A nasty family curse for a paladin in my game
A nasty family curse for a paladin in my game
I am looking for a family curse for a paladin in my game. Her family was originally from Mordent. But because of the curse their estate was ruined and they had to flee the area. The curse was placed on them by the Fair Folk. Can anyone help me figure out what to do?
-
Igor the Henchman
- Evil Genius
- Posts: 795
- Joined: Tue Dec 02, 2003 6:50 pm
What sort of curse are we talking about? The "work together with the player to enrich character background" kind or the "drop evil surprise on player in the middle of the campaign" kind? If its the former, then what is the player like? A heavy roleplayer? A hack-and-slasher? Average in-between? Should the curse be mild or severe? Does the player have ideas for what his family is like?
Off the top of my head:
-PC's ancestor made a pact with the fey to be the best weaponsmith in the realm. Since then, weapons wielded by family members gradually come alive.
-PC's ancestor bargained with the fey to prolong his life in exchange for offeering his progeny as changeling servants. Since then, one family member in every generation hears the call from the Fey Realm and eventually disappears.
-Family members' "life threads" are being used to weave a grand tapestry in the fey realm. Near the end of their pre-destined death, family members' flesh starts to unravel like woven cloth.
-having once stolen a unique objet d'art from a fey treasury, the family members must seek out unique forgotten artifacts to "repay" the fey, under threat of being turned into trinkets themselves.
Off the top of my head:
-PC's ancestor made a pact with the fey to be the best weaponsmith in the realm. Since then, weapons wielded by family members gradually come alive.
-PC's ancestor bargained with the fey to prolong his life in exchange for offeering his progeny as changeling servants. Since then, one family member in every generation hears the call from the Fey Realm and eventually disappears.
-Family members' "life threads" are being used to weave a grand tapestry in the fey realm. Near the end of their pre-destined death, family members' flesh starts to unravel like woven cloth.
-having once stolen a unique objet d'art from a fey treasury, the family members must seek out unique forgotten artifacts to "repay" the fey, under threat of being turned into trinkets themselves.
-
Yaoi Huntress Earth
- Evil Genius
- Posts: 247
- Joined: Wed Dec 03, 2003 1:15 am
- Gender: Female
- Location: MO
- Contact:
You could go the Tam Lin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tam_Lin) route.
I'm a deviant: yaoi-huntress-earth.deviantart.com
The paladin's family made a pact with the fey to give them economic power/riches but then violated the pact (whatever it was) and attempted to turn the tables on the fey....so they were cursed and their estate was left in ruins (like so many in Mordent). The family relocated to try and escape the curse. They told stories to their children about once having been a part of the noble caste in Mordent....but those were just stories told around the hearth at night.
When the family fled Mordent they had to take up trade skills to survive.
When the family fled Mordent they had to take up trade skills to survive.
Don't fey also snatch babies away in the night and replace them with changelings?
Or at least, that's the standard explanation whenever a woman gives birth to a deformed or otherwise physically atypical child.
Maybe the paladin's family has a curse that means their children will be born... not quite right. Maybe not every child. But each kid might have a little quirk or peculiarity, such as being fascinated by fire. Just wait until the right combination of recessive genes links up, and you'll have a full-fledged arsonist pyromaniac kid on your hands.
It's not a huge curse, but if your player is into roleplaying, you can hint darkly at "cousins in attics" who aren't quite right. Maybe you can even give him a distant relative madman who's a badguy in one of the adventure arcs. And possibly the most bittersweet curse of all - give him the love of a good a woman who has some of those traits, and he has to turn her down because of how the children may turn out.
That's my thought for the day. I'm turning off my brain now to go watch NASCAR and read up on celebrity gossip.
Or at least, that's the standard explanation whenever a woman gives birth to a deformed or otherwise physically atypical child.
Maybe the paladin's family has a curse that means their children will be born... not quite right. Maybe not every child. But each kid might have a little quirk or peculiarity, such as being fascinated by fire. Just wait until the right combination of recessive genes links up, and you'll have a full-fledged arsonist pyromaniac kid on your hands.
It's not a huge curse, but if your player is into roleplaying, you can hint darkly at "cousins in attics" who aren't quite right. Maybe you can even give him a distant relative madman who's a badguy in one of the adventure arcs. And possibly the most bittersweet curse of all - give him the love of a good a woman who has some of those traits, and he has to turn her down because of how the children may turn out.
That's my thought for the day. I'm turning off my brain now to go watch NASCAR and read up on celebrity gossip.
-
Rock of the Fraternity
- Evil Genius
- Posts: 6410
- Joined: Wed Nov 21, 2007 1:16 pm
If the family welched on a financial agreement ... how about making the curse financial in nature?
