Make them more interesting: Zertorme

Zertorme is one of the trickier key players in Raven’s Purge to pin down. On one hand, he’s the defender of the free peoples against Zytera: a hero to Ailanders, Elvenspring, Raven Sisters and elves, and about the only thing that the Quard and Galdane Aslenes agree on, despite his attempts to mope in his castle for 200-odd years and talk to nobody. On the other hand, he is his father’s son, and the campaign is quite clear that if he tries to rule with Stanengist he will go completely insane.

How do you reconcile these apparently contradictory facets of his character?

Why is Zertorme still alive?

The elephant in the room: Zertorme was born in 834 (GM’s Guide, p. 26) and it’s now at least 1160, so he’s at least 320, and yet he “has the appearance of being forty, athletic and intense since he is a half-elf, as were his parents” (Raven’s Purge, p. 42). Elvenspring “live three times longer than humans” (GM’s Guide, p. 50), and are old from 101 onwards, compared to humans’ 51 onwards (Player’s Handbook, p. 31). Zertorme should look wise and distinguished at least, and should probably be dead. Why isn’t he?

“He’s from a long line of distinguished sorcerers”, you might say, but (1) there’s no indication that Zygofer or Martea somehow had anything like the blood of the Númenóreans in their veins, and in fact (2) to the contrary, Zygofer’s life span is rubbish.

Zygofer is young in 825 (GM’s Guide, p. 24), falls in love with Martea in 834 (ibid., p. 26), they quickly have Zytorme, followed by Marga and Therania in 841 (ibid., p. 27), Zygofer starts meddling with demons in 850, doubles down in 870 (ibid., p. 29), goes all-in in 874 (ibid., p. 30), and by 880, when he can’t be much more than 80 years old, and at which point most Elvenspring are just getting started, he’s “old and decrepit. His corrupting research and his struggle with the demons had taken a toll on his body and soul.” (ibid. p. 32).

OK, so that was down to the meddling with demons, but it seems like meddling like demons is like second-hand tobacco smoke: it can be deadly even if you’re just around when it happens. Marga was only eleven when she got permanently infected with a demon (ibid., p. 28), after all. What are the odds that Zertorme escaped?

The campaign is clear: none. If Zertorme tries to rule via Stanengist, he’ll go mad, just like his father (Raven’s Purge, p. 43). There’s got to be demon stuff in him.

But Zertorme’s entire public image is that he’s not his father. That’s how he’s managed to assemble a whole cadre of Kins whose apparent only common ground is that they think Zertorme is a great guy, including famously-demon-hating elves, and Galdane Aslenes of who it’s said “Above all, they hate Zygofer and anything that looks demonic, including wolfkin.” (GM’s Guide, p. 50.)

Zertorme therefore has a dilemma: while he’s probably still alive because he’s part-demon, that’s absolutely the last reason he should ever give in public. His coalition would crumble if his followers ever knew the truth.

Zertorme’s explanation: die from time to time (but get better)

The best approach, I think, is to be a tragic hero. “It is well-known that my father foolishly experimented with demons”, he can say, “to the point where my beloved mother despaired of getting him to see sense, and fled with my sister and me. He caught up with them, and I hope he killed them, although I fear they suffered a worse fate. I escaped, but I fear I can never be truly rid of his evil touch. With your help, and while I can, I will lead the fight against him, so nobody ever has to suffer this plague of demons ever again.”

It doesn’t matter whether Zygofer is actively trying to harm him now, or growing up in the household of a demon-meddling sorcerer passively harmed him years ago; even if Zertorme knows for sure. What’s important is that Zertorme is Zygofer’s flesh and blood, but has nonetheless sworn to rid the world of his evilness; and his health concerns are a sign, if you should need one, of why Zytera is bad. Truly he is a tragic martyr, and one behind whose banner we should all rally.

If your players are going to run into Zertorme a number of times, I think it would be interesting if they first encounter an ageing Zertorme IV, when they go back he’s dead but getting better (no, they can’t see him), and the third time they meet him he’s Zertorme V, clearly younger, and he claims to be a slightly new person, and to not necessarily remember everything from when they first met.

All that’s left is to determine how Zertorme can occasionally succumb to the malady infecting him, and then return from the dead (it is a miracle!) ready to continue the fight against his evil father.

