The seemingly-shifty grand vizier isn't a traitor who covets power...

>the seemingly-shifty grand vizier isn't a traitor who covets power, he just highly distrusts the PCs and attempts to sabotage them due to this gut instinct

I actually saw something similar happen in a campaign I was in. My character wound up accidentally saving the kingdom by prodding the guy with rumors to watch his reactions.

Yes, I was so bad at playing politics that it went out the other side and became almost greatness.

>The baron isn't evil, his manners are just a bit brusque because he used to be in the army and is sick and tired of silver tongued nobles trying to trick him out of his well-earned position.

To be fair, the vizier's job as an upper level administrator and advisor means he should 100% be suspicious of murderhobos. Or anyone from outside the establishment, really.

I see nothing wrong with this. Especially since your average group of murderhobos usually look like pic related

This.
He doesn't have to be a saint, either.

And he's right to do so. We're still gonna kill him though.

That's a good instinct.

>Vin Unleaded

Exactly. Who trusts mercenaries, especially FOREIGN mercenaries?

>I fucking hate Larry Harry
>Fucking Larry
I want to know the story behind that picture.

The tyrannical king is a just and honorable man, he just despises the two-faced and needs to be vigilant against perfidious foreign invaders.

The king is a just ruler, but is kind of an awful husband and father. Maybe he even knows it and it visibly bothers him.

>Generally amicable employer who pays fairly but happens to not get on with my character turns out to be the big bad

HA, I knew he was up to no good!

>The vampire countess would actually prefer humanity remain healthy and strong and only feeds discreetly, as a proper lady should!

>the older prince is a manipulative asshole, but he's just trying to keep his younger brother out of trouble, as the kid tends to be stupidly emotional and trust people he shouldn't

I'm part way through WoT book 4 and really hoping this is what's happing with Gawain and Galad, but I don't think it is. Jordan isn't much one for avoiding tropes.

>the head of the city watch isn't trying to stop you, just making sure that total strangers know what they are doing and keeping them honest

Mass Effect 3 plz go, that sudden betrayal of Councillor Udina was fucking stupid.

I have an NPC like this in my game. The older brother IS an asshole, but a practical one.

It makes perfect sense because aliens are cunts.

Never read WoT, but hoping for the same from Snow White with the Red Hair. Manga with court politics everywhere, assassination attempts and hating having different social ranks.

So in the royal cour so far we have

A King who is a fair and just ruler but a pretty shitty father and husband but at least is aware of this.

A shifty looking and suspicious grand vizier to the throne who has been pulling the strings since the current kings grandfather was around. Turns out he really does have the kingdoms best interests at heart and quite likes the king. He's just really cynical and distrusts outsiders to the court, especially foreigners. Especially mercenaries. And special especially foreign mercenaries.

The eldest son of the king is a level headed and serious sort who seems like kind of an asshole to the 2nd son but is really just stopping the little shit getting in the sort of trouble that could fuck him up. Lacks much imagination and charisma but takes his responsibilities very seriously.

The 2nd oldest son is a bit of a tool. Brash, impulsive and prone to bad decisions. But is very popular with the people and makes friends very quickly. Does not take his responsibilities as seriously as maybe he should.

The 3rd oldest, spare, son. Practically lives in the library. Gaunt, pale and sickly looking. Always has an expression of being hungry for something. Uncomfortable intense stare. Long greasy hair. His room is full of odd diagrams pinned to the walls marking points on the capital city and major cites of the kingdom and connected by lines of string. Old books everywhere, many in some sort of foreign script. Meetings with the lower classes of people at odd hours.

3rd oldest son is making plans to make a sewer system in the capital, aqueducts to other cities and repair and rebuild the old Imperial Highways and bridges.

>village elder is a bitter old man who willingly commits to selling villagers so that if they were to go extinct, their village would be repopulated with their clones
>villagers are okay with it and everything is done with their consent
>murder hobos just murder the elder and ruin their chances to survive the inevitable planar cleansing

A beautiful queen who regularly has private meetings with handsome men from other realms, unbeknownst to the king. She's actualy just fulfilling her role as queen and entertaining diplomats and other visitors to give them the best impression of the kingdom.

