Warlocks
Let us talk about Warlocks in Scarterra (and Scaraqua too I suppose).
A warlock is a male, and a witch is female but they are essentially the same thing. They are mortals who gain power by making a pact with an otherworldly entity. I plan to use "warlocks" as a gender neutral term here on out because “witch” has alternate definitions.
Before I started running my new RPG system, I didn’t wanted to start playing until I was “finished” but my friends knew me well and knew that I would
never be “finished” so we might as well build the plane as we fly it.
One of the things I had “unfinished” was warlock pacts but to my surprise,
all of my RPG playing friends told me they were not even remotely interested in playing a warlock. Odd, because if
someone else is Game Master, I often consider warlocks first, ever since warlock became an option at least. Before that I tended to play illusionists or paladins.
I find warlocks interesting characters because they are unlike the vast majority of other PC characters in D&D. Usually, a player character is an exceptional person with exceptional training. A warlock is a normal person who was filled up with the mystical power of a god or demigod. In a cosmic sense, the warlock was never
supposed to have power.
5th edition D&D made warlocks very customizable. There are six basic types based on who the patron is and each type is customizable within its patron subtype. You can see the 5th edition power summary on the six pact types via
this link (EDIT link
was broken, now it's not). if you are curious but my world/game system's warlocks are only using this for very broad guidelines.
Anyway the six pacts of D&D 5th edition are the Pact of the Arch Fey, Pact of the Fiend, Pact of the Great Old One, Pact of the Undying, Pact of the Celestials, Pact of the Hex Blade.
The pact of the Arch Fey, Fiend, and Great Old One are the original pacts and the other three were added to the game fairly recently. Here is a
short video with blatantly risqué humor comparing the three main pact types. It is hilarious in my opinion but I'm not sure how informative it is.
While a player making a warlock PC can decide what type of patron he has, most characters in a fantasy world don’t get to shop among multiple patrons. If they are lucky they might meet a representative from a single cosmic power during their lives and if they are really lucky, they might be allowed to say “no” and walk away alive. Sometimes warlock pacts are hereditary passing down to children and grandchildren.
I am a stickler for things to make sense, things to make sense in-universe and they need to make sense for meta reasons. But for meta reasons, my reason for including various types of warlocks is the same “Scalenex thinks warlocks are cool.” I have a less snarky meta reasons. “Warlocks are X-factors, providing an excuse for powerful characters to exist who are not tied to any government, temple, or guild.” Perfect if I need to create a one-off villain of the weak or if I want an ongoing chaotic villain akin to the Joker.
In-universe there are lots of reasons why a mortal might want to form an otherworldly pact. The seven deadly sins, greed, lust, envy, pride and the like can push someone to seek a pact. Desperation or obsession could make someone do it. Heck, a mortal can be put in a situation where the options are literally form a pact with this scary thing or die! Even the D&D SRD has 20 scenarios for how someone can become a warlock. If you look on D&D websites, there are hundreds of potential scenarios you can use to justify a person becoming a warlock.
In my world, I figure that are there are about 100 million Scarterrans and 50 million Scaraquans. I only need about one or two thousand of them to be witches or warlocks.
It's easy to come up with reasons why a few mortals might want to be warlocks, but that is the easy part. For me, since I tend to start with the gods and work my way down, the more difficult question to me is why would a powerful other worldly entity bother investing power in an insignificant mortal.
So far I have four types of warlocks in Scarterra and like everything else in my RPG system, they are pretty customizable
A player that wanted to play a warlock could suggest to me “I want XYZ power and I want it to have cost my character ABC pact worked out with QRS patron" and I’d probably be fine with it. I would set the mechanical dice limits for whatever the player described.
So far I have four basic warlock types, listed in order of most common to least common. I figured there would Greymoria/Taedi pacts, Fae Pacts, Void Pacts, and Nami Pacts. I figure Void Pacts are so drastically different from the other three that I should cover them in their own post.
Greymoria Pacts
Greymoria and her Scaraquan alter ego Taedi want to spread arcane magic and most importantly spread worship, love, and fear of her.
