Looking for ideas!
My party members are helping a conclave of wizards complete a ritual by rooting out the traitor among their 4 lieutenants. I want each to be a unique, iconic magic-user for the party to investigate. So far I’ve got:
(these are descriptive names, not npc names 🙂
Golem-mancer – has created a variety of golems, and his flesh golem poses as him. The real wizard’s body is kept safe inside the large iron golem.
Enchanter – a throng of dominated and enchanted humanoids, all dressed similarly – which among them is the real mage?
Drug addict – uses illegal substances to boost spellcasting, at the cost of sanity and health.
I’m still looking for one more strong thematic take on a mage, and haven’t come up with anything on my own. Would love your help thinking dangerously and portraying a fantastic world.
Elementalist – instead of minions, he calls forth objects and structures from the base elements, like a wall of fire, or a tower of wind
Warlock with bound demons
Necromancer who doesn’t use corpses, but instead binds ghosts to animate objects
There are a couple ways to approach this: come up with cool concepts of NPCs and build the enclave around that, or build a cool concept of the enclave, and flesh out the NPCs that make sense for it.
From your examples:
* The golem-mancer might provide raw physical labor to meet the enclave’s needs.
* The enchanter coordinates spies and diplomats between the enclave and other steadings.
* The drud-addict might peer beyond the boundaries of reality to grasp secrets that most don’t dare look into.
What do each of those tell us about the enclave itself?
* It has the need for lots of physical labor – lots of ongoing construction? Agricultural work?
* It has relations with society at large, and uses magic freely to improve their bargaining position?
* No area of research or type of magic is strictly off limits, no matter what they may publicly admit, and perhaps they have a mechanism in place to protect the enclave from those wizards who snap?
Perhaps you could find a function that the enclave would want for the fourth lieutenant, and build from there. A few examples:
* The Headmaster, who leads instruction of aspiring wizards. this wizard knows all the basic spells like the back of their hand, and has the loyalty of new and aspiring wizards alike.
* The Quartermaster, who keeps the enclaves resources in order. The quartermaster uses unseen servants to stock and inventory the pantry, cook the meals and wash the dishes, other “menial” labor that wizards don’t want to do.
* The Librarian, keeper of the enclave’s archive. Scrolls tucked around everywhere, and a cohort of ink-stained scribes who are busy copying anything written into the official record, recovered spells, etc.
* The Warmage, who leads the enclave’s cadre of skilled warrior mages to fiercely defend the enclave’s interests at home and in the field of combat.
The Legion, who is actually more like a druid than a mage. Whenever a wild place is brought low–developed by civilized folk, corrupted by dark magic, destroyed by a natural disaster–the spirits of that place are left unmoored. The Legion tracks these rogue spirits down and invites them to possess their body. Nobody knows how many souls speak through the voice of The Legion, but their mastery of wild magic is unquestionable.
Wizard that sacrifices its own body parts to cast spells. (more evocative take on blood magic)
Chronomage. Casts spells based on the colors around him/her. Leaves a path of gray in its wake.
Have a mesmer mage that casts spells to mystify and dominate others. Turns out, it’s actually the snake on his/her shoulder who’s doing it; the human is just another victim.
The Dreamwalker – they have been in a coma for a long time and you can only converse with them in the realm of dream itself, accessed through sleep or deep meditation. Their power in that realm is very real and stretches into the physical world, bending it in strange and dreamlike ways. Alternately this might be an interesting theme for a witness, where the PCs have to walk through their unconscious dreams to reveal the truth that put them in their endless sleep.
Awesome ideas, thank you all! Also thanks to Andrew for the bigger insight on how to flesh these things out – it’s helped me prepare for how to give more life to the entire conclave concept. So many of these that I’m sure I’ll end up using some other time if not tonight.
Spell thief.
Magic stolen from the other 3 wizards plus a few other tricks like druid spells and cleric spells