The Blog of Roon

Hating every millisecond of it, Renate had a long chat with the dragon-lord of Atlantis, in the course of which she disclosed her brother’s theft of an ex-magical gizmo (possibly Once and Future War Materiel) from an Atlantis museum.

Both she and the dragon behaved very well, though you’ll never get Renate to say much good of a dragon. (I look forward to inserting this bit into the next game session, actually, just so the other characters catch her in a fit of the poisonous sulks. She isn’t all sweetness and light.) She proved that the lessons in deportment she got from her mother and Godfrey did not go to waste; the dragon commented favorably on her poise, and she only got backed into a conversational corner once.

And because I am nothing if not a cooperative player, I swallowed a plot hook whole, fully aware that it was a plot hook.

When the dragon wondered aloud why he’d never heard of her, our Rennie reacted with characteristic modesty: “I can imagine no reason you should have, my lord.” This led to the GM revealing post-play that Renate is the first Noble Child not to use the alter ego to escape the strictures of nobility and sow some wild oats—not to mention earn something of a reputation.

And I blinked, because that’s just so not Rennie. Her prologue shocked any thought of wild oats right out of her, and she has the strictures of nobility bred right into her acrobatic little bones. Her central conflict isn’t between nobility and personal enjoyment—it’s between honor and expediency, and she’s feeling it a lot lately.

She is, in other words, a born hero, in the Aragorn rather than Han Solo vein. Well, I did promise myself I’d play her that way.

I think, though, that the GM was expecting a top-down hero (the Roland or Round Table Knight model) or a rock-star type, and I’m not giving him either one. Renate works from underneath, from the grass-roots—she is beginning to believe, though she hasn’t given this belief voice yet, that the only way the Silver Coast will survive the coming Andragarian onslaught is if everyone everywhere resists, not just the soldiers and the mages and the other so-called heroes. She’ll rabble-rouse and spotlight-grab when the time comes, because she’ll have to, but her staunchest support will come from what plain old honesty, decency, and hard work can attract to her. Her modesty is neither a pose nor a disposable remnant of youth; it is key to her hero appeal.

(I mean, that’s why the other two PCs stick around her—she’s a good kid, she looks out for them, and she never steals their show. No reason this shouldn’t happen on a wider scale—especially since it’s a sort of personality jiu-jitsu that this showy, celebrity-mad world isn’t accustomed to. That unfamiliarity itself, I believe in the part of my mind that does my evil-GM-plot-foiling, will prove to be useful. Celebrity has a habit of o’erweening arrogance…)

When all the fuss is over, if Renate survives it—she currently believes firmly that she won’t, but I myself have no opinion on the matter except to note that she loves life deeply, even considering how often she’s put it at hazard—I can quite see her pulling a Cincinnatus, opting out of power and glory to return quietly to the beloved home whose need of protection enticed her toward power and glory to begin with.

It’d be very like Renate, that—and it’s not a bad campaign ending if I do say so myself. We’ll see.

Ren slashed her methodical way through a quite creditable number of undead last Dragonhunt; I think she ended up with the largest kill count of the Troubleshooters. Not a spectacular fighter to watch, Ren isn’t—she just quietly goes about her business, doing whatever she has to.

She did, anyway, until she got hit by a nasty lightning-bolt spell, a rapier to the chest, and a blow to the back in unhappily quick succession. That brought her down.

Whereupon the other two Troubleshooters lost their tempers and set loose the flashiest sorts of derring-do on the critters that hurt her. I think they might actually be fond of Ren. A little at least. Maybe a little.

But she’s going to have a little chat with them about the advisability of keeping one’s head in crisis situations. When she wakes up, that is. Assuming there’s time, which I rather suspect there won’t be.

I found this snippet in my email. It represents my attempt to define the character of the von Adler majordomo Godfrey Cuyler (played, of course, by the GM) from the point of view of sixteen-year-old Renate.

His name is Godfrey Cuyler, and he runs the baronial staff as well as performing personal services for members of the baron’s family.

