Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Jagnis 04-18-07, 07:34 PM	I know Denith must be close to LG on account of the Sentinal Marshals they use but.... I'm the campagn we're playing I was planning on approching house Denith with this offer: We would attack Caravans (either unguarded or privatly guarded) and dissable all but a few of the Merchants, then, just as we're about to ''Finish off'' the survivors, house Denith charges in to save the day, thus proving they are worthy Guards. What I want to know is do you think this would fly with House Denith, or would they put in jail on the spot?? *Jagnis*
Edymnion 04-18-07, 07:46 PM	Probably jailed on the spot. Deneith takes it's place as the neutral peacekeepers very seriously. To the point anyone that agreed to this deal would likely get himself excoriated. By default, anyway. If you as the DM want to change that, you could. There is talk of some members wanting to take over by force and reunite Galifar under their lead, so there could be room within that scheme for this one.
Bluebrush 04-18-07, 07:59 PM	Well, just as you can't paint Karrnath as wholly Lawful Evil you can't paint Denieth as wholly Lawful Good. That said, yes the overwhelmingly likely response is that you'd be jailed on the spot or the guy you've approached would demand you leave his sight and never darken his doorstep again. And that's if they don't defenesterate you before you finish explaining your idea. You'd have to be looking for someone who's: -Evil enough to want to gamble lives for his own game. -Incautious/trusting enough not to suspect this is an entrapment attempt. -Desperate enough to feel the need to pull a scam like this. -Foolish. All to a great extent. And if Denieth catches a whiff of something like this going on they're going to investigate and come down on the lot of you like a ton of unusually pointy bricks. That said, it's a questionable plan. Denieth usually goes for guarding, not the ride in and save the day thing. Unless they're responsible for guarding an area and, if that's the case, failing to elminate a gang of bandits (who always seem to get away) will tarnish their reputation. Fact is, Denieth already has a damn good reputation and a better market share than anyone else out there. They got that by doing their job really well for a long time. If you want to help them in a scummy way, you're better off sabotaging Tharashk's monstrous mercenary services by inserting unreliable elements into their mercenary bands.
korcheck 04-18-07, 08:14 PM	If you want to help them in a scummy way, you're better off sabotaging Tharashk's monstrous mercenary services by inserting unreliable elements into their mercenary bands. On the other hand going to house tharashk with this proposal MAY have its merits. Just a thought.
Alex_ 04-19-07, 01:42 AM	I know Denith must be close to LG on account of the Sentinal Marshals they use but.... I'm the campagn we're playing I was planning on approching house Denith with this offer: We would attack Caravans (either unguarded or privatly guarded) and dissable all but a few of the Merchants, then, just as we're about to ''Finish off'' the survivors, house Denith charges in to save the day, thus proving they are worthy Guards. This isn't the kind of thing I would imagine you start by approaching those in power. Generally, they would approach you. This requires an inside job with people in high places, and lower levels being kept in the dark, and the exchange of lots of money/threats to keep a scandal from breaking out. I can see there being corruption in House Deneith. However, I doubt the corruption has its root in outside influences. I find it much more likely that you would be approached by House Deneith with such an offer than them accepting yours.
Jagnis 04-19-07, 12:39 PM	Thanks for the imput guys. I'll probably end up going to Thurask for my idea.
Nuclear_Buddha 04-20-07, 02:14 PM	I'd be real careful with that plan. After all, what if Deneith (or Tharashk) just decides to REALLY take care of the perpetrators while they're "fending off" one of these caravan attacks? Looks better for them than allowing murdering bandits to escape, and it cleans up any potential tattletales. This is extra bad in the House Tharashk scenario, since they're especially likely to be able to find you. Just like in Shadowrun: always realize when it's more convenient for your co-conspirators to just kill you.
