This post is part of a series of answers to the Reverb Gamers 2012 blogging prompts (full list in PDF format here).

REVERB GAMERS 2012, #26: Who or what was the most memorable NPC you’ve ever encountered? Why?

I feel like this was pretty well covered in talking about the most memorable foe I’ve run and the list of weird NPCs I wrote about. So, what about the most memorable NPC encountered who was not a foe or weird? 

Well, this one from our Demonsea campaign did make their weird list, but he was actually more human than most. He was a shadow demon who was a bit of an outcast amongst demons. He wasn’t good, but he wasn’t really evil either. He fed on secrets. He inhabited her and eavesdropped on all she heard, saw, sensed. He needed secrets like people need food. He could get them through his senses, or he could gain every secret of an individual by killing and draining them. The demon could go for a while without secrets, but each time he used his shadow powers he weakened and eventually he would get ravenous.

It only happened once, but when it did he used a magical device to implode an entire college of Inquisitors (plus six rival demons within) plus much of the town around them. He didn’t kill them all by hand, but he did kill some people the PC knew (though not close friends) and drained enough to right himself and force himself to stop.

One of the six demons he killed was a sun demon he sort of loved, but could never touch or else he would die. He didn’t love her, so much, as he loved the sun itself. He had experienced thousands of years of people’s lives, vicariously. But he had never felt the touch of sun on his own skin. The sole secret he could never learn was how to free himself from a host.

The finale was in an ancient temple where demons could walk (and in fact were torn out of any host they possessed). They fought the rage demon that previously possessed the PC as it tried to steal her demon-touched baby as it was born on the demonic altar. The shadow demon tore itself from the PC’s body and sacrificed itself to save them all. It died in a blinding shaft of light, happy.

It was a simple idea: a demon who longs to be free, to be more like humans. But he really felt like a non-human, an alien trying to understand, and the relationship that built up was filled with emotion, followed by that bittersweet the finale. I think my wife, who played the demon’s host, would agree this was one of the most memorable. 

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