Donate Your NPCs!

Regis · 02-25-2010, 12:42 AM

Sooner or later, every game world needs fleshing out with a few NPCs here and there. So, this is the place to tell the rest of us about the coolest ones you've encountered or come up with yourselves, that others might share the love! Give descriptions, one-line summaries, full stat write-ups, whatever takes your fancy.

For my first donation, I present a lowly soldier: Lumpy. Lumpy has a real name, but no Angel has used it in his lifetime so he's given up trying. Lumpy is an athletic young man of Egyptian descent, whose family have irregularly been recruited as Soldiers by the same Ofanite of Eli for several millennia. Apparently the bizarre nickname was awarded to the first of the line that this angel encountered on account of him being fat and generally useless, and he's seen no need to bother learning any new names when the first one he came up with has such a long and noble pedigree.

Lumpy is a laid-back sort of individual, as benefits a Soldier of Eli. He has no knowledge of Celestial politics, and no desire to get involved in them - he just genuinely wants to help out God and do the right thing. He's never going to be the greatest brain on the planet, but he throws down a mean guitar solo and is willing to do heavy lifting or rough up a few low-lifes if it would be helpful. Bring him in if you need someone to stare at your PCs in utter bewilderment and go, "Wait, you're doing what?"

JCD · 02-25-2010, 07:35 AM

Marit is a Lilim in the bar in the Guildhall. She is a Player, in that she helps deal with policy and implementation (at least as much as the laid back Lilith has policy). More importantly, she keeps her ears open for the latest gossip and trends from the Girls.

She holds court, being important enough that she doesn't have to move elsewhere. If one doesn't gossip, one isn't welcome to her table (reserved special for her by a deal with the proprietor).

She is a fixer/information source. She can also serve as a Patron or someone to do freelance jobs for.

Jason · 02-25-2010, 09:46 AM

One that I didn't get to use:

Kevin Fleet, aspiring Angel of Windfleet

For our first campaign, my players had to deal with a number of incidents in the made-up city of Windfleet, CT. I wanted to make a character to show up whenever they got lost, needed info on the city, caused way too much property damage and/or disturbance, or just needed some comic relief. Sadly, there were more than enough NPCs to keep them busy, so Kevin got shelved.

Kevin is an Ofanite of Cities, a servant of Bethanel, the non-canonic Archangel of Cities. He is hoping that Windfleet will become important enough to be assigned its own Word-bound angel as Bethanel has done for other major cities. He is very hyperactive and super excited about Windfleet's growing economy. He would be happy to give PCs any maps they might need, and if they're good, he might even help get them special permits or parking spaces. He is likely to say corny things like, "Windfleet ... a city on the GROW!" In a darker game, he may actively turn on the PCs if they are not kind to the city and its denizens.

The next ones are somewhat spoilery for my players. If you know me in person, don't read this. :-P

Spoiler:

I like writing about NPCs far too much, I imagine I will be back...

ladyarcana55 · 03-03-2010, 01:43 PM

One of my FAVORITE characters! Gauranteed to aggravate your PCs and to give everyone a good laugh.

Serin is an Impudite of Belial. He is a Knight of the Infernal Furnace and an explosives and demolitions expert. He is also a very skilled fighter so he is not someone to be taken lightly.

What really sets him apart from other demons?

Well, let's just say that to call him a flamer would be an understatement. He is very openly and obviously gay and loves it. He is da bomb and he knows it. He will also make sure you know it too.

To give you an idea...

"Hello everyone! I am the magnificent, the amazing, the great Serin. I see everyone is in awe of me, as they should be."

---

"Oh honey, what happened to your hair and skin?"

Her: "What wrong with my hair and skin?"

"Everything. But no worries. We can work on it and maybe make you somewhat presentable. Let's go upstairs, I'll give you a makeover and you can sit down and listen to how amazing I really am"

His vessel is ALWAYS a very fit male and he loves the challenge of seducing a married man. Married men are like crack cocaine to him, he HAS to have him. But once he has them he's done. Game over.

But he has a pretty good track record seducing straight men and piquing their curiosity. Once he sees a man's curiosity he goes in like a shark.

In that way he burns women's confidence.

JCD · 03-04-2010, 01:02 PM

Chloe Roberts Foster Home

This is a Cherub's cover for an angelic training facility. Children are cut a great deal of slack for social faux pas, so it is a low stress way to train in Secret.

Added to that, the fact that she establishes it in low income areas, who are more tolerant of eccentricity. But the neighborhood kids learn quickly to leave her foster kids alone. And who betide the demon who looks for easy pickings.

Phoenix42 · 03-04-2010, 09:16 PM

this is actually a pretty much straightforward character, but somehow my players really love him so I'll post him up.

Zephyros - Kyriotate Master of Destiny
Seneshal of the Tether of Destiny at the Gutenberg Museum, Mainz, Germany

*squeaky yet powerful voice from the darkness*
"What do you think you're doing? When I said sweep the floor I meant sweep the floor, not sing some essence-consuming rubbish. I think if you truly understood how much you need that enochian manuscript you would be on your vessel's knees cleaning the ground of this tether with your spittle."

"I am a Seraph of Judgement! I think I can spend my time better than..."

"So you keep saying. Now, friend, you were the one who came to me requesting a service. You also know that I speak the truth when I say that you really need that manuscript, and you need it tomorrow. So either you keep whining and you can explain to Dominic why you haven't accomplished the task he assigned to you when he comes to visit you next, or you can take the scrubbing brush and get to work. Now."

