Hi everyone! Call for suggestions!
Right now I'm working on Chaos Knights for ADOM (as a PC class that is). I'm considering to do special background stories for them (as for barbarians). Ideas are welcome and then I'll decide. Please post them here for everyone to consider and include intended effects!
Hard one...
ReplyDeleteMaybe, coming from a family of necromancers, or
secretly you join a cult of chaos. Or even you are possessed by chaos and you leave your family forever (if not kill it?)
Obviously they should be fully correlated to ChAoS.Im thinking about this kind of (short) story:
ReplyDelete"At the beggining of ChAoS ErA, along the plains of chaos and despair, PuRe CoRrUpTiOn dominated the plane. Conceived with gruesome instruments of hell, born in the horrid core of havoc, feeding with seeds of vengeance against Law's path followers , you became the embodiment of ChAoS.
"The Law is there,just to piss off The ChAoS" - this pathetic justification of Law existance became your mantra over your childhood.
You forgot to worship anything but yourself and became the one whom the gods detest. Elder Brothers of Thee declared to send you for the quest baptizing you as Chaos Knight"
Thats what spawned out of my head after 3 beers (dont blame for grammar mistakes or syntax errors), thx :)
You begin training as a knight, upholding their ideas of chivalry and doing knightly things. Over time, your mind is twisted by chaos (perhaps beginning in your sleep, and growing more pervasive, Lovecraft style). At the beginning you still believe you are fighting for your old causes and honor system, while all the time chaos is slowly twisting your morals/influencing your actions until you end up entirely acting as a force for chaos, and renouncing your former way of life.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely not easy.
ReplyDeleteYour parents are normal something.
As a child you felt that you belong neither to Order nor Balance(+Le,-Wi) / met a stranger who revealed your destiny to you(-Pe,+St)
As a youth you trained alone (+Dx,+Pe) / tried to incline other youths to follow the ways of Chaos(+Ch,+Wi).
As young adult you thought you gained enough power to challenge your homeland's way of living.You failed and had to run away in order to survive.(+St,-Ch)/ As young adult you strived to understand Chaos more. You had to leave your hometown as there was noone with that knowledge there(+Le,-Dx).
+1
DeleteNot quiet agree with the young adult part, but it sounds like an interesting background to me.
I thought of a few rough ideas. I don't know how varied you can make the rewards...
ReplyDeleteBirth:
You were found abandoned in a dark alley. A _______ adopted you and raised you with their kids. (+Toughness, depending on what you filled the blank in with it could further affect the results (e.g. merchant = Charisma, soldier = strength, cleric=healing rate, thief=dexterity or stealth, etc.))
You were born in a small village, your family was ostracized for their poverty and strange religion. (- Charisma, + mana?, + willpower)
As a child of the town leader, you were born to privilege, despite the ill omens of the day. (+money, better equipment?)
Childhood:
In your childhood you enjoyed playing tricks on everyone. You even got away with it most of the time. (+dexterity)
In your childhood you snuck away and explored many of the forbidden ruins near your home. Often you witnessed strange purple lights dancing across the stones. (+ corruption?, +willpower, - Intelligence)
In your childhood you enjoyed torturing small animals. (-charisma, +Strength?)
Kid:
You were often teased as a kid. This led you to withdraw into your studies. (+Learning)
As a kid, you became a bully, forcing others to do your will. Many feared your anger. (+Strength)
You ran away as a child for three days. You were finally found in a nest of rats with strange purplish fur. (Chaos rat companion?, some beginning corruption?)
Young adult:
As you grew, you started to tamper with primal forces, eventually scaring off those around you (+mana, -Charisma, 1 starting corruption?)
As a young adult, your anger festered until you took it out on a group of soldiers. Your mistake almost killed you but a man with strange glowing eyes offered to save you, for a price... (-toughness, +Willpower)
As a young adult, you fell in with a gang. Your natural leadership qualities quickly made you their leader. (+Charisma, -Learning)
As a young adult, you volunteered to work with a sorcerer. Little did you know that your role would be that of a test subject. (-toughness, +Mana)
Parents:
ReplyDelete-Your parents are renowned adventurers. They have embarked on more expeditions than anyone else in your home village.
-Your parents are affiliated with the Church. They possess a great amount of arcane artifacts and know a great deal of lore.
-Your parents are great collectors. They are somewhat infamous in your home village for purchasing strange objects from traveling merchants and stealing artifacts from ancient ruins.
Childhood:
-As a child your parents brought you on one of their expeditions to an ancient temple. When your parents were not looking, you snuck away down a dusty corridor, where you were suddenly engulfed by a strange purple ray. The ray chilled you to the bone, yet it felt good.
-As a child you once snuck into your father's study. There you found a strange potion emanating a purple aura. When you attempted to examine it, you accidentally spilled the contents of the bottle onto yourself. The liquid gave you a sickly pallor for an entire week.
-As a child you were once bitten by a queerish purple rat. The bite marks never fully faded from your skin.