Renate can’t remember the house without him. Whenever she needed a toy or a ’cube or something to eat as a child, Godfrey obliged. When she cut her arm badly playing in the armory she was forbidden to enter, Godfrey found her crying, bandaged her, cleaned up the mess, and didn’t tell her parents, earning the closest thing to undying loyalty that Renate possessed.

Even in the worst spasms of the teenage craze for privacy, Godfrey is permitted entry to her room. After all, he’s only Godfrey. As well refuse to open the door for the cat.

Besides, she likes Godfrey, when she remembers to. He’s so funny, always so proper and prim! (He’s probably gay, Renate thinks. That would explain why she never feels like flirting with him, the way she does with Aaron.) And he never laughs at her the way Emil does, or scolds like Mama, or brushes her tiredly off like Aaron. Godfrey’s all right. You can’t talk to him, really—pointless; he doesn’t think about anything but the household—but there are lots of people you can’t talk to.

Needless to say, sixteen-year-old Renate was wrong about Godfrey’s character on almost every count. I am delighted to see how much their relationship has changed, how much Renate has learned from him (now and then, she even sounds like him), and how much he’s helped her grow.

She owes him, and I suspect—no, I know—she knows it. Helping find the Reichert murderer was something, but it’s not nearly enough. (Plus, putting her on that job turns out to have been a plot hatched up by Godfrey, Aaron, and Renate’s father the baron—and when Renate next goes home there is going to be A Serious Discussion about that, among other things.) I hope she gets a chance at some point during the campaign to prove how much she respects and cares for Godfrey.

Hannah just had to (metaphorically) spank one of her crewmates for calling her an American. (She isn’t, any more; she’s a French citizen and proud to be so.) She did, however, take the hint and switch from English to French.

Which has sent me scurrying frantically into some of my mind’s mustier closets looking for the French I never learned to write to begin with. (I can read French. I can’t speak it, and I can’t write it.)

Perhaps not the ideal (re)learning environment, but I’ll take what I can get.

Never let it be said that roleplaying is entirely divorced from Real Life ™. I recently noodled on a piece of (probably non-canon) Dragonhunt fluff, in which Renate took the Ilium police files manager/researcher out to lunch.

So she asked him…

“How’d you get your job, anyway?”

“Majored in archives administration at university. They wanted me to stay for grad school and teach, but that’s a sucker’s game. You end up like Shem Matas.”

“Dead?” Renate’s eyes widened.

“Worse. Adjuncting.”

“Oh.”

I was not wholly responsible for the setup on this one. Long before SLIS tried to recruit me, the Dragonhunt GM had established that Shem Matas was an adjunct professor at Eldorado University before a demon lord took off the top of his head and burned out his brain. In fact, I think Shem’s so-called career was established in previous iterations of the Dragonhunt campaign in which I had zero involvement.

So it’s not my fault. Honest! It just worked out into one of those purely irresistible real-life/gaming jokes.

Well, owing to circumstances we shan’t be able to seek out our Dragonhunt quarry until next week… but events transpired nonetheless.

Renate’s older brother Emil, you may recall, ran away from home to avoid being formally named their father’s heir, and ended up in the elite fighting/espionage force of their home nation’s major political enemy, Andragar.

On a trip to the city of Atlantis to enlist some aid, Rien happened upon Emil—robbing a museum of an artifact. Rien recognized Emil from his resemblance to Renate, and kindly put the police off Emil’s trail.

He hasn’t told Renate yet, as he doesn’t want to distract her from the job they’re on… but when he does, it puts Renate on the horns of a walloping lulu of a dilemma. See, Renate hasn’t told her companions about Emil’s allegiance, and his appearance in Atlantis didn’t give it away to Rien. As far as Rien knows, Emil has just plain sunk to thievery.

So Renate and no one else will have all the puzzle pieces to know that Andragar was behind the theft. She can’t put anyone on the right track, however, without ratting out her only brother—and there is a special circle of Renate’s private hell reserved for people who betray their families.

I think I know how she’s going to handle it, after all the wailing and gnashing of teeth is over. But ow, this one’s gonna hurt.