Brother Darius

I had a migraine yesterday, the first proper of this year. It meant I had to cancel our game (which sucked because I'm really enjoying Exalted and the slow reveal of the world and the GM's doing a fantastic job with the NPC's and with giving a foreboding sense of foreshadowing. If we're playing Pathfinder it's not so bad because there's more of us and we play at mine so if I need to I can lie down elsewhere for half an hour or whatever to get my head back towards the game, but that's less feasible with 2 players and someone else's house), but as it started to fade I learnt that Oxford University's Bodleian Library has released a colouring book of images from their collections, so I spent the evening colouring in instead, which was actually a lot of fun and a good distraction from the wibble of a migraine. And being me, as I coloured, I started to wonder who the people might be, if they were characters in a roleplay world. So here's the first.

This is Brother Darius. Not as he is, so much as he dreams of being: the priesthood he's a member of is as corrupt as it is good at hiding its corruption and there are only two ways to rise through the ranks: bribery, and blackmail, and either way it's dead (or disgraced...) man's shoes. Darius joined the order as a young teen. His family's poverty has kept his rank low, and he has spent the past couple of decades eavesdropping, spying, and otherwise learning enough about other members of the order and other major players of the region to make his play for promotion the next time an opportunity arises - and some of this knowledge could come in handy to a group of adventurers passing through town. At a price. Gold would probably do it, or a trade of information, or...

Darius is intelligent and hungry for promotion. He's not above engineering an opening in the hierarchy, but needs to do so in a manner that won't lead back to him. A more morally dubious party might be amenable to assassinating an opponent in return for information. But later, as he rises further, he may worry about what they know about him - particularly if they become notorious - at which point, he may decide it's time to do away with loose ends...