CREATING THE VILLAIN AND MORE DETAILS
Previous article…Campaign Chronicles #1 – First Steps
So, as we said we are going to craft our villain employing the AD&D handbook known as “The Complete Book of Villains”.
We want the villain to be the “employer” of our player characters.
Indeed our characters, in this campaign, will be the bad guys. Evil witches to be specific. However, who knows what the players will ultimately decide!
We also said that the villain, due to the flavour of the campaign, will be a green hag.
The best candidate to pick as a green hag is Meg Mucklebones.
I’ll use Meg because she looks frightening. However, I just need her appearance, because soon I’ll care to fill this villain with some interesting stuff.
Let’s start!
Occupation
Meg is a hag, and as all respected hags she makes deals with all those who are willing to deal with such creatures. She deals with almost everyone in need of a quick solution to his problems. It doesn’t matter if the customer is a king or a farmer, a dragon or a wizard, an evil undead or a devil from the pits. A deal is a deal, and there is always a chance to make a profit and get a juicy capital gain.
Objective
Meg has a plan. A big and ambitious plan. She does not consider herself as one of those lousy hags, so traditionalists and attached to their role. She thinks they are boring, they are not ambitious and their habits predictables. Meg wants a kingdom, all for her. That cheerful valley enclosed by that unpassable mountain range needs Meg as their queen. There are towns, people, shops, and much more stuff. Meg wants them all because Meg knows how to take care of people provided they obey.
Motive
A long time ago Meg took a bad decision and screwed it. She did something she was not supposed to, and paid the price, a high price. She is still paying today and she wants to undo what was done to ther.
She was ambitious at those time, so she stole the soul bag from a black hag known as Shelly Thatchwallow. She broke the code and betrayied her coven. That action attracted the wrath of the old Shelly so much, that she cast a terrible curse upon the poor Meg Mucklebones.
From that day and for all the days following, Meg would not have been able to procreate daughters. Any attempt to procreate, only gave birth to useless monstruosities.
Meg found herself outcast, without a coven to rely on, and unable to form a coven on her own.
She retired in a forest, where she turned an old cave into her lair, and there she stayed for decades, trying to survive and trying to figure out how to break the terrible and powerful curse that was cast upon her.
One day, the Archduque Mefistofele, who was also her patron, answered Meg’s call and prayers. The Devil agreed to offer Meg a way to solve her problems. For a price, of course.
Mefistofele asked Meg 1001 souls, however they had to be souls coming from the hands of a Queen.
A Queen of a kingdom raised from chaos and reborn in order.
Cure of Shelly Thatchwallow
A Queen of a kingdom built on blood and raised with steel.
A Queen of a kingdom and 1001 souls.
Mefistofele spoke, and Meg cried again. Desperate more than never, overcome by the impossible task imposed to her by the devil.
Who could willingly accept her, Meg Mucklebones, as a Queen?
Meg spent months thinking how to achieve this goal. She consulted her tarots dozen, hundreds of times! Until she finally came out with a solution.
She needed time, patience, resources and allies. She could not rely on hags anymore, because no one trusted her.
She would have raised her own daughters, taking childs from the far corners of the world. The tarots guided her to the chosen ones. She would have picked four, but only two of them could become the ones to form the coven. It wouldn’t have been a true coven, but it was best than nothing.
Personality
Of course we are going to describe traits that distinguish Meg from any other hags. Just stating that Meg is cruel would be pointless, because all hags are cruels.
Irascible: Meg easily loses patience. She wants things made quickly and she is often angry with herself also.
Methodical: Meg loves to make things with order and discipline and her minions are expected to do the same.
Careful: Despite her nature, Meg care for her minions. Her years in solitude and isolation, having to face external threats and enemies aware of her weakness (she can’t procreate hags or join a coven), has taught her that every ally is precious. She’d rather punish a minion than kill him. With her kidnapped “daughters” (the characters in other words), she has always been very careful and protective.
Compulsive: Meg has become compulsive toward material possessions, even more than an average hag. She learned to value every small piece of weird stuff, seeing it as valuable to create curses or special spells.
Attitude & Behavior
Attitude: Meg Mucklebones has a very stoic attitude toward life and the future. Isolation has taught her that until her curse is active, she will have to endure terrible trials. Stoicism and good dose of pragmatism is what kept her alive to this day.
Behavior: Meg has learned to suppress her predatory nature. When dealing with other living beings, minions or customers, she always appears kind and warm. Calm and silent when she listens, quick and brillant when the time to close the deal comes.
