Toben the Many? o.O'

[Zilfer]

Came accross the ideas in the vault about him.... btw do we still do those? Kinda a neat thing to peruse through a lot of the members (that i now recognize by name's entries) ideas.


Anyways this guy perked my interest, from the bits and pieces i was able to gather he infects recently dead people. Smiles creepily alot, and talks in a weird voice which i'm having a hard time picturing. (is that the right word for a sound?)

He seems to have a twisted sense of humor as well, anything you can tell me about this guy? o.O'

Sounds like it'd be an awesome thing to throw in for a little bit of laughs in a game.

[Hazgarn]

He's outlined in Van Richten's Guide to the Walking Dead. He's more or less what you'd get if you took a zombie plague, made it sentient and gave it the Joker's personality. Or like an undead version of the Borg, turned psychotic. I like the idea of him a lot, and I know I want to use him some day. I've had a few ideas, but I'm a long way off from having a game run long enough to bring him out.

Some of my rough ideas:
- The characters first encounter the idea of Toben in an adventure that actually takes place in Scaena. First the players investigate the orphanage that he "collected" in the narrative of VRGttWD, but half way through Juste decides that having investigators show up is "contrived" and revises the plot, forcing them to live it all over as children living in the orphanage instead.
- Having previously encountered or heard of Toben, the party investigates the deaths of miners. Though originally killed by bandits hoping to reap a payload, a blast or accident opened up tunnels sealed ages ago to contain an outbreak of Toben's disease. (If they've encountered him before, of course, he may remember whatever "fun" they got up to previously).
- Reversing the idea of Azalin seeking to use Toben, the players are approached by one of Toben's zombies who poses as a man whose sister has been kidnapped. In truth, one of his vessels has been captured by Kargat agents and is being taken to a facility in Darkon. He and the party would have had "fun" in the past, so he has a good idea of their abilities and motivations. And can't risk raising his full number of bodies to pursue the stolen vessel himself... (Optionally, since one vessel is theoretically aware of anything another vessel is aware of, they might take his head in a basket to provide clues in their search. This, only because I would probably drop or tone down his disease aura ability.)

[alhoon]

Toben the many is more than "one" thing. He controls and occupies a large number of zombified bodies and uses them for sick, deadly pranks. He has a hive mind. He is able to control all his bodies independantly and he inhabits all.
He's nearly indestructable and unstopable since ALL of his bodies have to be destroyed for him to be finally destroyed. And he can very easily turn people to Toben zombies with a disease, or by punching them to death.

[Lucien Doomdark]

Anyways this guy perked my interest, from the bits and pieces i was able to gather he infects recently dead people. Smiles creepily alot, and talks in a weird voice which i'm having a hard time picturing. (is that the right word for a sound?)

He seems to have a twisted sense of humor as well, anything you can tell me about this guy? o.O'

Sounds like it'd be an awesome thing to throw in for a little bit of laughs in a game.

You could use him as something of a comedy character and you'd be more than welcome to do so. But in my opinion, it'd be a tragic waste of an opportunity to truly, truly mess up your PCs. If you can get ahold of Van Richten's Guide to the Walking Dead, then I highly recommend you do so because it takes your typical D&D undead: skeletons and zombies, and makes them absolutely terrifying. The best way to use to Toben is to use his mobility and his malicious sense of humour to your advantage -for example, an adventurer, long away, returns home and goes to see his family to see them all sitting around the dinner table waiting for him in a grotesque tableau of a 'Welcome Home' party. "Hello" "Son" "You were away" "Such a long time" "So we got a little bored" "And started the party without you."

[Zilfer]

Yeah i'm not sure i'll be able to pick up the book any time soon is why i was indeed asking.

Furthermore i'm guessing that last part is the many different bodies talking in a string to make a sentance.

[HuManBing]

In the few times I've used him, I've really played up the extreme level of intercoordination among the possessed Toben bodies. Much of the shock value can be had with conversation flowing seamlessly from one host to the next, but in combat Toben can be downright terrifying.

Imagine a mass of two dozen undead. But instead of a rag and tumble cohort, they're all dashing and leaping around and over each other with the amazing cohesion and coordination of gymnasts or performance artists.

Say the PCs are hiding up a staircase, and they had the wit to destroy the stairs behind them to keep the zombies at bay. In one single round, a Toben zombie takes a running leap towards the PCs, as two others lay themselves down at the base of the stairs, and kick upwards with their feet just as the leaper lands on them. The leaper catapults upwards, just in time for another zombie to through a woodaxe across the staircase - and the leaper catches it flawlessly and brings it down on the cowering PC with all its weight behind it.

Just little touches like that, which indicate that something of far greater coherence is controlling all these bodies as a set of limbs under one massive, brooding mind.



The only other time I make undead this well-coordinated and efficient is when Azalin is controlling them - and then only when he himself is physically present. It's a terrifying break from the usual stereotype of "resilient-but-slow milling corpses". What does the hero do when the corpses he's fighting are as well-coordinated as a set of fingers all controlled by one single blackened hand?