Zephyros has been around a long, long time, even for an angel. Rumour has it he was having one-on-one chats with Yves and Raphael even before the Fall, though he doesn't talk about that particularly, and certainly not with the young hotshots who come round his place from time to time. The fact that he is on a first-name basis with Yves (first-name basis, Yves, geddit? sorry, they made me do it :( ) made him eligible for maybe the most powerful Yves-tether on Earth, the Gutenberg museum. The museum is new, and actually only houses the tether by default. The true tether is at its centre, the printing types used by Johannes Gutenberg that went on to revolutionise first Europe and then the world, bringing the destinies of millions of writers, readers and artists to fruition who would have otherwise been left floundering, even illiterate. When Zephyros, who had been spreading a bit of early renaissance enlightenment in southern Europe at the time, realised what had happened, he petitioned for the Word immediately.

Since then, he has guarded his tether diligently, but being a servitor of the stand-in archangel of knowledge, he has been busy on the side as well. In the course of time, he has amassed a truly incredible library in a non-dimensional vault beneath his tether, including a copy of practically every book ever in existence since 1450. This includes not only works by mortals, but also by angels, and even a few ethereals and demons. Since the room is only accessible in celestial form, it also houses celestial books, including many containing descriptions of songs and ancient litanies predating 1450 by several millennia. Naturally, Zephyros guards this section closely.

In february 1945 (our current campaign year), Mainz was firebombed by the Allies. While comparatively few people died, the old museum was burned to the ground. Zephyros did not mind too much, he did not care for the walls - the books were safe outside the material realm, and the types were in the cellar, locked in crates. It pained him however that even after the war, people could not take notice of his tether in the way that they should. But he could not reassemble his tether without help, nor could he do it inconspicuously. The angels of Laurence in the grand Mainz Cathedral across the road were busy after having only narrowly saved their own tether from the firebombing, and it seemed that some Belial-servitors were setting up shop in the old cloister where some nuns had been burned alive during the fire-raid. Zephyros had no intention of getting his books caught in a potential crossfire, so he had to tread carefully.

At this point in time, Zephyros can act as a powerful, yet cautious patron for angelic pc groups. He will help any servitor of Yves, Eli or Gabriel, but will always demand that they do something to help him in return, be it setting up a petition for the rebuilding, currying favour with the interim French military authorities, or simply distributing flyers in the city. He will also pounce on any skilled and trustworthy artificers he comes across and will weedle them into re-enchanting some of the foundations of the museum for him (he could do it himself, but it would take him ages, which is why he is especially keen on finding Eli servitors).
What Zephyros (or Zef, as some servitors have been known to call him when they think he isn't listening) does not take well to are angels who turn up looking to quickly rid themselves of dissonance. Any requests that aren't obviously guilt-ridden and sorrowful are denied, and even those he accepts have to pay through the nose ("Oh, by the way, I am looking for the five Gutenberg Pamphlets of 1449, but they were secreted away in the last phases of the war by some Nazi top-dogs... I don't know where to, but bring them to me, and you can spend your time here... go on, tick tock..."). Once they have earned his trust, petitioners are allowed to spend their time painting the walls, carrying stuff or, in rare cases, sorting the books in the library. These tasks vary in the course of time, going on to security detail for the tether and retrieval missions for rare artefacts later when the museum has been resurrected. But even constructing another Johannes-Gutenberg statue somewhere or organising guided tours leading to the museum would probably serve to favourably impress the old Senechal.

Zephyros, usually taking the body of a rat, sits on his crates, or later hides in the museum's cubby-holes while he watches outside his Tether using other rats and the occasional swallow or pigeon. Toward others, he tends to underplay his powers, always asking for help rather than pulling off stunts to aid others (he has a weak spot for the truly helpless, mortal children especially, and will help them as well as he can, but woe betide anyone getting caught trying to use this against him in any way). However, if he really wants something, he is willing to reward diligent angels, and even some accomplished soldiers, with a selection from the inner sanctum of his library. In fact, many servitors seek him out for exactly that reason, and he uses his petitioners to keep the place safe and tidy while he sees to the important stuff, or trundles off to acquire a nice 7th century manuscript. While he himself has (even in recent times) not watched the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, many of the more in-touch Mercurians have remarked on his similarity to Master Splinter, since he hardly ever possesses humans, always coming back to his favourite old rat whenever he can.

Jason · 03-06-2010, 09:41 AM

Josiah Ward

To his regular customers at Harry's Occult Shop, he is "Joe." To his allies in the ongoing war on the streets of Philadelphia, he's Josiah Ward, a teacher of Songs and Sorcery.

Joe appears to be a crazy old man, but no one's quite sure how old or how crazy he really is. His, silver hair is thinning on top, and he tends to wear a dark gray (or faded black?) trench coat even in relatively warm weather. He carries a cane with a snake-head pommel wherever he goes. On the back of each hand, he has a line drawing tattoo of an eye. He appears to be in his 60s, though he sometimes regales his friends with tales of his days as a mystery man back in the ’30s, the masked vigilante known as "The Seer." (There don't appear to be records of any such person.) He claims the Philadelphia police department has long known him as "Josiah Ward, Paranormal Investigator," but local cops tend to dismiss him as a crazy old coot. Everyone knows that he inherited his Occult shop from his relative, Harry Seligman, though Joe has referred to him as his uncle, cousin, and nephew on different occasions.