It’s all a sham

Zertorme is a powerful magician, his printed stats notwithstanding: he can maintain invisibility spells for a significant period of time (Raven’s Purge, pp. 88, 91), and illusion spells for even longer (ibid., p. 81): “Zertorme has placed illusions on the stone bridges, making them appear to run a couple of feet to the side of where they actually are. Anyone who carelessly runs across them will plummet into the ravine. To maintain the illusion, visitors are provided with blindfolds before they are led to any of the buildings on the plateaus.” To my mind, “to maintain the illusion” means “so it doesn’t look weird”; there’s no indication that the illusion winks out of existence if someone falls through it.

So assuming his exposure to demons was the really nice sort where he just lives for ever without aging, and nothing else bad happens to him, he could simulate aging anyway, eventually “die”, vanish for a while (a fake body can be arranged for anybody who wants to look in the casket or wherever they’ve put his body), until it’s time to be reborn, at which point he drops the invisibility and aging spells and “comes back to life” as himself again.

Maybe he does age and is reborn

Truth is the best lie, so maybe Zertorme does indeed live forever, at the cost of aging more rapidly than Elvenspring normally do (like his father), and occasionally he dies, only to rejuvenate (maybe inside some sort of sarcophagus) until he’s back to an apparent early-adult form, at which point he gasps for breath and comes back to life.

It’s unclear whether Zertorme maintains consciousness throughout the process, and how much he remembers of his previous “life” when he’s reborn. A good politician like Zertorme will manage to both remember important things from his past “life” when they benefit him, and claim to not remember promises that a “past him” made.

Regardless of what goes on these days, it probably seriously freaked him out the first time it happened, and there might still be an ancient Elvenspring who remembers it happening, if Zertorme hasn’t made sure to wipe out all awkward witnesses.

Maybe his flesh catches fire and he’s reborn from the flames, like a phoenix

This is the same as the previous explanation, except that it’s a lot more demonic. This definitely freaked people out the first time it happened, and the nice old NPC from the last section is certainly dead now. There may well be weird magical juices produced by his melting flesh, translucent crystalline structures from his bones, weird leathery scraps of skin that shimmer in the right light.

A good amount of mass is shed in the process, and he needs to regrow it before he can reappear in public. Let’s say he does something like an insect pupating, for added weirdness. The flesh of the pupa probably doesn’t survive, because the reborn Zertorme eats it immediately upon emerging, so he can recover his memories. But you never know; a fresh Zertorme might be uncharacteristically bestial, and fragments could escape his notice.

The phrase “trade in relics” is now a security concern for Zertorme, and a path to wealth, or at least attention from many powerful people, for others.

If Zertorme occasionally catches fire and gets better, it might also explain why he pals around with a fire demon these days.

The theatre of dying and coming back

Regardless of why or how it happens, or what happened the first few times, I think Zertorme has it down to a fine art these days. When he feels he’s getting old, which I suspect happens every 80 years or so, he says something oracular and profound, and then retires to a crystal sarcophagus of some kind. (Something like Snow White’s coffin, but with more facets, and translucent, apart from maybe a faceplate where people could gaze at his beauty. If he’s lost his face, there’s no more faceplate.)

If you ascribe meaning to colour, then red means demons, yellow means Merigall’s eyes, blue means elf memories, we should probably reserve green for nature, but Zertorme is a goddamned liar so his sarcophagus should be white (nobody from a Western tradition can disagree with white being good, right?).

Depending on how you think this process goes, his sarcophagus might end up engulfed in fire, perhaps to get rid of the evidence of his rebirth.

What is Zertorme trying to do?

“Since the Blood Mist lifted, Zertorme has desperately started to experiment with a form of fire magic to use against his father” (Raven’s Purge, p. 42); but if anything, the end of the blood mist hurts Zytera more than it does Zertorme. For centuries, Zytera has been free to research demonic magics in peace while their Rust Brother troops subjugated all the nearby Alderlander villages; but now that the blood mist has dropped, the Rust Brothers have lost their monopoly on travel between villages, and people are now starting to swap stories. Meanwhile, the orcs are stirring and wondering how much more land they could take for their own, posing a simultaneous second threat from without.

Zertorme, meanwhile, has the Quards, Galdanes, Ailanders, Elvenspring and a fair number of elves following him. The Galdanes could already ride freely across the grasslands of Margelda and Yendra, and they’ve been looking out for invaders for at least the last hundred years. Zertorme is not the one who should be surprised by invading armies!

Moreover, with the end of the blood mist, Zertorme has a whole host of new allies to draw upon. The Galdanes don’t hold with wolfkin, so best to leave them alone, but the halflings and goblins in Belifar are next door, there are dwarves nearby, and the orcs in Arina Forest aren’t far at all. “Elves, dwarves and orcs don’t get along”, you say, and fair enough; except that Galdanes and Quards get along even less. If anyone can unite them, it’s Zertorme!

