Sages & Willy Wonka
Introduction
I talk a bit about Willy Wonka, compare him to Sages, and then show you a sage I made.
Sages & Willy Wonka
A Sage, as laid out in AD&D, is a person with nearly encyclopedic knowledge of something at their fingertips, either within some sort of library or merely in the luminous halls of their mind palace, who is willing to answer questions for 4-50 players at a time. There are distinct procedures in place for hiring sages, asking them questions, and proceduralizing the research they perform.
Charlie & the Chocolate Factory is a surreal jaunt around the mind palace of an esoteric and eccentric man named Willy Wonka. His palace-factory is his library, books and tomes replaced with fizzy lifting drinks and endless gobstoppers.
Sages ought to be more like Willy Wonka.
The spaces sages inhabit ought to mirror Wonka's factory, inevitably changed, warped, shifted by their personality & way of being. Their words should be mystical, abstract, vague, in a way that mirrors Wonka's cryptic messaging throughout Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Taking a Sage's word at face value ought to be dangerous, especially if the Sage is asking you to go somewhere or do something for what you seek out
Sages play a vital part in the interplay between the various factions in a region. They presumably control vast hoards of information, and their advice helps or harms the people who come to them seeking advice (most notably the actual adventuring party, the most dynamic faction within the world). A sage's "knowledge" about unplundered tombs or dangerous locales can wholly shape the course of action of the players in a way that a rumor in a bar can't. Anyone who has lived in an area long enough has surely encountered the Sage at some point or another, or at least knows where they might be found. They redirect, focus, shift the thoughts of a region based on the questions they are brought.
If we are cribbing from the Willy Playbook, each sage is looking for something, a successor, a worthy rival, a rare reagent for some powerful spell. Their manipulations of regional politics revolve around this search, as does the knowledge they give out to any nosy adventurers.
How do you write a Willy Wonka in time for your weekly hexcrawl? You can structure your prep here as a series of questions. Remember, you're trying to make Willy Wonka, not Gandalf; it's okay if the answers you come up with are inscrutable, silly, or downright strange. It might even be better that way.
- What is the Sage's name? What is their Epithet?
- Where do they live? How have they changed it?
- What do they know? How do they know it?
- What are they looking for?
There isn't much that I can explain further that wouldn't be better explained with an example. So here you go:
Exisectis, Blade Whisperer
The path to the home of the Blade Whisperer is strewn with sword, poking, prodding, and cutting the clothing of anyone who walks down it. Blades bitten deep into the flesh of fat fir trees, blades poking up from the dirt like sharpened steel maize stalks. To walk to the Blade Whisperer is to self-mutilate, despite how careful you might say you're being.
His home is simple, cut cleanly into the forest and barely noticeable amidst the forest of hanging blades. Dozens, hundreds, suspended from twine over the branches of the trees, which bend over the clearing from the weight of their steel.
He will always be sharpening a blade when visitors arrive.
Exisectis is covered from head to toe in scars and fresh wounds, more a living scab than a human being. He stands 7 feet tall and, should the need arise, wields a massive claymore in each hand (HD 7, two attacks of 2d6). The need never arises.
Exisectis listens to the whispers of cutting steel and bronze. They're everywhere in this age of violence, so you need only quiet yourself for a moment to hear the clash of metal in the space between the back of your eyes and the front of your brain. Or at least that's what Exisectis says to anyone who asks.
He knows of battles, both recent and ancient, and of all conflict with bladed weapons in the region. If he is brought something that can be cut, whether by knife or axe or guillotine, he may listen to the whispers of the blade. It tells many secrets if he listens long enough.
There is a sound that confounds him, a whisper from a great sword just barely audible over the hissing cacophony of the War That Never Ends Beneath The Wet Earth. He desires it desperately, and tries to discern it via the resonance of other powerful blades. He will drive his petitioners to swords, forever and always searching for the sound he can barely hear.