Can an Evil NPC turn good?

[Orsen]

Hi all,
I'm running my group through Rise of the Runelords (the anniversary edition which is fantastic btw) and we're just coming up to the end of Chapter One, Burnt Offerings. For those who are familiar with the campaign: The party has just cleared out the surface level of Thistletop and have made there way into dungeon level one where they encountered the Yeth Hounds in the chapel. The party will be regrouping with Thistletop's inhabiters now aware of the party.
For those who aren't familiar (a longer story is necessary):
Nualia was left on the door step of the Sandpoint cathedral as a child. Sandpoint is a small town and the good priest took her in. As she grew up she was recognized as an Aassimer, and while the adults liked this, her exotic and celestial beauty caused her to be teased by the other children.
Eventually a young man took notice of her and they consummated there new love in caves underneath Sandpoint, a cave just outside an evil shrine dedicated to the dark Goddess of Monsters and Monstrous births. Nualia became with child and the young man fled upon hearing the news. When she could not hide it any longer from her adopted Father he was furious and locked her away, forcing her to pray many long hours each day. She grew to hate the good Goddess she was forced to pray to and her adopted Father, and the whole town for what it had done. An ancient magical event happened, sparking intense rage across the town late one night. Nualia, with all her pent up rage was especially affected and awoke, locked her FAther in his room and then burned down the church. She then ran.
Following messages of her new Dark Goddess she seeks now to throw off her celestial taint and offer up all of Sandpoint in flames to her Goddess to become a demon in a dark ritual. The PC's are currently at her base (Thistletop, home to a goblin tribe serving her) and will soon encounter her.

One of the characters, an Oracle of the good Goddess is hoping to be able to bring Nualia back to the right side, and offer her a chance for redemption. I think it's a great idea and very in character so I'm excited to roleplay it. My question to the Playground is whether or not it should work. She does not have any other effect on the story after this chapter so I know it is possible to do without upsetting the campaign, but can someone come back from such evil? What would it take to convince her? She has already dug up and used her adoptive Fathers remains in a dark ritual to gain a demonic hand, which to me shows a whole lot of commitment to her new Goddess. What does the playground think?

[Dust Bunny]

Sure--it's a common fictional trope (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HeelFaceTurn), and the way you have it set up sounds great!

[DontEatRawHagis]

Sounds cool.

Shouldn't be as simple as saying she'll switch sides(since she's now corrupted by evil), but a journey of repentance might be in order.

[navar100]

Only so far as the DM allows such a thing to happen.

[Orsen]

Alright. We'll I (the DM) feel more confident about letting this redemption happen but I guess I'm looking for more advice on how to let it happen. I don't want it to be too easy. Should it come to a battle? Will words suffice? Has anyone had this happen before? How did you handle the situation?

[Teflonknight]

It would have to be a significant "shock" to get her started on the path of reformation. Two ways come to mind for me.

(1) The young man returns with a good explanation:
(A) He was threatened by one of the dark goddesses minions that if he didn't flee both the child and his beloved would be killed.
(B) He was afraid of becoming a father..etc.
Of course he would need to be protected from her until he was able to get the message across.

(2) Something to do with the Baby (assuming the baby lives):
(A) The Dark Goddess requires the babies sacrifice as part of the ritual, if she hesitates maybe a minion will steal the baby for the sacrifice and can be rescued by the heros.

I agree that the process needs to take awhile, turning on her dark mistress should only be the start.

[Hopeless]

I wondered about this and thought the best way that could work is if the character was considered the opposite of Nualia so for example they had a warforged arm for instance the result of an incident in her childhood that left her orphaned and raised in the same community only unlike Nualia was considered a cripple because of her lost limb and scarring.

Perhaps reveal that the true cause of her downfall was the very people who gave her comfort after the fire and that they used her to release a much greater evil that would then use her as Lamashtu's servant to rebuild its hellspawn army a fate that would be far worse than her life in Sandpoint.

Maybe get one of her allies to reveal how she had been used maybe by having that creature from below Sandpoint boast about how it caused her downfall and even insured her illegitimate child was corrupted so she would be cast out and ready for Lamashtu to turn to her own use.

Maybe I'm going too far, has the Oracle character any prior dealings in their backstory to do with Nualia?

Perhaps she was a friend who tried to warn her about her new boyfriend or tried to help her when she realised Nualia's adopted father was really using her for his own benefit and didn't care one jot about Nualia herself?

[hymer]

Here's how I see it:

They have to get her to spill her story, or they must find out about it some other way. Then they have to use that knowledge, and this probably needs to be face to face, to get her to begin to doubt that she's doing/has done the right thing.
In this case, pointing out to her, in a matter she'd believe, that she is actually a victim of circumstance and the Dark Goddess, and right now she is digging her own hole deeper. Might require some subdual first, as she may be likely to try and kill the PCs if she meets them. Otherwise, you need some situation where there will be no blows traded, but conversation can take place.
From then on, she'll need to gradually return to the light, so to speak. She must decide against pursuing the dark path she is on and search for wisdom. As she's doing that, she needs to feel some sort of redeeming emotion: Love and friendship are the usual choices, but hope, gratiutude, etc. can be other ways. Then she'd be on the path back to the light, if she chooses to embrace this good emotion. She'd need more support from the redeeming PC, but by now she should actively be looking for it, which helps a lot.

OR

Book of Exalted Deeds has a way to just dice it (p. 28 on).