So why hasn’t he?

The Doylist explanation is that it’s the PCs who are supposed to get all of the various Kin behind them, so they shouldn’t just piggy-back on Zertorme’s efforts. As for Watsonian explanations, I can think of a few. Mix and match them to taste for your campaign.

Zertorme isn’t that charismatic; he just got lucky

Zertorme never set out to be the champion of the native Kin, the tragic leader of the anti-Zytera forces against his own father. Some power behind the throne realised the troops needed a leader, and spotted potential in Zytera: he had the vigour of youth, an amazing backstory, decent charisma. He could be moulded into a suitable figurehead.

If the wise svengali was human or Elvenspring, they’re now dead, and Zertorme probably oscillates between wishing they were still alive so he could ask them what to do, and glorying in the freedom he has now that they’re no longer telling him what to do. (Unless he made sure they ended up undead or a ghost, so he could do both.) If they were an elf, well, they could still be dead, or they could have wandered off and be doing their own thing. (Hey, what if they’re Kalman Rodenfell?)

Either way, Zertorme is up to maintaining his own myth, but he’s well aware that he’s not going to unite a whole bunch of disparate Kin behind him a second time. He’s going to have to make do with what he has.

Zertorme is an aristocrat and above hob-nobbing with hoi polloi

Zertorme can identify with fellow half-elves, obviously, and therefore also with humans and elves. Beyond that, he has problems. This version of Zertorme is patrician and aristocratic; he can spin a line, deliver a speech, he can charm a room who already think he’s awesome, but he can’t glad-hand the common populace, and he certainly can’t charm goblins or orcs. He thinks dwarves are beneath him, and if someone calls him on it, he can’t even rescue himself through the most obvious of ad-libs.

Zertorme, in this light, is a classic second-generation Buddenbrooks: he inherited his father’s position of power, but not the singular drive that led Zygofer to become the ruler of the Ravenlands Alderlanders, or to master Merigall and Krasylla. His father hoovered up magical knowledge from everywhere until he could rip the worlds apart; Zertorme has spent the last few hundred years moping in his palace, and doesn’t want to do a deal with orcs etc. because he’s a privileged racist.

Zertorme wants to do everything on easy mode

Zertorme could go out and persuade other Kin leaders to follow his banner, but wouldn’t it be easier if he hired a bunch of diplomats (this would be the PCs) to do that for him? And then he can be oh-so-clever and betray them all right at the last minute by seizing Stanengist for his own and become ruler of the world literally by magic!

I mean, it says right here (Raven’s Purge, p. 42): “Zertorme’s greatest personal dream is to tame a dragon to ride in battle.” This is “I wanna pony” for fantasy grown-ups. Zertorme wants to have, to be given, not to do.

Where did Brinhelda come from?

“When a fire demon named Brinhelda became Zertorme’s guest he took up the abhorrent demonic arts of his father to, with the help of the demon’s bodily fluids, create fire-breathing beasts to be used in the war.” (Raven’s Purge, p. 75.)

Palling around with demons is a bad look for the leader of the anti-demon coalition. So why does he?

She just showed up

This is the explanation given by the campaign. Either she turned up just as the blood mist vanished and he was fretting about facing his father, as the campaign suggests, or she arrived earlier, as he “became increasingly heavy-hearted […] and lost his appetite for the company of others” (ibid., p. 42).

The campaign suggests that Merigall was one of his regular visitors at this point, and loth as I am to ascribe to the campaign’s general “Merigall did it” answer to everything, a seductive demon turning up, and Zertorme deciding to try and see if he can have hot demon sex and do demonic magic experiments, while still maintaining his strong anti-demon public stance, is exactly the sort of thing that Merigall would find funny.

Zertorme is demonic enough that he attracts demons

Zertorme’s regular regenerations could have attracted demons’ attention over the years. Maybe existing Ravenlands demons heard that Zertorme had become young again (“It’s Zertorme the third now? How is he doing that?”) and decided to pay him a visit.

The seal on the nexus in Shadowgate Pass is tied to Zygofer remaining alive, so maybe Zertorme dying but then getting better sends a signal through the rift that demons on the other side can hear? It sounds silly, but what do we really know about demons?

Not all demons in Churmog are friends of Krasylla, who jealously guards passage through the rift, but maybe the occasion of there being a new Zertorme makes it possible for a demon to come through via another route? (Or maybe they always could open up a small gateway, temporarily, and allowing only a few demons to come through, and this was the impetus to do so?)

She’s an emergent phenomenon of Zertorme being part-demon

This works best if you also decide that Zertorme occasionally catches fire and gets better, but it works with all metaphysics. It goes like this.