Greymoria/Taedi might not be a popular goddess, but she is still one of the nine deities of Scarterra, so a lot of people still pray to her. Because Greymoria/Taedi is a spiteful goddess and the magic goddess of revenge, some mortals pray to her to bestow them with the magical power to get revenge on their enemies.
Greymoria/Taedi hears some/most/all of her prayers including the pleas of spiteful little brats praying to her to give them the power to smite their bullies and perceived tormentors. Being a spiteful brat herself, Greymoria might see some of these people as useful pawns. If suitably impressed, she might actually send a spirit minion to offer one of these mortals a mystic pact. I often call these specific spirits "Faustian spirits" because their sole job is to negotiate Faustian pacts. I’m not sure whether I want to give her 4, 9, 12, or 100 Faustian spirits but either way they rank among Greymoria's most trusted and powerful minions. They have their own unique names and appearances and have different tactics for recruiting warlocks.
If Greymoria/Taedi reallylikes the cut of their jib, the mortal could be offered a pact immediately. If Greymoria/Taedi is uncertain, she can arrange for her supplicant to be tested for worthiness. There are a bunch of secret rituals that can summon a Faustian spirit. As a test, she can feed a potential warlock bread crumbs to “discover” one of these rituals. The more uncertain Greymoria or Taedi is, the harder the warlock has to work to find a ritual.
Some of these rituals are as simple as standing at a particular crossroads at midnight while others are both ritually complicated and involve gruesome sacrifice. Whether simple or complex, violent or benign, by enacting one of these summoning rituals in the first place the mortal is already signaling to Greymoria and her agent “I’m willing to play by your rules.”
What Greymoria offers is magic power. Essentially a warlock can use all the magic that a wizard can use, but does not require years and years of boring training. Greymoria or Taedi is using a portion of her own power to make up for the lack of training, and in return Greymoria expects a return on her investment. Does she take the mortal’s soul? Yes, eventually, but she is still one of the Nine and can collect souls pretty easily without making them warlocks first.
A Warlock could owe her patron
one quest or service and be done with it, or Greymoria/Taedi (through her Faustian spirit intermediaries) can make demands of the warlock for their entire life. If hypothetically, a potential warlock already hates all the same people that Greymoria hates, the Faustian spirit is not likely to make many demands on the warlock and can safely assume that said warlock will act on Greymoria’s behalf of his/her own volition. These minions are often more powerful and useful because they apply creative out of the box solutions and they don’t require micromanaging.
Every year, tens of thousands of mortals pray for mystic power and only a few hundred of these prayers get answered. That means Greymoria and Taedi can be picky and only except witches or warlocks that offer Greymoria lots of service or only accepts warlocks that already are formidable
before gaining mystic power, or only accept warlocks that have hearts full of hate or only accept warlocks that have access to the halls of power. You get the idea. They have to be useful or unique in some way.
Greymoria may be the metaphysical embodiment of the concept of a spiteful witch, but Greymoria is usually honest about what she wants. Greymoria’s Faustian spirits may demand a potential warlock do difficult and heinous things to earn their power but they are not likely to lie about it or even sugar coat it. Greymoria
wants her pacts to be followed to the letter. A rogue warlock is a liability she does not want to deal with it, so she doesn’t want to recruit warlocks who are lukewarm about their pacts and try to back out of them halfway through. That’s not to say Greymoria
never produces rogue warlocks by accident, but it’s something her minions are punished severely for if they accidentally create a rogue warlock.
Also, not every warlock has to eat babies. Greymoria may be evil but that doesn't mean
everything she does is always overtly evil.
Taedi, Greymoria’s Scaraquan alter ego, is very similar to Greymoria in most respects. The main difference is that Greymoria is usually very blunt while Taedi is usually very subtle and loves to play 4D Chess. That means Greymoria’s Scarterran pacts may be horrifying but they are straightforward and easy to understand while Taedi’s Scaraquan pacts probably have a lot of fine print in them.
