Player wants to interrogate a Vestige

[Dr_Dinosaur]

I have a fairly long-running campaign coming to a climax as the players are preparing to move in on the big bad, who has been summoning up Vestiges and binding them into sophisticated construct bodies to serve him in enacting a much larger binding ritual that will essentially allow him to both destroy death forever (his actual goal) and basically unravel the universe, kicking off another gods vs. Titans war in the process, assuming they don't intervene. They are starting to figure all this out, with one character leading the delve into the bbeg's backstory and the lore. Now this character is looking to be left behind for a session while the group (they have some npc friends so he wants to play one of those) goes to finish some other pressing business. Alone with one of the vestigebots. And now that they've caught one, he wants to have his character get some answers from it about what it was helping with.

I don't mind the trying, since they haven't quite put together the plan yet anyway and vestiges are known for being mercenary. But the issue is that, A. The vestige in question is Orthos, and B. The construct bodies have been established to restrict their ability to go against orders or actively work against him.

So, how would you have the oldest, most enigmatic, and silent of the vestiges respond to the questioning without invalidating the work put into catching it? Have your binders asked one about previous contracts?

[Kelb_Panthera]

I wouldn't.

Vestiges are irretrievably mad beings from outside time and space as we know it. Even if it was a more humanoid vestige like leraje, it would be a fool's errand to try to glean any useful information out of one. That a strange ritual has bound up one in some sort of construct body doesn't really change any of that.

Seriously, the kind of madness where 1+1=cheese, morality is orange and purple, and the very concept of time is utterly meaningless. You may as well ask a desert lizard for a good blackened catfish recipe.

It might be entertaining to roleplay it out but I wouldn't let any more useful information come from interrogating a vestige than I would from interrogating a golemn. Top it off with the fact orthos doesn't speak and you can just outright forget the whole thing as a waste of time.

[Honest Tiefling]

If I remember Orthos and vestiges correctly, it is likely a task for epic skills. I mean, he doesn't seem to really talk, and constructs aren't known for being good with body language. If you want the player to not feel screwed, here are some suggestions:

Capture someone else who maybe a bit more on the talky side of things. He could have been mistaken...And maybe this vestige doesn't really want everything to end, at least not just yet. The trick is letting the vestige get a chance to speak.
Don't interrogate him, but research the ritual. Perhaps even devise a way to undo it or change how it works.
Orthos is needed for the BBEG's plans for...Some reason. Even just keeping him away from the BBEG throws a wrench into things. Perhaps a hit squad targets the player if you get some time with them without the other players to spice things up a bit.

[Dr_Dinosaur]

Pretty sure none of my players use this forum so I'll lay it out a bit more. The constructs are technically suppose to act like normal semi-intelligent constructs, just powered and enhanced by the vestiges. The couple of them housing formerly-mortal spirits have somewhat taken on personalities similar to the vestige, while Orthos' and the others are still mostly just trapping the things Eggman-style. The issue is that one of the more 'human-ish' ones has been interacting with them on and off without them knowing his nature for a while, and that apparently gave this player the idea that they were all like that, when it was an unstable prototype with a relatively recently-created vestige inside. The suggestions given are great though.

I think what I'll do is stonewall his attempts to chat, but let the character poke through what info they managed to get on binding magic and either have the strike force come to retrieve the unit (that they didn't check for traps or enchantments) or let what I expect to happen once he knows more go through, which is binding Orthos to himself as part of his rather illconcieved bid to betray the party and finish what he thinks is a standard 'attain ultimate power' ritual himself once the bbeg is dealt with. And before concerned parties say anything, everyone already agreed that intra-party conflict is fun and have existing rivalries going on.

[DemonRoach]

TBH I think this is easy.

They key is the players have to realise that what they need to to is offer a variety of sensations, that's the entire reason Binders work. Orthos' lack of communication can be done by stilted responses and no references for time, with at best hazy representations of location. He doesn't need to give much in terms of amount, if he can give something that is plot significant, such as the BBEG plan in archaic/confused language.

