common role playing situations- Emord

I’m writing a kind of overview of some role playing situations that your characters are likely to encounter based on your race, alignment, and class.

Interestingly, the reace most like humans are dwarves. They’re obsessed with craftsmanship and gold. They believe in war and suffer from xenophobia…just like humans! Unfortunately, the xenophobia they share is also a force that drives them apart from other races. The dwarves see humans as a bumbling race content to leave on their leavings up at the surface. A human in a dwarf city is seen as a friendly diplomat from a country that could easily become an enemy. Dwarves living among humans often see human problems as trivial. They deign to deal with the surface dwellers only as needs be. Humans covet dwarves for their riches, for their secrets, and of course, for their military presence (the size of which is always an unknown factor for human governments). Human government desires military and trade pacts with dwarves. On occasion, such pacts are made, but never in perpetuity. Dwarves are shrewd.

On the other hand, the average human sees the average dwarf in the same way they’d see anyone else. They may expect more structural knowledge from a dwarf, but other than that, there isn’t a strong predetermined reaction. Humans have little problem accommodating dwarves living in their settlements. The reverse is not true except in extraordinarily rare circumstances, and even then there are stipulations.

For Nicki, the real role playing challenge will not be playing a dwarf but playing a lawful good cleric of Moradin. Moradin is the dwarven god of justice and war. He is devoted to finding the dark monstrosities of the world and ringing them out into the light where they can be dealt with. This is also the goal of his followers. That means that when Emord sees things amiss he MUST do something. That’s his religion. Plus, he’s lawful good which means that Emord must avoid deception and criminality as he attempt to help those around him/save the world.

This is not a “hey Emord, why don’t you leave the room for a second,” kind of situation. That’s just bad role playing. People who want to do sneaky stuff are going to have to be sneaky about it. Basically within the party, Emord’s going to have to be worked around lest the characters become adversarial towards each other. I repeat, if characters do stuff that is in opposition to Lawful Good, they should expect to have to deal with Emord. If he knows about what the characters are going to do before hand, he is likely to forbid them doing so. Asking Emord to give up his staunch ethics should be akin to asking Earthmoon to torture small animals for fun.
Emord may elicit a number of reactions from N.P.C.s. On one hand, he’s the cleric of a god of justice and war. On the other hand, it’s a dwarf god. Some humans will treat Emord as a roaming fighter of evil and professional do-gooder. For others, the prospect of a dwarf telling everybody what to do and claiming divine authority is intolerable. Keep in mind, humans worship Moradin as the father of the gods and as the god of craftsman. Humans have Kord for war, Pelor for Justice, and Heironeous for valor. They don’t understand Moradin as a god of these things and may not feel comfortable conceding to Emord on issues of orthodoxy (though some may…it depends heavily on the strength of the craft guilds and the proximity to dwarf kingdoms).

One advantage Emord has, as a dwarf and a cleric of Moradin, is that human authority will recognize Emord as an ambassador. He will, at the very least, be tolerated by human authority. They may be reticent to arrest or harass him (though his companions will probably not share this immunity).