Imagined game mechanic, never happening for many reasons

#1

(There are times when I have an idea in a dream, and when I wake up it plugs into my imagination and conscious mind, fleshes itself out, and then sits there going “ta-dah!” This concept is therefor not a request, more of a crazed fanfic, placed here for your amusement.)

  1. Locate (through divination) lair of a large dragon.
  2. Quest to get to and enter lair, and negotiate with dragon.
  3. Voluntary death of “potent and heroic” character (must be 12 character points or over)
  4. Assign dragon as a ritual effect to an Imperial Province, in the same manner as (eg Rivers Run Red).

“And so we came at last to the chamber of the great beast, and it looked down upon us and sneered. It knew that we longed to best it, for t’would be a glorious deed of legendary scale*, and it also knew we had no hope of doing so.
And Lord Corwin De Rondell**, the Unbeggared, stepped forth and bargained with his life for the service of the great beast. And when the bargain was completed, we degirded our brother, and said our farewells. And we left them there***.
And the Dragon swept out of its lair, and we marvelled at its majesty and awesome might, and it paused on a mighty crag, and declared its intent.****
And as it flew off into Imperial service, we wept for what we had seen, and for what we had done, and we told ourselves that it was worth the price…
And all through that summer, the Jotun in Liathaven suffered beneath the attacks of the Dragon, and were as helpless prey before it, and they knew not succour nor sanctuary, and were as a helpless mob…”*****

*Yes, it’s Dawn. Nobody else would try something like this…
**Sorry.
***Sacrifice gets eaten. Memory gets eaten. Possibly Soul also gets consumed. It’ll certainly take them a LONG time to get back through the labyrinth, if they even enter it. Certainly no True Liao vision has involved being eaten by a dragon. Oh look, heresy…
****Dragon then decides to what extent it will do what it’s been asked, depending on RP and calibre of the sacrifice.
*****Jotun forces in Liathaven take 10% attrition to all armies, They may not move, they may not give or recieve orders. They may not resupply.

#2

Thois answer here mostly to consider how this would [and wouldn’t] fit into Empire from my point of view, and where one might go to find this sort of game.

The Outcome of this ‘The empire gains a powerful new ally that works with us for a while then departs’ already exists in the Empire game, normally through the Eternal game, whether Kaela’s grim Legionairres, a pack of hunting griffons from Hayaak or a swarm of Arhallogen’s spiders to harass our enemies [There are even possibly dragons in the realm of summer {not the world} that might if could convince the right eternal might join our battle] there are plenty of ways to get advantages see Rhiannon and his heralds seeking ‘Adventuere’, alternatively international politics can throw up extra armies, military forces or even monsters [I mean we could probably buy a drake or two off the Druj right?].

As for sacrifice a PC, I’m always wary of that, especially in empire where, the 12xp thing means a character that has had basically two years of play invested in them. Odyssey had lots of sacrifice but a] Odyssey had a much more rotating door of the underworld, death wasn’t the absolute end it is in Empire and b]Sacrifice was much more built into the various briefs as something that happened, with varying regularity between nations that just isn’t there in Empire. Not to mention there’s it seems to me much more of a feeling of ‘Being dead is boring, being messed up and angsting is fun.’, see every traumatic wound ever.

I’ll leave aside the whole ‘destruction of the soul’ because thats a little too close to a bunch of cool IC discussion bits and bobs.

#3

I agree with the thought that it’s not likely to work, but as Ricohard says, there are probably similar things you could do with either Summer eternals (for GLORIOUS SACRIFICE) or Winter eternals (for INEVITABLE SACRIFICE), possibly by a character being willing to become a herald in exchange for a boon.

That way you get some of the “oh no but what about their soul” and some of the “you cannot play this character afterwards” because of the herald-ification, and it fits into things that have happened before. :slight_smile: