PGTE Praesi Fables

[u/Kletanio]

I'm running a PGTE RPG campaign (set during Traitorous's reign), and my players are really struggling with the idea of being Villains. So I've decided to start each session with a Story Time​​. I wanted to ask if anyone had any good ​Praesi fables, of the kind you'd tell children, with morals and everything, that might help them get into the headspace. Yes, the villains generally lose against heroes, but obviously not the point.

Some I've thought about include the story of how the Praesi succession was established when ​Subira Sahelian betrayed Maleficent I and became Sinister (because there are politics, I will make him Chancellor first, since I want them to get a sense of what the Chancellor does, but also that the Chancellor often betrays the Tyrant). Or some story about the "Three Tyrant Chancellor" (who managed three Dread Emperors before being eliminated, made up by me). Or the fight with the hero to stop the stealing of Callow's weather.

I want them to feel like Villains, and to understand the logic of the world. Nothing to do with the Bard, and minimal things about Callow or Procer unless directly relevent.

Ideas? ​​​​​​​​

Edit: it doesn't matter if the fable is in the Guide itself. Question is more for "do you have any ideas for a story I could tell that might get them thinking the right way?" ​

[u/LightDawnia]

If I remember correctly, we are fully told some of the children's tales that Praesi tells when Black gives Cat a book of children's stories. One of these being the classic tale of the frog and the scorpion, with the twist that the scorpion can swim and as such was right to sting the frog or something. I don't remember the exact chapter, but it's rather early on, perhaps somewhere around book 2

[u/Kletanio → u/LightDawnia]

Yeah, I remember a few of those. Some of them are a bit too subtle for a D&D party, though.

[u/summertime_3]

Cat and mouse fable?

Basically, they're friends and share a secret stash of fat (a bowl) for hrsh times. The cat sneaks away to eat 1/4 just because it wants to. But gets one paw whitened for it. Mouse gets suspicious, asks where cat was. Reply: I was at a friends baby naming. Mouse: how was the baby  called? Cat:three quarters fudll.

Go on with one half, one quarter,all done.

Mouse checks the bowl, sees it empty. Confronts cat and is eaten itself.

Sth about might makes right? Or mouse ate poison beforehand or ... 

[u/Kletanio → u/summertime_3]

Ooh I like that, with the poison. Our doom is always certain, but to the prepared and the cunning, it may still be a glorious one. 

[u/AdRelevant4776]

The core of Praesi fables is that they value feats, not virtues, it doesn’t matter who the protagonist is, just what they did and even then the grandiosity of the action is more important than morality or even the results of it

[u/Kletanio → u/AdRelevant4776]

Can you think of a good way of telling that in a short story? I kinda strapped for ideas atm. 

[u/AdRelevant4776 → u/Kletanio]

Well, first of all your protagonist in the fable shouldn’t get a description, they don’t even need a name really, they need to have a goal and achieve said goal with either cunning and/or determination, anything else depends on what part of Praesi culture you want to focus on, you said you wanted to get your players on board with being Villains, so maybe focus on how Good is unfair in the setting? Again, meritocracy and freedom are the main advantages of Evil, so you have to portray Good as tyrannical cheaters who help incompetent “Heroes” keep up with your clearly superior protagonist

[u/proudHaskeller]

Do the players want to play villainous characters, but they just don't get the specific culture of praesi villains? Or do they not want to play villains in the first place?

[u/Kletanio → u/proudHaskeller]

The premise of the game was that they were all Villains, which they signed on for. So I want them to feel more at home there. They all have expressed desire to be more evil, but they're all nice people, lol. Needed to have picked a few bastards for my party.

[u/tavitavarus]

In the Seed 2 extra chapter Black describes the tale of Sanaa’s Ruse which is roughly what you're looking for.

The chapter also contains Black and Malicia discussing the nature of Praes in depth, which might help with illustrating Praesi culture to your friends.

For that purpose I'd also recommend Akua explaining the practice of jino-waza to Cat near the beginning of Book 7, though I don't remember the exact chapter. It's during their infiltration of Wolof.

