Kaithe Dame — Roleplayer Guild

Content warning for a story told through the eyes of a BBEG ‘but done right.’ Credit to David Verburg’s Practical Guide to Evil for inspiring this story and, strangely enough, Mitsiki, as well as the RPG The Last Sovereign.

TLDR; a comprehensive story of a lowborn (man/woman) whose origins are rooted in mundanity and becoming a tyrannical but competent figure who also fucks.

You’ve heard this one before.

It’s a subversion as old as time; the ‘What was Sauron’s tax policy? What were the infrastructure programs like in Mordor?’ I like those, and, rather than reinventing the wheel, I’d like to add another hitch to it -

The Losing Dogs / The World’s Worst Dating Sim.

In a world threatened by / recovering from a TBD apocalypse, a Fellowship has formed to (save it / aid it) and finds themselves sorely lacking in backing for their plan. They find an unlikely ally in the form of our main character, a new blood (Senator / other elected official) who, apparently sharing their idealism and desire to help others, puts their backing behind these heroes.

Our heroes become the unwitting patsies in a scheme to supplant the democracy of their minor city with dreams that stretch beyond the horizon. The story, as I see it, follows a machiavellian villain who takes advantage of the good naturedness of these heroes and serves as a malicious ‘Quest Giver’ and slowly wraps them around their finger, all the whilst engaging in the politicks of their homeland, attending government conferences, meetings, writing out bills - and between all of this, building an underworld empire and going on silly dates with members of the Fellowship to twist their hearts, filling them with hopes and dreams and feelings of love.

Our ‘Losing Dogs.’ Good people just trying to do good and falling in love with the one person who seems to believe in them.

(Short-term smut plot involving a high-ranking individual being brought to their captor for an involuntold dinner. Functionally AxA regardless of gendered nouns below; it's meant to be some verbal foreplay before mostly consenting sex, details pending.)

Long shadows dance between each tent wall that she passes by.

Demons, perhaps. Or their worshippers. Or more dangerous yet, drunken soldiers who had just experienced the greatest week of their lives. Inebriated as much on victory as on imperial vintage wine, they stumble between pavilions, plucking through the belongings of those whom they had sent flying down the river. Their Shepherd had promised them loot in exchange for battle, and they’d gotten away with their rewards with few even having to draw their weapons.

Betrayal. Sylvan Varain had struck at his royalist allies in nearly the same moment he’d come to their aid, having the moon as the only guide they needed to lead his men into his peers’ camps, knives  found throats and before long the entire camp was all but emptied of proper, loyal men and women. Those that stayed, turned, turning torches on every flag bearing the brand of the family they’d followed into war, before long starting a fire that had consumed most of the camp by the time the sun came out to greet them.

That had dampened the mood. Slightly.

Still, three days later and the camp was still in high spirits. Few seemed in a proper enough place to be aware of their two visitor’s presences, and those that could be bothered to acknowledge them didn’t seem keen to disobey their master’s orders.

On their way to Lord Varain’s tent they must have passed hundreds of what used to be ‘their’ men. Colors turned inside out, sharing the same food and drink that littered the floor with mercenary and slave alike. Copper collars were amassed across the floor, some in pyres, some in haphazard and broken pieces across the floor where somebody had taken a mallet to them.

Some eye Molly’s - her handmaiden -  collar with the hate one regards a leper. Their pity is almost as noticeable.

A smidge of sanity seems to remain in the inner circle of tents where her father’s pavilion once stood, his goat torn down and replaced with a violet eye. Varain’s colors. Indeed, there was violet everywhere. The color of magic and demons and elves and of the many men and women in his court, apparently. Even here they seemed dressed to impress, courtiers and soldiers stepping in and out of each tent with too much to do to notice either women or offer directions. There didn’t even seem to be a guard posted to keep an eye on them, but it wasn’t like they needed directions. She knew her father’s tent by heart, and when they found it, they found the man they’d been looking for.

He’s no smaller or taller than any other elf she’s met, his dusty, violet eyes peering at them through the thick smell of incense and straight through a goblet of wine he was pretending to drink. A rare sphere of candor in a spiral of chaos, his stitched and well-fit clothes making him particularly odd considering just how completely trashed the room is. Every imperial eagle, one for each legion, had been thrown to the floor or carted off. His throne has been tipped over and probably pissed on, and the bed looked like an ogre had an orgy on it, its mantle torn apart and its silk drapes torn or fallen to the floor.

On the floor? More food and drink. Splints of wood. Blood. On what remains of a table that cost more than half the empire? The semblance of a proper meal, which, to anybody’s shock, smelled magnificent. At the center of it, Lord Varain, smiling invitingly and waving them further inside, his form difficult to properly see through the haze of heat and aroma.

“My ladies!” He greets, calling them with too much happy familiarity. “Apologies. I would’ve had somebody lead you here, but most of my followers are indisposed at the moment - the useless louts.”

Only two chairs were left, and both were close to their host.

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Vylinius of Varathia

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