These days, Joe seems (or claims) to have settled down to run his magic shop and instruct a new generation of Philadelphians in the ways of Songs and Sorcery. It's kind of ballsy of him to run a magic shop with an angel painted on the side in a city with a respectably sized demon population, but for whatever reason, Hell's Servitors tend to give Joe --*and his close associates -- a pretty wide berth. While even those who are aware of truths beyond the corporeal realm aren't always entirely sure of Joe's sanity, they can't deny that he is an adept teacher of Songs of all three realms, and extremely knowledgeable in sorcerous rituals. No one can say where he learned such things, or how he learned to use Songs that most humans could never perform. Even the criminal underworld has some respect for Joe, as he is quite willing to sprout extra eyes and babble prophetic-sounding nonsense to strike fear into the hearts of evil men.

It is left deliberately ambiguous whether Joe is a human, celestial, or ethereal. For what it's worth, in my game, Joe's mundane actions create no disturbance, and while he teaches much sorcery, he has never been seen to use it himself. Trying to damage him might give a clue as to his nature, but nobody who walks the streets of Philadelphia today claims to have ever succeeded in doing so.

In my game, Josiah Ward is a patron for unaligned PCs so they have someone to go to when they want to acquire new Songs, Rituals, and Artifacts. He may set them up with missions, but claims to be too old to go adventuring himself anymore, except to occasionally spook some minor ruffians as a favor to an old friend. He also plays a mean game of poker, and hosts card nights regularly in his apartment above the Occult Shop.

Phoenix42 · 03-06-2010, 08:17 PM

Okay, here's another one from our 1945 post-war campaign. With a bit of doodling, he can fit in just about anywhere, though he fits in best in somewhat anarchic or destabilised environments.

Alrishar, Calabite Knight of Theft
"Please, this is all I have! Can't you make an exception just this once? We really need the medicine..."

"Sure sweetheart, right after I join the salvation army. It wasn't easy getting this stuff across the border and I'm not going to give it away, am I? Now, you've got until 6 o'clock to get the money together, or find something valuable in exchange. After that, it gets shipped to someone who can actually pay"

"But how can I get at that kind of money until then? I can't steal it!"

"Good question. I'd suggest prostitution, but seriously, the way you look, you're probably better off trying to rob the militia. But tell you what, I happen to know how you could earn the difference - if you can get a parcel across the demarcation line within the next hour, to a friend of mine..."

Alrishar is a demon with a mission: he wants to earn the word of Smuggling. If the worst came to the worst, he would settle for more specialised versions, like Arms Shipping, Profiteering or Bootlegging if he had to, but his dream is to become the Demon of Smuggling, an undeniably powerful word.
For a Calabite, he is surprisingly subtle. His typical MO is to work both sides of a border (he has two vessels), infiltrating the border security on one side and posing as a dealer on the other. He specialises in destabilised regions, working wherever people are desperate and need to get hold of basic goods and/or weapons, and are willing to pay large sums for them. At the same time, these regions usually have shipments of exactly those goods passing through, usually intended for armed forces, who tend to be well looked-after.

He typically will attack such supply shipments, plunder them, and then sell the goods on the other side of the border (or this side, if he is feeling cocky), bringing the gains across the border. At the same time, he operates pawnbroker/black market businesses, squeezing the people who come to him for everything they have to fence the stolen goods, and taking payment from money to personal belongings in return. By bribing border patrols, stealing, blackmailing, eliminating his opponents and generally racketeering, he soon sets himself up as a little empire of its own, sending the region further and further into abject poverty as the forces in the region tighten their crackdown on the hopeless civilians. Having thus taken apart the infrastructure of an area, he moves on, leaving his flourishing business to the next big king-pin, his second in line mortal. Thus he leaves fully functional mobs in his wake. From the ancient Chinese kingdoms to the Texas-Mexican border to post-war Europe and modern-day Iraq and Afghanistan, he's been to all of them, selling weapons, sowing chaos and taking what people hold dear. Alrishar gets a kick out of seeing people swallow, squirm and sweat when he tells them the price for the item they desperately need; this is his way of theft, both the armed robbery and the extortion of the helpless afterward, and consequently driving his victims to theft in the final consequence. He is, in short, an absolute bastard.

Sadly, he is simply not subtle enough to understand the finer points of manipulation, which is why his chances of ever becoming word-bound to a subtle concept like smuggling are slim at best. His business runs on fear, desperation and violence; however, he is oblivious to the wiles of Lilim, Mercurians or Impudites, and even Habbalah have been known to be too underhand for him, since the idea of actually influencing humans into certain behaviour rather than bullying them does not really enter his train of thought. As a consequence, he is an easy mark for clever grifters who can try and con him into thinking they can make him an offer, or even more, put a good word in with The Boss for his petition. While especially Lilim of Theft find him far too unrefined and Impudites think he should be one of them, servants of Kronos tend to like him since the spiritual damage he inflicts on an area tends to be far greater than the actual thieving.

Those who cross Alrishar soon come to learn of his penchant for automatic weapons (in Gurps IN, he really likes fully automatic guns with unholy bullets at every tenth round) and his willful sacrificing of minions to suit his purposes. He is also not above using his aliases to turn his enemies in to the authorities, though he tends to arrange "mishaps" during their apprehension just to make sure.

