The Fidele is from
Dark Roads & Golden Hells from Kobold Quarterly. I needed to figure out what sort of fiend the thief was going to bind, and for reasons that will be explained later, it wasn't a simple question. The assorted ranks of the undead, I've got down, but on planar matters, I don't have much experience. So, I had to turn to the experts: The denizens of the forums at planewalker.com, the official Planescape fansite. Many thanks to Jem, Wicke, Mask, Viking Legion, Palomides, and Anetra from over there for helping out a "clueless berk" like myself. The fideles were actually created by Jem, and they fit the bill perfectly.
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Ladies and Gentlemen, Zorach the Widower. I knew I wanted Cynthia to summon an extraplanar creature of some sort to preside over the ceremony that would resurrect Baron Metus. The problem was that I couldn't find a creature that seemed to fit. I could of course, have just made something up, but I was hoping to find something existing that fit, and was sure there was something out there in the whole wide D&D multiverse. But since my specialty is Ravenloft, I don't know much about the outer planes, and nothing in the Monster Manual seemed to be what I wanted.
So, first I asked my Fraternity of Shadows buddies, and we'd come up with the ice weird, but it just wasn't quite right for what I was picturing. So as mentioned in the previous commentary, I went to the experts, and posted on the official Planescape fansite, planewalker.com, asking for help. Thanks again to Jem, Wicke, Mask, Viking Legion, Palomides, and Anetra for their ideas, and particularly Jem for creating the fideles and Anetra for bringing them up in the thread.
My original thought was a male demon of some kind. Kind of something like The Gentlemen from Buffy, or Pinhead from Hellraiser, or the Utapauns from Revenge of the Sith. Sort of sinister, but clearly intelligent and not a monster. The sort of thing one might sell a soul to. My full criteria were as follows:
- willing to be bound into service to higher powers
- religious trappings or history of worshipping deities
- willing to make deals with mortals
- Relationship to undead/undeath
- schemers/infiltrators as opposed to brutes
- relationship to magic/ritual
- aspect of fire/heat and/or ice/cold
- creepy looking, but not over-the-top-monstrous
I figured, if I could hit 2 or 3 of those, I'd be happy. Turns out the fidele could fit around 5 or 6, plus their backstory of being the embodiments of eternal love fit right in with Cynthia and Evening Glory.
The only issue was adjusting his abilities to reflect a widowed fidele, mad with grief, and not your standard bonded fidele. I gave him an ability I called "Forced Bond," which says:
"Forced Bond (Su): If a female is hit by one of Zorach’s arrows, she must make a DC 20 Will save or become bonded to Zorach as per the forced shared pain psionic power. This lasts for 7 rounds or until a dispel magic or similar spell is used on the target. When active, a glowing ring of energy appears on the target’s left ring finger. If another target fails their will save against this attack, any previous target is freed from the effect."
And I altered his "To my Lover's Side" ability to only allow him to move to the vicinity of the victim of his forced bond power. (Maybe if I want to be cruel, it can take him to his dead mate's grave too, but now that he's trapped in Ravenloft, that's moot.)
Other than that, he's a standard fidele Rgr3 with human as his favored enemy. Any ability to officiate over unholy rituals is a gift from Evening Glory, and not from any class abilities.
I didn't give much thought to who killed his spouse or how, since it wasn't relevant right now. Presumably, it was a human who killed her, hence the favored enemy choice. If I ever get around to writing him up for Quoth the Raven, maybe I'll come up with something.