Tastes & Preferences
Well, Meg Mucklebones is fond of meat, especially birds. She loves to eat them cooked or alive and she decorates her room with skulls and feathers.
She also loves books, scrolls, parchments and whatever is written on something, including stone tablets. She is always looking for new books to enrich her library. When she is bored she writes notes, chronicles and new alchemical formulas on her journals. Once a journal is finished, she spends hours thinking about the title. When in good mood, she even adds sketch and illustrations.
While the majority of hags don’t really care about their clothings, Meg has a different mindset about that. She’s already thinking like a queen, so she has spent some time investigating what a decent dress is. She now loves wearing silk, however she has not learned the concept of clean clothings yet.
Sorroundings
Meg’s Lair: Meg made her lair in a forest, one week away from the closest town. From time to time she leaves the lair and journey to unknown places – at least unknown to the characters. She comes back with curious and weird stuff to enrich her collection of trinkets and books.
However Meg’s lair is not placed in an isolated place. One week far there is a town. We decide to sketch some details about the local geography.
We decide as well to expand the setting using the bottom-top method. It means we are going to detail the setting and the geographical content later, while the campaign is going on.
We just state that the lair is hidden in the depth of a forest. One week far there is a coast town called Seawell. The forest lies inside a valley and other four towns are known to exist. Enough for now.
History
We detailed some history about Meg Mucklebones previously in this article, or at least we wrote about the motives that drives Meg Mucklebones to pursue her goals. We don’t want to detail too much because most of Meg’s background is unknown to the characters, at least for now. So we state that uncovering Meg past will be part of the ongoing campaign.
It’s better using some improvisation and observe the players trying to figure out what happened to Meg in her past.
Network
As we said Meg is an outcast among her kind. Since she stole the soul bag from the black hag she can’t rely – or thrust – any other hag. This has forced Meg to build – slowly and patiently – a sort of deep and hidden network of contacts.
Some of them are allies, but none of them are friend.
This network of contacts explains why Meg leave her lair for weeks. She pays visit to her allies to negotiate deals and reinforce alliances.
We won’t take not, at least for now, of all the contacts she mantains because we’ll have time to enrich this aspect later, once the campaign takes shape.
We’ll just take note of a couple of contacts that will play a key role in the short term.
A Disgraced Hobgoblin General
At some point Meg will have to invade the valley to forge her kingdom. In the last weeks she has intensified communication with a hobgoblin general capable of providing loyal and efficient troops. However Meg has not yet figured out how to pay the hobgoblin.
A Tribe of Stone Giants
A small tribe of stone giants guard the only – and safe – passage that leads to the valley through the northern mountain range. If Meg wants the hoboglin legion to cross safely the passage, she has to negotiate with the giants, or at worst neutralize them.
More of this will become clear once we’ll spend some words about the setting and the local map.
Resources
Meg does not have what we know as common currencies like coins, jewels and gems. Her primary resource is hag’s magic.
Hag’s magic allowed her to craft unique magical stuff and of the weird ones.
Ancient knowledge is also a powerful coin which Meg employs to predict events, craft plans and control creatures.
During her life as an outcast she spent plenty of time studying and crafting many trinkets. We detail a few of them and we’ll introduce more as we proceed in the campaign.
They will be like the ace up her sleeve that will help the characters to further Meg’s plans to conquer the valley. Some stuff have been hidden from the characters since the beginning, others are known to them.
Tarot of Enigmatic Divination
Meg crafted this deck of tarots many decades ago. Indeed the tarots suggested her to steal the soul bag from Shelly Thatchwallow
The deck includes 10 empty cards made of exotic and hardened leather. Once three tarots are drawn an illusion appears from each card. The illusion represents something symbolic, not always clear, and requires the user to puzzle out what the hell they are saying.
Meg will use the tarots before sending the characters to their first mission at the town of Seawell.
Bookcase of Holding
As we said Meg is fond of books of any kind, provided they contain some useful knowledge. However collecting books over decades, if not centuries, requires plenty of space. That’s why Meg, inspired by the magical item known as Bag of Holding, crafted the Bookcase of Holding.
The bookcase can contains thousands of books, scrolls, parchments and tablets, but nothing else than that. Anytime you want a specific content you just have to speak the title, and the bookcase of holding will spit it right in your hands.
The bookcase possesses limited intelligence, so you can eventually name a topic, and more books at once will be throwed at you. At your own peril of course.
The bookcase is made of wood. Two meters wide, five meters long and one meter deep.
It possesses a primitive way of communication, with an alphabet composed of creakings and woody noises. Only Meg is able to understand what the bookcase says.
