#its not a huge dramatic shift. its a role they play! and they arent like. in turmoil about it

[isaacathom]

spent all day being completely unproductive but now i have a changeling paladin ready to go at a moments notice with a whole like. Vibe established in my head. they've got a whole thing going on

the basic gist of their life, in as far as what matters, is they live in some moderate size town, they've a member of the local church, everythings grand. they're an adult, like 20s+ easy. they've been in this community their whole life, they have the identity they use most frequently, and they will only sometimes swap to masks to fill little additional roles the church might need of them. everythings chill.

they get sent out on some small task or another with a close friend of theirs, and things go poorly. not quite sure how or what, SOMETHING happens to the friend. The paladin is fine. and obviously distraught about the whole thing.

So what prompts the paladin to adventure out is a desire for two things. the first are the means to support this friend of theirs and that friend's family, who had been relying on them prior to this incident. And the second, presumably, to find a way to actually help them? (this all depends on what that something is. if its a curse or some serious injury, there has to be a reason they cant just fix it easily - ie that the nature of it isolates the friend from the community if theyre still alive, that people are loathe to interact with them or smth, or theyre just straight up dead and the paladins going more That Route, which is difficult for a Paladin given. uh. they dont get high enough spell slots to do that themselves! whoops!)

but, but, changeling, right? whats up with that part? well, their intention is that they will gain no glory for anything they do. its hard to be anonymous when seeking adventure, but if theyre someone else, well... then it hardly matters. the deeds they commit, as this heroic paladin, will not reflect back on their life back home. They will tell their friend's family that they were sent away to another temple, yknow, work is like that and so on, and just bring the gifts. hell, bring the gifts anonymously, because the point isn't to be lauded. thats the opposite of the point. the point is to help. they want to see their friend heart and hale, they want to see their family endure and thrive, because they've naught much of their own. it's something to cling to.

so out on the road, they're someone else. still a knight of this religious order, still fiercely devoted to its tenets, because that is their centre. there may be physical traits which tie together their various masks and forms, but the loyalty is there. even pretending to be someone else, or BECOMING someone else, that's hard to break. that's important to them.

things of this nature. a whole thing. itd basically never come up, is the thing! its basically something just for me as a hypothetical player. That if the party were to ever return to their home town, they'd try and slip away quietly after setting the party up somewhere, with some thing (taking advantage of their religious connections, even) before heading to their friend's house to deliver gold and supplies they'd been accumulating. just something like 'well, i head to X's house and knock on the door. And when either [the partner] or the kids open the door, they'll see the familiar face of [completely different character name] smiling brightly at them'

itd be the characters little secret. :)