(TFT) Nomination for Most Annoying NPC of the week.

[Mark Tapley <mtapley@swri.edu>]

Found enough of my stuff to re-create this guy. Let me know what you think.
The players I was GM'ing for did *not* like him, but that was sort of the
point....
								- Mark

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ST:	16	Name:	Sironila Marestril, AKA Scirocco (M)
DX:	13	Race:	Human, but see below
IQ:	19	Job:	Wizardly Brigand, pay $250, risk 5/12

Talents:	(IQ) Spells:
Literacy	18 Shapeshifting		11 Rope
		17 Spellsniffer			11 Reverse Missiles
		16 7-Hex Sleep			11 Illusion
		16 Create/Destroy Elemental	11 Control Animal
		15 Create Gate			10 Dazzle
		14 Lightning			10 Lock/Knock
		13 Flight			10 Far Vision
		12 Magic Rainstorm		10 Shock Shield
		11 Reveal/Conceal

Useful Magic Items:
	Owns a Lab and some items, but carries nothing (see below)

Background:
	Sironila started as a combat support wizard, IQ 11. He was clever
and lucky, and advanced rapidly. He was also very impetuous and at least a
bit absent-minded. His tendency to say *exactly* what he thought won him no
friends at all among the Wizard's guild as he grew more powerful. He
developed claustrophobia early - this has grown stronger as he has grown
older, until now he will almost never enter a tunnel or even a closed-up
building (though burned-out ruins are OK). His affinity for high, airy
places also brought, recently, a fascination with air elementals - which
eventually landed him in his current fix.
	He paid the Wizard's Guild to forget an earlier spell and learn
Create/Destroy elemental. He was his normal abrasive self during this
entire process. The senior wizards were not half so annoyed by some of his
scathing thoughts about them - everyone has those, to some extent - as by
the fact that he didn't restrain himself *at all* from vocalizing them.
When he was done, he went on, in the next few weeks, to create a stream of
air elementals - and release them all into the neighborhood! Complaints
about mischievous whirlwinds multiplied overnight.
	The moment he hit IQ 18, he learned Shapeshifting. (He did this on
his own - the Wizard's guild was already ready to disown him.) The moment
he learned it, he cast it on himself - to *become* an air elemental,
keeping his original attributes. Voila! No more need for most of the
defensive spells he'd skipped as a younger mage. Instant, free, rapid
transportation, built-in flight ability (he'd have to forget the Flight
spell eventually), no worries about falling.
	After an ecstatic several hours whipping about his mountaintop
laboratory, he realized his error - not only do air elementals not have
hands to gesture with, they don't have voices (their airy whispering
doesn't count) to incant with! Sironila would have to run his IQ all the
way up to 23 (5 above 18, the IQ of shapeshifting) before he could cast it
again to revert to human form. (He also lost the ability to use his other
spells above IQ 13.)
	The Wizard's Guild was *no* help. They fairly unanimously decided
to punish Sironila for his arrogance and foolishness, and simultaneously
distance themselves from him, by refusing to do anything whatever to help
him out. That also served the secondary purpose of shutting off the supply
of liberated air elementals, as that was one of the spells he was unable to
cast. Furthermore, a senior wizard laid a Geas on Sironila  - "Do not
suffer anyone to cast 'Aid' on you until you are human in form again!" - to
keep a wayward apprentice from helping him out with a 5-point Aid to IQ. He
was stuck as an air elemental! (GM note: A player character active in the
Wizard's Guild may "remember" hearing about this some time ago at a guild
meeting.)
	He worked on the problem alone for quite some time, gathering
enough experience to increase his IQ to 19 (so he can now use Lightning).
He has not learned another spell to take advantage of that IQ, since he's
unable either to buy a book or to turn the pages. He has learned to
restrain his motion enough to slip through the air almost unnoticed when he
wants to - which is much of the time. He can be effectively Invisible in
the open on a gusty day.
	He now goes by the nickname "Scirocco". He enjoys tearing through
brigands' or orcs' campgrounds during thunderstorms, casting Magic
Rainstorms inside large tents, Lightning-bolting sentries' butts and tent
ropes, Dazzling the entire group when a natural lightning bolt strikes
nearby, and generally leaving some whopper bad-weather stories in his wake.
	He's reasonably ethical, if obnoxious, and has been known to help
out a desperate party of good characters if he feels like it - particularly
when it's something easy like blowing a smoke screen in the right direction
or putting a guard to sleep.
	He does a good job of tracking treasure-hunting parties and
brigands in the vicinity, and taking mental notes of whether they come out
of the holes they go into, where they bury or hide their loot, etc. He is
very apt to do away with the goblin an orc party entrusts to hide their
loot, then put 2 or 3 Conceal spells on the stash to make sure the orcs
can't recover it. A favorite tactic is to put the unfortunate trustee to
sleep at a very inopportune moment (like when he's climbing a tree, or
crossing a log over a deep river). He thought about using the nickname
"Sandman".
	He does a lot of amateur meteorology, investigating thunderstorms
and tornadoes from the inside, riding the jet stream, soaring thermals,
etc. He's usually got a considerably better than average guess at what the
weather is going to be like tomorrow. He's fooling around with the idea of
using a magical Lighting bolt to serve as the leader (creating a small
ionization path) for a real, natural lightning bolt - but this is very hard
to make work, even from inside the thunderhead.
	Despite all this, he wants to reclaim his lab, pay his debts, and
generally rejoin human society (if not the Wizard's Guild part of it). So
he needs help.