Zertorme has been permanently contaminated by being near his father’s experiments as a child, and there’s a certain amount of demon goo inside him, like how if your parents smoked around you when you were a baby, you’ve got some damage inside you that might eventually give you cancer. He regularly dies and gets better, which is also pretty demonic, and every time that happens the demonic part of him is reinforced.

At some point, that amount of demon goo reaches critical mass and becomes separate and sentient. I think it’s dramatically appropriate if this happens in the most recent regeneration, because Zertorme and the PCs are both startled, but you can also say that it happened in the previous regeneration, and Brinhelda was merely biding her time.

But also: if the demon-stuff within him has reached critical mass and become its own thing, does that mean that Zertorme is no longer demonic? That the curse is over, but now he has a normal lifespan ahead of him? Or will there always be a bit of demon left, and every time Zertorme steps out of his coffin will he be nervously checking whether there’s a new Brinhelda waiting for him?

The consequences of there being a Brinhelda

The campaign says she can teach Zertorme fire magic and/or is better at it than him, and sure, that makes sense. Let’s make her even more valuable to Zertorme and say that she has vital knowledge about the care and capturing of dragons (or that Zertorme thinks she does, which is as good).

Because she’s also a tremendous liability for the leader of the anti-Zytera faction, and you have to think that someone is going to find out about her eventually. (Probably the PCs, but maybe not just them.) And then Zertorme is going to be faced with a difficult decision.

He can try to spin her as a consulting demon who wants to help them fight Zytera. Even if it’s not true, he could use the “I was contaminated by demon stuff when I was young, and she’s the emergent consequence of that” theory to justify not killing her, because she’s arguably him. (Best not to mention the hot demon sex at this point, because that makes him look weird and shallow.)

But eventually pressure will mount for him at best to banish her, and at worst execute or sacrifice her. (It’s an execution if the law or the people demand it, and a sacrifice if the Galdane priests of Horn, the Raven Sisters or maybe the Congregation of Serpents demand it. But maybe there could be some magical ritual involved as well?)

And this, I think, is why she was so determined to steal his face. Because if he decides to throw her under the bus, she can produce his face, and spell it to speak the truth, in his voice, and he’ll be struck dumb and unable to contradict her.

And that, in turn, explains why he might “lend” his face to the PCs if they decide to go to the Stoneloom Mines (except that he’ll explain that Brinhelda is jealous so they’ll need to steal it from her quarters): it deprives Brinhelda of her trump card. He can send the PCs away, who if they’re about to go to the Stoneloom Mines are pretty powerful by this point, to avoid them messing up his plan to get rid of Brinhelda. If this plan ever goes wrong, he still has a backup plan of telling Brinhelda that the PCs were the real traitors, and when they return he can blame them for stealing his face, and hopefully they can’t work the “speak Zertorme’s truth with his own voice” magic, and a mob will lynch them / let Zertorme’s guards carry them off to the dungeons.

Who’s thwarting Zertorme?

Zytera is strictly-speaking his main enemy, but I suspect that Zygofer only pays occasional notice to him. Therania is almost certainly spying on him in her ethereal form: Zygofer might be fairly blasé about eventually being overthrown by his son, as that’s what you expect to happen if you’re an evil blood sorcerer, but Therania will be less pleased at losing to her big brother.

Merigall likes messing with him, and probably has one of their children as a permanent courtier in Amber’s Peak (this is a useful clue to Merigall’s permanent yellow eyes / a way of adding confusion if the players think they’ve worked it out).

Kalman Rodenfell may have originally installed Zertorme as leader in Margelda, and possibly has doubts about whether Zertorme is so great as he wants people to believe. Rather than intervene directly, he’s more likely to tell the PCs about weird rumours, and leave it to them to investigate.

Krasylla has spies in his lands which Zertorme might spot, but his focus is the arrow of the Fire Wyrm. Zertorme surely doesn’t think he can ride Erinya… does he?

Katorda will be thinking about border skirmishes and possible attacks, but there’s no way he can get spies into Zertorme’s kingdom.

Most of the challenges to Zertorme’s authority will come from within, so if you want to run court scenes, you might have to come up with a few people with authority that Zertorme has to grant an audience to. Leaders among the Galdane or Quard Aslenes, probably; also emissaries from the Raven Sisters and/or Congregation of the Serpent. If the Maiden druids are powerful enough, there’s a permanent ambassador from Maidenholm.