The characters know of the bookcase, indeed they have used it every day during their life with Meg – from childhood maturity – while they were studying almost anything Meg asked them to.
Book of Chronicles and Facts*
*This artifact is inspired on a magical item found on Rules Cyclopedia, D&D ruleset.
Originally the magical item was composed of two scroll only and, if I’m not wrong, possessed limited range.
This bizarre artifact is composed of a Book, a Scroll and a Bookstand.
In order for the artifact to work properly, the Book must lay on the Bookstand and never be moved. If it is moved its magical properties won’t work.
The book records all facts written on the scroll, provided the scroll is in the same plane of existence. Distance between the book and the scroll doesn’t matter. Whatever you write on the scroll disappears after 1 minute. Up to 3d20 words can be written. The scroll can be used once every 24 hours.
Meg Mucklebones will provide the characters with the scroll, in order to receive updates about the progress of their mission.
Cauldron Maleficarum
This bronze cauldron is big enough so that a man sized creature can fit “comfortably” in. In Meg’s humble opinion if the creature is chopped in pieces, than the better.
This Cauldron is one of Meg’s masterwork. She invented this artifact to craft weird and horrific creatures by employing chopped pieces of sentient beings.
The outcome is usually something that is a hybrid of the former creatures thrown inside. Most of the times the result is a Broken One. However the process is demanding, dangerous and the creature emerging from the cauldron not always willing to obey.
Meg discovered that it is suitable to craft ordinary undead, especially skeleton or skeletal champion if the creature is boiled until all the flesh is ripped away.
Henchmen, Flunkies & Lackeys
Meg Mucklebones has acquired a three followers who serve her loyally. We’ll detail each of them, including some background. However we won’t detail any specific trait concerning them. We’ll have time to develop more about these follower later, while the roleplay evolves.
Keep in mind that the first game session was played wednesday the 5th of June. So the name of each follower, or “npc” if you prefer, were assigned from the players because I asked both to do so. Both players played their first game session ever.
Ojolojo* (Beholder Spectator)
*In spanish Ojolojo means Crazyeye (ojo=eye; lojo=crazy)
Some decades ago Meg stumbled across an abandoned ruin. She was looking for exotic magic employed by a long death wizard.
She finally found the secret room she was looking for and inside it there was a big surprise. Apparently the wizard summoned a Spectator to protect his laboratory and the secrets hidden within.
The beholder had spent like 10 years guarding the laboratory, and he would have spent 91 more years if Meg didn’t offer him a better deal.
The creature was growing really bored, starting to develop paranoia and mental instability. He was aware that 91 years of solitude would have impacted his mind forever and he didn’t want to end up like many others of his species.
No one knows what kind of deal Meg offered to the poor beholder, but thanks to her cunning the binding was broken, the spectator obtained freedom and at the same time the wizard’s secrets remained such.
Since that day, Ojolojo has become the most loyal of Meg’s servants. His loyalty is strong as steel and he takes order only from her. Meg never had to argue with Ojolojo, because he’s smart enough to accomplish any task he is asked to.
Ojolojo doesn’t like to speak. He prefers to use telepathy instead, and even then he’s not very talkative. When he communicates he is very vulgar and love to make cruel – but harmless – jokes to anyone in the lair (except to Meg of course).
When he has free time he loves to read books and exterminate pests that occasionally infiltrate the lair.
It’s not unusual to find him staring at something for hours like weird insects, or the sky in a cloudy day. He finds amusing observing such apparently meaningless things.
Sticky (Mimic)
The second add-on among Meg’s follower is a mimic. Its name is sticky for obvious reasons. Meg rescued the shapechanger which was on the edge of death. She was crafting the bookcase of holding at those time and the Mimic proved to be a useful resource to employ.
He saved the life of the creature, but she took something from it. The mimic is alive but crippled, it can only move of 5 feet because Meg syphoned some of its essence to use it in the creation of the bookcase.
Sticky has become obedient and act like a pet. Its primary purpose is to take the shape of furnitures, especially those that Meg does not possess. Her favourite form is that of a blackboard, that Meg employed to teach her daughters (the characters in other words).
Kirk (Outcast Orc)
I didnt’ pick the name. The players did, during the first session, and they insisted. So don’t ask me why the orc possesses this name.
Kirk is an orc, and a discrete fighter. He cares for the lair and keeps safe Meg’s four daughters. He trained the characters in the art of war and melee fighting since their childhood.
He is a skilled leatherworker and he spent the last weeks crafting leather armors for each one of characters.
Kirk the Orc will join the characters in their first mission. I created this npc to balance the fact that both are magic user and the adventure requires some strenght.