Alrishar can serve two main purposes in a game:

First, in an angelic (or otherwise moral) campaign he can be an intermediate, or even a large-scale antagonist. He has the resources to seriously get on angel's nerves, and make the lives of soldiers a living hell. More importantly, he can interfere with just about any angel's attempts to improve the situation of mortals, which makes him a useful plot hook.

Second, he can be a fencer of all kinds of stolen goods, including artefacts, which Alrishar often takes as payment from unwitting mortals ("oh, a family heirloom, how quaint. I'll give you an extra fiver, now get out!"), in short, a useful guy to know and have around. For a little bit of flattery and lying, he can get hold of most things mundane, and quite a few things celestial, given enough time. Servitors of Andre might consider offering him joint operations for human trafficing, as well.

For an example from our current campaign, see the following (I had to post it because it's just a funny story)

Spoiler:

In our campaign, he operated in post-war 1945 Mainz, Germany; he acted as a member of the US military authorities north of the Rhine (US-controlled zone) and a black market racketeer south of the Rhine (French controlled zone). He organised raids on French shipments, which made the French authorities crack down even harder on the civilian population, who then went to Alrishar (aka Alexander Reißer in his persona) for the bare necessities. He also sold weapons to the last remnants of Nazi resistance (the so-called werewolves); but most of all he got a kick out of watering down antibiotics he had stolen in both sectors and selling them to the ill-equipped hospitals as well as sick civilians in the French sector, thus causing death and pain that nobody could trace to him, while literally stealing both the lives and money from his victims.
Unluckily for him, the players (by divine intervention, believe it or not) realised he was a demon the first time they saw him, and soon resolved to get rid of him. He gave them a run for their money, almost successfully having one of them assassinated and then launching a full-scale attack on a convoy that the players were using to transport one of his henchmen to prison, with automatic weapons and everything. After this, the angels debated what to do with the henchman they had captured.
Ofanite of Gabriel: "We should kill him. He had his chance, he killed for personal gain, he deserves death."
Cherub of Gabriel: "I agree. Though maybe we could imprison him so he has time to think about what he has done."
Mercurian of Yves: "We can't just kill him, come on... He told us everything we asked, surely we should show mercy. He may yet be destined to rise above his past deeds..."
Elohite of Eli: *draws silenced pistol, shoots prisoner in the head three times, sheathes revolver; turning to the others* "He tripped. Can we go now?"

The gabrielites in the group having dealt with this, they rallied the French soldiers in Mainz and started an attack on Alrishar's river island base of operations. The angels got across, but when they arrived, Alrishar had entrenched himself in a warehouse brimming with stolen goods, from medicine to anti-tank rpgs, and told the angels in no uncertain terms that he had deposited casks of watered-down antibiotics in several regional hospitals and that only if they let him leave with the loot would he reveal which they were. The Elohite of Eli, using his Serendipity advantage, happened to see a receit for medicine shipments lying on one of the desks. Taking an anti-tank weapon from one of the casks, he proceeded to shoot Alrishar, with a f***ing rocket launcher! While the other angels were staring in disbelief at the smoking ruins, the Elohite informed the Ofanite of the location, and she then speeded off and saved the hospital from poisoning its patients.

The irony is that, defying logic, Alrishar actually survived the impact, but was knocked unconscious, so the angels took him to the neares Heavenly tether and destroyed him, utterly.

Considering how much time I put in that character, it would have been seriously depressing how easily they got rid of him, if it hadn't been quite so cool... well, trust Eli to give everything a spin...

BillionSix · 03-07-2010, 01:46 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ladyarcana55

One of my FAVORITE characters! Gauranteed to aggravate your PCs and to give everyone a good laugh.

Serin is an Impudite of Belial. He is a Knight of the Infernal Furnace and an explosives and demolitions expert. He is also a very skilled fighter so he is not someone to be taken lightly.

What really sets him apart from other demons?

Well, let's just say that to call him a flamer would be an understatement. He is very openly and obviously gay and loves it. He is da bomb and he knows it. He will also make sure you know it too.

To give you an idea...

"Hello everyone! I am the magnificent, the amazing, the great Serin. I see everyone is in awe of me, as they should be."

---

"Oh honey, what happened to your hair and skin?"

Her: "What wrong with my hair and skin?"

"Everything. But no worries. We can work on it and maybe make you somewhat presentable. Let's go upstairs, I'll give you a makeover and you can sit down and listen to how amazing I really am"

His vessel is ALWAYS a very fit male and he loves the challenge of seducing a married man. Married men are like crack cocaine to him, he HAS to have him. But once he has them he's done. Game over.

But he has a pretty good track record seducing straight men and piquing their curiosity. Once he sees a man's curiosity he goes in like a shark.

In that way he burns women's confidence.

I like it. It's odd, since celestials are inherently genderless. He must get some odd questions from other celestials.
"If you like sleeping with men, why don't you ask for a female Vessel?"
"Why would I want to be a woman? I love men too much!!"

"Shouldn't a Fire demon be... manlier?"
"I'm gay! That's Double Manly!"

hehe.

Phoenix42 · 03-07-2010, 10:54 AM

Yup, the gay fire-demon is definitely one of my favourites ("I thought you guys burned things...?" "Yeah, just watch me burn, babe..."). It's a tie between him and ol'Joe, for me...