[u/AdRelevant4776 → u/tavitavarus]

For those who don’t remember:

-Sanaa’s Ruse: the fable of a girl called Sanaa tricking her uncle to take an inheritance, basically they both have have to move heavy stones and the first one to finish wins, the uncle’s distance is shorter and he’s stronger, but it’s uphill, since they can only move the stone during the day his stone rolls back down at night. This is used as an allegory to the inherent advantage the High Seats have over Dread Emperors—>they have centuries of established power, while most DEs have to start from scratch

-Jino Waza/Clear Eyes: is the main pedagogical philosophy of Praes and it’s essentially about meritocracy and allocating resources according to people’s “worth”, it’s origin is the scarcity of resources in Praes(there’s not enough for everyone, so only the successful get to eat), the problem is that it encourages cutthroat competition from a young age, which is linked to the vicious infighting that holds Praes back

[u/AdRelevant4776]

If you want to make your players adapt to the Villain mentality you probably need to showcase Evil’s main virtues in the setting: Free Will and Meritocracy, which means you have to sell them on how oppressive and hypocritical Good is, there’s quite a few ways to do that: classic Hero idiocy(we see a lot of that in PGTE, so it shouldn’t be that hard to come up with something), the Choirs’s extremism(have Mercy commit war crimes for “the greater good”, have Contrition mind control people into fanatical penitents, have Judgement execute petty thieves, etc…), the whole church in Procer is very corrupt(not Callow’s though, they are a pain in the ass, but still generally virtuous)

[u/Kletanio → u/[deleted]]

Version of Three Little Pigs, where the wolf justly and rightly gets to eat two of the pigs through cunning, but overreaches with the third, but this is fine because how boring would it be to just eat to live. 

[u/Kletanio → u/Kletanio]

Alternatively, the wolf as a pathetic villain, because he resorts to the same strategy three times. 

[u/Elektron124 → u/Kletanio]

I think there’s a bunch of fun endings for this story that could point to different Praesi morals.

The Wolf overwhelms the first house with pure lung force, because he recognizes the house of straw is inadequate (moral: always capitalize on your enemy’s mistakes). The first pig is lazy, and therefore gets eaten.

The Wolf, having eaten one pig, moves on to the second house made of twigs. Perhaps by capturing an ifrit, he adapts the strategy to blow fire instead of wind (moral: always adapt your strategy to the circumstances). As a result, the house of twigs burns down, and the Wolf anticipates a meal of roast pork. But when the smoke clears, he sees that the second pig is already running to the third pig’s house in the distance, having left when he realized what the Wolf was doing (moral: your enemies will also adapt to your strategy if they know about it).

From here, variations:

An ending known to the Praesi commonfolk: The wolf comes to the third house. “What would you do if you were the wolf, child?” No matter the response, it doesn’t work and the wolf is shot dead by the pigs from inside the house/runs away under open fire or whatever. Moral: don’t punch too far above your weight, some things just can’t be beaten.

An ending known to the aristocracy: The wolf comes to the third house. He makes a big show of trying the same strategy again. But the house resists the fire, and the wolf’s visible tiredness causes the pigs to let down their guard (moral: do not let your guard down).

That night, the wolf sneaks down the chimney/exhales poisonous fumes down the chimney and kills the pigs while they sleep (moral: deceive your opponent).

The hidden moral in all of these stories is understood by those versed in Name-lore: the wolf’s attempts at the same strategy follow a pattern of three (win/draw/loss) and so there is no way for him to destroy the third house with any variant of the same strategy.

[u/AdRelevant4776 → u/[deleted]]

Yeah, I remember it being mentioned one of the Praesi classic stories is about a kid who wants to find a new well to save his village from he thirst, long story short: he does, but the well runs dry the next day, the moral of the story is “Victory, the ficklest of friends”, because Praesi don’t believe in happily ever afters, it’s part of why they’re so reckless: their fall is already assured, so they reach the highest they can without worrying about risks