Why would a man make doppelgängers?

[Concrete]

I'm fiddling with a short adventure for my players, (Pathfinder, City Watch campaign) in which the PC's are to investigate a case wherein a sailor returns home, only to find himself sitting at his kitchen table, talking with his wife.

The man returning does not know that it is actually he who is the dopplegänger, created to replace the man just as he was to set out to sea for two years, but the man survived, and was found beaten into a coma in an alley. As the pc's investigate, they will realize that a worriyingly large minority of people returning to the city from journeys are actually distressingly lifelike golem dopplegängers, who believe they are the people they were meant to replace...
There is more, but that's not really relevant to my question.

You see, I almost have a whole adventure, but it still lacks one crucial detail...

Why the hell would someone create lifelike golems to replace common working men and travelers?
I realize I've started this off from entirely the wrong direction, but I have no real idea what the villains damn motivation should be!
I could just say he's some simple crazy wizard who did it for ****s and giggles, but I must admit that I've already had a whole lot of giggle-wizard villains in my campaign and I really need something more substantial. Please, help me! Give me an idea! Anything!

[BDRook]

Think of it like the Doppelgangers are sleeper agents. The big bad is slowly taking over the populace with fake people who believe they're real people...until the time is right to take over the town. Then he says the secret magic words and activate them who then become minions under his control.

[Geddy2112]

Second sleeper agents, and on a related vein the plot of the movie "invasion of the bodysnatchers"

Being in two places at once can be beneficial, or used to frame somebody for a crime they did not commit.

Homonculi/dopplegangers/golems are a source of free labor and service for the creator.

[Segev]

One explanation is that he's kidnapping the real ones for some nefarious purpose, and doesn't want anybody to know or notice. Though you would have to have a strong reason why he couldn't keep the doppelgangers as his prisoners, instead. Especially if they're pricy to construct.

It's a classic move of the more powerful and deadly sorts of Fae, for example: capture playthings, and send changeling constructs to replace them so nobody knows any better.

Sleeper agents does seem the most likely reason. It's the typical reason for replacing anybody: get agents into a position to do what you need them to without anybody realizing they're there. There's also the assimilation/invasion plot. Pod people replace the real ones so that nobody notices the alien invasion, precisely because the invaders are slipping into extant roles.

The problem with the sleeper agent plot is that it has to be cost effective. He has to have a purpose for the infiltration that he couldn't achieve just by using all those constructs as warriors to conquer or pillage or steal. The most obvious goal would be power over a nation-state. To make this feasible, the replacements would have to be a relatively small percentage of the population by the time he's secure enough to make his move. If he's replacing the majority, he'd be better off just building his own kingdom of golem-people. He must have means of getting more back from replacing people with expensive constructs than he could get just using the constructs for labor. This usually means his goal has to be controlling the populace through some means.


It could be that this is not just an invasion/conquest scheme, but that this is also how the Secret Police of an evil empire works: dissidents are "disappeared" and replaced without anybody knowing. They believe they really are the dissident they replaced, but are programmed to make specific "mistakes" that betray the others, or have sleeper agent programming that lets them be activated to help capture others.

Even if Bob was your genuine confidant for the last 3 years, if he slipped up just a little, you can't be sure he wasn't replaced with a doppleganger and is now reporting every dissident thing you say to him to the authorities. Undermine the trust of people in each other because they can't be sure their once-loyal friends haven't been irrevocably "turned" and you break up a huge amount of any rebellion's ability to form.

This evil empire's secret police now are being used to spread influence to other nations. The replacements aren't doing the secret police thing so much as the secret agent thing, being in key places to make key sabotage occur, to capture, kill, or steal vital resources, to just plain turn on people.



Heck, it could just be a wealthy crime syndicate that uses this technique to get a foothold in an area. Now they have fences, safehouses, spies, and even "donors" who will earn them a little money. They wouldn't even have to trigger them to full "active agent" status. "Buy this stolen item and don't recognize that it's stolen" or "ignore anything that goes on in here but don't let anybody see it" could be practically subconscious programs. Bob thinks he's the real Bob, and doesn't even recognize that he's totally ignoring his cellar that's being used to store contraband. But man is he upset if anybody (other than the mafiosos) tries to get a look inside it!