02-25-2010, 12:42 AM	#1
Regis Join Date: Sep 2009	Donate Your NPCs! Sooner or later, every game world needs fleshing out with a few NPCs here and there. So, this is the place to tell the rest of us about the coolest ones you've encountered or come up with yourselves, that others might share the love! Give descriptions, one-line summaries, full stat write-ups, whatever takes your fancy. For my first donation, I present a lowly soldier: Lumpy. Lumpy has a real name, but no Angel has used it in his lifetime so he's given up trying. Lumpy is an athletic young man of Egyptian descent, whose family have irregularly been recruited as Soldiers by the same Ofanite of Eli for several millennia. Apparently the bizarre nickname was awarded to the first of the line that this angel encountered on account of him being fat and generally useless, and he's seen no need to bother learning any new names when the first one he came up with has such a long and noble pedigree. Lumpy is a laid-back sort of individual, as benefits a Soldier of Eli. He has no knowledge of Celestial politics, and no desire to get involved in them - he just genuinely wants to help out God and do the right thing. He's never going to be the greatest brain on the planet, but he throws down a mean guitar solo and is willing to do heavy lifting or rough up a few low-lifes if it would be helpful. Bring him in if you need someone to stare at your PCs in utter bewilderment and go, "Wait, you're doing what?"

02-25-2010, 07:35 AM	#2
JCD Join Date: May 2008 Location: Birthplace of the Worst Pizza on the Planet	Re: Donate Your NPCs! Marit is a Lilim in the bar in the Guildhall. She is a Player, in that she helps deal with policy and implementation (at least as much as the laid back Lilith has policy). More importantly, she keeps her ears open for the latest gossip and trends from the Girls. She holds court, being important enough that she doesn't have to move elsewhere. If one doesn't gossip, one isn't welcome to her table (reserved special for her by a deal with the proprietor). She is a fixer/information source. She can also serve as a Patron or someone to do freelance jobs for.

02-25-2010, 09:46 AM	#3
Jason Join Date: Oct 2009 Location: Boston, MA	Re: Donate Your NPCs! One that I didn't get to use: Kevin Fleet, aspiring Angel of Windfleet For our first campaign, my players had to deal with a number of incidents in the made-up city of Windfleet, CT. I wanted to make a character to show up whenever they got lost, needed info on the city, caused way too much property damage and/or disturbance, or just needed some comic relief. Sadly, there were more than enough NPCs to keep them busy, so Kevin got shelved. Kevin is an Ofanite of Cities, a servant of Bethanel, the non-canonic Archangel of Cities. He is hoping that Windfleet will become important enough to be assigned its own Word-bound angel as Bethanel has done for other major cities. He is very hyperactive and super excited about Windfleet's growing economy. He would be happy to give PCs any maps they might need, and if they're good, he might even help get them special permits or parking spaces. He is likely to say corny things like, "Windfleet ... a city on the GROW!" In a darker game, he may actively turn on the PCs if they are not kind to the city and its denizens. The next ones are somewhat spoilery for my players. If you know me in person, don't read this. :-P Spoiler: The Nameless Horror After years of Lovecraft-inspired stories, a single Nameless Horror from Beyond the Void begins to coalesce in the Marches, devouring and assuming the mantle of all the other nameless Elder Gods which are too terrible to even describe. It's the PCs' job (in an uneasy cooperation with NPCs or other PCs from the other side) to team up against this thing. The easiest way to fight it may not be to actually engage it in combat -- it is, by definition, too terrible to contemplate -- but to encourage the author of a new, bestselling horror series that she should switch careers before her books get optioned for movies, which would dump way too much Essence into this thing. Li'l Cthulhu Fortunately, even the other Elder Gods are happy to cooperate against the Nameless Horror, as they are tired of being systematically devoured. As a being with one name and many popular representations, there are MANY versions of Cthulhu in the Marches. One of them, based on Cthulhu plush toys, cartoony card games, and flash videos online, is a Servant assigned to the PCs' contact in Beleth's operation. Mostly Li'l Cthulhu skulks around trying to look mean and scary, but being utterly cute. The only way his master gets him to do anything is by flattering him for being so awesome and terrifying. Eventually Li'l Cthulhu will grumble something about how he will fetch your coffee, but perhaps this will be the cup that shatters your mind (gurgle mwah ha ha). I like writing about NPCs far too much, I imagine I will be back...

03-03-2010, 01:43 PM	#4
ladyarcana55 Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Bellflower, CA	Re: Donate Your NPCs! One of my FAVORITE characters! Gauranteed to aggravate your PCs and to give everyone a good laugh. Serin is an Impudite of Belial. He is a Knight of the Infernal Furnace and an explosives and demolitions expert. He is also a very skilled fighter so he is not someone to be taken lightly. What really sets him apart from other demons? Well, let's just say that to call him a flamer would be an understatement. He is very openly and obviously gay and loves it. He is da bomb and he knows it. He will also make sure you know it too. To give you an idea... "Hello everyone! I am the magnificent, the amazing, the great Serin. I see everyone is in awe of me, as they should be." --- "Oh honey, what happened to your hair and skin?" Her: "What wrong with my hair and skin?" "Everything. But no worries. We can work on it and maybe make you somewhat presentable. Let's go upstairs, I'll give you a makeover and you can sit down and listen to how amazing I really am" His vessel is ALWAYS a very fit male and he loves the challenge of seducing a married man. Married men are like crack cocaine to him, he HAS to have him. But once he has them he's done. Game over. But he has a pretty good track record seducing straight men and piquing their curiosity. Once he sees a man's curiosity he goes in like a shark. In that way he burns women's confidence.

