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Millstone85
2015-08-12, 04:27 PM
So this here is the story of a character I play in a campaign.

Escarboucle was conceived on the plaguewrought border of Chondalwood. Her mother Miranda Thermidor was from a long line of druids and became one herself, while her father Almandin Ormphel was an orphan of Ormpettar (hence the "family" name) who was raised in the Church of Silvanus and became a paladin. They lived in a forest community devoted to both the spirits and gods of nature, with the mission to heal the land.

One day, a sudden surge of spellplague engulfed the camp, turning all its residents into plaguechanged creatures. The pregnant Miranda was locked in a fully conscious but helpless form. She prayed the spirits and the gods to come to their help but no answer ever came. To her renewed shock, she carried her baby to term and Escarboucle was born not as a plaguechanged creature but only as a spellscarred one. Miranda prayed again and soon thought herself and her child truly forsaken by the world.

Eventually, a spirit manifested itself, appearing as a cat leading a pack of wolves. There was a wrongness in the air. More than the spellplague alone, the touch of the Far Realm could be felt. An entity calling itself Uruboriade proposed a pact. It would foster the girl, which was both the offer and the price.

Escarboucle grew up among aberrations. At first, it was only beasts. Later, she travelled to the Underchasm and to a cyst of kaortis who had made their own pact with Uruboriade. That's where she learnt the ways of civilization and helped the conversion of many people into new kaortis.

At Uruboriade's command, the now 15 years old Escarboucle went adventuring along with the cat familiar that was Uruboriade's mouth and the she-wolf that had become Escarboucle's companion (respectively named Kyubey and Nymeria, yeah I was shameless there). They were instructed to seek a promising group of adventurers and join it, mainly so Escarboucle would gain field experience.The party was founded by a genasi cleric of Kelemvor named Sha-Karn and a tiefling bard named Murmure, who share origins in Calimshan. A shardmind druid named Zakiti joined the group around the same time as Escarboucle and her animals. There is a fifth player who alternates between characters of a roguish network.

Surprisingly enough, the progressive reveal of Escarboucle's past was most accepted by Zakiti (as explained in another thread, I wish this hid something, but the player just isn't that dedicated to his role). The one who truly despises Escarboucle is Murmure, because the kaortis remind her of her past as a slave in Calimshan. But Escarboucle's greatest concern is that she lost contact with "her" kaortis, apparently defeated by a rival cyst. The influence of rival Far Realm entities named Yurtoth, Nyarleth and Urd has also been felt.

The party main quest has been to escort a baby from a place near Erlkazar to the Cormyrian capital of Suzail. Brimeote, a ranger/wet-nurse (who is also the official DMPC), was hired by the party to take care of all the boring stuff like diapers. The baby had no known name so Brimeote called her Mel. However, Mel turned out to be one of them ultra-fast growing ultra-fast learning babies and she now looks like a slightly immature 18 years old. The party was also regularly assisted by Nalephite, a mithral dragon in human form (who I suspect to be the unofficial DMPC), and Escarboucle was contacted by spellscarred Cormyrians who offer her a new start in life.

The quest is now complete as the party reached Suzail and delivered Mel to the mage council. She turned out to be something the characters never saw coming (but the players yes, from a mile away): none other than Mystra reborn. But she does not remember her past lives and she does not want to be anyone important.

Meanwhile, Suzail is in a turmoil. King Foril is recovering with difficulty from an attempt to poison him. His son is not ready to rule. Some nephew named Erzoured, with connections in Calimshan, is advocating forced labour. And most obviously, the neighbour nation of Netheril is on the offensive and opening portals to Banehold. Two guilds are suspected to have a hand in all of this and also work with kaortis.When Escarboucle came into play, she was out to get the world, like a psycho magical girl. Now, she feels severely outgunned and out of the loop. There are bigger baddies in the world and beyond, and she does not have the luxury to face them by increasing order of difficulty like she originally intended.

So she is thinking about making uncanny(ier) alliances. If Bane appears to be working with the Far Realm, then perhaps a highly influenceable soon-to-be-Mystra could be convinced to get her own outer sponsor. The presence of an easygoing shardmind druid would help sell the concept. Of course, Escarboucle also has to make her patron see the merits of working with Mystra, even though the goddess could end the spellplague and thus close many portals to the Far Realm.

There is also the matter of what would happen to Escarboucle if either her spellscar or her pact got erased. Optimistic scenario n°1: She manages to keep one volatile magic under control without the help of the other, even though she has never done that before. Optimistic scenario n°2: Curing her from the spellplague also closes her inner portal to the Far Realm, leaving her neither a plaguechanged nor an aberrant creature, and then she receives new powers from Mystra or something. Pessimistic scenarios: Countless.
I am trying to set her on a path toward the stuff described in Dragon#394's Totems of the Far Realm. She would become a character who seeks balance not between the planes of the cosmos but between the cosmos and the lovecraftian weirdness beyond it.

Do you have any advice on how I could achieve that?

ScrivenerofDoom
2015-08-13, 12:18 PM
Advice?

I hate to say this but you really need to talk to your DM. This is not standard issue FR (or even D&D) so it all depends on how he or she sees the Far Realm and the return of Mystra. But, personally, I don't think there can ever be balance between the Far Realm and reality: they are two fundamentally opposed forces.

Canonically, Bane wouldn't ally with the Far Realm because all that madness would actively undermine his divine power base (he wants tyranny and order and something like the Far Realm would only be allowed to cause chaos in the short term to justify his followers implementing their special brand of order thereafter.)

That said, beholders are from the Far Realm and often ally with clerics of Bane. Maybe your answer lies with the eye tyrants - who may also want to see Mystra returned because they actively like magic (if you read 3.5E's Lords of Madness you will see that magic items can form part of their diet) - but you really need to ask your DM if that's how he or she sees his or her version of FR.

Millstone85
2015-08-13, 03:43 PM
The impression I get from my DM is that he has never really used the Far Realm before. A previous character of mine had an encounter (of the escape sequence variety) with what I believe was a gibbering mouther, however the creature was explained as a necromancer's handiwork. And at the risk of offending an obvious fan (what with your avatar and all), I was told that this DM typically uses beholders to guard chests. Oh, don't get me wrong, he treats other creatures in depth, and largely favors story over combat. I guess the Far Realm is just not a side of D&D he has seriously considered before. He thanked me for introducing this theme, though.

Partly because of this, I got to present my own preferred interpretation of the Far Realm. I see it as a place of untamed creation where every new thing is at the mercy of the next. The moral and elemental planes emerged from it, though they only represent a subset of the ideals and substances that exist in the Far Realm, hence aberrations seeming so insane and alien. I also insisted on the Great Old Ones being more similar to Nature Spirits than to Gods or Primordials. Uruboriade in particular is like a sentient oceanic ecosystem.

Escarboucle's incoming talk of balance might very well be, just like much of her life before, completely off the rocker. And when she starts believing it herself, that might not make her any less selfish or cruel, not truly. But it doesn't matter to me. It is just the direction I want to develop the character toward.

Now, how should Escarboucle bring this up to an amnesic Mystra, in the current situation of Suzail?