[BarbieTheRPG]

Why are the clones returning to this particular city? Do you have more setting information - which city in Golarion? With that, I can give you better ideas.

[LibraryOgre]

He's trying to perfect a technique. He wants to be able to create better versions of Clones, or he's working with soul magic and wants to try duplicating them, or he's pioneering a wizardly ressurection technique... some sort of magic that lets him make perfect copies of people as an intermediate step. My favorite would be life-extension via clones, without the attendant level loss. He's been using people who were going away so his plan won't be discovered as quickly.

[Segev]

Another possibility is a misguided attempt at kindness. He scries out people who die away from home, and creates these duplicates to replace them so that their families and loved ones won't suffer the pains of the loss. He just...misjudged this one. Thought him dead when he really wasn't.

[Fable Wright]

Heck, it could just be a wealthy crime syndicate that uses this technique to get a foothold in an area. Now they have fences, safehouses, spies, and even "donors" who will earn them a little money. They wouldn't even have to trigger them to full "active agent" status. "Buy this stolen item and don't recognize that it's stolen" or "ignore anything that goes on in here but don't let anybody see it" could be practically subconscious programs. Bob thinks he's the real Bob, and doesn't even recognize that he's totally ignoring his cellar that's being used to store contraband. But man is he upset if anybody (other than the mafiosos) tries to get a look inside it!

This. I'd say that the syndicate stumbled across some kind of device that makes it a lot easier to create replicas of people, to explain why they have access to high level magic, and they decided this would be the best use of it. If you lease it, headache-inducing problems for the syndicate. Ignore it, and you are passing up on the use of a powerful artifact. This seems like the most innocuous use they could make money from, so they're sticking with it.

The PCs, of course, would soon realize that this device could cause terrifying problems if looted by a less conservative organization... which leaves the question of whether to let the syndicate keep it, hidden and well-guarded, move the extremely heavy and indestructible artifact to a safer home after fighting off a powerful organization, or leave it and hope obscurity will keep any radical organizations from finding it.

[Knaight]

Another option would be that these are part of a development process. Eventually the plan is to replace highly visible figures that people pay a lot of attention to - diplomats, warlords, maybe even a monarch or three once the technique gets good enough. It's just much easier to start with travelers, where behavioral discrepancies, lack of knowledge, etc. can be explained away with convenient excuses like "I've been at sea for the last five years".

[Honest Tiefling]

A better question is, why WOULDN'T you make doppelgängers? They could just be a mistake or an experiment gone awry in the name of SCI--I mean MAGIC!

Through such magic indicates great resources, so it could also be a distraction for a completely unrelated magical experiment. It's subtle, but plays on fears of being replaced and worries a great number of people and would make people looking in the wrong direction for something else...

[Stryyke]

Two other possibilities:

1) Matrix. The real people can be used for human batteries, but for some reason, the clones cannot.

2) Spell gone wrong. A powerful sorcerer of some sort is casting a completely unrelated spell, and doesn't even know this is happening.

[Flickerdart]

The travelers all encounter aliens/outsiders/an island full of nubile young beings who offer them a chance to explore the stars/planes/hot tub. The travelers who decide to stay have a doppelganger sent back in their place; those who choose to go have their memories of the encounter erased.

[Segev]

The travelers all encounter aliens/outsiders/an island full of nubile young beings who offer them a chance to explore the stars/planes/hot tub. The travelers who decide to stay have a doppelganger sent back in their place; those who choose to go have their memories of the encounter erased.

Now, now, why be so either/or about this? Nubile alien outsiders offer the travelers a chance to explore extraplanar stars in their hot tub space ship.

[LibraryOgre]

The travelers all encounter aliens/outsiders/an island full of nubile young beings who offer them a chance to explore the stars/planes/hot tub. The travelers who decide to stay have a doppelganger sent back in their place; those who choose to go have their memories of the encounter erased.
Greetings, Starfighter. You have been recruited by the Star League to defend the frontier against Xur and the Ko-Dan armada.

[Mando Knight]

A better question is, why WOULDN'T you make doppelgängers? They could just be a mistake or an experiment gone awry in the name of SCI--I mean MAGIC!

Through such magic indicates great resources, so it could also be a distraction for a completely unrelated magical experiment. It's subtle, but plays on fears of being replaced and worries a great number of people and would make people looking in the wrong direction for something else...