Don’t underestimate Zertorme

I’ve been rude about Zertorme, because the campaign suggests that he’s a supreme plotter that the PCs will never see through, and I don’t think that’s true; but that doesn’t mean he’s incompetent. The Buddenbrooks effect merely says that the third generation of a family should be rubbish (recent example: Fred Trump vs Donald Trump vs Donald Jr.), and implies that the second generation doesn’t have the particular drive of the founder; but even if he’s not going to uproot the Ravenlands like his father, Zertorme can still be a superb politician and administrator.

He is, after all, still keeping the coalition of elves, Elvenspring, Galdanes, Quards and other Ailanders together, and has made sure nobody thinks he’s a demon. When he wants to he can be charming, commanding, disarming, and make you think he’s your best friend. His command of illusion and elemental magic is superb, and he’s an excellent horseman. (This may be one of the ways that he maintains the respect of the Aslenes.)

If he accompanies the PCs on a dungeon expedition, he should be casually competent at adventuring, and won’t complain about camping in the rain or how there’s mud underground in dwarf caves, because he understands that the best way of dispelling the image of a rich hanger-on is not to behave like one.

More generally, of the powerful key players, he’s the one with the most flexibility when it comes to his plans. Krasylla is under contract to Zytera, and has an arrow of the fire wyrm with their name written on it. Merigall has their finger in every pie, but Zytera has their life essence so Merigall has to keep them alive. Kalman Rodenfell has no real plan other than remembering things and telling them to the PCs.

Zertorme is in the unusual position that he’s in charge of his own realm, has significant power as a result, no other key player has a significant hold on him, and he’s a talented politician who can wriggle out of tight spots. This is why I actually like him as an NPC: because he might genuinely evolve as a result of events in the world.

You said you’d talk about Stanengist

Zertorme wants Stanengist because he thinks it’ll let him rule the Ravenlands, but more importantly it’ll let him throw a monumental amount of shade on Zygofer. (I think all of his plans end with him confronting his father, and beginning a triumphant monologue with “So, father, what do you think of me now?”) This is arguably a flaw in the Frailer makeup: that they cling to human familial relationships even though their extended lifespan requires different dynamics.

The problem is, wearing Stanengist will drive him mad. Who’s going to tell him?

Not Merigall. Merigall is nervous about Zygofer deciding to wear Stanengist, going mad and dying, because if Zygofer still has control of Merigall’s life essence at that point Merigall’s in a spot of bother; but he still nurtures the hope that he’ll get his life essence back before Zygofer+Stanengist becomes an issue, and he wants Zygofer dead. But if Zertorme double-crosses everyone and takes Stanengist for his own, then is driven stark raving mad almost immediately? That’s the sort of hilarious schadenfreude that the yellow-eyed demon lives for.

Kalman Rodenfell might warn Zertorme, if it looks like things are coming to a conclusion and he still hasn’t decided which of his two incompatible goals (save the elves, save the world) he’s going to commit to. But chances are he’ll ask the PCs to tell Zertorme instead.

The PCs are expected to find Stanengist and talk to the elves in it, at which point they’ll find out about its effect on “demons and demon-tainted creatures” (Raven’s Purge, p. 28). Chances are that they’ll tell him. Zertorme might be effectively their patron, so they’re going to tell him everything they find out; Zertorme is officially anti-demon, so they might think “maybe we can just put this crown on anyone we think is demonic and that’s a one-shot kill”, and share that strategy with him. If they find out that he’s a bit demonic and he ever mentions Stanengist, they might say “well obviously you can’t have it, so we’ll keep it for now” as their way of settling that argument. Or they could even be subtle and not tell him directly, but plot about what they’d do with it as an anti-Zertorme gambit, and he’s got spies so he’ll probably find out.

What’s interesting about Zertorme is while he might decide that the PCs (or whoever told him) are liars and plotters and they’re trying to keep him from his legitimate birthright, he might also decide “wow, that was a narrow escape; time for a plan B regarding Stanengist”. If the final confrontation in Vond happens, he might still decide to pull the “I’ll take Stanengist for myself” card, but maybe he’ll decide to “crown” Therania with it first, sending her mad, before chucking it through the rift, becoming even more of a hero than he was already in the eyes of his supporters, and then spending the next few decades gleefully watching his troops wipe the floor with the rest of Zygofer’s Rust Brothers and demons.

Don’t get me wrong: there are very few key players in Raven’s Purge who are anything approaching nice people, and if your players decide to hate any of them I’d say they’re justified. Zertorme is arguably a lazy entitled brat with daddy issues, and he is absolutely due a comeuppance. But he’s one of the few NPCs capable of learning, or at least acknowledging defeat and coping with it. That’s got to count for something.