Celas Evriamytholin 04-20-07, 03:12 PM	I see one of my players is coming up with more dastardly ideas... Where do you come up with this crazy stuff anyway, J? =P Self-proclaimed leader of the Shards of obsidian =P And its house Deneith, and Tharashk. Maybe you should tell them about your run-in with those hippogriffs...? Good old greed.
AntiSean 04-20-07, 04:43 PM	It sounds like you're conflating the Sentinel Marshals into comprising the whole of Deneith. House Deneith in its entirety can probably best be described as LN/N, and while the Sentinel Marshals may attract a fair to good number of individuals who could be described as LG, that branch is probably LN on the balance. You *might* be able to sway a particularly corrupt and ambitious lower ranking Blademark officer, but even that is unlikely; the risk and reward involved would likely not be worth risking the ire of the House if their duplicity was uncovered, let alone the blackmail opportunity they would present the offering party with (unless they eliminated them afterwards to keep them quiet). Proposition a Sentinel Marshal like that, and you'll wind up in the stocks, put to the sword, or shipped off to Dreadhold.
Cloud Divider 04-20-07, 07:08 PM	You *might* be able to sway a particularly corrupt and ambitious lower ranking Blademark officer, but even that is unlikely; the risk and reward involved would likely not be worth risking the ire of the House if their duplicity was uncovered, let alone the blackmail opportunity they would present the offering party with (unless they eliminated them afterwards...)<snip> I think there's ways you could make it more plausible for the Deneith to be more...susceptible to corruption. Let's say there's a small burg out in the hinterlands somewhere (Very Rural Breland or something; maybe on the border with Droaam). For various reasons, the Deneith are the ones effectively in power. Maybe they've been hired by the local government. Due to their location, they've got something of value - precious metal/gem mines, Last War plunder, Dhakaani goblinoid archaological items, whatever. The Deneith detachment is small (call it a squad of 20 or so...that many professional troops is probably more than enough to have military control of a small area). The governor is corrupt. He's skimming a share off the top of the gold/whatever shipments. He's paying those that matter (the Deneith) to look the other way, and to keep any dissenters in line. The Deneith officer-in-charge eventually gets the idea that it'd be even better to start officially "losing" a caravan or two every month to "bandits". Put the burg on the Droaam border, and he can pin the blame on them. He can allay concerns by bringing in the occasional gnoll head or two. They're in a backwater territory - risk of external investigation is reasonably low (save those thrice-accursed Adventurers!), but the reward is high (all the booze and women you can buy with a G'rashz Dynasty Dhakaani stone tablet you sold on eBay). Up the ante/plausibility a bit, and make the Deneith officer a disgraced one - he (and his troops) got the backwater posting because of their past actions. The promotion and fat paycheck passed him by, but now he sees the opportunity to live the high life...even if the "high life" in the backwaters isn't what it might be in say, Sharn. Throw in a bit of bad blood between the burg and the merchant company he's trading the goods to (so he doesn't care too much when the outgoing caravans get raided), there's much less concern about casualties. Though maybe he puts the occasional plant into the caravans. You'd have to be careful not to kill them by mistake... This is where you (and your group) come in. Of course, eventually, someone probably will come looking. And that's when it's time for your guys to cut and run. Else face the same fate as those sacrificial gnolls.