Or, the creator could be another doppelgänger, who doesn't even remember why the project started and is just continuing it. Nothing intentionally sinister, the thing just went "Sorcerer's Apprentice" on the original.

[Alent]

The Doppelgangers are being created because the Wizard oversold his ability to produce Golems to a Devil. They made a Trade, Wizard got what he wanted, now the Devil is pushing the Wizard to deliver the goods or forfeit his soul, so he stepped up the game a bit.

Hence, the Wizard is creating the doppelgangers to slowly composite together combat experience against all kinds of beings, and survival skills used in adventuring. Slowly but surely, he's creating the ultimate Golem soldier that can take on all outsiders and win through sheer skill alone, not just through specs and magic immunity. However, to do that, he has to use a spell that creates the Golem Doppelganger, complete with memories, so that he can analyze the abilities in the Golem animation core, rather than attempting to translate Human memories into a Golem animation core.

Once he's done with the analyzed golem, he does a quick divination to see if the original is going to die or not, and if he is, he sends the Golem back to the original's family as a mercy to the golem. No sense in wasting a good creation. Just sometimes he ends up getting false positives on his divinations.

[John Longarrow]

Powerful spellcaster is trying to gather a lot of information about a lot of things, all of which are protected against arcane/divine intel gathering attempts.

Spellcaster finds out who is going to the area he is interested in, removes them, and sends a replica that can provide him an exact copy of all it has encountered.

Once he has enough information about his target he can stop using travelers and start replacing individuals in the area. His plans involving this area are almost complete, but he has no reason to get rid of his duplicates.

PCs get involved now and may try to thwart him before he moves to another area to start the same routine again.

[MrStabby]

The doppelgangers are commissioned by their originals. You have a debt of labour to pay? Commission a doppelganger to do it for you. Press ganged into the merchant navy as a punishment for something? Get your doppelganger to take the rap. Don't want to spend another weekend with your mother in law? Comision a doppelganger to go in your place.

[KillingAScarab]

He's trying to perfect a technique. He wants to be able to create better versions of Clones, or he's working with soul magic and wants to try duplicating them, or he's pioneering a wizardly ressurection technique... some sort of magic that lets him make perfect copies of people as an intermediate step. My favorite would be life-extension via clones, without the attendant level loss. He's been using people who were going away so his plan won't be discovered as quickly.I like this one, as it reminds me much of the plot to Dark City. Bonus points if you have a grizzled detective investigating the matter who plays an instrument and gets a solo scene.

[ElChad]

A service provided by a seedy local golem maker who makes Dopplegangers of sailors for their significant other while they are away at sea.

It is highly illegal to create a doppelganger (essentially creating a life from another person) so it is a well kept secret of the spouses of sailors. There is no ill will with this trade; just lonely people trying not to be lonely while staying true to their husband / wife. The only grey area of this practice is the fatal disposal of the doppelgangers when the true self returns from sea.

Will the party let this slide and keep the population happy? Or will this incident shine a light and bring people to loneliness and adultery?

[John Longarrow]

ElChad,

I'd expect the expense of getting one to be beyond the means of lower class people. If you could afford one, why would your spouse need to go on an extended voyage? I'd think these to be thousands of GPs to make, so its not like a day laborer can afford one.

[LokiRagnarok]

ElChad,

I'd expect the expense of getting one to be beyond the means of lower class people. If you could afford one, why would your spouse need to go on an extended voyage? I'd think these to be thousands of GPs to make, so its not like a day laborer can afford one.
A god(dess) of fertility, hearth and family is producing them at no cost as a "boon" for the aforementioned reasons.


As another suggestion, the creator does not like humans, period (for all the reasons any cliche misanthropic villain does not like humans). For some reason, wiping them out is not an option. Who better to replace them with than creatures of his own, err, creation?

[Gensuru]

I like the idea of a crime syndicate or a doppelgänger gone rogue. For an actual wizard with the level of skill to construct these, the ressources to do so for peasants and the ability to locate and time the replacement (e.g. a sailor just as he was to set out to sea) it seems rather odd that a mistake as glaring as "he was found beaten into a coma in some alley" could even occur. Unless this was deliberate and all of this is merely a distraction. Or some demented social experiment. Or a threat to destabilize the nation. "If this town was infiltrated, how do we know the others weren't too?" Depends how easy it is for the players to figure out who is a golem and who isn't.

