Character Profile: The Herald

The Herald is a character I wrote for a Dark Sun campaign I used to run. He was an essential component of my rather peculiar Dark Sun campaign arc and I thought I would present him as a potential addition to a Dark Sun campaign that wants to go a little off the rails.

In the Fourth Edition of Dungeons & Dragons, the world of Dark Sun exists as it does in part due to a great battle between the Primordials and the Gods. In that battle, the Gods were destroyed. The Primordials were either destroyed as well or left to do business elsewhere, leaving the world to slowly die on its own. By the time of the city-states and sorcerer-kings, the idea of gods and primordials is long since forgotten.

Things forgotten often have a way of coming back to relevance. The Herald is a peculiar link to that past, a servant of the Gods left behind for some reason unknown to the world of Athas. The Herald's peculiarity, the fact that he is a creature of another world and his motives are unclear, is what makes him both a potential ally for or against the Sorcerer-Kings and a potential threat to the world that is Dark Sun.

Appearance of the Herald

Don't mess with
this guy's orb.

Physically, the Herald is a Deva, a servant of divine powers and a creature unheard of on the desert world of Athas. When found, be it by the player characters or some other party, his appearance is both astounding and alien. Although Athasians may have seen creatures with blue to gray skin covered in strange markings or tattoos, the Herald has a certain aura about him that feels completely foreign and out of place within the harsh, desert world of Athas.

His presence tends to make most Athasians uncomfortable in part because he is a creature unknown to the world but in part because he is imbued with power, divine power, that is completely foreign to Athas. Despite being far out of time and far from his source of power, the Herald can still utilize and manipulate the divine forces imbued into him by the Gods. His utilization of this power is enough to make even the Sorcerer-Kings take notice. He is an anomaly in Athas and the players should be reminded of that.

When found, he would be wearing clothing normally associated with Deva in Dungeons & Dragons: gossamer blends of silk that support the majestic, divine appearance of Deva. Of course, how he changes his appearance as he adapts to the environment of Athas can be an important element of his character. Does he continue to clothe himself in a manner consistent with the old world he came from, or does he take on the appearance of the new world in which he awoke?

Adding the Herald to your Dark Sun Campaign

Having the Herald appear in a Dark Sun campaign is relatively easy to do. The PCs (or some other power) could find a strange cave in the desert that has within it a mysterious sarcophagus containing him. Maybe he appears after the activation of some ancient ritual from the old time, a powerful exhibition of old, divine power. It could be as simple as he simply appears, teleported through time to a specific day and place to carry out his divine mission.  Depending on the story of the campaign, it may be more appropriate to make his appearance a sort of startling twist at the end of a previous story arc, giving the players something to think about between play sessions.

How the Herald appears in Athas is much less important than why he is there. When introducing the Herald to a campaign, it is important to know what his motivations are. Here are a few possibilities as to why the Herald was left behind and what his goals for Athas may be:

Who knows what he could
be doing here...

1) The Herald was left by the Gods as a last ditch effort to prevent their demise. Perhaps he knows a way to tear the fabric of space and time and allow the Gods to escape their inevitable destruction at the hands of the Primordials. Maybe he holds the secrets to creating a new age of Gods. Whatever his purpose, the eventual conclusion of his plan could be exactly what Athas needs. Or, more sinisterly, the worst thing that could possibly happen to Athas. No matter the exact details of the plan, the Sorcerer-Kings would likely be interested in stopping the Herald's efforts as the return of the Gods would likely lead to their demise. Or, maybe they try to use the Herald to advance their own plans for divinity. How the party chooses to side in this conflict may depend on the nature of the divine plan.

2) The Herald could be a deserter from the God-War. Although a dutiful servant of the Gods, Deva still retain a modicum of independent will and sense of self-preservation. The Herald may simply be somebody who could not handle the horrors of the war and fled, adopting the moniker of "The Herald" in order to establish himself as relevant in this new world. Of course, without the power of the Gods, the Herald may no longer have the ability to be reborn anew. After countless lives serving the Gods, the Herald may know that he is on his last life. Maybe he sees the efforts of the Sorcerer-Kings as method he could use to preserve his existence. How the Herald deals with his newfound mortality could become an extended story arc, with the player characters trying to aid him (or stop him) from carrying out some sort of plan to save himself.

3) In contrast to above, the Herald may be an effort by the Gods to repair the eventual damage caused by the God-War. Maybe they knew the resulting arcane power that would appear and sent the Herald forward to rebuild the world. The Herald could be an important tool in restoring Athas to its pre-devastation status. The Preservers would be quite interested in him. Of course, it is quite possible that the Herald was meant to be brought back shortly after the God-War. How will he respond to the fact that his restoration was too late to save Athas? Is his purpose irrelevant now, or is there still a way for him to rebuild the world?

Whatever his goal, it is likely that he would not share them readily as the world he awoke to was not necessarily what he expected. The Herald would try to execute his plans while letting those he works with no the least about the eventual outcome. Building a measure of distrust in the Herald could be an important part of his involvement in the campaign. Take him at his word? Or assuming he has no good intentions for Athas? Only time will tell.