[Hazgarn]

One thing I've thought might be fun with Toben (hinted in some of my ideas above) is the "possessive nemesis" trope.

Toben's sense of humor is sadistic and he has no respect for the lives he's destroying in his games, but they are games, and he's entertaining himself. To him, living beings are an endless supply of cheap toys. But what if he found some playthings that he felt were unique and interesting enough that he didn't want to break them right away (important NPCs--perhaps Alanik Ray is shades of this--or the PCs themselves)? Technically he could collect them at any time and possess every part of them, but maybe there's something special about watching their reactions to his antics. His pranks paint him as an artist of macabre humor, and an artist can't fairly be his own critic, can he?

These are his favorite toys worthy of special care and attention...and if he values these toys he wouldn't want the other children on the block to break them either.

[Zilfer]

Wow just reading that and picturing that in my mind screams bad ass, and scary if i was a player because that'd be odd for a zombie to do. I think it more has a fear of the unknown is what i'd be feeling in that case.

Nice theme's btw Human.

So when he plays these games.... what type of "games" would he be playing? Something like pretending to be alive still, and infecting more people?

[alhoon]

Well.... that you describe HMB would require a good deal of acrobatics/tumble or whatever you want to call that skill to pull it off.
It seems kinda unfair for a hive mind to have that much greater coordination that a single mind would have over a body. What I mean is, I understand that all the zombies could do what a single body does in unison. But the acrobatics you describe would be hard to pull for a single person (Steping on something, jumping in the air, catching something he threw with the other hand like juggling and throwing a hit afterwards) unless he was a skilled athlete.

I personally go someway on the "those bodies are nothing to me" route. Like a Toben zombie purposefully stepping on a fire, cackling laugh as the fire consumes the body, while the other Toben zombies taunt and engage the PCs. Hard way for a loved one to go, as a grinning zombie with none of the personality you knew inside it, the very body of the loved one thrown away just for the laughs.
It's not just that Toben took someone away for you (like a plague would). It's that Toben didn't even care about him/her, he just wanted you to not have that person in order to make you sad, not that he had any use for the stolen person's body.

[Hazgarn]

The above idea gave me this one as a potential example of a Toben prank:

Toben witnesses a troupe of dancers performing somewhere. He likes them. He thinks their dances are beautiful. He has to have them, their bodies and their skills. So he "collects" the dancers, and he plays with them for a while, and he thinks...wouldn't this dance be even more wonderful if they were on fire when they did it? So he does it, and it's brilliant, and the burning corpses laugh at the audience's horror as they dance.

[alhoon]

Yeap. Sounds like Toben.

Have the zombies also dance/jump through the stage exits or the village or theatre or something starting dozens of fires and you have a nice one.

[HuManBing]

Well.... that you describe HMB would require a good deal of acrobatics/tumble or whatever you want to call that skill to pull it off.
It seems kinda unfair for a hive mind to have that much greater coordination that a single mind would have over a body[...]

I personally go someway on the "those bodies are nothing to me" route.

That works too, for sure! I personally think the "disposable cannon fodder" attitude is usually too common among undead in general, so I go with the "badass acrobatics/synchronized" trope instead for elite threats. But use whichever one works well with your campaign.

As a note, I hold that Drakov first realized that Azalin's power over undead was truly unusual, when he noticed that the undead were exhibiting such a level of coordination. Drakov has fought undead before on Krynn, but they were all more like the disposable cannon fodder corpses common to standard fantasy fare. I wanted Azalin's undead to be fast, sleek, and SCARY, even to a seasoned veteran like him!

[alhoon]

Weeeeell... considering that Drakov invaded Darkon 4 times just to have his army wiped out without accomplishing nearly anything, with just a though of Azalin to send the dead up and then send the freshly dead up again, I don't think he got the message.

[Zilfer]

Heh maybe I'll be able to pull off both at different times .

[Hazgarn]

The acrobatics might be an extreme example (though a cool one, and if he's collected a troupe of acrobats, definitely appropriate), but the ability to manipulate his bodies simultaneously is intrinsic to what he is, and could potentially be a terrifying weapon on its own.

Imagine it kind of like an RTS game: What any group of zombies sees clears the "fog of war" for Toben, and as the controlling will for all of them is capable of timing his spectacles, diverting his efforts, or creating ambushes in a single coordinated effort in real time.

If the PCs are fleeing one group of zombies to reach a bridge, if he can manage to get another group to that bridge on time he can cut off their escape.

Now, through that first group, he has a good idea of how close the PCs are to the bridge and how much time he has. If he manages to get that second group there on time, sure, he could destroy it right away...or, he could set it up and wait for the perfect moment.

Wait until the PCs are close enough to watch their only means of escape being destroyed just when they thought they might get away...

Or, he might choose not to destroy the bridge at all and let the PCs escape. But he knows where the closest town is, and if he takes his time, he could just as easily prepare something truly spectacular for when they get there.