Sell Me On Inza

[DocBeard]

So I've been trying to like Inza for ages and it just hasn't been working. Part of it, I feel, is that it's super weird to me how little the elves of Sithicus had to do with the adventures; i might like Inza way better if she was the spoiled daughter of an elven high speaker instead of another corrupt Vistani literally next door to Gabrielle Adarre. I dunno. She just seems like a mess, a mix of shadow and guilt powers with no real structure or theme that resonates with me.

What's her curse? To be irrelevant? But she's powerful enough to torment everyone in her Domain invisibly forever. To be mocked by the memory of her Mother? Then shouldn't mom feature more centrally in the Domain's culture? Inza also replaces a powerful D&D villain archetype, a dark knight in a wicked tower, with a shadowy manipulator in a section of the core that is overflowing with manipulators who do it better without having to be invisible all day. And you still have an elf domain that isn't about the flaws and suffering of elves in Ravenloft, unless you could not being in control of their own destiny to be a curse and I feel like a population of wild elves in Vechor would do that better.

So help me out here. There are some fantastic writers on this board and I'd love to be convinced.

[Mistmaster]

Have you tried Qith the Raven 27 Sithicus, Land of the Prophetess by our friend Brilliantlight?

[The Lesser Evil]

Inza's character can seem pretty two dimensional, as on the surface she seems be into committing evil for evil's sake. She is misanthrope supreme, believing all people to be deep down as evil and corrupt as herself. Thus he primary motivation is to bring everyone in her domain into the grasp of corruption and eradicate all that is good from her domain.That altruistic and good-natured people can exist confounds her and makes her sleep unrestful, which I imagine is what bothers her most of all. The mere presence of Innocent characters causes her pain. Inza is also made of living shadow and only keep a human like form through focus, though it probably would bother her more if she weren't generally asocial save for manipulations. She is damaged in sunlight though.

Inza has one thing going for her in that she's a manipulator, but she is an asocial and entirely hidden one- that is what differentiates her from Dominic d'honaire or Gabrielle Aderre or Ivana Boristi or even the Three Hags- all of them are respected or even revered in some form or another by a retinue of humanoid minions (goblins for the last). Inza has no place in a social hierarchy (at least any formal one), save perhaps for the shadow beings she controls. Instead her magic, abilities, and crystal ball allow her to be a shadowy whisperer of temptation and evil, which means she could have any number of individuals as her pawns or servants, all acting with their own agendas and hangups.

As far as altering or reemphasizing different aspects of Inza, there's a couple of different routes you could go. Because she was born during a storm the same hour Gundar was killed, it's strongly implied that Gundar may have somehow left a stain upon her soul. Although Gundar really had it in for Magda Kulchevich and by extension the Wanderers, the exact nature or origin of any Gundar stain upon Inza's soul has never been explained. explored, or even confirmed. One approach might be to have some remnant of Gundar act as a devil upon Inza's shoulder. He would always try to nudge her toward viewing the world around her in the darkest lenses possible, including and especially her relationships with her mother Madga and the rest of the Wanderers. Inza would come to view Madga's blind good will toward her as simply using her as a tool to revisit lost relationships and accomplishments Madga never got to enjoy. In addition, Inza would view the distrust the rest of the Wanderers felt toward Inza as an inborn hatred/hostility toward her from the beginning she could never escape. In response, she justifies (or at least tries to justify) any evil on her part (or at least tries to justify) by saying everybody deep down is just as bad as she is.

To go with the ideas above, I might make Inza to have more of a philosophical bent, sort of like some depictions of the Joker. All it takes is just one bad day to push a person over the edge. To this end, she watches people with her crystal ball and tries to get them at their weakest (not always in person- sometimes through pawns or servants). Sometimes she might blackmail, sometimes she might tempt like a Faustian Mephistopheles. My imaginings of a philosophical Inza might wish her ideas to be more formally recognized/adopted by society. However, her cursed shadowy form makes any sustained social presence without discovery of her true nature really hard.

[tomokaicho]

It can't be done. Inza would have been better served by her own domain, rather than Sithicus.

[Mistmaster]

It can't be done. Inza would have been better served by her own domain, rather than Sithicus.

Read Brilliantlight version in QtR 27.

[brilliantlight]

Yeah, I turned her into a prophetess , which at the very least, gives her some motivations. Is she Soth? No, but I think she is at least less bland.

[DocBeard]

That's not a bad idea, though I run into the wall of "Gabrielle's right next door." again. Maybe she'd just work way better for me if she was the high speaker's bratty kid or something, or played at being a dark knight while she was really a clueless kid playing dress up. Something to tie into the chivlaric themes of Sithicus.

[brilliantlight]

That's not a bad idea, though I run into the wall of "Gabrielle's right next door." again. Maybe she'd just work way better for me if she was the high speaker's bratty kid or something, or played at being a dark knight while she was really a clueless kid playing dress up. Something to tie into the chivlaric themes of Sithicus.

Turn it into an island domain if you are worried about Gabrielle being right next door.