For instance, every time a member of the family holds any item made of gold, the gold bleeds. And screams. Or perhaps it instantly turns jet black and starts to smell offensively.
Another possibility is that whenever a member of the family holds more money than they have a need for, it instantly starts to attract thieves of the very worst kind, some possibly monstrous ones out to steal more than money.
For instance, every time a member of the family holds any item made of gold, the gold bleeds. And screams. Or perhaps it instantly turns jet black and starts to smell offensively.
Another possibility is that whenever a member of the family holds more money than they have a need for, it instantly starts to attract thieves of the very worst kind, some possibly monstrous ones out to steal more than money.
Well, here's my take on this.
Just a warning, I had planned this before opikenopi posted the backstory guidelines, so if this doesn't fit that's why.
So, feys... it always comes down to babies, doesn't it?
A woman a few generations ago (2, 3?) made a pact with a fey lord. She loved a noble man, a strong and powerful knight, but he did not return the feeling. She made a pact with the fey: he would give him a potion that would cast a spell on the knight, so that for one night she would be his lover (a lot like Lancelot was deceived by Elaine and on that single night engendered Galahad). In the morning, the knight would still not know what had happened and would not know her. But she would be pregnant from the spell, and in exchange, the fey only asked for the child that would be born. After the birth, he would be able to cast the second part of the spell that would cast so strong a love on the knight that would bind her to the woman for his whole life.
The woman accepted to the terms. By some means (I think it's easy to set this up if she moves in the right society circles) she manages to poison the drink of the knight and indeed take advantage of the spell to spend a night in his bed. She left before dawn, quite certain she had a seed in her belly.
But after nine months, when the time came to give back the baby to the fey, she refused it. She stole a baby from one of the peasants in her property, therefore of much lowerblood than the promised baby, and she gave that instead to the fey.
What the fey had neglected to tell her was that the baby was an important material component of the second part of the spell, more exactly, the baby's blood. Because it would be of noble origin, it would somehow carry a stronger essence within it than the peasant baby's (sort of like the higher blood in the Birthright setting). It would therefore cast a reinforcement, a strenghtening of some feelings. Because it was meant also to be strongly related to the blood of the two targets (the knight and the noble woman), their binding would be effective.
Unaware of the exchange, the fey performed the spell and it backfired horribly. Instead of casting a spell of love and potency on the couple, it cast a spell of deceit and failure. Instead of strenghening their selves, it cast a waning on them, and because their child was still alive, on the child too.
The elf understood the error then and explained the results. Curse or spell, here they are: everything owned by them would lose its vital strength over time. Its essence would not be what it appeared.
It began with the sheep in the property. Their milk seemed white, but was in effect water. Over time, it expanded to the human household: the womans would not give milk, only water would come out of their breasts. Eventually, the cereals in the fields would crumble to sand instead of flour, and in time, even the house began to crumble down, as the rock lost its strength and the pillars and columns stopped supporting the buildings.
The couple grew older sooner than expected, their bones became brittle and their muscles lost their power. The man became impotent.
The knight and the woman died eventually of their own wasting. The child, less affected, survived to adulthood, to getting married and having children of their own. They still carry the taint.
Her descendents take the curse with them. After they settle in some place, the curse begins to manifest in their property around them, taking first the weakest things then the strongest ones. The house is always the last to be affected, but without crops of flocks wealth doesn't last much. It always takes time to manifest, this is a very slow effect, but it's there and they will notice in the end.
Your paladin, of course, is a descendent of this line. The stories of their past wealth are true, though why they lost it is a shameful secret.
Possible Variants:
* There are some changes I considered in this story. The spell could affect only the true fathers of the sacrificed child, that is, the servant. In this scenario, for added drama, the servant might not even belong to the household of the culprit woman who then did not need to be wealthy, but to that of your target family. It would then be affected by a wrong acted upon servants of their own, a tragedy they would not be responsible for.
* Another change in this direction that takes the curse to someone else than the originator is that someone in your target family actually marries someone of the tainted line. If I DMed this, I'd actually pick one of these two, only because I enjoy the twist that the curse is really unfair and it would freak the paladin out to discover and try to correct that.
* Another variant: the fey actually requests that the woman be pregnant from him in exchange for the spell he would cast later, and that she give him his son. When she gives him a false one, playing the classic trick of feys on them, the elf lays the curse on her and her true (and his too) son, thus sacrificing his offspring for a retributive punishment. The reason that this woman must be wealthy is that this is the ancestor of your paladin's family and so the curse would easily lead her from wealth to poverty and to extend down the line as described above.
Whatever suits you best
I hope this is not too rated for these forums :-/
Alex
Just a warning, I had planned this before opikenopi posted the backstory guidelines, so if this doesn't fit that's why.
