Dreams of a Fallen Crown:GM Questions

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Questions

  • The initial focus of the game will be a conflict with the Guild in the South, and the corruption it represents. With that in mind, answer the following:
    • Why is your character opposed to the guild?
    • What are your character's intentions with regards to the guild?
    • What reasons do you have for remaining in the South for the moment, besides already being there?
Note: Since these three questions reflect the premise of the game, 'None, really' is not a valid answer for obvious reasons.


  • List 3 different things (people, objects, organizations, causes) that your character wants, hates, or cares about. Don't worry about lack of knowledge regarding the setting. Make them up if needed, and *poof* they were always there. We'll find a way to work them in, possibly with a bit of mangling.


  • List 3 things that you as a player want to show up in this game. This can be conflicts, moral questions, scenes, opponents, opportunities etc.


  • Describe an environment (set piece) for a fight scene you'd like to see.

Answers

Oath-Graven Diamond

  • Why is your character opposed to the guild?

The Guild represents the very worst of the tyranny of mortals. It is practically a government unto itself, but one focused on gaining wealth at the expense of the people. It is a merchant in king's robes; while merchants have their place, they can't possibly be regarded as the fair, just, and impartial force that a ruler must be. While the dragonblooded are in revolt against the natural order, the guild represents an even more flagrant violation. Bringing them low is the greatest blow that can currently be struck for righteousness.

  • What are your character's intentions with regards to the guild?

Ultimately, to see the guild in ruins and its trade brought under the eye of strict policing; its slaves freed and its leaders destroyed. Making this permanent will require the force of the Realm, but disrupting the Guild to its core will greatly reduce its impact for many years.

  • What reasons do you have for remaining in the South for the moment, besides already being there?

My manse and my investments in Chiaroscuro, first--"all my stuff is there", so to speak. It's something of a surrogate homeland, also, having been dispossessed of my own. Truly, though, every land the Unconquered Sun touches is my home.

  • List 3 different things that your character wants, hates, or cares about.

I hate the Realm for its usurpation by the Dragonblooded. They must eventually fall if this world is to become righteous.
I care for the people oppressed by the Realm and by the Guild. While the Realm might be wicked, those living under its rule are innocent of their rulers' crimes.
I care for my family, if distantly; I wish them no ill despite my estrangement from them.

  • List 3 things that you as a player want to show up in this game. This can be conflicts, moral questions, scenes, opponents, opportunities etc.

- Conflict with his brother, Cathak Kiru, riding with the Wyld Hunt
- Lead a slave revolt out of somewhere interesting
- Deal with spirits or elementals

  • Describe an environment (set piece) for a fight scene you'd like to see.

A running battle across the clear glass rooftops of Chiaroscuro, harried by hungry ghosts along the way...

Captain Eino Suutari, The Scarlet Kestrel

  • Why is your character opposed to the Guild?

First off, speaking strictly as a Haslanti the Guild has long been an antagonist to the tribes of the League. They represent an insidious, double-dealing force that has tried from the very time of our founding to bring the Haslanti under their bloated, money-stained thumb, and anyone who values the freedom of the League and its people is opposed to the gluttonous hunger of the Guild to rule us wholesale. Speaking more personally, well, the Guild's tyranny is the tyranny of the drug dealer, the slave auctioneer, the criminal overlord who masquerades as a legitimate businessman while feeding your basest desires and binding your will through them. They break you, squeeze you dry of your last coin, then keep squeezing while you mortgage your soul and your dignity to crawl back to them and pay for one more fix, one more vice indulged. And they laugh, and count their profits, and live fat and decadent off of the ruin of your life. More than anything else I have come across, they are the Creation-spanning and systematic corruption and brutalization of the innocent and downtrodden, the thieves of hope and humanity, all the more vile because they are themselves human. Damn but it feels good to sweep down on their caravans in our gliders, to skim down ropes from the deck of an air boat and take their ill-gotten gains for the good of the tribes... and to keep a lucrative percentage to boot.

  • What are your character's intentions with regards to the guild?

Once I would have been content to undermine their operations in the North and make them bleed profits for daring to bring their corrupting influence to bear against my people... but then I was personally betrayed in the name of the Guild, and the ensuing ordeal opened my eyes to the terrible state of our unrighteous world. Now where I once wanted the Guild to bleed, I want it to hemorrhage. Plunder on a vast scale... I want to hit them where they live, where they lair, to put paid to the traitors who made me take a walk into open sky and knock the rotten underpinnings out from under the Guild as a whole. It's going to take an incredible crew to pull this off, but I'm going to do all I can to bring the Guild low and bring hope and dignity back to the innocents they prey upon in the name of 'business'. It'll be just the first step to setting the world to rights, but it'll be an immensely satisfying one.

  • What reasons do you have for remaining in the South for the moment, besides already being there?

