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"Teacher" Copyright (c) 1997 Simon E. Phipp
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# Teacher

This was a mistake. I will cheerfully admit it. Along with the Arkati in Arkat’s Last Tower this was the biggest mistake I made in the Dorastor Campaign. Fortunately, I fixed it relatively quickly, unlike the Arkat cock-up.

Teacher was one of the early God Learners. He had remembered all the secrets supposedly taken by the Gift Senders and had hidden away, not using his gifts and was overlooked. He went to Dorastor to hide, as so many had hidden from Arkat, and hid within the Ancient Tower of Lead. There he met the Mistress of Light, Guardian of the Fires of Heaven who knew a troublemaker when she saw one and quickly imprisoned Teacher - he could escape the Gift Senders but not the wiles of an Angel.

Teacher lay imprisoned beneath the Tower, occasionally being forced to perform some deed or other, but mostly ignored. Then the party came along and destroyed the Tower of Lead, shaking his prison and waking him up. Teacher managed to make contact with the party members when they came back to loot the ruins of the Tower and tricked them into helping him escape. He said that he would smash the Tower into dust for them so that they could search it more easily, but they had to speak a magical phrase. When they did, they allowed him to destroy his prison and escape, also destroying the remains of the Tower.

Teacher then offered to teach them the direct manipulation of the Powers of Destruction and Creation. Being PCs and wanting the easy way and all the short cuts, Derak and Solarus agreed, learning to Destroy Darkness, Earth and Water, since Destruction was easier than Creation.

Solarus used his Darkness Destruction to kill a couple of shades and a few trollkin, just to test it out. All he needed to do was to imagine Darkness and say a few words and they were destroyed, annihilated.

Derak used the Destruction of Water on a Newtling and an Undine, as did Solarus. Then Solarus had to perform a Quest to ally a River God of Balazar, part of his plan to make the surrounding spirits friendly to the Country. This Quest failed in the worst possible way - the River God turned against Balazar and Solarus. When he worked out why, Solarus found that using the Power of Destruction had made him an enemy of all Water Gods and Spirits, tainted.

This was not good at all, so Solarus and Derak deliberately forgot how to Destroy and refused to learn how to Create as they no loner trusted Teacher. They then perfoemed HeroQuests to purify themselves - Solarus had to beg the Powers of Darkness for forgiveness, Derak and Solarus had to beg the Powers of Water for forgiveness.

I can’t remember the Darkness Quest, but I know that it ended up with Solarus and Derak turned into Shades with Derak chasing Solarus around Hell shouting "Got any Darkness in you? Want any Darkness in you?". Most amusing at the time and still brought up to irritate Solarus.

The Water Quest involved joining a set of Cursed Sailors who went to Magasta for Forgiveness. Each Sailor had offended Magasta or another Water God while on HeroQuests and each was affected by the Closing whenever they were at sea. This was very bad when one was on board. When you had 7 sailors all affetced by the Closing in particular ways, it was very bad indeed. One of them caused the boat to be attacked by a Sea Dragon, another by the Old Man of the Sea, another by the White Lady who killed people as they lay sleeping, another by the Whirlpool, another by Dead Calm and so on. The scenario was full of superstitions - they could not have a woman on board, but one of the sailors was a woman in disguise, they could not eat meat but hadn’t told Solarus or Derak, I managed to work in every superstitioon I could think of and a few more. All in all, it was a very atmospheric HeroQuest which I quite enjoyed.

In the meantime, Teacher was searching for one of his old enemies, The Sultan of Vanch. Derak found this out and sent Teacher after Vanch, telling him where he was, what he was doing and that Solarus had asked Teacher to kill the Sultan of Vanch as a personal favour.

A few weeks later, Teacher’s headless corpse was sent back to Solarus with a note saying that he had to do better than that. Solarus wet himself and ran around in a panic as he couldn’t understand why the Sultan of Vanch had picked on him as an enemy. He even had the audacity to blame me for always picking on him! I had to gently point out that it was nothing personal, I picked on everyone, it just happened to be his turn that week. Fortunately, I had managed to rid myself of Teacher.

There is a moral to this, although normally I hate using morals. Do not offer PCs exotic powers unless you are prepared to allow them to use them. If you do, then you have to make it so nasty for them to use the powers that they have to give them up or never use them. As PCs will never, ever fail to use powers which they have, they have to be made to give them up. This has to be done from a roleplaying perspective as it is unfair to say "I made a mistake so you cannot have those powers" - we never take time back in that kind of situation.