I'm assuming the Golems are created as specific copies rather than as artificial doppelgängers who simply chose a convenient target to impersonate. If so, a wizard being behind it would require every chosen target to be targeted on purpose. The time and money a golem would cost doesn't make targets of convenience viable. That purpose needs to be a short- or long-term payoff large enough to create profit.

Also, unless the wizard's forbidden school happens to be enchantment, sleeper agents would be much easier to create via mind control. Unless you want sleepers with superhuman durability and strength once you activate them.


It could be a plot to take over the country if the King (or whatever) tends to visit this particular place on a regular basis. I don't quite know how to fit a sailor into this plot but having, say, the maids, cooks and local guards under your control should make grabbing and replacing the King a lot easier. Few people pay any mind to their support staff, after all. Installing a puppet ruler would at least make the payoff big enough to be worth the bother. Again, though, it seems odd that a wizard rich and powerful enough to go this way would even bother.


The secret police state thing seems nice, but I have to ask: If you can create doppelgängers that already manage to replicate the original and its memories so well, why bother? Unless the process of scanning a mind so thoroughly also destroys it in the process (which the surviving original does not seem to indicate) it seems far easier to have mandatory mental scans performed to weed out rebels.


Alternatively, as a race of outsiders is behind it. A race for whom the creation of copy-golems is simple but they are lacking in other areas (e.g. brute force). The motivation will be an issue though. Maybe each copy unknowingly carries a passenger or some kind of device that gathers some form of ressource while they are on the prime material plane. The people they replace don't, in fact, matter at all and were chosen at random. The outsiders also lack the necessary creativity to simply create fake people from scratch, hence why they snatch and replace people.

[Mastikator]

Plot twist: the PCs are the doppelgängers and the people they see are the real people. Their quest becomes figure out who created them and why.

[Herobizkit]

I know why *I'd* create doppelgangers... who wouldn't want a, erm, 'companion' who can 'be' anyone you want?

What if this villain has slipped a few disks and wants to create a perfect utopia on a demiplane... much like a child builds a Lego fort? Everything HAS to be JUST SO. It's far easier to build "blanks" and mold them rather than make real people and risk them not being perfect.

Like many mad geniuses, though, he's such a perfectionist that he never completes his goal, just endlessly meddles with minutiae.

He does need to kidnap people for the drones to study, though.

(He's basically a Minecraft world-designer.) ^_^

[Coidzor]

He's mastering alien magitek and also just can't resist prodding at things. The doppelgangers he's sending out are part of testing it out by seeing just how human-like they can be and for how long, and also it's going to be hilarious to watch the society tear itself apart if it gets out and it tears itself apart.

Could be he wants to unlock the secret of creating true life. Might be that he wants to make a living but perfectly immortal version of himself to transfer his consciousness into, rather than have to become undead or lose everything or at least a significant chunk of power or free will by being metamorphosized into some other form of immortal life. Could be an intermediate step to figuring out how to make a golemtopia.

[ElChad]

ElChad,

I'd expect the expense of getting one to be beyond the means of lower class people. If you could afford one, why would your spouse need to go on an extended voyage? I'd think these to be thousands of GPs to make, so its not like a day laborer can afford one.

He could be doing it on the cheap, for cheap, and taking the financial hits on costs? I wasn't really factoring GP into the situation. I am in the mindset that the GP to make golem's are more of a PC cost than an NPC cost.

[Segev]

The secret police state thing seems nice, but I have to ask: If you can create doppelgängers that already manage to replicate the original and its memories so well, why bother? Unless the process of scanning a mind so thoroughly also destroys it in the process (which the surviving original does not seem to indicate) it seems far easier to have mandatory mental scans performed to weed out rebels.

It could be a moderately expensive process, or that you can't "scan the mind" without actually making the doppelgolem. And the doppelgolem itself is not cheap enough that you could just replace your entire kingdom's populace with them (or, heck, of course you would, you evil paranoid dictator, you).

I mean, of COURSE the effigy master or the necromancer who has nothing but totally-obedient constructs and undead making up the entirety of his nation-state is a secure absolute ruler. Perhaps a bit lonely, but that's nothing megalomaniacal madness can't solve!