[Psyren]

Eh, I disagree that vestiges will invariably give a 1+1=potato answer. Basically the only thing to keep in mind is that many of them are, in addition to being gleeful liars, are very disoriented by their situation. They genuinely do get confused, even about the details of their own lives, never mind all the fragments they get from our world by being briefly bound. That doesn't mean the data they provide is useless, just that you have to corroborate and fact-check it.

[Eldan]

Oh man. That reminds me of that one time I sent a party to Moil and the Binder bound Acererak and Tenebrous. Or one of its last visitors and its creator, in other words.

I opted for the "mad" way out too, though I gave him a few tips for creativity.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Eh, I disagree that vestiges will invariably give a 1+1=potato answer.

Well of course they won't. 1+1=cheese. Everyone knows that you get potato by adding cheese+chair. :smalltongue:

[Bad Wolf]

I think there's a bit in ToM about Sense Motive checks automatically failing against vestiges. Might be somewhat relevant.

[Red Fel]

Here's the thing. Vestiges exist in a nonplace outside of reality. Outside of time and space. A vestige can be in multiple vessels at once. It can be attached to multiple beings at once, or neither. Tomorrow, it can be bound to a vessel yesterday.

Even if you could extract logic from it, asking it "What did your master tell you this past Tuesday?" is like asking "When is Africa?" When time and space have literally no meaning to a being that can be everywhere and nowhere in asynchronous order, you can't even tell if you're speaking to the same consciousness now that you were fifteen seconds ago.

Further, the rules on vestiges don't support any communication beyond initial negotiations. There are no rules suggesting that there's some kind of "second mind" dwelling within yours, actively communicating any thought or conscious will (unless you fluff it that way). Rather, the rules suggest that the presence of a vestige within a Binder simply "influences" the Binder to act in ways more fitting the vestige in question. For example, a Binder binding Malphas won't become suddenly nostalgic when walking through an Elven village or Druidic grove. A Binder binding Shax won't recognize a Storm Giant as descended from somebody Shax knew personally centuries ago. Nor would a Binder binding Aym, upon discovering an ancient Dwarven ruin, gasp that the place was reminiscent of home. There's no communication of actual conscious thought there. There are simply sensations, influences, skills.

Vestiges don't generally speak about previous contracts. Or current ones. Perhaps they're unable, perhaps they're unwilling. You could play it off as mystique, confusion, or genuine madness. In the case of Orthos, I would play it off as mystique - whether he is even capable of answering or not, he would simply refuse, with a knowing smirk.

[Psyren]

Further, the rules on vestiges don't support any communication beyond initial negotiations.

Actually, you can ask questions at this time. They aren't always answered but they can be, and the info isn't always helpful, but it can be too. ToM:


Occasionally, a vestige might speak with a binder about other matters before the process of binding begins, though its willingness to do so is based entirely on whim. The information gained from such a conversation, however, is suspect because vestiges are notoriously unreliable sources. They don't seem to recall anything except their own lives, and even those memories are often confused and incorrect.

To make themselves more attractive to binders, vestiges often pretend to possess much greater knowledge than they are capable of having; indeed, some even assert that they can see the future or monitor present events occurring in distant locations. It's impossible to force a vestige to tell the truth or even determine whether it is lying, since vestiges have immunity to all spells except antimagic field, and Sense Motive attempts against them always fail.

Even so, however, some Binders consult regularly with vestiges. Although the information provided is unreliable, it sometimes bears a startling similarity to the truth, and strange coincidences abound. Years of questioning various vestiges about their origins have yielded many different versions of each one's story, but the binder scholars who collect vestige legends have become adept at compiling the common elements and researching their veracity.

Furthermore, there is an entire organization dedicated to gaining as much knowledge from and about vestiges as they can - the Theurgian Society (ToM pg. 94.)