Despite Scarterra having roughly twice the mortal population of Scaraquan, Taedi has considerably more fervent worshipers than Greymoria has, so she
should be considerably more powerful. Unfortunately Taedi’s love of complex machinations is as much as a weakness as a strength. Sometimes Taedi (and by extension Taedi’s various minions) make their schemes
too complex and this causes her machinations to fail. In any event, it is a near certainty that a Taedi sponsored warlock is going to be a pawn in greater events beyond his or her comprehension.
This is all backstory and fluff. Within in the context of my RPG system, a warlock, wizard, and sorcerer all have access to the same magic. You as a player spend freebie points or experience points to buy dots of arcane and roll the same dice pools to use the same effects.
To the characters in Scarterra, the cosmetic effects of the spell look and sound different but the end result is the same. Invokers roll Stamina + Invocation to blast their enemies and this is the same whether they are a warlock, wizard, or sorcerer. Just a reminder that is what the dot system is for. Someone with Stamina ●●● and Invocation ●● is going to five dice to make things go boom. Someone with Stamina Stamina ●●● and Invocation ●●●● is going to have seven dice to make things go boom. Effectively dots = dice.
Greymoria/Taedi based faustian pacts occasionally come with physical alterations in addition to magical alterations but these alterations are usually pretty subtle. In rare instances, a Greymoria warlock may have his/her main casting attributes artificially (Stamina for Invokers for instance) boosted. More often than not, Greymoria warlocks receive magical dots and nothing else. Mundane dots, the warlock has to develop the old fashioned way: practice, exercise, and training.
Fae Pacts
Greymoria/Taedi is juggling thousands of warlock pacts at any one time, but she is a goddess. Fae Lords and Ladies are powerful but they are not gods. The most powerful Faerie nobles can maybe maintain a dozen pacts at best if they really work at it. Lesser fae can only maintain one or two pacts, and a great many Fae cannot make pacts at all. There are also a great many fae that
can empower warlocks but choose not to. But there are hundreds of Faerie lords and ladies and there are hundreds of thousands of fae commoners, so that is a lot of potential warlocks regardless.
There are probably more Fae warlocks than Greymoria warlocks, maybe more fae warlocks than all other warlocks combined. Sometimes to the definition of a warlock gets blurry. A peasant family could periodically leave out a saucer of cream at night for a brownie and in return the brownie keeps the house clean. This is
technically a faerie pact of sorts, but no one would call the people in this family warlocks. Faeries and mortals make reciprocal agreements like this all the time, but if neither party is physically or spiritually altered by the pact, there are no warlocks or no patrons.
The Fair Folk are very much infused arcane magic Fae warlock pacts can bestow mystical arcane power similar to Greymoria pacts, but Fae warlock pacts are not limited in this way.
Some warlocks with fae pacts have fairly subtle pacts that are not as blatantly obvious as being bestowed with mystic power. A Fae pact could bestow youth, beauty, musical talent, combative prowess, and other relative mundane things. Two mortals both with Performance ●●●●● are going to be equally talented even if one got that way from a Fae pact and the other got that way from years of practice and hard work. Though it’s likely that the two musicians have very different attitudes and personalities. In fact, anyone who has a five dot ability of any kind is probably going to make people openly wonder (usually in jest) if a person made a pact to get so good at their chosen skill. As rare as five dot abilities are, the vast majority of them got that way
without making a pact to get it.
Greymoria warlock pacts are almost always made in exchange for service. Fae pacts might demand service or they might not. Fae pacts can bestow almost anything to a mortal, but they can also
take anything from a mortal. For instance, you might have a handsome mortal give up his beauty in exchange for great strength in battle. I can easily picture a Scarterran Fae making a deal like Ursula and Ariel in
The Little Mermaid where a mermaid gives up her voice for a chance to be human.
I created a bunch of
weird RPG Flaws , many with warlock pacts in mind. For instance, a Fae Patron could want to taste mortal food and perhaps take away a warlock’s sense of taste and require him to eat twice as much so he can taste the mortal food.