03-04-2010, 01:02 PM	#5
JCD Join Date: May 2008 Location: Birthplace of the Worst Pizza on the Planet	Re: Donate Your NPCs! Chloe Roberts Foster Home This is a Cherub's cover for an angelic training facility. Children are cut a great deal of slack for social faux pas, so it is a low stress way to train in Secret. Added to that, the fact that she establishes it in low income areas, who are more tolerant of eccentricity. But the neighborhood kids learn quickly to leave her foster kids alone. And who betide the demon who looks for easy pickings.

03-04-2010, 09:16 PM	#6
Phoenix42 Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Mainz, Germany	Re: Donate Your NPCs! this is actually a pretty much straightforward character, but somehow my players really love him so I'll post him up. Zephyros - Kyriotate Master of Destiny Seneshal of the Tether of Destiny at the Gutenberg Museum, Mainz, Germany squeaky yet powerful voice from the darkness "What do you think you're doing? When I said sweep the floor I meant sweep the floor, not sing some essence-consuming rubbish. I think if you truly understood how much you need that enochian manuscript you would be on your vessel's knees cleaning the ground of this tether with your spittle." "I am a Seraph of Judgement! I think I can spend my time better than..." "So you keep saying. Now, friend, you were the one who came to me requesting a service. You also know that I speak the truth when I say that you really need that manuscript, and you need it tomorrow. So either you keep whining and you can explain to Dominic why you haven't accomplished the task he assigned to you when he comes to visit you next, or you can take the scrubbing brush and get to work. Now." Zephyros has been around a long, long time, even for an angel. Rumour has it he was having one-on-one chats with Yves and Raphael even before the Fall, though he doesn't talk about that particularly, and certainly not with the young hotshots who come round his place from time to time. The fact that he is on a first-name basis with Yves (first-name basis, Yves, geddit? sorry, they made me do it :( ) made him eligible for maybe the most powerful Yves-tether on Earth, the Gutenberg museum. The museum is new, and actually only houses the tether by default. The true tether is at its centre, the printing types used by Johannes Gutenberg that went on to revolutionise first Europe and then the world, bringing the destinies of millions of writers, readers and artists to fruition who would have otherwise been left floundering, even illiterate. When Zephyros, who had been spreading a bit of early renaissance enlightenment in southern Europe at the time, realised what had happened, he petitioned for the Word immediately. Since then, he has guarded his tether diligently, but being a servitor of the stand-in archangel of knowledge, he has been busy on the side as well. In the course of time, he has amassed a truly incredible library in a non-dimensional vault beneath his tether, including a copy of practically every book ever in existence since 1450. This includes not only works by mortals, but also by angels, and even a few ethereals and demons. Since the room is only accessible in celestial form, it also houses celestial books, including many containing descriptions of songs and ancient litanies predating 1450 by several millennia. Naturally, Zephyros guards this section closely. In february 1945 (our current campaign year), Mainz was firebombed by the Allies. While comparatively few people died, the old museum was burned to the ground. Zephyros did not mind too much, he did not care for the walls - the books were safe outside the material realm, and the types were in the cellar, locked in crates. It pained him however that even after the war, people could not take notice of his tether in the way that they should. But he could not reassemble his tether without help, nor could he do it inconspicuously. The angels of Laurence in the grand Mainz Cathedral across the road were busy after having only narrowly saved their own tether from the firebombing, and it seemed that some Belial-servitors were setting up shop in the old cloister where some nuns had been burned alive during the fire-raid. Zephyros had no intention of getting his books caught in a potential crossfire, so he had to tread carefully. At this point in time, Zephyros can act as a powerful, yet cautious patron for angelic pc groups. He will help any servitor of Yves, Eli or Gabriel, but will always demand that they do something to help him in return, be it setting up a petition for the rebuilding, currying favour with the interim French military authorities, or simply distributing flyers in the city. He will also pounce on any skilled and trustworthy artificers he comes across and will weedle them into re-enchanting some of the foundations of the museum for him (he could do it himself, but it would take him ages, which is why he is especially keen on finding Eli servitors). What Zephyros (or Zef, as some servitors have been known to call him when they think he isn't listening) does not take well to are angels who turn up looking to quickly rid themselves of dissonance. Any requests that aren't obviously guilt-ridden and sorrowful are denied, and even those he accepts have to pay through the nose ("Oh, by the way, I am looking for the five Gutenberg Pamphlets of 1449, but they were secreted away in the last phases of the war by some Nazi top-dogs... I don't know where to, but bring them to me, and you can spend your time here... go on, tick tock..."). Once they have earned his trust, petitioners are allowed to spend their time painting the walls, carrying stuff or, in rare cases, sorting the books in the library. These tasks vary in the course of time, going on to security detail for the tether and retrieval missions for rare artefacts later when the museum has been resurrected. But even constructing another Johannes-Gutenberg statue somewhere or organising guided tours leading to the museum would probably serve to favourably impress the old Senechal. Zephyros, usually taking the body of a rat, sits on his crates, or later hides in the museum's cubby-holes while he watches outside his Tether using other rats and the occasional swallow or pigeon. Toward others, he tends to underplay his powers, always asking for help rather than pulling off stunts to aid others (he has a weak spot for the truly helpless, mortal children especially, and will help them as well as he can, but woe betide anyone getting caught trying to use this against him in any way). However, if he really wants something, he is willing to reward diligent angels, and even some accomplished soldiers, with a selection from the inner sanctum of his library. In fact, many servitors seek him out for exactly that reason, and he uses his petitioners to keep the place safe and tidy while he sees to the important stuff, or trundles off to acquire a nice 7th century manuscript. While he himself has (even in recent times) not watched the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, many of the more in-touch Mercurians have remarked on his similarity to Master Splinter, since he hardly ever possesses humans, always coming back to his favourite old rat whenever he can. Last edited by Phoenix42; 03-04-2010 at 09:37 PM.

