Bonding a hireling to Azi Dahaka

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numenetics
Far-Sighted Wanderer
Posts: 35
Joined: Thu Jun 09, 2011 6:14 am

Bonding a hireling to Azi Dahaka

Post by numenetics »

One of my players sent me this, and I got permission to pass it along. The character began as a Chaotic Jeweler (he rolled for alignment). Even though INT wasn't his best stat, it also wasn't his worse, and he wanted to try out being a wizard. He rolled Patron Bond and decided to go with Azi Dahaka. He's now level one.

A few word of introduction: We had never read any GG materials before, and had never heard of Azi Dahaka, so we just made stuff up (which is why our AD doesn't jive with some of the GG stuff I've since read). Norman is his hired man-at-arms, who we used the meatshields generator to build (converting the necessary things, of course). He ended up being a disgraced noble with his tongue cut out, and became a thief when he hit level one (gave him 1/2 shares of xp, which made him level before the PC hit level 2; normally I wouldn't have a hireling be of equal level to the PC).

Anyway, here's his description of bonding Norman to Azi Dahaka. I think it shows how evocative the play generated by the funnel and the concepts of the magic system can be to a player:
I told him that we had business in the steppe and he took a moment to nod. The words came out as though they were rehearsed but I did not make the plan. The plan comes from the dreams, the dreams I cannot remember. But I think I know why we must go to the steppe. Does Norman know? Will he kill me while I sleep, his dagger sliding across my throat? If he knows, if he even suspects, then he should kill me. Sleep brings terror and despair as always, my constant companions since my time in the empty spaces. My senses are confounded and I cannot remember the dream clearly except for the roaring of the desert and the buzz of the beetles. I awaken and Norman has not murdered me. He is weak or simply foolish. He needs to be remade, I need him to be strong if he will serve me in the coming years. The desert craves him. We leave early on mules and travel for days into the empty spaces. Norman and I do not speak but his fear is transparent as he rides in front of me. He does not yet see the subtle beauty of the dry wind, the freezing nights, the music of the insects. He eats little and sleeps less. Three days into the march he turns to me and looks me in the eye, his face begging me to let him turn back. We march on. I cannot tell if I sleep anymore, the dreams and the reality of the desert are the same. We are out of rations and we are out of water. We will die in two or three days without water. I turn to Norman and I begin to speak but my voice cracks because I have not spoken in four days. I cough and started again.

"I entered this desert once as part of a caravan that was hoping to make better time by crossing the wastes. This desert is known to be wild but we had more than enough rations and water to see us through to the other side. We had wood for fires at night and we huddled around them, cursing the bitter wind and the chittering of the insects that kept us from sleep, joking about the pervasive nature of the sand. However, each day we suffered from misfortunes, none large, but accumulating over time. As we got deeper into the desert they seemed to get worse and it was not long before we began to believe we were cursed. Finally we realized the depths of our damnation when we knew we had traveled longer than was necessary to cross the desert. That night we heard a crash and found that the wagon wheels had all rotted and fallen apart. The food was gone and the waterskins were dry. We would not be able to move in the morning. We sat around our campfires, paralyzed and silenced by absolute terror. We did not speak of the distant laughing on the wind. We did not discuss the dark things moving around us, the forms you could see against the night because of their utter blackness, slinking and stretching like the shadows of shadows. I do not even know for certain that the other men saw the same things I saw or heard what I heard. That was the first time that I knew terror, the fear that cannot be withstood."

"You may have felt afraid of me when I said we were coming out to the steppe. You have feared me since you met me Norman, though you haven't known why. You have been afraid when we have plumbed the depths of dungeons but you did not have time to experience terror. You have not had the opportunity to be terrified until now. The third day when you knew we were passing the limit of our rations, the seed was sown. You have had two days for that fear to grow into true terror. You are going to die here in the desert, this is the end of you Norman. Death is coming on the wings of hunger and dehydration and there is nothing at all that you can do. Terror is first among emotions and it will devour everything else in your mind. When terror is in you there is not room for love or morality or anger or anything else. Terror emptied my mind and my heart and made me receptive to the words of the shadows. Their words are in the wind and the sand and their god is in the insects, the beetles that are the only living thing I have ever seen surviving these wastes. As they spoke to me, the stars were extinguished and the fire guttered and we were left in absolute darkness."

"When the sun rose the next day, every man in the caravan was dead but I was alive. The beetles fed on the corpses and I joined them. I ate the beetles and the dead indiscriminately, such was my hunger. Pain is the terror of the body and the most useful pain is hunger and it never leaves me since that night. When night came again, I studied under the shadows and learned of their lord, who long ago enslaved the desert spirits of the world. It now seeks to spread the deserts over the face of the earth and devour everything and it is succeeding, season by season. It seeks harbingers, men to sow terror and to feed it's hunger for souls."

"Now I would say that I am trying to recruit you but that would be a lie. Your only chance at salvation was on the third day. You could have slain me. But now even if you do, you will not make it out of the desert if the desert does not wish it. You may either give the desert your soul or your life. It will take one."

Shuddering in the cold, Norman looked up at the heavens and watched the stars begin to fade out. He turned back to me and nodded once and closed his eyes. I smiled and began the incantations that the shadows had said to me, words I could never forget. Insects and sand swirled around me as the ritual started. "Azi Dahaka..." and I discovered how a man with no tongue screams.
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Skullking
Ill-Fated Peasant
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Re: Bonding a hireling to Azi Dahaka

Post by Skullking »

Awesome!
"Promise your soul to Orcus, for through him you will live forever. Eat of his tainted flesh and drink of his fiendish blood, and you will know eternal unlife."
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