[Hopeless]

Or the fact someone else is in love with her and begs the Oracle to help, maybe even reveal her misshapen child wasn't cast out and is being raised by a loyal friend who refused to give up on Nualia maybe even have her be a former rival for the same boy except when she realised what he did to Nualia she was the reason he fled to Magnimar since she was the one he loved...

Oh! what is the Oracle's back story by the way, what they've come up with so far?

I wonder what if the mishapen child is considered that because of evidence that its proof he/she is cursed BUT that isn't the case and the Oracle has been told there is a way to reverse the curse on both mother and child if she can save them both by finding the true culprit?

What if Nualia's foster father was hiding something else perhaps it might be worth adding the fire wasn't caused by Nualia but another who made Nualia think she did it and let her believe that she locked her father inside BUT even if she hadn't barred his door he couldn't have left the room anyway because something had already paralysed him...

[Orsen]

Wow. There's a lot of really cool ideas going on now.
Oracle back story for those that have asked - Grew up in Korvosa (big city far away) in a magical family. As his natural talent grew he was trained and he believes that his power comes from the stars, not directly from Desna. He was sent with a trinket to be blessed at the new cathedrals opening but now he's caught up in this business.
He has no past experience with Nualia what-so-ever. He only knows as much about her as he's been told by townsfolk, and what evil he's discovered she's done.
Opportunities to reveal how she was manipulated may be scarce at this point. There are few NPC's who were actually close to Nualia left to reveal secrets like that but I will try to think of a way to include it. The PC's will likely be encountering her next session. It's too bad I didn't know the players intentions earlier, I could have been dropping more clues.

As a note on Nualia's own backstory, the child was still born and the monstrous deformed body was burned immediately by the wet nurses (it was shortly after this that she burned down the chapel) so unfortunately it can't be used as motivation, except as part of the manipulation.

[Acanous]

If the oracle is willing to pay 17*90+10,000 GP and lose a level, he can cast Sanctify the Wicked on her.

That'd do it.

[hymer]

Wait, what? Can he pay an NPC to cast the spell but make the sacrifice himself?

[Dust Bunny]

If the oracle is willing to pay 17*90+10,000 GP and lose a level, he can cast Sanctify the Wicked on her.

That'd do it.

I have to admit--I don't like spells like this. While I'm not a fan of the alignment system, seeing it subverted like this is ... cheap.

My inner bard demands an epic quest for redemption, complete with an initially unwilling "patient," a long, painful struggle towards the good, occasional back-sliding ... the whole nine yards. On the other hand, if this is conducted "on-stage," then the redemption becomes the campaign. It's a lot easier to do in written fiction than in RPG, but it can be done, if the party agrees to it.

[Larkas]

I see a couple of (not necessarily mutually exclusive) scenarios:

1 - Nualia gets on with her plan to turn demonic. The players find out and manage to stop the ritual. It is revealed that the Goddess simply wanted Nualia's soul for some reason and another, probably because it was so close to the upper planes, and would fall the hardest. The Goddess, enraged, tries to take Nualia's soul by force anyways, maybe using an evil cleric, and the players manage to foil this too, maybe with great sacrifice. Nualia isn't redeemed yet, but she is impressed at how much someone can care for her, the reject that was despised by her childhood peers, abandoned by the man she loved and locked away by her foster parent. This might give her a small spark of hope, something that she never truly had. (Turn her to a DMPC at this point?)

2 - The PCs decide to dig up Nualia's past. They find out that the Goddess has always had her eyes set on her. The terrible deformations her stillborn child had were actually some kind of curse the Goddess set on it, designed specifically for it to suffer in the womb and die before its birth. Her lover did not actually run away from his responsibilities, he was brutally assassinated by a cleric of the Goddess, who then impersonated him and played the coward's part. Some or all of the nuns in the temple were actually agents of the Goddess, bent on making her every day a little torment by manipulating the populace into believing her to be a little miracle but to never truly trust her. She is an orphan because the Goddess's agents killed her biological human father and have been torturing her half-celestial or aasimar mother, a high-ranking paladin for the good Goddess - for the past 20-or-so years! All her life has been a way to psychologically mangle her mother and, by extension, the good Goddess, who for some reason or another simply couldn't interfere. For some tension, you could add that her foster father genuinely cared for her... Anyways, find a way for the PCs to present this information to her that will break her spirit - and her conviction that her path is the path of evil.

Both scenarios won't necessarily push her to be good, but does somewhat push her to be non-evil. Maybe this is where the oracle comes in! By rebuilding her confidence in herself and showing that this is a life worth living, the oracle might keep her from falling further due to her angst (there probably is an evil Death God, after all...) and actually show her the way to redemption. And you might even have material for a great future campaign: saving Nualia's mother from the grasp of the evil Goddess!

Of course, there are many other ways to explore this, but the point is that there certainly are several ways for an Evil NPC to turn good :smallsmile:

[Hopeless]

You're assuming she hasn't already been possessed and everything thats been happening is the work of the fiend thats possessing her who used her relationship so she would be weakened enough to be possessed and the wave of evil was what it used to complete the task.

How would Nualia know that using her foster father's remains to strip her of her celestial heritage and assume Lamashtu's blessing?

Her boyfriend was murdered and replaced by one of the skincarver's maybe even a doppleganger and with the aid of a certain follower of Lamashtu has set up Sandpoint for the return of an old foe slain by the current sheriff?