Youth;
-During your youth you became overcome by a desire to feel the purple energy the your body once came in contact with again. You read volume after volume looking for an account of the energy, yet you found none. Those years were lonely and wasted.
-During your youth you once felt the familiar aura of ChAoS whilst you were playing with the fellow village children. Running off into the woods you saw a small group of perverted men and women with purple auras. These figures stayed on your mind for your entire youth.
-During your youth you began embarking on more expeditions with your parents. Pleasing them, however, was not your goal. You once spent three whole days in a dungeon looking for more purple rays.
Young Adult:
-As a young adult your parents became increasingly fearful of you. They took you on an expedition into an incredibly deep and foreboding cavern, where they abandoned you on the 36th floor. Your anger boiled, yet you could feel the ChAoS that the cave emitted, you spent two whole years in that cave, accepting and feeding off of the ChAoS energies.
-As a young adult you encountered a traveling ratling. He had a large supply of the potions you craved and was willing to sell them to you. You spent your entire life's saving attempting to quench your endless thrust for ChAoS.
-As a young adult you encountered a pilgrimage of ChAoS monks. You willingly joined their order, and quickly rose through their ranks.
I would say the reason as a child they started down the path of chaos and eventually grew up to be a chaos knight is because they were either bitten by a chaos animal like rat/bat while looking in a forbidden cave or found a piece of beautiful jewelry that they always wore but didn't know it was cursed with chaos.
ReplyDeleteAs they grew up, they were drawn more and more to chaos as a result. They became an outcast of their village due to their chaotic nature/actions that no one understood. They met an agent of chaos in Lawenilothehl as a teenager that led down the final path of becoming a chaos knight.
You have no memories of your parents and childhood. Sometimes you see glimpses... a hand with a knife, a screaming face... but you don't know whether they are forgotten memories or merely nightmares. (-Le, +Wi -- you lost your early education, but your will is stronger for enduring the nightmares)
ReplyDeleteSince as far as you can remember, you studied in the chaos monastery. You've learned much about the glorious history of ChAoS and how the sinister forces of Order and Balance usurp it from taking its rightful place in the world. (+Le, -Ch -- monasteries aren't best places to get people skills)
As a young adult, you've been sent to knightly training with a group of your best friends. You've killed them all and it felt good. (+St, +Ch -- to kill your friends you need not only to overpower them, but also to deceive)
Though you reached the envied rank of chaos knight, you are not content with serving the forces of ChAoS. Your true goal, no, your destiny, is to be the master. In the light of burning monastery, you set out to discover the whole TrUtH... and to conquer it. (+St)
Memories? What memories? All you can ever remember is destruction, death, mutilation and chaos. You have no recollection of how you were raised., you just remember fighting and killing.
ReplyDeleteSomething called out to you from within the Draklor Chain, a call that must be answered, something you could not ignore. What it is, you do not know... but whatever it is, you're ready to face it down.
I think Chaos Knights would be cool if they were a faction which looked at the other factions, and scoffed and deemed the other factions conflicts and lack of balance to be the problem, and then organized a solution of wiping out the highly-aligned,
ReplyDeleteFor fun, here's something bit different:
ReplyDeleteYou were born as a cave tiger. Your memories from your early life are very hazy, but you remeber one day fighting a warrior intruding your territory when you were suddenly tranformed into a being of pure chaos by some kind of magical attack. You survived the fight, but now felt closely attuned to the forces of chaos. Led by your new instincts you found your way into a lair of powerful servant of chaos who you served for many years.
One day a group of servants of order attacked the lair of your master. During the fight you lost your consciousness in a magical explosion. Whe you woke up, you found yourself transformed into a [actual PC race]. Your master and all his other servants were killed.
It seems that chaos has something great planned for you. You now begin your journey towards your destiny as a chaos knight...
Effects: Raw meat is more nutritious(like for trolls etc), as even former cave tigers like raw meat. Or maybe rats would flee more easily.
SLIGHT SPOILER:
As a note I'm not entirely sure if this scenario could play out with current mechanics. Are WMoPCs immune to potions of exchange? If they are I'm gonna claim some kind of rare contamination on the potion used or something like that.
This was also discussed on the forum, see:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.adom.de/forums/showthread.php/11916-Ideas-for-Class-Powers-for-Chaos-Knight-Duelist-classes
Chaos knights come from the land/village founded long ago by the first hero who tried to end the threat of chaos, and failed at the very end. Cursed (bLeSsEd?) and driven insane by the gods the fallen hero was sent back into Ancardia where twisted tribes and dark villages now worship him/her. These cursed people, over millenia, have gradually been given longer and longer lives by the unnatural powers of cHaOs. But this longevity has come at a cost: fewer and fewer unmutated children in these villages have been born, and now it has been many, many years since the last successful childbirth.
ReplyDeleteSacrifices have been in vain and, for reasons unknown, the mad demigod is quiet, no longer heeding supplications.
Until now, perhaps. You are the first child in over 10 generations to have been born in these barren lands.
