Exchange of Realities

So you’ve got protagonists in your plans again, and you have to wonder: Who are these idiots, and where did they come from?

Now, technically, the Grand Reason For All Protagonists is to Maintain the Balance Between Good and Evil, providing Dramatis Personae for an Unspecified Audience to support, according to the Laws of Dramatics. Most of us, on the other hand, are looking for something a little more practical and with a bit fewer unnecessary capital letters.

Some protagonists, in keeping with the above reason, are created by Destiny. In other words, Fate got bored and slipped Good a few trick dice, and they landed in front of us. Most of these people are from noble or otherworldly bloodlines that apparently ran through the mud for a little while. Others get it from a trinket they found somewhere (and probably still have that bloodline thing going on). Still others are the spiritual reincarnation of a prior hero (and have a 50% chance of—) Let’s be honest. Nine out of ten of them are in some way descended from either a royal/heroic bloodline or somebody having a roll in the hay with a creature of magic/from another world, and at least two of those nine are probably involved in both. (A note: if one manages to do both multiple times in the span of five generations with a variety of antecedents, and your world is showing no signs of a cosmic sense of humor, get out of there. Nothing’s worth tangling with one of those.)

Other protagonists are created by trauma. Many were orphaned by disasters—and a lot of the time, those disasters were the fault of one of our own, leaving a youngster who is very interested in showing us “exactly as much mercy as we showed [insert relative here]”. Others were cheated of their life’s dreams. Yeah, you can probably guess how. Still others were created by some idiot forgetting that the more horrendous a fate you inflict on someone, the likelier it is that someone (though not necessarily them) is going to show up and take revenge. (In some cases, I don’t blame them. Even I have lines I won’t cross.)

Still other protagonists just have it in their personalities or their upbringing; they operate on the firm belief that Evil is a bad thing and they should do something about it. Annoyingly enough, these are also the kinds of people who attract special interest from Fate for other reasons (see also bloodlines, above). Particularly dangerous are the ones who add to this having power beyond that of a standard mortal—combining those, as likely as not, gets you people who don’t get corrupted by this power, but decide they need to use it for the benefit of those weaker than them. And often keep doing so, out of some misguided notion that the weaklings will eventually accept them for it. They’re easy to mess with, sure, but it’s pathetic to watch them. Give me door-bashing kleptomaniacs any day.

Speaking of door-bashing kleptomaniacs, you have to be careful of those as well. Nobody’s quite sure where they come from; while many fall into all the other categories, some seem to just pop into existence for the sole purpose of making life difficult. (On the plus side, they have very short attention spans.)

And every now and then, when a Hand of Darkness finds someone who isn’t so dark very interesting… yeah, yeah. Do you have any idea how many protagonists have one way or another been created from our ranks? Too. Bloody. Many. It’s not just fraternizing outside the ranks that gets us protagonists, though; children whose parents are both Hands, clones of Hands, or even ones whose other parents are demons, devils, Otherworldly horrors, dark gods, you name it—any of them can grow up to be a protagonist!

Even card-carrying Hands of Darkness have occasionally turned to the side of fluffy bunnies. Granted, these are pretty rare, and are usually results of clash between two Hands with different definitions of ‘acceptable behavior’.

The short version, then, is ‘trust nothing until you’ve worked with it for a while, and even then be careful.’ Protagonists are everywhere. But don’t give up hope; just because we can’t avoid them doesn’t mean we can’t turn their origins to our advantage. Stay tuned!

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