AntiSean 04-20-07, 11:10 PM	I think there's ways you could make it more plausible for the Deneith to be more...susceptible to corruption. Let's say there's a small burg out in the hinterlands somewhere (Very Rural Breland or something; maybe on the border with Droaam). Oh, I definitely agree. I had meant to add in something about a more remote location making it easier, but I was rushing out the door as I was posting. IMC, the House is definitely leaning towards the darker shade of grey; one of my players is playing a starry-eyed young scion of House Deneith, so I've made sure to play up all sorts of nasty elements of the House just to torture her. :)
Cloud Divider 04-21-07, 04:59 AM	Oh, I definitely agree. I had meant to add in something about a more remote location making it easier, but I was rushing out the door as I was posting. IMC, the House is definitely leaning towards the darker shade of grey; one of my players is playing a starry-eyed young scion of House Deneith, so I've made sure to play up all sorts of nasty elements of the House just to torture her. :) Indeed. There's a lot of interesting things you could do. Consider something as simple as war atrocities ("Hey, we were paid to take out that village...so we Took It Out.") Someday, I'd really like to have a "foreign" Deneith PC (similarly "starry-eyed") in a Sharn campaign. It'd mesh in quite nicely with the Inspired arc I was running before. Granted, one way or another, it would ultimately become a Setting Changing event - one way or another, the Sharn Deneith get exposed. Whether they then get culled (by the Deneith or Inspired) is dependent on how hard of a conspiracy game one is playing... Ideally, it would turn into a major "gang" war in Sharn, and further divide the Deneith. Weaken Breland, weaken a Marked House which would weaken the most militarily strong House...and then that opens up all kinds of broader possibilities. Yeah, that'd be cool. Oh, incidentally, you mentioned the Deneith Sentinel Marshals. Assuming your game is set in Sharn or its vicinity, you've already got corrupt Sentinel Marshals to play with. I could easily see them setting up some of their non-Sharn brethren to take a fall elsewhere in Breland to further their nefarious plans... Then you can have some really interesting drama as you've got what might otherwise be a sympathetic Deneith leader, being given some strange orders from the Breland Guild House. But he's got to follow them, because they are his chain of command... He's probably already been involved with some of Deneith's scheming already (hey, Deneith's selection to defend City X instead of City Y may not be based only on who paid most. What if they had some ulterior motive to ensuring City X survived, or City Y fell?). So he's basically just being told to be a little less attentive with respect to a few specific caravans... I likes me a good conspiracy. And that's one of the elements I really like about Eberron's setting. Hmm, this is getting me all fired up to run Eberron again... Too bad my group's a continent away.
WolfHati 04-23-07, 03:23 AM	You should avoid making everyone corrupt though, because then it'll just be an Eberron cliche. Eberron's fun because it goes against all sorts of D&D cliches while keeping with the spirit of the game. There's no need to manufacture entirely new cliches.
Cloud Divider 04-23-07, 06:27 AM	You should avoid making everyone corrupt though, because then it'll just be an Eberron cliche. Eberron's fun because it goes against all sorts of D&D cliches while keeping with the spirit of the game. There's no need to manufacture entirely new cliches. I wasn't suggesting everyone was corrupt. Well, maybe I was. As I think I might've mentioned earlier, I tend to play Eberron with a decidedly noir bent. And one of the staples of noir is that the difference between a "straight" man and a corrupt man is that the straight man hasn't been offered the right price yet. However, then there's the heroic exceptions - commonly the heroes (or villains, in certain cases). People who believe so strongly in their ideals that their "price" is so high it can't be paid. The PCs tend to fall in that category... That's not to say there's not other flaws, however. Another trope is that of the redemption arc. You could easily have the "fallen" ex-cop (busted for corruption) has a change of heart, and becomes a hero. So yeah, while in my game I had my fair share of corrupt people (cops that were on the take, for instance), there were also a number of genuinely good people, too (a good cop fighting in an understaffed and underfunded slum district). There's patriots, and then those patriots willing to go too far to achieve their ideals. People who will abuse their power to get what they want. But then, when the PCs go and do something heroic, they burn all the brighter... Your mileage may vary, naturally.
korcheck 04-23-07, 04:27 PM	Well, maybe I was. As I think I might've mentioned earlier, I tend to play Eberron with a decidedly noir bent. And one of the staples of noir is that the difference between a "straight" man and a corrupt man is that the straight man hasn't been offered the right price yet. How very true I guess then that I may be a bit noir in life as well, I am a building inspector in life and have stated often that if a builder wants to bribe me it will cost $16 million dollars becuase if I'm caught I'll never be able to work in this buiness again so it has to be worth it and able to sustain me the rest of my life.... no takers as yet sigh... :D