Portrait of a Villain: Brother Ptolemy & the Hidden Kingdom (part 2)

… continued from part 1.

Brother Ptolemy by Paul King

Goals

On the surface, the main goal of the Hidden Kingdom is to free all people, rich and poor alike, from the pain and suffering of a living existence, ushering them into the freedom of sentient undeath, though it is not common knowledge that the group is comprised solely of the undead – a secret they go to great lengths to keep.

What is not known until someone has the ritual performed upon them, is that whoever performs the ritual has an unnatural influence over the subject. Since Gerhardt von Brandt performed the ritual on himself, he retained his own will. An acolyte, upon performing the ritual upon a new initiate, has substantial influence over them – but since the acolyte is already in thrall to Ptolemy, he essentially controls the new initiates as well. Though he would never openly admit it, Ptolemy secretly entertains the idea of ruling a kingdom – perhaps even a continent, or a world – of sentient undead.

These goals are accomplished by following a very well-defined procedure: First, a small detachment of followers will move to a city and begin conducting acts of charity (funded by the group’s considerable resources) to gain the favour of the populace. At first, the group will pay particular attention to inviting the homeless and poverty-stricken to join – which they are often eager to do at the promise of little more than a hot meal. Soon after, they begin focusing on ‘rehabilitating’ criminals. During this time, the groups numbers will grow steadily, but the general populace often only notices that crime and poverty are being eliminated thanks to the mysterious group. An ‘outreach’ program will begin, involving public speakers and visits to friends and family of existing members. Eventually, the group will reach critical mass and can then exert enough political influence run the city or simply use the weight of numbers to forcibly induct the remaining population. A smaller detachment is then formed and sent out to repeat the process in another city.

Organization

Ostensibly, every member of the Hidden Kingdom is equal. Everyone dresses the same – wrapped head to toe in bandages, and dressed in red robes with a wooden mask painted gold – and all personal assets are handed over to the group when an individual joins. According to the monks themselves, this way of dressing and giving up personal wealth is a means of freeing oneself from vanity and greed – two things that commonly lead one to being a ‘prisoner of life.’ This gives them considerable resources for conducting charity work and, where necessary, bribing government officials to either look favourably upon them, or turn a blind eye to their activities. It also makes it nearly impossible to tell who is running the organisation. Numerous attempts to discover the origins and driving force behind the group have failed, and more than one assassin hired to put and end to a local cell has quit in frustration (those that weren’t converted, that is).

When faced with a threat, the group will avoid direct confrontation and attempt to use political and social influence to press the local community or governing officials to protect them. They will often try to spin a situation to put themselves in a position of being persecuted and victimised, despite wanting to help the community. Often enough, they are able to use their good standing within the community to force any would-be accusers into a very uncomfortable, unpopular position within the community. Attempts to discredit the red monks or cast doubt on their intentions with anything less than irrefutable proof are almost always going to fail.

Under the cover of darkness, however, the red monks might just as easily swoop down upon a desirable-yet-resistant potential convert or a vulnerable perceived threat in the middle of the night and forcibly convert them into followers. The services of a professional – particularly one from outside the local community – are also likely to be procured. The contracted help is just as likely to be silenced (or converted) as the intended victim, however, depending on how discreet and capable the monks’ perceive the hired help to be.

If, while still in the minority or lacking a hold over the local government, and faced with public exposure that threatens to unmask them (literally or figuratively), the red monks will withdraw from the community entirely that very night, before any hostility against them can be organised or perpetrated.

Gameplay

Brother Ptolemy and the Red Monks of the Hidden Kingdom are what Open Grave (a D&D 4e supplement) refers to as souled undead – living consciousness and intellect inhabiting a reanimated shell. In this instance, however, their bodies were never really “reanimated” in a literal sense, but rather never stopped being animated upon their death. The ritual used for the conversion will not raise the dead, it must be performed on a living being; it does stop the ageing process, however, but it will not heal wounds or prevent decay when a body can no longer maintain its vital functions. Thus, converts upon whom the ritual is performed are immediately ‘killed’ and embalmed as a part of the conversion process – not necessarily because they have to be, but because Brother Ptolemy wants it that way.

There are several important changes one experiences upon becoming a Red Monk:

• All converts to the Hidden Kingdom retain most, if not all, of the knowledge, skills and abilities they held in life – a fact which the Hidden Kingdom uses to further it’s agenda and influence within and around a community. However, any of those same powers, skills or abilities that relied on holy/divine/spiritual or primal/nature-based power sources are lost. Individuals worshipping evil deities who undergo conversion will keep or lose their power source at the discretion of their deity.
• Since their bodies no longer live, they have no need to eat, drink, breathe or sleep. They feel no pain, cannot be knocked unconscious nor can they be poisoned – in fact any bite attacks against a Red Monk by a living creature risks the attacker being poisoned by ingesting the chemicals used to embalm and preserve the monks’ bodies. For each bite attack, roll a d10; any rolls less than 10 mean the attacker has accidentally ingested some of the embalming agents and provokes the following attack:Attack: +[monk's level] vs. Fortitude, ongoing [attacker's level] damage and slowed (save ends).
• All Red Monks gain the following ability upon a successful conversion:Rise Again – If a Red Monk is reduced to 0 HP by any attack that does not deal fire or holy/radiant damage, the monk is not destroyed, but falls prone and appears to be dead. At the beginning of its next turn, the monk may stand up with a number of hit points equal to its level plus five (hp = monk’s level + 5). The monk, while prone, may choose to delay doing this until later in the turn and/or encounter.
• Due to the nature of the embalming and slow decay of their bodies, all Dexterity-based skills and abilities take a -2 penalty. Endurance/Constitution checks are passed automatically.
• With the exception of Brother Ptolemy, all converted monks are under supernatural influence from those who performed the conversion ritual on them. On the very rare occasions where insubordination occurs, any attempts by a monk to resist following orders made by their converting monk take a -6 penalty on a Willpower check versus the other’s Diplomacy. For every conversion tier above that, give an additional -2 penalty. (Example: a monk wants to resist an order given by his converter’s converter’s converter, thus the penalty will be -6-2-2 = -10; it may help to think of it in terms of father/grandfather/great-grandfather or as a pyramid scheme)
• In order to better spread their influence, all Red Monks are trained by their order in Diplomacy. If a Red Monk is ever unmasked, that monk takes an immediate and permanent -4 penalty to all Charisma-based skills against anyone who happened to see their face. Any and all other monks take a -2 penalty versus those same individuals by association.

Brother Ptolemy by Nevermet Press is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.nevermetpress.com/contact.

[D&D, Dungeons & Dragons, Open Grave, and souled undead are property of Wizards of the Coast]