In the real world, a lot of stories of the Fair Folk involve faerie having sex with mortals both in positive and uplifting ways and in horrifying ways. Also there are a lot of legends about Fair Folk stealing human babies and leaving Faerie babies in their place. Or Fair Folk like Rumpelstiltskin requiring a first born child as payment for services way. Either way, I’m leaving it vague for Scarterra/Scaraqua, but the Fair Folk do want/need some degree of blood mixing between the mortal plane and Fae Home.
I am leaving it deliberately vague whether Fair Folk can take human souls. The Fair Folk themselves aren't in a hurry to answer yes or no on this definitely because it raises their fear and mystique.
A mortal who is a fae empowered warlock could find himself entangled in Fae Court politics for his entire life, or after his initial payment for the pact is collected, he might never see one of the Fair Folk again. No two Fair Folk are alike, and the Fair Folk are pretty mercurial so they might be a different person on Tuesday than they are on Thursday.
I generally want to keep the Fair Folk mysterious and alien. Each pact bestows something different and each one requires something different. Some Fair Folk are straight shooters with their warlocks, others fill their pacts with a lot of hidden fine print.
Nami Pacts
So eons ago, Greymoria spoke to the rest of the Nine was like “I want to create some warlocks and
none of you can create warlocks”.
Khemra and Mera meekly tried to suggest that there shouldn’t be any warlocks at all, but they couldn’t really stop her. Most of the rest of the Nine didn’t care. After all, if Greymoria wants to invest her own power in creating warlocks, why should they intervene? For the Nine, it’s far less costly to imbue a mortal with divine magic than it is to imbue a mortal with arcane magic, so they don’t have much incentive to do so. Even Greymoria, the goddess of arcane magic, cannot channel arcane magic as easily as divine magic.
But Nami doesn’t like being told what she can or cannot do.
Just to thumb her nose at Greymoria, Nami empowers warlocks. Greymoria is the goddess of magic and Nami is not. To use a metaphor, think of Greymoria has a university educated engineer and Nami as a hobbyist who occasionally tinkers in her garage (not to insult garage tinkerers, some great inventions were made that way). It generally takes much more effort for Nami to empower a single warlock than it does for Greymoria, and Nami is only mildly interested in empowering warlocks. Whereas Greymoria sponsors hundreds of warlocks every year, Nami typically empowers one or two each year.
There is an unproven proven that while Greymoria empowers warlocks through Faustian spirits acting as middlemen, Nami herself
personally empowers her warlocks. Again, this is not proven, but Nami is said to wander the mortal plane in innocuous disguises while the rest of the Nine never seem act on the mortal plane directly.
Unlike Greymoria, Nami does not imbue her warlocks with a specific agenda in mind, but Nami still wants a return on her investment, sort of.
Essentially, she wants entertainment. Nami uses her powers of prophesy to find unassuming people with a potentially strong destiny, imbues them with mystic power, then lets them live their lives as they see fit. Then Nami pulls out the popcorn and watches the warlock’s life like a soap opera. Her warlocks might live out happy lives or tragic lives, but they never ever live out
boring lives.
A briefly toyed around with a character concept for a warlock character for me to play as a PC in a 3.5 D&D game. To pay for his power, the warlock had to give his patron “a lifetime of deception.” He wasn’t sure what that meant, but afterwards found himself like Jim Carrey in the movie
Liar Liar. I figured such a character might be fun at first, but would eventually become annoying. But I can totally see Nami sponsoring a warlock of that mold.
As of yet, I’m not sure whether Nami’s Scaraquan alter ego, Kontona, bothers to empower warlocks. If she does, I would not want to meet a Kontona warlock. Nami is an all-around light hearted trickster and Kontona has a stronger sadistic streak so her warlocks would probably be violent psychopaths.
Nami warlocks are mechanically identical to Greymoria warlocks. Nami warlocks get arcane magical ability but for their mundane traits, they are mostly, if not entirely on their own.
Anyway, before I move on to Void warlocks I want to see if you guys have any commentary, critiques, or ideas on what I have so far. I suppose I am even open to knew variations of warlock pacts if anyone has any brainwaves on that, but I think four is enough, though since I am taking the kitchen sink approach to world building there is always room for one more.