Well of course. It wouldnt do for a lady to be found gorging herself on inferior stock,what would her neighbours say?

Well ofcourse.
Just think of all those quarians waiting for your space aids!

I am having this funny image of some ancient Miss Manners vampire countess that is frequently sought by vampires to teach their noble vampire "kin" manners befitting their station.

Warhammer has those, the Lahmians do that.

Miss Manners: Now gently place your hand at the back of your partners neck,just below the base of their skull..
*sounds of movement*
I said gently Roberts, dont clutch at them like a drunken lout!
*quick movement*
Better. Now gently slip and arm around their waist and draw them in...
*shuffling sounds*
Good.Good! Now...dip and close in to their neck, take the moment to savor the aroma and the feel, its polite to compliment your partner at this moment as well.
Aaaand now a quick nip and suckle, just enough to sate your thirst, not enough to leave them woozy.
Good Roberts,much better...
Margarie! I said nip and suckle, not rip and tear! Are you a vampiress of good breeding or some werewolf on a bender! Go clean yourself up!

"Being living impaired is no excuse for bad manners!

Do you know what separates us from the undead? No, not that aroma of decay but our ability to choose the right wine to go with our 'meal' so to speak.

And if I ever catch you mixing white wines with elves I will PERSONALLY put you underground like the ghoulyou aspire to be!"

Should the king's younger brother or eldest son succeed the throne?

And is the king's eldest son ever going to get a son of his own? He's got six daughters already.

For that matter, how did the prince's wife swing that marriage? She's from a truly minor noble house and she's... a little homely.

Hating aliens makes sense.

Joining up with the space equivalent of Dick Dastardly as a result does not.

The eldest son of the king will inherit the throne.

Should he be found incompetent the current king's brother could call a gathering of nobles and senior clergymen to depose him and have kings brother put in place.

If the prince heir never manages to father a son, legitimately or acknowledged illegitimately, then it will go to either the current kings 2nd son or a male descendant of the current king of the prince heir's choosing. Theoretically it could go to the current kings brother if he was chose but by that time he will almost certainly be an ill-advised choice due to age.

That is a beautiful image.

Rules for lady vampire etiquette could be stuff like

>Don't kill your partner
Not because it's mess, depletes food stocks or makes mobs more likely. It's just massively impolite and a breach of civil conduct.

>Your partner and guest should always dine before you do
Not only does a night strengthening meal, with appropriate wines, make your meal taste better but it also helps them recover and a hostess should always be generous.

>It is improper to feed from the front
Unless married or at the very least engaged.

>Orcs and human is served with white wine. Elves with red. Dwarves with strong ale.
This can either mean what they are drinking or what you are drinking or both.

>A noble woman's first taste of the day must always be from her husband.
as is proper.

Also there could be something about them only drinking with members of the nobility for preference. The higher up the social ladder the better it is.

Always keep bandages around in case of accidents.

...

>One should only feed excessively from ones husband or wife in the privacy of ones own home.
Or ones official mistress, but again only in privacy and never while drawing attention to it.

>Never drink below ones station. But then also, never drink to far beyond ones station either.
It is just as important to consider ones partners image and it is gauche to impose on another of higher station.

How could you not see that coming all the way from ME 1?

Military guys do goofy poses for a photo, later somebody adds fake names based on the poses.

ME 1 had him as the abrasive guy who ultimately had the best interests of humanity at heart. His introductory scene has him arguing passionately for the sake of humanity with the council due to their inaction, then ripping into Shepard and Anderson

His main source of conflict came from a fairly reasonable, if dickish, move that he made due to having the misfortune of not reading the script.

