Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 kitrack Jul 11, 2009 19:35:18	I'm looking for some advice on a antagonist's background in my Eberron campaign. My party is going to be hired to track down a war criminal, who's hiding in Xen'drik. I want him to be a high-ranking man (Captain, Colonel, General, et al) who committed some war crimes during the Last War, and now feels remorse. I don't know what sort of things he would have done, but I want them to not be over the moral event horizon. The purpose of this is to give the PCs at least a little of the moral quandry - turn him in, let him go, help him with his new cause (Probably some form of evangelism in Xen'drik?) So, please give me some advice: What sort of war crimes would make the government of Breland want to go to these lengths to retrieve him, but without making him so evil that the PCs don't even contemplate doing anything other than their initial job. Thanks in advance!
#2 blackmage88 Jul 11, 2009 21:13:59	Treason/killing his own men. The twist is that he was actually trying to prevent something worse from happening. Maybe his unit was infiltrated by the Emerald Claw or Khyber cultists. Maybe his subordinates were getting out of control and comitting the standard over-the-moral-event-horizon war crimes. Perhaps he was falsely accussed after the fact. Or he could have viewed the necessity of his actions as a sign of his failure as a commander, seeing the loss of his command and citizenship as a just punishment for having failed to prevent the circumstances which prompted his 'treason'. Basically, he betrayed Breland and turned on his own men. On the other hand, it's not like he wasn't doing it for a good reason.
#3 Mr._Wilson Jul 12, 2009 0:33:22	Fragging a superior officer is generally considered a war crime. In this case, your antagonist might have fragged his immediate superior because he believed the man to be incompetant, a butcher, or a traitor. Rather than follow the chain of command (maybe time was a factor, or maybe he didn't have enough evidence), your antagonist took matter into his own hands and fragged his man. Breland then declared him an outlaw (maybe they still don't know the truth...then again, maybe the superior officer was a hero and Breland doesn't want his crimes known for their morale reasons) and the antagonist had to flee certain execution. For an added twist, maybe his men followed him, giving you something like a Heart of Darkness/Apocolypse Now adventure.
#4 Gilo Jul 12, 2009 20:31:36	Maybe he was a captain in the king's Shields (bodyguards to the royal family). He learned that King Boranel wife was influencing her husband to abolish parliament (maybe she learned of the prime minister's dealings with queen Aurala). He then assassinated Boranel's wife (seeded suspicions that Droaam was behind it) believing that he was acting in favor of Breland, the democracy movement (/Swords of Liberty) and the greater good. Edit: or maybe the antagonist was commanding a small Brelanish force which was occupying a small Cyrian town on the border near the end of the war. The local town population was very difficult and there have been some local insurgency acts against his soldiers. so he decided to pull back his unit from the town - knowing well that a Darguun force will move into the town and massacre the Cyrian civilians.
#5 devlonir Jul 13, 2009 4:44:10	Well.. sometimes good men ignore the orders of their commanders because they believe what they do is good. And when they are succesful they will get applauded.. Now, what if he got a direct order from a Commanding Officer to ignore helping a refugee caravan getting caught by Droamm/Darguun raiders and killed and sold into slavery. He ignored that order and took his own unit of a few dozen men to fight the raiding party and save the refugees. Now, the problem was.. he didn't know the reason the main army did not help. It being that it wasn't a mere raiding party but an entire army that is crossing with the refugees. His entire unit gets slaughtered and captured, he is the only survivor. This loss of men and materials would have been a blow to any regiment and he could have been marked a traitor by his Superior Officers. He would have probably not gotten physically punished for it though, seeing he already had to go through the trauma of loosing his men. Now, why would he have to be hunted down now? That can also be interesting. Maybe they found out something new he was also involved with but never punished for. That is why they hunt him down in Xen'drik. Maybe an officer of his got assassinated in his sleep after the event that led to his exile and he is now seen as the one behind that assassination. While, in fact, he isn't. This leaves another hook open, trying to find out who and why they wanted to frame this already traumatized man (Maybe some group wanted the heroes away off Khorvaire for a while, maybe this man is actually a key to the Draconic Prophecy that certain groups want to disappear, etc.) It's a cool hook that way :P
#6 NullOperative Jul 13, 2009 9:18:46	A war crime could always be based on how things look after the fact. Perhaps this man's unit occupied a town or village. The people there rose up against them; perhaps they were not mundane humanoids, but lycanthropes, magic users, or people possessed by undead spirits. The soldiers defend themselves and kill many of them. Anyone who shows up after the attack just sees armed soldiers and a pile of dead civilians, and murder of civilians is certainly a war crime.
#7 archangel62 Jul 14, 2009 5:02:15	Now this one is a little out there, but it has some potential story play. The Colonel was assigned to lead a unit to stop bushwackers from raiding supply convoys and disrupting trade withing Breland and between allies. The raiders in question though were part of the dark pack, a small collection of surviving lycanthropes. The colonel was the kind to lead from the front, unfortunately for him that got him bitten and infected. When he transformed he ended up slaughtering his men. He couldn't explain what he had done, and he couldn't risk staying around others because there was a very real chance that they'd get infected as well. Just an idea.
#8 soyim Jul 16, 2009 16:04:37	I'd rather go with something much more morally questionable but still above the Moral Event Horizon. Captain X was highely succesful in intimidating foes on one of his campaigns against a rival nation- to the point in which he managed to capture more enemies than he killed during a particularly nasty fight. Immediattly following the battle though it became apparent that it was going to be impossible to control/feed/deal with the sheer number of prisoners of war that he was responsible for bringing in. His commanding officers told him to deal with it. A riot was pending, nobody was going to be fed, the army needed to move and the local militias would be overrun by former soldiers: So he decimated the captured legion- killing one men in ten. If that's too much maybe he took the Captured Soldier to an interment camp that was sadly located in Cyre and now he's considered responsible for the deaths of all those men and his superior officers sold him out. The reputation he has as a fearsome warrior doesn't help his case.
