a wondrous magical item when I failed a critical roll during the ceremony. My homebrew god enjoyed his failure and rewarded him with a stony ride that snorts flames. I had the chance to pick any item I want, but I decided to forgo combat badassery and simply go with what was cool thematically at that level. I’ve started developing the horse now as a cool addition to enhance my character’s presence and style, and I really like the flavor a giant stone horse come to life brings. The image of a giant orc in plate mail with a huge axe riding an obsidian horse  is really what I want the character to be about visually. If that doesn’t scare you, nothing but death is going to change your mind.

Eventually the characters I control make it to a tomb that they were reluctantly going to disturb to fulfill their god’s edict. It turns out it was already raided by some evil Drow Necromancer. He was using dark magic to try to raise the very person we were sent to burn in a funeral pyre. Now we had the hero and all we had to do was defeat the Necromancer and the minions and burn them to make the prophecy become true! The battle took 5 rounds, and ended when the Necromancer fell for a trap I had set for him at the entrance of the tomb. He was crushed to death by a giant flaming wagon we had brought for the funeral pyre. Spectacular!

After we discussed the evil that had corrupted the hero and I described the made up ritual honoring his death in detail, the DM made a proposition. The city’s hero, who had been raised from the dead by the necromancer, treated us as his savior from a corrupted unlife. He willingly gave us his high level items, gold, and treasure. He wanted to be burned in the fire, and was quite helpful. He wanted us to raid his tomb and use his items, because he thought we were noble and righteous and he had no use for them. He had tons of information about what we needed. We were going to burn him in the funeral pyre to burn the book and he was happy about it and wanted to give us his cool stuff!

I did the unthinkable and TURNED DOWN the magical items he was offering. I let the war hero keep the item in his tomb and performed the ceremony to get rid of the evil book. It was tempting, but I thought better of it.

I did it for two reasons. One, my Orc is sheepish about stealing if the dice are any guide, and didn’t want to go on this tomb raid in the first place. Only the command of his god made him willing to raid the tomb of a hero. Secondly, I thought this was a sort of meta-game test as a player. I thought, and a called the DM out on, the fact that I thought this scenario was a giant trap that was going to get my character lynched when he went back into town. If I showed up wearing a dead hero’s armor after his crypt was recently defiled, I was going to be treated like a ghoul even if I had the now crispy hero’s permission. Instead, I correctly gaged the situation and turned down all but the gold and gems. Those are anonymous and untraceable.

I got a note from my DM, who basically admitted that I had called him out correctly. He thought he’d have gotten me to surrender to my greed in trying to grab better gear for my two characters instead of making the right choice “in character”. The amount of gold I’ll be able to spend will probably be able to pay for the item anyway, so there really wasn’t anything lost. I’m really enjoying this character and game. It keeps building over time. It’s worth the effort it takes to keep up with the story from day to day.