Borrowing Role-Playing Ideas: Dark Sun and Doctor Who

Warning: This post discusses the Doctor Who two-part story, The End of Time.  For those who have not seen it but "will get to it soon," you may want to avoid reading this post.  You have been warned.

People sometimes ask me where I get the ideas for character and campaigns that I play.  Like most people, I tend to borrow them from existing fiction, whether it be a television show, a video game, a book, or some other piece of fiction. I thought this would be a good time for me to talk about one experience I had borrowing heavily from some other fiction in creating a D&D campaign arc.

When the Dark Sun Campaign Setting was first released for Dungeons & Dragons Fourth Edition, a number of my friends were interested in playing a game in that setting.  I agreed to DM it as it seemed a worthwhile thing to attempt.  I always saw Dark Sun as a sort of post-apocalyptic D&D setting where magic, instead of "the bomb," shattered the world.  It also had the weird historical quirk that there were no gods, and thus, no divine power.  In 4E, this came from the backstory that the old war between the Primordials and the Gods had gone differently than most settings.  The Gods lost.  Psionic power was the primary power source for this world until a strange new energy, arcane power, appeared.  Potentially powerful yet corrupting, arcane power is what lead to the eventual change of Athas into the desert world we know.

If the sun is so dark, why is it so primoridal-damned hot?

For some reason, the old "Gods and Primordials" battle, which lead to the eventual death of the Gods, sounded familiar.  As a D&D player, you know that the gods can be difficult but they are generally a good thing within the fantasy framework.  I started to consider what it would mean, in the context of the Dark Sun setting, if I turned that expectation upside down.  I began to look at it sort of like the Doctor Who two-part story, The End of Time.  Here, the conceit was similar.  The Time Lords, a people who we know to be a fair, just, and worthwhile race of people, were destroyed in a terrible war with a force we already know to be evil, the Daleks.

The Lord-Presdient of Gallifrey. He has the Evil gene.

Of course, the big reveal in The End of Time was that, at the time that the Doctor destroyed everything and ended the "Time War," the Time Lords of Gallifrey had become just as corrupt, just as evil, just as terrible, as their mortal enemy.  As Wilf gets excited about the return of this wonderful race of people, the Doctor tells him the grim truth.  The Time Lords are as bad, if not worse, than the Daleks.  This seemed like a terribly good conceit for a D&D Dark Sun campaign.  This story was not intended for the characters, per se, as the characters would not know what gods were.  It was more for the players.

The course of the campaign would have characters following series of mysterious artifacts, all leading back to Kalak, the fallen Sorcerer-King of Tyr.  In investigating these artifacts, the characters would begin to find strange relics from long ago: references to the old gods-war, still preserved in the darkest corners of Athas.  Rventually, they would find a living creature, a Herald of the Gods, left behind to ensure the eventual return of the Gods.  While combatting Kalak's minions and the other Sorcerer-Kings, all hoping to use the power of the artifacts for themselves, the party would piece together an age-old mystery leading to the return of the Gods to Athas.

The Death of Kalak

I actually borrowed even more heavily in my story outline.  I wanted Kalak to be something more than just a guy that got killed.  I wanted him to be the focal point.  It wasn't that a few mortals could topple a Sorcerer-King; it's that the other Sorcerer-Kings wanted him dead.  Perhaps Kalak found something beneath the desert sands, a source of divine power, that convinced the other Sorcerer-Kings to work together to stop him (for what may be the second time in recorded history).  As I saw it, Kalak started to occupy the place of the Master in The End of Time.  He would be the one that would bring about the final steps of the Gods' return, all the while not realizing that he would be potentially dooming Athas in the process.

I presumed that Kalak thought he had discovered a way to ascend to godhood that was more effective, more powerful, and all around more convenient than the means utilized by the Sorcerer-Kings.  Kalak had no intention of becoming another Dragon of Athas.  He would use this ancient technology to become the very power, force, and essence of Athas.  I figured that, from his perspective, Kalak would have rebuilt some sort of vast mechanism for ascending to godhood, only to realize it was a great focusing lens for pulling the Gods out of their war with the Primordials and into the living world (or, for the Doctor Who fans, the "waking world").

Gallifrey Rises!

When Lord-President Rassilon appears on Earth, his plan seems abundantly clear.  He, along with the rest of the Time Lords, intend to tear reality asunder and ascend as beings of pure consciousness.  I figured that the return of the Gods need not be that dramatic.  Merely destroying Athas and building a world anew would be sufficient.  Either way, that was the eventual plot-line.  The characters would now have an epic conclusion to a Dark Sun campaign, having to destroy the Gods themselves and realizing that their very actions set the whole world of Dark Sun in motion.

Of course, like any good D&D game, we never made it past 4th level.  As it ends up, the party was about to meet the Herald in the upcoming adventure, but we never made it, which is too bad.  I was not proficient enough as a Dungeon Master to keep up with the needs of the group.  But, either way, it presents a situation where I, as a Dungeon Master, unabashedly ripped a story arc from popular media and made it into something I could use for a D&D game.  Even something as ridiculous and whimsical as Doctor Who can provide inspiration for any time of D&D game you may want to play.