03-06-2010, 09:41 AM	#7
Jason Join Date: Oct 2009 Location: Boston, MA	Re: Donate Your NPCs! Josiah Ward To his regular customers at Harry's Occult Shop, he is "Joe." To his allies in the ongoing war on the streets of Philadelphia, he's Josiah Ward, a teacher of Songs and Sorcery. Joe appears to be a crazy old man, but no one's quite sure how old or how crazy he really is. His, silver hair is thinning on top, and he tends to wear a dark gray (or faded black?) trench coat even in relatively warm weather. He carries a cane with a snake-head pommel wherever he goes. On the back of each hand, he has a line drawing tattoo of an eye. He appears to be in his 60s, though he sometimes regales his friends with tales of his days as a mystery man back in the ’30s, the masked vigilante known as "The Seer." (There don't appear to be records of any such person.) He claims the Philadelphia police department has long known him as "Josiah Ward, Paranormal Investigator," but local cops tend to dismiss him as a crazy old coot. Everyone knows that he inherited his Occult shop from his relative, Harry Seligman, though Joe has referred to him as his uncle, cousin, and nephew on different occasions. These days, Joe seems (or claims) to have settled down to run his magic shop and instruct a new generation of Philadelphians in the ways of Songs and Sorcery. It's kind of ballsy of him to run a magic shop with an angel painted on the side in a city with a respectably sized demon population, but for whatever reason, Hell's Servitors tend to give Joe --*and his close associates -- a pretty wide berth. While even those who are aware of truths beyond the corporeal realm aren't always entirely sure of Joe's sanity, they can't deny that he is an adept teacher of Songs of all three realms, and extremely knowledgeable in sorcerous rituals. No one can say where he learned such things, or how he learned to use Songs that most humans could never perform. Even the criminal underworld has some respect for Joe, as he is quite willing to sprout extra eyes and babble prophetic-sounding nonsense to strike fear into the hearts of evil men. It is left deliberately ambiguous whether Joe is a human, celestial, or ethereal. For what it's worth, in my game, Joe's mundane actions create no disturbance, and while he teaches much sorcery, he has never been seen to use it himself. Trying to damage him might give a clue as to his nature, but nobody who walks the streets of Philadelphia today claims to have ever succeeded in doing so. In my game, Josiah Ward is a patron for unaligned PCs so they have someone to go to when they want to acquire new Songs, Rituals, and Artifacts. He may set them up with missions, but claims to be too old to go adventuring himself anymore, except to occasionally spook some minor ruffians as a favor to an old friend. He also plays a mean game of poker, and hosts card nights regularly in his apartment above the Occult Shop.

