This month's RPG Blog Carnival is about taking a real life individual and using them as inspiration for an RPG character. This post is my response to that call.
The Dark Golden Age from bySwarm is a wild place where monsters like chimera, hydra, owlbears and others were magically kept under control to fight in combat for the entertainment of the masses in large arenas. We created a prestige class for Pathfinder called the beast wrangler to represent the individuals that made a career out of wrangling these beasts both between fights and during combat. In thinking about this month's Carnival theme, it hit me that John Wayne would make a great inspiration for an beast wrangler NPC by the name of Marion Morrison (John Wayne's birthname).
Youth
John Wayne earned the nickname "Duke" for the dog that often accompanied him as a child. He also is viewed as a cowboy in popular culture although he himself was never one.
Marion Morrison was born about 40 BC (Before the Collapse) in the city of Halag on the western edges of Sascria. His family raised and sold domesticated and enchanted beasts as pets to the city's middle class. Marion first became acquainted with beast wranglers at the age of 16 when he started working with one as an assistant on hunts for beasts in the wilderness. Sascria's magocracy had a firm control over the magical beasts of the region via the beast wranglers. The beast wrangler took to calling Marion by the name "Duke" after the large mastiff that Marion brought with him on hunts. The beast wrangler focused especially on horse-based beasts such as the pegasus, the unicorn, the hippogriff, and the dragon horse.
Rise as the Duke
John Wayne became rather influential in American pop culture and politics. His films were extremely popular and sometimes used to sway public opinion.
By the time he was 20, Marion was himself a beast wrangler who most frequently worked with a hippogriff by the name of Dawn Rider (name of John Wayne's earlier movies). By 25, Marion was becoming somewhat influential because of the number of fights that his beasts had won. In Halag, he had become known by the informal title of Duke of the arena there. While he had no formal connections to the magocratic council of Halag, he held a great deal of influence over them and magocrats throughout Sascria.
Controversy
John Wayne was embroiled in his own share of controversial subjects. One was his involvement with the "Red Scare" and the Un-American Activities Committee of the House of Representatives. Also while he acted in many military films, he was always kept ineligible for the draft. Finally, he also made many racial comments in an interview with Playboy magazine in 1971.
Religion has almost always been seen as a weakness within Sascrian society. When arcane magic is able to give you everything you could ever imagine, what does religion have to offer you? In 10 BC, religion was tolerated and had been growing in popularity even among the ruling magocratic class. The Chancellory and the Deans of the Schools saw religion as a potential threat to the stability of the nation and instituted a program to root out and quash religious practices. Marion was very active in this program due to his ability to track down individuals and move about the countryside quickly. He reportedly was involved in more than a few killings to destroy small cults, especially among magocrats. Apart from these somewhat safe encounters though, Marion was never forced into servitude during the many military conflicts between Sascria and its neighbors.
Beastfolk had been part of everyday life in the Dark Golden Age for hundreds of years, but most races of these half-man, half-animal beings were seen as subhuman and therefore had few if any rights. Marion was known for being on the side of keeping all but the most valuable and intelligent beastfolk outside of any rights within Sascrian society. He typically used his influence within the magocracy to make sure that only those he thought worthwhile received the same rights as humans.
After the Collapse
"Out here, due process is a bullet!" John Wayne in The Green Berets
A few years ago, magical power throughout the world ceased functioning in what is now known as the
Collapse. The world as he knew it collapsed all around Marion. The beasts he wrangled broke free from their enchantments with the exception of Dawn Rider, with whom he shared a special bond. It is believed that the two of them fled Halag into the wilderness once it became obvious that the city was lost to beastfolk. Rumors abound that the Duke has contracted a wasting disease while living in the wilderness, but he still occasionally appears to attack beastfolk or protect humans from beastfolk bandits. Rumors say that when he captures a bandit who pleads for mercy, he says to them, "Out here, mercy is an arrow through the head."
Comments [0]