Cincinnata
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.
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