Unfortunately they promptly assassinated his character in 2, I assume because characters that disagree with the protagonist were mandated to be evil, lest the player actually have to think about their actions in an RPG

ME1 had a lot of interesting characters that were subsequently assassinated in ME2 and ME3.

The Royal Chronicler, a tall pale woman in a full body covering black dress, black head scarf, serious black boots, black gloves and broad brimmed black hat is in fact a vampire and everyone knows it.

She is also the kings mistress. Everyone also knows this, even the queen. She is fine with it and get along a lot better with the Chronicler than she ever did with her ass hat of a husband.

She is not trying to enslave the kingdom into an undead controlled puppet nation despite what the grand vizier claims. She has served loyally under many, many generations of kings and some queens if rumours are to be believed.

>the ancient lich has lived for so long that he doesn't desire power any more just a cure for the crushing boredom

>the evil general isn't actually a bad guy, it's just that his son is the bbeg and he wants to defend his honor even though his son is a shit and he knows it

You forgot the pic

Somehow this jaunty little guy knowing what a disappointing father he's been is actually kinda sad.

The baroness isn't evil, she just has resting bitch face.

>The plucky, idealistic anti-monarchist group may have the best interests of the people at heart and be geuinely well meaning, but they have no idea how to govern and would turn the realm into a clusterfuck of red tape, citizens' councils, and hearings to discuss a meeting to appoint a board to propose a bill to create a department to fix the roads.

Later WoT is 50% bondage, 30% sexual innuendoes, 10% slavery of vaguely sexual manner, and 10% fights.

I try stuff like this but my friends are murderhobos through and through.
At least they'll restrain this to DnD and Pathfinder. If it's Savage Worlds, Gamma Worlds or any of the 40k RPGs they'll go for subtle.
Shame our games seem to be 99% DnD these days with brief one shots to interrupt.

>The postrevolutionary government really does want to get shit done right, and might even know how.
>They just can't get the people at the bottom to all cooperate at once because everybody wants a say in everything now.
>The shaky new government is reluctant to escalate such nonviolent conflicts towards violence because the appearance of fairness is how they sold everyone on the revolution to begin with.

>The asshat witch-hunting for counterrevolutionaries is finding legitimate threats.
>But he's still fucking the new government's perceived legitimacy by publicly executing beloved members of the community.

>but my friends are murderhobos through and through.
Thus proving the vizier was right not to trust them and making sure his replacement is even more shifty, paranoid, and schemy. It's about consequences.

I quite like this, and love the idea of some over the top, Transylvania-analogue having a finishing school for young lady vampires.

Poor Margerie. She's already been held back 100 years from graduating. Some girls just can't live up to their pedigrees I guess.

>The democratic revolution fails because the people willingly voted the monarchy back into power

Vive la France!

>Your partner and guest should always dine before you do
>Not only does a night strengthening meal, with appropriate wines, make your meal taste better but it also helps them recover and a hostess should always be generous.

I remember reading a young adult's book about a brother and a sister who find themselves on a pirate ship manned by pirates. They only fed on humans once a day and prior to it they'd have a big dinner together that was extremely rich in protein and calories to promote faster blood regeneration so they could feed daily without accidentally killing their partner and minimizing how woozy their partner felt after a feeding.

Manned by vampires I should say. Don't know why I said pirates twice.

>the entire game is an underground dungeon full of monsters and there are no friendly NPCs of any kind

Literally a thing in Warhammer. It's at the Silver Peak.

I picture Margarie as this tomboyish girl, who looks completely uncomfortable in the finery and oversized dresses.
She just wants to be the dark monster in the night terrorizing the witless flock of humans, you know, like the Great Vampires of old.

I'd read it.

...

Sounds like a tween/young adult fantasy fiction coming of age novel

question now is who the heck her love interest would be

Vampires don't seem like they'd get along well with sailing. Even if you assume they have night vision to see at night (and the advantage of ambushing ships at night), not being able to man the decks at all during the day, and the fact the wind is usually much much stiller at night, would make sailing very slow.

Does she need one? Can't she just have a supporting cast?