Are you a sign from the forces of Law, or are you the reincarnation of the dark avatar?
You were born beneath a blood-red moon. Some called it an ill omen, but the influence of your wealthy parents put down any persecution.
ReplyDeleteYour mother died in tortured childbirth and you were raised by your father. He always resented you for her death, and your stepmother hated you lividly.
Your mother was poor and forced to work as a prostitute. Your father was unknown. As her looks withered so did your family's fortune, and you oft went hungry in dank alleys.
Your parents were slaves. Though poor they loved you, but they could not protect you from a harsh life.
You were raised in an orphanage with no knowledge of your parents other than dark rumours. The local priest always avoided you.
---
As a young child you were ostracised from the other children. You spent a lot of time alone, dark thoughts slowly brewing.
In your childhood you were obsessed with knowledge, seeking secrets in places no others would dare.
You were a selfish child, demanding that your every whim be met and throwing fits when it was denied.
As a child you were gifted, but often misunderstood. Your powers made others jealous, or afraid.
From an early age you suffered years of abuse. But where others broke, you were hardened, and the memories have never left you.
---
You were a fey youth, prone to playful games and following your own mood. You were known for being active, curious and devilishly cunning.
As a youth you were a brutish bully, torturing other children and dominating anyone around you.
During your youth you became involved in a local gang, carrying out various acts of petty theft and even some more serious crimes.
Your youth involved a lot of travel, usually on the run from the law. You saw many strange places and came in touch with odd people, but you never felt settled or relaxed.
You were a quiet youth, spending much time alone in the woods. You used to hunt small animals, sometimes playing with their corpses. One day your collection of trophies was found by your carer, and you were never allowed into the woods again.
Your youth was spent in strict servitude to the local church. You resented each command and order, and took every opportunity you could to defile their sacred relics.
---
In your later years you became a sword for hire, known for your brutal and bloody murders. But you made many enemies, and suffered many scars from close encounters.
As a young adult you rose in society as a manipulator and shrewd politician. You bred corruption, and profited immensely, but were eventually found out and put to trial. Only by your network of contacts did you manage to escape.
You once fell in love with a young woman/man, who encouraged you to repent from your darker ways. But a voice came to you in the night, and you could not resist its terrible instructions. The muffled screams still echo through your head.
As you grew older you became enamoured with fire. Minor toying soon rose to acts of arson, and eventually you burned down your whole village. To this day none know you were the cause.
As a young adult you became initiated into a local cult, performing vile rites and taking part in dark orgies of sin. You revelled in this worship of chaos, and accepted it as core to your being.
---
At the age of xx you left behind the horrors of your past, looking forward only to the horrors of your future. The dark path of a Chaos Knight lay before you.
At the age of xx you accepted your fate and became a Chaos Knight.
At the age of xx you burned all ties to your past, and danced upon the corpses of those who had wronged you. Bathed in their blood you became a Chaos Knight.
At the age of xx an apparition came to you instructed you to go to the Drakalor Chain. You gathered your things and ventured forth, ready to seek the source of corruption, part of your destiny as a Chaos Knight.
Lovely, exactly the stuff I'm looking for!
DeleteOne possible way to go with this, is to present all of the background info as rumors.
ReplyDelete"They say that as a young boy you were gifted, but often misunderstood. Your powers made others jealous, or afraid."
"There are whispers that you were a quiet youth, spending much time alone in the woods. You used to hunt small animals, sometimes playing with their corpses. One day your collection of trophies was found by your carer, and you were never allowed into the woods again."
"Those that will even speak your name say that As a young adult you became initiated into a local cult, performing vile rites and taking part in dark orgies of sin. You revelled in this worship of chaos, and accepted it as core to your being."
"A madman once wandered into Terinyo, babbling about about a (wo)man who has burned all ties to his/her past, and danced upon the corpses of those who had wronged him/her. Bathed in their blood s/he stalks the world as a Chaos Knight."
It's not like this guy/girl/whatever you are after enough mutations is going to be very open about his past, and is very unlikely to have left enough people alive for anything to be an established fact.
Another fun angle would be how there's really no limit to how wild the rumors could get, especially since, as a lvl 1 NPC, you stand about a 10% shot of being crushed by the first stonefall trap on the first level of the first dungeon you wander into.
Maybe we could add a little flavor to the background stories by having them be rumors?
ReplyDeleteI.e. It's said that when you were born.../There are whispers in the less savory parts of town that as a youth you.../Those who will even speak your name claim to have heard.../A madman once ran into the town square, babbling and raving. Just before he died he claimed to have seen.../Local villagers outside the tower where you apprenticed still practice wards to keep you from their homes at night/According to the local constabulary, the criminal underworld knows you as wo/man with strange tastes, and few will have dealings with you, fewer still more than once. However, no one has provided hard evidence, regardless of the punishment they could escape by confessing.
It's not like you're going to be a very open person, especially when you consider what crimes against man/god/nature you have to commit to be where you are, and it's also not like there are many people who were party to them who are either alive or more evil than you.