What if Inza killed Azreal and took over Sithicus

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brilliantlight
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Re: What if Inza killed Azreal and took over Sithicus

Post by brilliantlight »

Rock wrote:She might be, but she has to overcome the 'truthful' quality that now saturates all of Sithicus.
Use half truths , selective quotes and vague pronouncements. If vague statements were good enough for Nostradamus to get himself regarded as a prophet the same thing could be used by Izna. Remember Inza is smart!
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Re: What if Inza killed Azreal and took over Sithicus

Post by Rock of the Fraternity »

She is also a Darklord. Get nearly all you might have coveted, but never all you want and need to be happy.
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Re: What if Inza killed Azreal and took over Sithicus

Post by brilliantlight »

Rock wrote:She is also a Darklord. Get nearly all you might have coveted, but never all you want and need to be happy.
True, but what has she ever coveted?
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Re: What if Inza killed Azreal and took over Sithicus

Post by Rock of the Fraternity »

Power. Complete control over her world and everyone around her. The freedom to take whatever she wants and hurt whoever she wants, whenever she wants, without consequences to her.
In Ryan Naylor's Pathfinder write-up of the Darklords, she's written as having the Hollow feat, same as Azrael, and it suits her.
No soul. No empathy. Only empty darkness inside; a sociopath without even the chance of redeeming features because there's nothing there to be redeemed.
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Re: What if Inza killed Azreal and took over Sithicus

Post by brilliantlight »

In which case the church gives her a lot of freedom to do so but it bites her in the end. The control she has is fleeting and limited, she has a number of hangers on but many fall from the faith. They find true faith in Ezra and the Morninglord and happiness. She finds having to move the time burdensome and want to get rid of it. Some of the churches started in her name become reformed and do truly good things and in her name.
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Re: What if Inza killed Azreal and took over Sithicus

Post by Rock of the Fraternity »

Have fun.
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Re: What if Inza killed Azreal and took over Sithicus

Post by Cromstar »

brilliantlight wrote: I admit it is a challenge but I think making her a wandering false prophet could well change that with the right follow up ideas. Inza isn't stupid . She is bland so it is up to us to flesh her out. My idea is basically turn her into some false messiah figure using a false front for a corrupt church.

I don't see how making minor plots involving Azreal's fall would do that. She is smarter than that and is capable of far more than that. That would be , at best, a short term approach.

Giving people a false hope through a corrupt church that sets some of them up for a fall is much better. She is both smart and charismatic enough to pull it off. She is int 17 cha 18 for crying out loud. She is more than capable of pulling it off.
I initially stayed out of this conversation because I honestly don't care for Inza generally (Soth is boss and Inza is too...one-dimensional IMO, her motivations and goals just aren't realistic), but last night I had a bit of an epiphany. So here's the possibility I thought of:

The honesty in Sithicus means people are, generally, going to take her at her word. As Darklord, she could have the ability to lie, which would provide her the means to built up all this false church as part of her grand plan. But, being the bastards they are, the DP's have added an extra layer: she's outright prevented from telling the truth about the church, ie she has to lie about it. Which means she never gets to pull off the 'big reveal' that its all for naught.

She can lie and manipulate the church to get anything she wants, but the people believe any lies she tells. They think she's a legit prophet and take her at her word and they are full of honest and pure devotion, the one thing she wants to take from them and can't.

...and I just realized as I typed this out that this is 80% G'Henna. Dammit.
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Re: What if Inza killed Azreal and took over Sithicus

Post by Rock of the Fraternity »

That's going to be a problem with any provably false theocracy you set up in Ravenloft. It's easier to work with faiths that have the ambiguity of uncertainty whether there's a real deity at the root , and genuine faith on the part of the observants.
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Re: What if Inza killed Azreal and took over Sithicus

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Rock wrote:That's going to be a problem with any provably false theocracy you set up in Ravenloft. It's easier to work with faiths that have the ambiguity of uncertainty whether there's a real deity at the root , and genuine faith on the part of the observants.
True...though on the other hand, from the player/PC side, they're indistinguishable. We only know which ones are provably false b/c that's in the DM-side info. I mean, there's really no way for anyone in G'Henna to prove factually that The Beast God doesn't exist. The only guy who knows it is too afraid to admit it aloud.

The nice thing about G'Henna though is that its so very much different on the face of things that, no matter how similar on the DM-side, you can make the theocracies completely different facially and they probably won't seem similar to players. Example here: Inza doesn't run the church in question, she's just the revered and wise prophet of the church, so the church changes based on whatever new lie she decides to spin out on any given day, etc.
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Re: What if Inza killed Azreal and took over Sithicus

Post by Rock of the Fraternity »

Hmm.

And of course it's possible for Inza to be thrown for a HUGE loop if/when one of the faith uncovers old texts from the lost faith of the two dragon deities that resemble her own lies.
As investigations continue, the people rejoice that she has reconnected the nation to its mercurial deities, especially the five-headed one who speaks a different truth and different commandments with every head.

