From: lwl@graphics.cis.upenn.edu (Lydia Leong)
Date: Fri, 31 Mar 1995 15:50:42 -0500
Cain realizes that the only people who are likely to protect him in case the Bad Things Come For Him are his fellow Concilium magi. He's a Tytalus -- he has a concept of destructive and constructive conflict. Goading Alanus Scotus, for example, is constructive as long as it proves Cain's superiority (in his own mind, at least); beyond that point, it's destructive, and Cain stops.
Cain divides the world into two groups of people -- those of the Order or of the Concilium, and those who aren't. He's loyal to the first (almost fanatically so -- he thinks of himself as one of the last bastions of everything the Order's stood for), and the second are inconvenient bugs to be dealt with as necessary.
He calculates, without much regard for anything other than his oaths and his goals, which is more or less what makes him unnerving, i.e., from last session: "If I try to blast my way out of here, not only will I violate the oath about dealing with the mundanes, but I'll likely get a crossbow bolt through me and several of my companions injured. Or, I can leave someone behind, and let the rest of us get out unharmed and able to continue with our mission. I can't leave Maggie; if something happens to her, Alanus will probably strangle me in my own robes. I need Giovanni's swordarm and contacts. I need Gregor to help me plan the rescue for whoever I leave, so it can't be him. I can't leave the Grog soldiers, and Ricardo's language skills are necessary. Asatar will be difficult to rescue, due to his age, and I definitely don't want to piss off Tariq. Vastin seems to be capable of great feats of persuasion, he's a religious man -- useful if they try to kill him, and Paul is probably the least dangerous mage to anger. I guess I'll leave him behind."
Cain's current goal is, literally, to erase the knowledge of the Deadfire Weapons from the world (save from those of the Concilium, who are already sworn to protect the secret). This means, if he can, he's going to leave behind a trail of dead bodies or mindblasted imbeciles (though actually it might take Asid to do the second), but he's not likely to do this with big spectacular shows of magic (since this would violate the Code of Hermes). (He has a secondary goal of preserving the remnants of the Order.)
Cain's willing to do whatever's necessary to achieve that (though he's not going to sacrifice his companions if he can avoid it, since they're not replaceable, and it'd likely upset his fellow magi). He's already a dangerously unbalanced personality; in basically making the vow of, "I'm going to wipe out, one way or another, every person who knows about these weapons", he's more or less paralleling Tytalus (who tried to wipe out every non-Hermetic mage he could). This absolute determination is the reason I asked about being able to take a Passion for, "Protecting the secret of the weapon". :)
(If you want Really Scary In General, Asid is possibly worse, I think, since what he wants is mundane temporal power. Cain's goal before the Deadfire Weapons showed up was simply to increase his own power and carry on what Order traditions he could. Asid values mundanes, though, and does things with full knowledge of his actions, whereas Cain doesn't quite think of them as fully human, or something, which doesn't make him really dangerous to outsiders until he has a goal that deals with the mundane world. :) )
So, in general, you can expect his behavior to be restricted by his oaths, which should hopefully keep him out of trouble with the rest of the Concilium, but I wanted to check that this wasn't going to violate any pre-planned story. (I recall that a part of the Pendragon storyline was more or less blasted to bits by the Saxon shearing our contact in half...)
My non-MUSH characters usually don't end up with this level of mental detail. This Ars campaign, thus far, though, has been phenomenal for hitting on every character's neuroses. :)
-- Lydia