But the secret police are running a much larger nation, one with so many citizens to keep under heel because they ARE productive slaves to the state...but can't afford to replace all of them

The secret police tactic thus goes for key figures. They make examples of the lesser targets. The ones who don't know enough, but were foolish enough to do something that actually inconvenienced the police state, or who were vocal enough speaking out that the police state couldn't pretend to have not heard.

Only those who really are effective, or who might actually have more connections, get the full "replacement" treatment.


Or perhaps there's no "mind scan" at all. Or it's rudimentary. Instead, the golem is implanted with what its creator thinks is the original's personality, memories, and knowledge, and is made to believe it's the original. There are gaps and holes. But the secret police have skilled puppet-masters who can monitor the early stages, and between interrogation techniques to get specific details and very skilled social engineering (high Bluff, Diplomacy, and Sense Motive, perhaps), they can make the doppelganger's impersonation better and better until it fits in without supervision.

More effort, more risky, but still worth it. And a good reason why they don't just "mind-scan" everybody, or replace everybody.

[GungHo]

Why the hell would someone create lifelike golems to replace common working men and travelers?
Deal with the/a Devil. Sacrifice 666 day laborers. Devil was young and inexperienced and didn't specify that it couldn't be fake people.

[Dire Roc]

Whats the government of the city like? If there is any sort of election process then replacing a small but significant part of the population could let some evil mastermind (who took Enchantment as his banned school) control the outcome of a close race. Heck, if the populace had low turnout rate this influence would be even greater.

[Segev]

Whats the government of the city like? If there is any sort of election process then replacing a small but significant part of the population could let some evil mastermind (who took Enchantment as his banned school) control the outcome of a close race. Heck, if the populace had low turnout rate this influence would be even greater.

Wizard William has decided to take up a moderately-popular cause of standing for the little guy, and for equality. Between that and his policy promises, he can reliably garner about 37% of the populace's support, against his rival, Bard Bradly.

Part of what drives some to Bard Bradly is Wizard William's claim that equality means they have to pass laws explicitly protecting the rights and privileges of the elf and half-elf population of the city, which amounts to about 15% of the people. This earns William a little higher support from the elven-blooded population, but not as much as he'd hoped.

In truth, William is just saying things his high-Int-driven sociological study says should be popular. Sadly, because he doesn't believe them and isn't very charismatic, he's only doing as well as he is: 37% support.

But... if elves and half-elves aren't well-enough liked, he reasons, to get him support for making laws helping them overcome that problem, then maybe people won't notice if they start to disappear.

Wizard William begins polling the elf-blooded population, and as he finds elves and half-elves who don't support him, he quietly begins replacing them with doppelgangers who DO. William's PR credits his rising popularity amongst elf-blooded individuals with being due to his support of their needs, and suggests that his overall rise in popularity is due to the people of the city supporting his egalitarian mindset.

When he gets 99% of the elf-blooded vote (pushing him to about 52% support overall), nobody bats an eye. After all, he's been their public champion.

Moreover, now that he has his golems in place with them, any laws he passes to get them more and easier access to ... anything ... lets him put his golems in places of influence. All with replacing people he, in his own vile mindset, thinks nobody will miss or notice being replaced. Or care if they report something "wrong" with their replaced friend.

[LVOD]

Two other possibilities:

1) Matrix. The real people can be used for human batteries, .

I was thinking something like this. Maybe he needs souls as a form of power for his research, and he's using the dopplegangers to cover his kidnappings so people don't notice.

Though it sounds like hes not doing anything with the real people in the meantime, so thats a hard sell.

[LokiRagnarok]

Could be he wants to unlock the secret of creating true life. Might be that he wants to make a living but perfectly immortal version of himself to transfer his consciousness into, rather than have to become undead or lose everything or at least a significant chunk of power or free will by being metamorphosized into some other form of immortal life.
For extra Tearjerker points: he wants immortality not for himself, but for a loved one.

You see, his lover/child/parent/mentor/dog has been befallen by a terrible curse, which slowly causes them to wither alive. It is supposed to force the golem maker to watch on while their loved one dies. The bestower of the course did not anticipate that instead of helplessly watching, the man would try to create immortality for the accursed.