#Lysthzaho

[dailyadventureprompts]

any ideas for a druid villain who isn't a pro-environmentalism "extremist" who opposes the #just'n'kind authorities and such? i'd like to do one but honestly most suggestions are just to make a fantasy anti-civ unabomber and idk im not too crazy about the concept

Villain: The Eelmonger

While the scholars debate whether it is nature, society, or fate that makes a person cruel, remember my student that none of these things are kind or fair to most whom they govern. -From the diaries of Tarraji, country tutor

Hooks:

Every year a great festival is held across the kingdom to honour the queen's birthday, a tradition started by the previous rulers to celebrate the long-sought birth of their first heir, but maintained by the current sovereign as a means of sharing a little of her prosperity with her subjects, the crown footing most of the bill for the event. This year, just as people (and the party) are crowding into the rivermarket to enjoy the festivities, a horde of grotesque aquatic monsters surge from the water to rampage through the town.

Two days later when the last of the beasts is either slain or driven off, word arrives that similar attacks have occurred all up and down the central waterway, paralyzing the realm's economy and making travel tremendously dangerous. The party could go hunting the worst of the rivermonsters, or they could sign up to protect a daredevil merchant's cargo and make a small fortune crisis trading.

Along with all this chaos an old threat reemerges, pirates with a long hatred of the realm trawling for plunder in the wake of the rampage. Apparently exempt from the wrath of the seabeasts that still lurk in the rivers and canals, they fly a new flag bearing images of sharp-toothed eels, and sing songs in praise of an unseen master.

Dressed like a peasant and exalted by outlaws, the enigmatic figure known only as the Eelmonger has emerged seemingly from nowhere to overthrow the realm and topple the queen from her throne. Who is she? Why her unprecedented attack? How is she able to turn the great predators of the deep into warbeasts bent to her aims? Among all the uncertainly all that can be known is that she has seemingly declared war against the realm, and will not stop till the queen and any who support her have been reduced to meals for the ocean's scavengers.

Background: Sha's parents thought it was very lucky for their daughter to be born under the same stars as the crown princess, as in the old traditions of the kingdom such "celestial siblings" were thought to share their fortunes, and as poor fisherfolk eking out a meagre living from the sea that fortune was dearly needed. As Sha Grew however it became apparent that the stars played a cruel game of favourites, and whatever luck the oneday queen was given was taken in equal portion from Sha's own: The day the princess was thrown from her horse and rose mirraculously unharmed was the day Sha tumbled over the side of her family's boat in a calm sea and somehow broke three bones, the announcement of the king's recovery from the brittle sickness reaching Sha's village the same day they put her long-ailing father in the ground.

These transgressions were manifold, too obvious and cruel to be mere happenstance, and over the years and the grand festival-birthdays Sha's resentment at her distant royal sister and the injustice of fate filed her sharp and cold as a gutting knife. Things paradoxically got a little better during the pirate wars, when those foreign fleets took the town she lived in as their fortress, burning and pillaging many other settlements along the coast and great river. Sha, now a woman grown, felt her fortunes had reversed, as the pirates were all to happy to pay for her catch with handfulls of stolen coin, and her expertise with local cuisine saw her elevated to the position of landbound galleycook, feeding whole crews of cutthroats in between their inland raids.

It was not to last however, after a few brutal years on the defensive, the princess and her allies rallied and launched an offensive that shattered the invader's fleet and ousted them from the lands they'd set to conquer, culminating in a battle that saw Sha's town (and the life she'd built there) burnt to the ground. It was in the midst of that fighting, trapped beneath burning rubble that Sha saw her celestial sister for the first time, glorious and beautiful and totally ignorant of her existence, scaling the ruins of Sha's happiness on her way to future glory. Sha was pinned there for days, forgotten among the rest of the corpses; it wasn't until a great storm broke and washed the wreckage of the battle out into the sea that she was freed, her druidic powers awakening as she drowned and calling out to those creatures of the brine to aid her. Whatever warpath and hope she had for making a good life in spite of her sister she left below the surface, because as soon as she made landfall she started plotting her path back to the queen.

Goals & Schemes:

Ruination: As strong as her monsters are individually or as a horde, The eelmonger knows her beasts can't challenge the might or logistics of an entire kingdom. However, Sha grew up on the kingdom's waterways and knows that just like small tributaries fed the great trade river, the lives of farmers and merchants feed into the strength of the crown. If she has any hope of evening the playing field Sha must break the system that feeds the realm's warchest even if it means breaking the realm itself in the process. Monstrous chaos and resurgent pirates are just the first step: Targeting the merchants will cause supply shortages and beggar the realm, after that she'll move on to sowing famine in the farmlands. When there isn't enough to go round people will break down into factions, causing the army the well trained army the queen has inhereted to crumble before it ever reaches the field.

Fixing the broken scales: Simply killing the queen won't be enough. Sha reasoned out long ago that if she ever did direct harm to celestial sister whatever fate bullshit that connects them would likely redirect the outcome onto her somehow and that just wouldn't do. Instead she has to settle for making the soverign suffer by proxy, all the while searching for some means of attacking the connection itself. Those pirates directly privy to her plan are out hunting for priests and fortunetellers during their raids, anyone they could kidnap and bring back to the eelmonger to help correct this balance.

Saint of the Brine: Though she has no love for gods, Sha's vengeful ascent is watched over by a coldhearted deity of the fathomless seas, who has umbrage with this particular kingdom ever since the queen's ancestors laid claim to its bays and coastlines by slaying a titanic beast she favoured. The eelmonger is her unwitting instrument of wrath, and whether the gods involvement began during Sha's almost drowning or all the way back were praying for a safe birth is impossible to say. Though the eelmonger has unseen aid throughout her campaign against the crown, if the party is able to make their enemy aware that some god may be the source of her misfortune they may be able to divert Sha's wrath from the queen and the realm's inhabitants.

Art

#villain #seaside #Lysthzaho #pirates #mid level #high level #warfare #wuxia #festival #river #seamonster