A being as old as reality.

[atemu1234]

My players are trapped in an evil wizard's lair. They think the wizard is a transmuter, experimenting with a variety of creatures, trying to increase his own power. He's trapped a being highly similar to an angel; difference being he's older than most of the current gods and was created before reality was even a thought.

He's basically an eldritch being in humanoid form, and I'm wondering how he should react to
A) being chained in the center of a room full of arcane runes and trapped from doing anything.
B) Being found by a group of wandering mercs.

Any idea on how I should play this? Maybe even some dialogue I could use?

[Perturbulent]

I suppose it depends on how he's survived this long. If he's more or less unstoppable he should at most open a single eye to see the commotion and otherwise ignore them, completely nonplussed.
If he's survived by being paranoid and dodgy and fearful, perhaps he begs, bargains, throws a fit or similar. An eternal critter terrified of losing his immortality could be a lovely sort of fun.

I suppose I'm basically asking what his motivations are.

[Trasilor]

My players are trapped in an evil wizard's lair. They think the wizard is a transmuter, experimenting with a variety of creatures, trying to increase his own power. He's trapped a being highly similar to an angel; difference being he's older than most of the current gods and was created before reality was even a thought.

He's basically an eldritch being in humanoid form, and I'm wondering how he should react to
A) being chained in the center of a room full of arcane runes and trapped from doing anything.
B) Being found by a group of wandering mercs.

Any idea on how I should play this? Maybe even some dialogue I could use?

When working with incredibly large numbers, things get...interesting. We need to bake a couple of basic assumptions.
1) Your universe is approximately as old as ours.
2) Creatures evolve at about the same rate as our reality.
3) This creature is basically immortal. Killing it only destroys the current physical manifestation, not the consciousness.

This creature would be billions of years old. I say it is basically immortal because any physical calamity that could have happened, probably did (asteroid striking a planet, trapped in ice due to rapid shift in climate, caught in an avalanche, etc). Plus any intelligent creature probably has attacked this creature before. Billions of years is a very long time to be around.

Lets assume this creature is 5 billion years old (about half as old as our universe, older than the planet). Being trapped for 100 years would be like your 20 year-old adventurer being trapped for 12 seconds. It really wouldn't phase this creature.

As such, when you have infinite time, you no longer have a pressing drive to do anything. Nothing really engages you, as you have seen or experience everything.

Being trapped for hundreds, (or even thousands of years) wouldn't even phase this guy. He would treat it like a brief respite. Perhaps he has been contemplating the mysteries of the universe or a speck of sand he found.

Personally, I would play him as an amoral, tired, 'old man'. One who constantly slips into forgotten languages making talking to him rather complicated to talk to. He might come across as feeble-minded as he wouldn't even know what kingdom he is in or who the current ruler is. As one who has witnessed the rise and fall of gods these changes just happen to quickly for him to care. He might not even be sure what plane of existence he is in.

Perhaps he is interested in things that are new to him. As ancient as he is, he has seen and done it all. These things might be trivial to the PCs but he finds them extremely interesting.

[Bronk]

I suppose it depends on how he's survived this long. If he's more or less unstoppable he should at most open a single eye to see the commotion and otherwise ignore them, completely nonplussed.
If he's survived by being paranoid and dodgy and fearful, perhaps he begs, bargains, throws a fit or similar. An eternal critter terrified of losing his immortality could be a lovely sort of fun.

I suppose I'm basically asking what his motivations are.

It could be 'used to it', like the Genie from Aladdin... being trapped for a bit would be just more of the same to him

It could be just sleep through any sort of time, like Smaug.

It might just sit there and wait patiently and have it just be a small, insignificant slice of eternity for it, like for an elemental... or be slowly getting PTSD like Dream of the Endless.

It might take an active role, trying to corrupt or save its captor, like a devil or an angel might.

Also, the Hitchhiker's Guide series introduced the concept of differing immortal mindsets... some were born that way and could while away the eons without getting bored, while others had to keep themselves busy (for example, by setting a personal goal to insult every being in the universe at least once).

[Brookshw]

When you say Angel how do you mean? A primordial-ish embodiment of good?

The old ones don't have much of anything to do with this world (were not talking old ones a la lovecraft btw). Draeden just said screw it and went back to sleep until all the noisy kids are gone. The ancient baernaloths (spellings probably off) pretty much took off and don't care much what's going on. Leshay (lashay?) likewise stay out of things. Pretty much, the older, the less directly active. I'd be a bit surprised if you ancient being reacted at all to the party.

But that's not much fun now is it so, 1) ask what's in style these days? 2) ask who won that little law/chaos tif, 3) has the pact of (whatever) been maintained, 4) does anyone have any coffee, 5) where's the toilet. Mostly just allude to some cryptic things that may be a part of the campaign/setting.

Can you specify a bit more about the campaign? There's a lot of set up potential here but details would help.