As the writings provide structure to the faith, Inza loses control and sees the faith of the twin dragons uplift and revitalize all of Sithicus, leaving her on a pedestal, but essentially powerless.
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Re: What if Inza killed Azreal and took over Sithicus

Post by jamesfirecat »

brilliantlight wrote:
Mistmaster wrote:Why, didn't Inza actually became the Darklord after Soth became too boring for the DP?
The DPs love irony! :D They exchanged a cool DL for a boring one. I am trying to make her not so boring
With the extra irony being the reason they made the exchange was the cool one was behaving in a boring manner as far as they were concerned.
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Re: What if Inza killed Azreal and took over Sithicus

Post by Mistmaster »

My question is, where is the tragicity in Canon Inza? Like Drakov, d'Honaire and many others Inza same quite lame.
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Re: What if Inza killed Azreal and took over Sithicus

Post by High Priest Mikhal »

Mistmaster wrote:My question is, where is the tragicity in Canon Inza? Like Drakov, d'Honaire and many others Inza same quite lame.
Good question. Like the others you mentioned, Inza comes off as a sociopath whose fate is entirely deserved. There's nothing to really sympathize with.
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Re: What if Inza killed Azreal and took over Sithicus

Post by brilliantlight »

Rock wrote:That's going to be a problem with any provably false theocracy you set up in Ravenloft. It's easier to work with faiths that have the ambiguity of uncertainty whether there's a real deity at the root , and genuine faith on the part of the observants.
How about this? Every time she "prophases" it is a lie. She can tell the truth on other occasions but when she speaks as a prophet of the church she has to lie. Despite her efforts in ruining other people's lives with these lies the lives of the people always benefit from it ... eventually. In many cases it is "You have to go through Hell before you get to Heaven." .

There might be struggles for months or years but in the end the people are happier in their lives than before. Thus it is far from a paradise and it is far from clear that it is a "true religion". The effect would be separated enough time from the cause that a skeptic could easily say things got better because you worked at it or something.

This works if , like in my campaigns, the DP aren't into misery per se but punishment. If other people are hurt or benefit is of no concern of their as long as the person that they curse is suffering. It often causes more suffering as suffering people often spread their misery but that isn't their goal. Their goal is to punish those they curse, innocent bystanders are of no concern.
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Re: What if Inza killed Azreal and took over Sithicus

Post by The Lesser Evil »

Rock wrote:Hmm.

And of course it's possible for Inza to be thrown for a HUGE loop if/when one of the faith uncovers old texts from the lost faith of the two dragon deities that resemble her own lies.
As investigations continue, the people rejoice that she has reconnected the nation to its mercurial deities, especially the five-headed one who speaks a different truth and different commandments with every head.
This could have potentially interesting implications for that one elven dragon disciple villain that was cut from Gazetteer IV. He was a faith revivalist for Takhisis that was planned on punishing those that forgot her. This guy could be a wild card in the whole affair.

http://fraternityofshadows.com/wiki/Thaumiol
High Priest Mikhal wrote:
Mistmaster wrote:My question is, where is the tragicity in Canon Inza? Like Drakov, d'Honaire and many others Inza same quite lame.
Good question. Like the others you mentioned, Inza comes off as a sociopath whose fate is entirely deserved. There's nothing to really sympathize with.
While I don't necessarily think tragedy or sympathy are necessarily needed for a darklord, adding depth or interesting inner conflict, on the other hand, could be a welcome addition to Inza's fairly flat character. D'honaire, while still a relatively unsympathetic character, was made a bit more real in Gazetteer III when they changed him from simply a bad seed born evil to a preternaturally intelligent child corrupted by the Freudian lack of a proper maternal figure and the grasping at power in order to gain to find a psychological substitute for it. Malus Sceleris is made more interesting if we play his wrecking the environment as striking back at dear old druid dad from beyond the grave rather than just being a Captain Planet villain. There's no reason a similar approach might not work for Inza.

In canon, it's implied Inza may have somehow absorbed part of Duke Gundar's inner darkness, for she was born on the day of his death with a storm commemorating the ominous circumstances of her birth and everything. This absorption of Gundar's evil could be a reason for Inza's affinity with (and ability to speak to/for) darkness, which she used to manipulate Azrael in Spectre of the Black Rose.

Like D'honaire, Inza was pretty evil from an early age. Also like D'honaire, Inza's opposite gender parent was dead before she got to know him (in Inza's case, her father was slain by Gundar's men prior to her birth.) We hear little to nothing about Inza's father spoken about in Spectre of the Black Rose or anything really other that the circumstances of his death in Inza's write-up. We might thus infer that the subject of Inza's father might have been a sore spot between Inza and her mother, Magda Kulchevich. Perhaps Inza blamed her mother Magda for her father's death, and this planted the seeds of alienation and resentment. (A potential dread possibility may have been that Magda played some role in instigating Gundar's overthrow and/or death, for Gundar's men hunted her for two years while she was in Gundarak).

Despite Inza's inner darkness, Magda failed (or refused) to see the depths in Inza that (most) the other members of the Wanderers noticed, at least until this was too late. Perhaps Magda’s refusal to acknowledge Inza's inner darkness came out of a blindly hopeful wish to see Inza delivered to the light away from the inner darkness that stained her soul if the darkness' existence was kept from Inza. In effect, a sort of "out-of-sight, out-of-mind" psychology that ironically motivated Inza to embrace the Darkness within her as a way of petty rebellion. If her mother saw (and/or tried to forcefully imbue) a sense of good and light in her whereas everybody else did not, then perhaps Inza came to see good and light as merely illusions/delusions she could take advantage of but ultimately despised. After all, if good and light were things, then why did everybody else treat her with so much (hidden) revulsion (thus ignoring any of her own involvement in instigating their antipathy.)

If we take all the above to be true, Inza’s desire to show everyone the truth of darkness and evil over goodness and light comes from a desire to prove she’s not alone, that she made the right decisions. She wishes not only to cause people to despair but to know that good and light are merely lies and self-deceptions. Thus, the creation of a phony church only to upend it later may be an outgrowth of that nihilistic psychology. To her, darkness and lies are more truth that actual Truth itself, which may explain why she can get away with lying in a domain where lies are normally uprooted.
Last edited by The Lesser Evil on Sun Jun 17, 2018 10:31 am, edited 1 time in total.
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