The Pitch:
	He will meet the party, perhaps while anonymously helping them out
of a scrape, and propose a deal to them. He guides them to "interesting"
situations. They keep the gold and items. They set things up so *he* gets
most of the experience. He will get as many killing blows in as possible.
He will "take possesion" of the treasure, then hand it over to the party.
He will encourage any schemes the party comes up with - but beware the
experience loss for killing captive foes. Scirocco will lose experience if
he tries this. On the other hand, if the party dives into a lair, gets the
resident 4-hex dragon really mad at it, then leads the dragon out into the
open - where it is met by a 10-die lightning bolt from Scirocco - well, the
dragon wasn't really "captive", was it?
	Scirocco will not easily take no for an answer. He can follow the
party almost anywhere they go, except of course for confined spaces - but
he knows the entrances and exits for all of those in the vicinity. He can
overcome his claustrophobia long enough to get to and through most Gates.
In many cases, if the party tries to flee, he will put their mode of
transportation (or its driver, in the case of a magic carpet) to sleep, and
go on negotiating. He will usually do this just as it takes off, but before
it reaches a dangerous speed/altitude. No injuries will result - but the
implication will be there.


GM notes:
	Remember, Scirocco no sooner thinks something than says it - and he
thinks pretty fast. Think Robin Williams' Genie from "Aladdin" - but more
insulting and less funny. He will *not* be fun to be around for long. The
party should not be aware of his claustrophobia at first - not until they
get to the first hole and he adamantly refuses to go into it, claiming the
"air is too still in there".
	The Wizard's Guild not only will not help him, it will not help
anyone trying to help him, though it will not hold a permanent grudge once
he does return to human form. They spy on him, too, so the party will be on
the outs with the Guild while Scirocco is with them.
	Scirocco can recharge, at 1 ST/turn, up in the jet stream - but
it's a 30-minute trip up and the same back. He can recharge at the same
rate on windy mountain tops or valleys, per the Air Elemental rules.
	In addition to the tactics mentioned above, he likes to put Shock
Shield on himself and enter HTH with his foes. This is generally pretty
effective against anyone with a lower DX than his, or anyone who doesn't
try to disengage immediately.

The solution:
	IQ potions can help give him up to 3 points of temporary IQ - if
the party can figure out how to feed them to an Air Elemental. Gas-bomb
Increase IQ potions may be the only way to do this - and that will take an
alchemist to develop, as it's not an off-the-shelf item. If no one thinks
of this (and Scirocco will not, as he's not a
better-living-through-chemistry kind of guy), he is just going to have to
rack up four more experience points during his time with the party. He's
already a 48-point Wizard, so this could take a while.
	Whenever he *does* get his IQ up to 23, he will immediately hiss
for joy, fly about 500 feet straight up into the air in exultation, and
enchant himself back to human form. Naked, completely un-equipped, and 500
feet in the air. He would fall to his death, except that he can still cast
Flight - which will let him land, naked and exhausted (ST 2, or unconscious
if he misses either spell once), at the party's feet. What they do with him
then ... heh heh ... is up to them.

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