Ryenionn The Deathless
Gives life to the notion of no good deed goes unpunished.
Nod to Gossomer, for her Solomon Grundy forum post, my inspiration
500 Word NPC challange
On the Stolen World, there are very few true monstrous types. But when a human dies with both a strong will and evil intentions. the very high ambient magical energy will sometimes give birth to an undying wight. Normally they are found in the less populous regions where the mana level is often untapped for centuries, It is not unheard of them to pop up in large cities.
Ryenionn(or Rye for short) had the typical background of an up and coming social bastard. Prostitute mother, poverty bleh, bleh,bleh. What separated him from the pack of violent rabble was his gift for murder. realizing this at a young age, he slowly set off perfecting his art. Not a true sociopath, Rye was just talented and realized it. He was determined to perfect his art with the proper education. At 23 he finally found a thief willing to school things to there correct level of expertise.The city of Miir was just big enough for him to commit his mayhem and provide the needed contracts for him to rather quickly rise to moderate power in his field of study.
The beginnings of his downfall was a very lucrative contract on a city council man by a jealous business rival. He had never taken such a high profile target before and as his learning was from a thief and not an assassin, he did not take the proper precautions of a murder of this caliber that Ry should of. The business rival was scared of his own actions and pointed a subtle finger at him. Inquiries were made, investigations followed but nothing came of them, he was however left under a major cloud of suspicion. He planned on one more hit and high tailing it out of town. Then came what brought about his true down fall. Love.
He fell hard for a common serving wench, who was happily married. He would drink at the Broken wheel, where she worked for a living, to flirt and be with her. She rebuffed him at every opportunity. He made a meager living mugging and killing, disguising it as the werewolf attacks that perpetually plague Miir. Switching from dagger to metal claws.
Finally he confronted the serving wench on a late night trip home. He had more than murder on his mind. Unfortunately for him he was caught by a group of adventurers, who had been shanghaied into hunting the latest crop of werewolves and they were aware of the cloud over him. Lust crazed and drunk he made his best deadly strike on the groups leader as he was accosted by the adventurers.
At this point he is killed by the group or quickly hung for his crime, either course of action will cause him to turn undead and be able to seek out the group for revenge.
When first encountered he will be of middling power with a strong ability to cause critical hits, but will be no match for a full party of adventurers. Six times he will rise from the grave during a full moon to pursue his nemesis. The first couple of attacks will be in broad daylight but as he goes through his undeath rebirths he will become harder and harder to kill. His attacks will be more cunning and he will become more durable. In his last few encounters he will be more monster than assassin.
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? Responses (11)
There is a nice tight conveyance of information in the first paragraph. You describe a lot about the nature of the world's magic and peoples relationship with it in the first paragraph.
In the second paragraph you could add one little tiny line about what makes Rye a talented murder.
'Rye had a strong stomach for the suffering of others and ability to completely suppress any feelings of hesitation or doubt when his own interests were on the line.'
Or
'Rye was the perfect combination of self loathing, confidence and empathy. He understood people, did not shy away from the difficult and didn't feel that his own life or the lives of others was worth second thought. The high-risk world or professional killer seemed to be the perfect career choice to him.'
If you don't want to take anything out don't worry about it. You are already over 500 words and I would be interested to find out more about this character and how you envisioned him.
I really like the end, where he dies for love (his version of love), but comes back. The end kind of reminds me of that old morality problem about the adulterous woman murdered on the bridge. Who does Rye think of as his nemesis now? Is it the waitress that rebuffed him? Is it her husband that caused to rebuff him? Is it the party that caught him? Or the hangman that executed him?
You could have it set up where the risen Rye kills these people in turn. And the PCs have to deduce who it might be committing these murders...'that randy drunk with metal claws has returned'.
Having to deduce who it is will give the PCs more of a chance to use the backstory you have written. Because it would be ashame to have a whole character backstory, but all he is just a re-occurring combat encounter.
I copied it into word before I read it.
Ah yes, now Word automatically has word count at the bottom. I read straight off the browser for subs of conventional length at the Ctiadel but I do find reading from Word is slightly better.
I liked Rye okay and his end was unexpected but this sub did not particularly strike a chord with me (b/c I'm non-gamer?) so I have to give a drastically different score than Axle.
Just a minor correction: 'Nod to Gossomer, for his Solomon Grundy forum post, my inspiration' should be 'Nod to Gossamer, for *her* Solomon Grundy forum post'
This is probably not going to win any points, but I think you spent too much time on the backstory. If you made it more concise, you would have room to give more detail on what Rye can actually do as an undead, and why he is special enough to rise six times instead of just the once that most undead get. Still a good submission, and entertaining read.
I haven't abandoned this yet will take your suggestion and axle's to improve.Also reading some of the other entries has made me re-think the direction I took with this. plus I'm pretty sure I've got some words to spare.Stay tuned for when my muse strikes and I can get some more computer time from my kids.
Interesting idea. This could be a fun NPC to mess with the PCs... Let them figure out how to finally kill the thing and watch them scramble more and more as the thing becomes harder to fight. I like it.
axle, I'm going to take your excellent suggestion as to NOT make this just a recurring combat thing and turn it more into a mystery thing, started a couple of weeks ago on running this.Gave the guy a macho look and high squeaky voice. They killed him and they know the body disappeared so far.Def gonna update.Eventually.