#9 need_a_life Aug 07, 2009 15:21:41	Personal favourite? Talking. He was captured by enemy forces (I'd use Valenar, but you pick your favourite) and tortured for days, turning him into a broken shell of a man, barely able to sit upright, much less resist the mind-games and interrogations he was put through. Due to him talking, a Valenar band was able to move behind the Brelish forces, eliminating their reserves before Brelish Command could respond and hundreds/thousands of soldiers and an unknown number of civilians died as a direct consequence of this. Morally gray? Light-gray, perhaps, but few PCs would choose not to escort him to his punishment, as he himself believes he is deserving (and, arguably, he is) and Breland will be able to restore morale by bringing a "war criminal" to justice.
#10 darkdragonk Aug 08, 2009 10:52:33	I vote for fragging a superior officer. Although I can think of Eberron related NON-Morally Grey war crimes (involving magic most likely) that would be much more interesting. For a twist you could say the Superior officer was a vampire/lycanthrope/cultist/whatever (hey if a king can get away with being a bloodsucker why not some random officer.)
#11 hellgrammite00 Aug 08, 2009 11:28:08	How about illegally obtaining slaves from Argonnessen to try and combat the growing warforged armies in the last war. A General of one of the five nations needed more forces to help give them an edge in the war. With the growing amounts of warforged, he feared that in time he didnt have the forces necessary for victory. Goblin mercenaries were also expensive and of questionable loyalty. Slavery was not permitted in his country of natural creatures of Khorvaire. With the last war, perhaps this rule could be bent, but who would he enslave? The gnolls? The minatours? The kobolds? Khorvaire is a complex place, and these creatures have a long history with the continent. Training and arming them, even as slaves, could prove dangerious. Though not of rich history as the goblins, it still would be a gamble. We could not afford to let another race of monsters to gain anywhere near that type of power again. And then one day you got interesting news from a trading ship. Apparanetly, the ship was caught in a storm, and landed on Argonnessen. Going a bit deeper into the island, they saw whole tribes of Dragonborn. He describes the culture of them, their strong fighting ability, and how much they revered dragons. Seeing an opportunity, through deceit and trickery, the general managed to capture and load thousands of these Dragonborn into slave ships. Eventually bringing to khovaire as savage infrantry. Through his cunning, some dragonborn believed they were serving their dragon masters, a higher calling, even as slaves. Others did not trust their human captors, but those who questioned or resisted were eliminated. The big thing is slavery is his crime. Those who realized that these humans were not of some higher order, or themselves servants to the dragons resisted. Hundreds, if not thousands of dragonborn perished just for questioning and demanding freedom from the bonds of their human masters. He also didnt just capture the dragonborn through force of arms. He used guile and all his cunning to convince the dragonborn that being infantry and servants to his cause were serving their dragon lords in some manner. Perhaps he made his ships look like giant wooden dragons for effect, and had his officers wear robes with giant metal dragon masks. Paying doppelgangers to appear as clerics calling this a sign from the great dragons themselves.
#12 Sarlax Aug 08, 2009 12:20:02	Given that Breland has a lot of manifest zones, maybe he did something with one of them. Perhaps he triggered the growth of a zone to Dolurrh. The initial burst of growth weakened the enemy army, but since that time, it's known that crops are dying out, many children are stillborn, and people who pass through the area get very sick with alarming frequency. Since you didn't specify race (and national is more important), he could be elf, dwarf, etc. and thus quite old. Maybe he brought down the Glass Tower in Sharn. It may have been filled with spies or been home to nefarious research, but the only way to take out the evil inside was to destroy the entire building, killing its innocent inhabitants as well. Stealing from others' ideas: he unleashed a spawning monster among enemy forces. It might have been a lycanthrope, vampire, etc., but the best candidate might be the wraith, as anyone killed by a wraith becomes a wraith the next round. He released the wraith among a resting army at night, perhaps to stop the destruction of an innocent city. With Fly 6, Hover, and phasing, the wraith and its descendants destroyed the army in minutes. They soon began merging, and now the region is roamed by hundreds of wraiths, dozens of mad and sword wraiths, and even a few dread wraiths.
#13 ront_iron-roar Aug 12, 2009 21:13:19	Perhaps, he participated in an illegal ressurection of a Higher up? He and his fellow men worked to find a priest who could bring back their commander. Unfortunately, the man they found was a worshipper of the Dark Six and instead of returning the Commander to Life he revived the body with a dark spirit within it, some soul of a killer or perhaps demonic possession? Either way things seemed normal for the first few days till their leader lead them on a killing spree through Cyran settlements. Of course, it wasn't long for the men to realize their commander was far different and they took direct action against the man to send the fowl spirit back to Dolurrh. Unfortunately, most of his compatriots were killed and those that surived were incarcerated or put into various asylums. He himself escaped and vowed to come back and send the fowl spirit back. Unfortunately, the demon possessed man realized he almost blew his cover and began acting more his role. Soon enough, the fiend began using the host bodies' nobility to pull strings after the war and began martialing his own private army to restart the Last War. Of course, the fiend is quite willing to track down and silence the old soldier.
#14 kitrack Aug 17, 2009 8:05:08	Perhaps, he participated in an illegal ressurection of a Higher up? He and his fellow men worked to find a priest who could bring back their commander. .... That seems to dovetail well with one of my character's plot line. I think I will definately steal that. Thanks everyone for the ideas. I'm planning to use several of them in my campaign (this or the next one - Karrnath seems the right place for some of them)!