Either A) A normal human boy below her station
or B) A Suave Sophisticated Vampire Boy way above her station.
The Vampire/Human part can be swapped I suppose.

In a tween/young adult fantasy fiction coming of age novel?
Of course she does! If we want to go against the grain we can make it a trilogy and she doesn't reveal/accept/acknowledge her feelings until book 2.

It was a kids story that had vampires in it, pretty sure it wasn't meant to be taken too seriously. Especially considering the ship apparently had it's own creepy fog generator or ghost-ship thingamajig and they did most of their sailing at night.

I will take the wherever, than you very much.

You might be right. Perhaps she's got a suitor, some dandified, foppish vampire youth that her parents and instructors assure her would make a fine match, but really all Margie wants to do is go out maurading in the night, sowing fear and chaos across the countyside without all these stuffy rules and expectations.

>The foppish vampire is a main antagonist a la Draco Malfoy

>Vampiress sucks your dick till you're hard, then bites down and sucks out the blood till you're flaccid again
>Licks the wound closed and repeats until she's full

Are they?

The only race in Mass Effect that are all cunts are the Leviathans which hardly count as there's barely any left.

Mix of these two might work.

Or maybe something lile in the Dark Materials series, through most of the book/s she is completely oblivious and against any feelings until she finally meets the right guy(just as dastardly a marauder as her perhaps) and acknowledges that she might actually like to rut with him in the dismembered body parts of her victims.

Oh god, i can hear the fanfics writing themselves.

Thats the kind of stupid thing thats gets you're head cut off, regardless of what's actually going on

Come for the subversion of standard villain types.

Stay for the budding tween story of a vampire tomboy.

adorable

We also have to have the brutish, low-born werewolf chick with the unrequited lesbian crush that Margarette meets after she runs away from her school that becomes her "smash-sister" in causing havoc and mayhem across not-Transylvania.

Then there will of course need to be the comedic relief/minor antagonist, perhaps a bumbling middle aged Hunter who keeps crashing in all of her fun but who she can never really lose or kill do to dumb luck.

>unrequited lesbian crush

Although the readers can, like, TOTALLY see it, the main character remains blind to wolf-bitch's feelings till the middle of the third book, when the situation gets played up for drama and used to teach Margie a lesson in the value of laying attention to other people's feelings or some shit.

and then they fuck

I don't care what his motivations are so long as the vizier is evil.

As long as she let's me do the same to her, I'm game.

Found the murderhobo.

No lezshitting plx

No, I'm just a fan of the classics.

A lot of readers thought thy should have and consider the characters their OTP, but they never actually book up in the books despite some deliberately ambiguous scenes after the crush confession. Officially, the two pledge themselves to be better smash-sisters but nothing more. Fanfiction tells a very different story, though.

I've met our party and to be fair I wouldn't trust us either.

Fuck yeah I've never gotten a hickey before

The princess dispite her taste in literature truly does intend to marry for the good of the kingdom but her farther has started second guessing himself.

There is a very vocal fanbase behind the Vampbitch ship but honestly none are more rabid than the Dom-erette ship.

They cite that there was palpable sexual tension between Margarette and her chief rival, Dominique, the extremely highborn and star student. Especially that one time Dominiqe broke decorum and struck Margarette across the face after she was covered in the blood of the laters most recent victim.

How's Al-qadim? Been wanting to run an Arabian fantasy game for a while now.

Whether they root for Gretta or Dominique, both shippers agree that Margarette SHOULDN'T have ended up with Roland.

I remember this book series. Was pretty good for a while, but it went to shit if I remember correctly

Oh fuck that would hurt so bad.

....does she at least wait till I've blown my load to bite me?

Vampires make poor wives as they are all barren.

But they stay young forever and tend to be well educated so they make great mistresses and administrators.

There is some considerable prestige to having a night dweller as part of the noble household. They get invited to all the parties.

Please tell me there's porn of this vampire.

Needs a Brendan haircut

...