So, feys... it always comes down to babies, doesn't it?
A woman a few generations ago (2, 3?) made a pact with a fey lord. She loved a noble man, a strong and powerful knight, but he did not return the feeling. She made a pact with the fey: he would give him a potion that would cast a spell on the knight, so that for one night she would be his lover (a lot like Lancelot was deceived by Elaine and on that single night engendered Galahad). In the morning, the knight would still not know what had happened and would not know her. But she would be pregnant from the spell, and in exchange, the fey only asked for the child that would be born. After the birth, he would be able to cast the second part of the spell that would cast so strong a love on the knight that would bind her to the woman for his whole life.
The woman accepted to the terms. By some means (I think it's easy to set this up if she moves in the right society circles) she manages to poison the drink of the knight and indeed take advantage of the spell to spend a night in his bed. She left before dawn, quite certain she had a seed in her belly.
But after nine months, when the time came to give back the baby to the fey, she refused it. She stole a baby from one of the peasants in her property, therefore of much lowerblood than the promised baby, and she gave that instead to the fey.
What the fey had neglected to tell her was that the baby was an important material component of the second part of the spell, more exactly, the baby's blood. Because it would be of noble origin, it would somehow carry a stronger essence within it than the peasant baby's (sort of like the higher blood in the Birthright setting). It would therefore cast a reinforcement, a strenghtening of some feelings. Because it was meant also to be strongly related to the blood of the two targets (the knight and the noble woman), their binding would be effective.
Unaware of the exchange, the fey performed the spell and it backfired horribly. Instead of casting a spell of love and potency on the couple, it cast a spell of deceit and failure. Instead of strenghening their selves, it cast a waning on them, and because their child was still alive, on the child too.
The elf understood the error then and explained the results. Curse or spell, here they are: everything owned by them would lose its vital strength over time. Its essence would not be what it appeared.
It began with the sheep in the property. Their milk seemed white, but was in effect water. Over time, it expanded to the human household: the womans would not give milk, only water would come out of their breasts. Eventually, the cereals in the fields would crumble to sand instead of flour, and in time, even the house began to crumble down, as the rock lost its strength and the pillars and columns stopped supporting the buildings.
The couple grew older sooner than expected, their bones became brittle and their muscles lost their power. The man became impotent.
The knight and the woman died eventually of their own wasting. The child, less affected, survived to adulthood, to getting married and having children of their own. They still carry the taint.
Her descendents take the curse with them. After they settle in some place, the curse begins to manifest in their property around them, taking first the weakest things then the strongest ones. The house is always the last to be affected, but without crops of flocks wealth doesn't last much. It always takes time to manifest, this is a very slow effect, but it's there and they will notice in the end.
Your paladin, of course, is a descendent of this line. The stories of their past wealth are true, though why they lost it is a shameful secret.
Possible Variants:
* There are some changes I considered in this story. The spell could affect only the true fathers of the sacrificed child, that is, the servant. In this scenario, for added drama, the servant might not even belong to the household of the culprit woman who then did not need to be wealthy, but to that of your target family. It would then be affected by a wrong acted upon servants of their own, a tragedy they would not be responsible for.
* Another change in this direction that takes the curse to someone else than the originator is that someone in your target family actually marries someone of the tainted line. If I DMed this, I'd actually pick one of these two, only because I enjoy the twist that the curse is really unfair and it would freak the paladin out to discover and try to correct that.
* Another variant: the fey actually requests that the woman be pregnant from him in exchange for the spell he would cast later, and that she give him his son. When she gives him a false one, playing the classic trick of feys on them, the elf lays the curse on her and her true (and his too) son, thus sacrificing his offspring for a retributive punishment. The reason that this woman must be wealthy is that this is the ancestor of your paladin's family and so the curse would easily lead her from wealth to poverty and to extend down the line as described above.
Whatever suits you best
I hope this is not too rated for these forums :-/
Alex
Zumba d'Oxossi (A Stitch in Souragne)
Brother Eustace (The Devil's Dreams)
Robert de Moureaux (A New Barovia)
Brother Eustace (The Devil's Dreams)
Robert de Moureaux (A New Barovia)
-
Hogan Van Monsterband
- Conspirator
- Posts: 49
- Joined: Sat Jun 13, 2009 7:21 pm
How about, instead of children being born changelings, their parents think they are? The fae have gotten into the parents' heads, and every so often, they'll look at their children and suddenly, subconciously go 'That's not my son/daughter.' The family've had to flee Mordent after a scandal where one of the parents took a (mortal, human, entirely normal) child up onto the moors to exchange it for the fae child they thought it was.