Decisions, Decisions

One of the things I do in my spare time is play role-playing games with some old college buddies. Traveller, GURPS, Call of Cthulhu, RuneQuest, Dungeons & Dragons, we wander around the various games to see what's interesting. We'll even mix rules systems for other campaign settings. We have played RuneQuest and Traveller using Castle Falkenstein rules. Currently, we're in a D&D 4th Edition campaign. I'm playing a Cleric who is half-human, half-werewolf named "Xale" (ZAH-lay). He has not inherited any shapechanging abilities (that he knows of). His backstory is that his mother was a werewolf, his father was a human, they fell in love, and Xale was raised in a human village. Only a few people knew of her origins.

One day, raiders came to the village and in the process of defending his home, Xale accidentally set a fire that killed his mother. Wracked with guilt, he turned himself over to Selûne (we're playing in the Forgotton Realms milieu) and was invested as a priest with the admonition to go to the various good werewolf clans to seek their judgement. He has joined up with some others and is engaging in do-good activities while he wanders to seek the other clans.

As is typical for our Dungeon Master, the game is filled with bad choices: Currently, we have cleared out an evil temple of its minions and now need to go after the guy who was trying to break down the walls between the worlds and cause bad things. Because we just cleaned out the temple and the bad guy wasn't there, we have the advantage of surprise. If we don't track him down and deal with him right now, he will soon find out that something is up and react accordingly.

Of course, the DM has also decided that the leader of one of the werewolf clans happens to be nearby and Xale has to choose: Fulfill the first step of his quest and possibly be commanded to perform a service that might take some time or go after the bad guy while we are on a roll. My current thought is that Xale should meet with the clan leader now since fighting the bad guy may take a few days and the leader may be gone by the time we got back. I would hope that the clan leader would understand that a completed quest won't be of much good if the world is ending. I certainly don't expect him to come along to help (that would be too much of a good thing and we've already got five characters in the party as it is, one an NPC for the DM to control), and Xale does have a fair amount of Diplomacy so he might be able to make his case: I'm here, I need to talk to you, but I really need to do this one thing right now and when I come back, I am yours to command.

But City of Angels closes this weekend so the big decision will have to be put off for a couple weeks.