I've been tracking the treacherous Captain Holanti and his 8 flunkies for five years now, and this is where the trail has lead me. A little revenge, a lot of justice; I've been personally charged by the League with bringing due punishment to the traitors and reclaiming the Airship in the name of the Wind Fleet, and nothing is going to stand in the way of either goal. The Guild made good on its promise to set them up like kings as reward for bringing it such a prize, but unrighteous kings have a nasty habit of losing their heads. I owe a debt of blood to those 9, and in turn they are going to lead me to MY Airship.

  • List 3 different things (people, objects, organizations, causes) that your character wants, hates, or cares about.

We'll consider 'The Traitors', 'The Airship', 'The Guild', and 'The Haslanti League' to all be givens, and move on to:

His Family: The Suutari family is large and tightly knit, but that is typical of the tribal underpinnings of the Haslanti League. Unlike many cliche hero archetypes who are loners with a troubled past or broken families, Eino has a loving and loyal extended family hoping for his success in his mission, and proud to have a god among its members. He, in turn, has a strong sense of family loyalty and devotion to the League in general, and these loyalties are a powerful supplement to his personal stake in both his immediate mission and his long-term goal of setting the world to rights in the name of Unconquered Sun.

Hope for the Downtrodden: Eino can't stand to see little people suffer needlessly. No, really, he can't abide it. Sure, the North is a harsh place, and survival is never certain, but the Haslanti League itself is an outgrowth of tribal devotion of cooperation and struggle to ensure survival. There's a world of difference between innocents suffering in the face of a harsh environment, and innocents suffering in the face of human (or inhuman) cruelty and avarice. Needless, pointless oppression and cruelty, the violation of the powerless and innocent... it pains and enrages him deeply, profoundly, and with the strength of his Exaltation he will give his all to excise it from the world.

Captain Niklas Holanti, Terrestrial Dragonblood and Vile Betrayer: Okay, maybe a LITTLE bit about the ringleader of the traitors... Bad enough that he tried to kill his First Mate Eino, and succeeded in killing 7 other crewmen who remained loyal to the League... but he did it to steal the very First Age Airship Eino's own dreams lead them to, the one Eino remembered as HIS in times long past, the one Eino managed to get flying again... and worst of all, Niklas did it so he could take what would be an incredibly powerful tool for the defense of the League, and sold it out to the GUILD of all organizations. He utterly, irredeemably betrayed all Haslanti to one of their vilest foes, for the sake of worldly wealth and power. Well, it could be worse, at least he's never shown much interest in those murderous, tyrannical usurpers from the Realm. That would just be the icing on a big steaming excrement cake.

  • List 3 things that you as a player want to show up in this game. This can be conflicts, moral questions, scenes, opponents, opportunities etc.

Some exploration of the First Age world that was, and the personal legacies that each of us carries through our Exaltations.

Hints and indications that all is not right with the gods, especially regarding Unconquered Sun and his mysterious 'problem'.

Revelations relating to the Dinosaur Kings, especially if we get to encounter/interact with some of the few survivors.

Bonus 4th Thing: Something to do with that God of Flight and his tower, whose patronage could greatly benefit the Haslanti!


  • Describe an environment (set piece) for a fight scene you'd like to see.

A pair of Airships careen through storm-wracked skies, their upper works grinding together as grapples and boarding ramps bind them to each other and their respective crews clash in a furious melee that rages from stem to stern and even belowdecks.

Al'mun Fa-Shazzad, The Masked Fox

  • Why is your character opposed to the Guild?
Fa-Shazzad is not so much opposed to the Guild as much as opposed to certain practices; namely slavery and drug sales. Such trades inherently shackle and subjegate a people built on their freedom and will. No profit or pleasure is worth the cost of the desert soul.
  • What are your character's intentions with regards to the Guild?
To show them that people of the South will not stand for their attempts to lessen their resolve or character. To make it... unprofitable to pursue such trades as slavery and drug sales in the Southern lands.
  • What reasons do you have for remaining in the South for the moment, besides already being there?
The South really is Fa-Shazzad's major concern. These are his people, and he is proud to be in their number. Even in the face of his Exaltation, the Fox feels that his place is in the Desert, somewhat to the exlusion of other areas. He also believes the answers to his many questions can be found quickest, if at all, in this region.


  • List 3 different things (people, objects, organizations, causes) that your character wants, hates, or cares about.
He cares deeply for the people of the South, both the actual individuals and the ideal.
He wants to discover his actual history.
He hates Paragon and all that it represents.


  • List 3 things that you as a player want to show up in this game. This can be conflicts, moral questions, scenes, opponents, opportunities etc.
Some interaction with agents of the Underworld beyond combat.
Strife with the people who aren't willing to be free.
A conspiracy, any conspiracy...
At least two rolls on the Random Destruction of Gem table. :)


  • Describe an environment (set piece) for a fight scene you'd like to see.
A huge astrolabe, or similar clockwork-ish device with lots of massive moving parts, with swinging pendulums and spinning orbs.