Commissions During Break: Wildtouched Part 5

Images: First image is a 'what if' scenario that Arrow gave me of what I would do with Richard if I played his Fae Master. This didn't actually happen in the RP.
The second image is during one of the sessions, where Kaga was reduced to a more feral version of herself, with the body of a dinosaur to match. She then tried to attack the characters.

More from Arrow's Plot on Kaerwyn's RP:

Now in front of the fae lord, he revealed some of his goals. After commenting on their failure and ribbing Jeremiah for wasting his gift of healing, the lord got down to business. (Apologies for the awkwardness; the characters never got his name and I don't want to spoil it!) He commented on the difficulty of snaring Richard, and taunting the characters some. He then indicated he had further use for them, but insinuated that they could no longer stop his core goal.

Despite repeated demands from the PCs, he refused to reveal much, as he was not in a position to need to. He changed Richard into his hawk form and brought him over. The characters actually twigged to the fact Richard was a necessary component of the master's plan...and tried to kill him, though it was unsuccessful, it allowed further plot development as to what was going on, and to allow him to start to separate the characters by elevating and demoting them in regards to each other. Working to treat his servant, he sent the other characters to an extradimensional prison where they would be cared for, but not be able to escape. (This allowed the characters to interact outside of GMed scenes)

Later, he returned them and indicated that while he had Richard, he needed Richard to submit fully to him; he was not usable in a resistant mindset. Pursuant of this, he used various forms of persuasion on the other characters to make Richard surrender in order to save them, before sending them back to prison, indicating they'd be called for later.

The backstory, as it is, is that during the Salem Witch Trials, the Wildtouched of that time broke off from near Salem (as if you turned into an animal during the full moon, you might get a bit twitchy when people are legit hanging each other over imagined witchcraft!) Since then, the lord manipulated events to have Augusta Falls built on a nexus of ley energies. Long ago, there had been a barrier, "Shroud", blocking the fae from affecting the real world, or humans from going into the fae realm. Richard was the result of centuries of work to produce a Wildtouched who would have a foot in both worlds, and be able to handle the magical surge necessary to be channled through him to shatter the shroud.

While simple in principle, the fae had frustration after frustration in getting this. Once they got the city set up, not only did they need to have such a Wildtouched born and available, it needed to be at a total solar eclipse over the ley energies, and various other issues were problematic; particularly, Wildtouched with the correct properties were often born very premature, and as a result, they had to fund research into neonatal medical treatment in order to bypass that. Richard himself was not a true messiah in the sense that only HE could do this, but he was a Dark Messiah in the sense that at the time the eclipse was nigh, he was the only one reasonably available for use.

If this plot seems convoluted, it somewhat is, but one thing I've always disliked in a story is a villain who is immortal acting with haste and disregard. An immortal entity who has lived long periods should not react quickly with anger; the ability to literally outlive ANY particularly troublesome hero should be leveraged to it's fullest! The fae lord is immortal, and he has all the time in the world to move pieces into place; he started moving them into place over 300 years in advance and because of the length of time involved, his plot was not apparent to humans. He just had to start moving faster as things started to go wrong as the eclipse date approached, and he had to make the best of a number of setbacks.