03-06-2010, 08:17 PM	#8
Phoenix42 Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Mainz, Germany	Re: Donate Your NPCs! Okay, here's another one from our 1945 post-war campaign. With a bit of doodling, he can fit in just about anywhere, though he fits in best in somewhat anarchic or destabilised environments. Alrishar, Calabite Knight of Theft "Please, this is all I have! Can't you make an exception just this once? We really need the medicine..." "Sure sweetheart, right after I join the salvation army. It wasn't easy getting this stuff across the border and I'm not going to give it away, am I? Now, you've got until 6 o'clock to get the money together, or find something valuable in exchange. After that, it gets shipped to someone who can actually pay" "But how can I get at that kind of money until then? I can't steal it!" "Good question. I'd suggest prostitution, but seriously, the way you look, you're probably better off trying to rob the militia. But tell you what, I happen to know how you could earn the difference - if you can get a parcel across the demarcation line within the next hour, to a friend of mine..." Alrishar is a demon with a mission: he wants to earn the word of Smuggling. If the worst came to the worst, he would settle for more specialised versions, like Arms Shipping, Profiteering or Bootlegging if he had to, but his dream is to become the Demon of Smuggling, an undeniably powerful word. For a Calabite, he is surprisingly subtle. His typical MO is to work both sides of a border (he has two vessels), infiltrating the border security on one side and posing as a dealer on the other. He specialises in destabilised regions, working wherever people are desperate and need to get hold of basic goods and/or weapons, and are willing to pay large sums for them. At the same time, these regions usually have shipments of exactly those goods passing through, usually intended for armed forces, who tend to be well looked-after. He typically will attack such supply shipments, plunder them, and then sell the goods on the other side of the border (or this side, if he is feeling cocky), bringing the gains across the border. At the same time, he operates pawnbroker/black market businesses, squeezing the people who come to him for everything they have to fence the stolen goods, and taking payment from money to personal belongings in return. By bribing border patrols, stealing, blackmailing, eliminating his opponents and generally racketeering, he soon sets himself up as a little empire of its own, sending the region further and further into abject poverty as the forces in the region tighten their crackdown on the hopeless civilians. Having thus taken apart the infrastructure of an area, he moves on, leaving his flourishing business to the next big king-pin, his second in line mortal. Thus he leaves fully functional mobs in his wake. From the ancient Chinese kingdoms to the Texas-Mexican border to post-war Europe and modern-day Iraq and Afghanistan, he's been to all of them, selling weapons, sowing chaos and taking what people hold dear. Alrishar gets a kick out of seeing people swallow, squirm and sweat when he tells them the price for the item they desperately need; this is his way of theft, both the armed robbery and the extortion of the helpless afterward, and consequently driving his victims to theft in the final consequence. He is, in short, an absolute bastard. Sadly, he is simply not subtle enough to understand the finer points of manipulation, which is why his chances of ever becoming word-bound to a subtle concept like smuggling are slim at best. His business runs on fear, desperation and violence; however, he is oblivious to the wiles of Lilim, Mercurians or Impudites, and even Habbalah have been known to be too underhand for him, since the idea of actually influencing humans into certain behaviour rather than bullying them does not really enter his train of thought. As a consequence, he is an easy mark for clever grifters who can try and con him into thinking they can make him an offer, or even more, put a good word in with The Boss for his petition. While especially Lilim of Theft find him far too unrefined and Impudites think he should be one of them, servants of Kronos tend to like him since the spiritual damage he inflicts on an area tends to be far greater than the actual thieving. Those who cross Alrishar soon come to learn of his penchant for automatic weapons (in Gurps IN, he really likes fully automatic guns with unholy bullets at every tenth round) and his willful sacrificing of minions to suit his purposes. He is also not above using his aliases to turn his enemies in to the authorities, though he tends to arrange "mishaps" during their apprehension just to make sure. Alrishar can serve two main purposes in a game: First, in an angelic (or otherwise moral) campaign he can be an intermediate, or even a large-scale antagonist. He has the resources to seriously get on angel's nerves, and make the lives of soldiers a living hell. More importantly, he can interfere with just about any angel's attempts to improve the situation of mortals, which makes him a useful plot hook. Second, he can be a fencer of all kinds of stolen goods, including artefacts, which Alrishar often takes as payment from unwitting mortals ("oh, a family heirloom, how quaint. I'll give you an extra fiver, now get out!"), in short, a useful guy to know and have around. For a little bit of flattery and lying, he can get hold of most things mundane, and quite a few things celestial, given enough time. Servitors of Andre might consider offering him joint operations for human trafficing, as well. For an example from our current campaign, see the following (I had to post it because it's just a funny story) Spoiler: In our campaign, he operated in post-war 1945 Mainz, Germany; he acted as a member of the US military authorities north of the Rhine (US-controlled zone) and a black market racketeer south of the Rhine (French controlled zone). He organised raids on French shipments, which made the French authorities crack down even harder on the civilian population, who then went to Alrishar (aka Alexander Reißer in his persona) for the bare necessities. He also sold weapons to the last remnants of Nazi resistance (the so-called werewolves); but most of all he got a kick out of watering down antibiotics he had stolen in both sectors and selling them to the ill-equipped hospitals as well as sick civilians in the French sector, thus causing death and pain that nobody could trace to him, while literally stealing both the lives and money from his victims. Unluckily for him, the players (by divine intervention, believe it or not) realised he was a demon the first time they saw him, and soon resolved to get rid of him. He gave them a run for their money, almost successfully having one of them assassinated and then launching a full-scale attack on a convoy that the players were using to transport one of his henchmen to prison, with automatic weapons and everything. After this, the angels debated what to do with the henchman they had captured. Ofanite of Gabriel: "We should kill him. He had his chance, he killed for personal gain, he deserves death." Cherub of Gabriel: "I agree. Though maybe we could imprison him so he has time to think about what he has done." Mercurian of Yves: "We can't just kill him, come on... He told us everything we asked, surely we should show mercy. He may yet be destined to rise above his past deeds..." Elohite of Eli: draws silenced pistol, shoots prisoner in the head three times, sheathes revolver; turning to the others "He tripped. Can we go now?" The gabrielites in the group having dealt with this, they rallied the French soldiers in Mainz and started an attack on Alrishar's river island base of operations. The angels got across, but when they arrived, Alrishar had entrenched himself in a warehouse brimming with stolen goods, from medicine to anti-tank rpgs, and told the angels in no uncertain terms that he had deposited casks of watered-down antibiotics in several regional hospitals and that only if they let him leave with the loot would he reveal which they were. The Elohite of Eli, using his Serendipity advantage, happened to see a receit for medicine shipments lying on one of the desks. Taking an anti-tank weapon from one of the casks, he proceeded to shoot Alrishar, with a f**ing rocket launcher! While the other angels were staring in disbelief at the smoking ruins, the Elohite informed the Ofanite of the location, and she then speeded off and saved the hospital from poisoning its patients. The irony is that, defying logic, Alrishar actually survived the impact, but was knocked unconscious, so the angels took him to the neares Heavenly tether and destroyed him, utterly. Considering how much time I put in that character, it would have been seriously depressing how easily they got rid of him, if it hadn't been quite so cool... well, trust Eli to give everything a spin... Last edited by Phoenix42; 03-06-2010 at 08:36 PM.*

03-07-2010, 10:54 AM	#10
Phoenix42 Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Mainz, Germany	Re: Donate Your NPCs! Yup, the gay fire-demon is definitely one of my favourites ("I thought you guys burned things...?" "Yeah, just watch me burn, babe..."). It's a tie between him and ol'Joe, for me...