In last week’s blog entry on the Outcasts of Curseborne, we covered the most militant and ferocious of the families: The Battleground Angels. This week we’ll cover a third family, one that many people think of when they consider demons and tempters of popular culture and ancient myth. They are mistaken as the hedonists, the beautiful, the wealthy, and the damned. They are…
The Munificents
Evil spirits are here in this world to tempt you into sin. That’s what many people have thought and felt for millennia. So it’s not surprising that there are some Accursed who seem to fit the mold, and most everyone who thinks of sin thinks of that one Munificent they know. And they aren’t wrong, per se. These Outcasts do tend towards the hedonistic. They have slick tongues, beautiful bodies, and a strange knack in knowing exactly what you want, when you want it. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a very sinful duck.
In fact, the only people it seems who don’t think of the Munificents that way are the Munificents.
This family of Outcasts actually consider themselves to be charity workers, working as hard as they can to make a paradise on earth so that others who are forced to live out a tortured existence can enjoy themselves, at least for a little while. They want to redeem themselves against some ancient sin they only barely understand, so they work hard to make life better for everyone else.
Of course, making life better isn’t free, and the Munificents aren’t above charging for the privilege. It’s a complicated self-delusion, and our narrator, Robert Byung-Gil, tries to explain how it works:
There are stories of the Bright God and the Dark God throughout the world. The Zoroastrians, the Manichaeans, the doomed Cathars, and the Dvaita Vedanta all tell stories of a sinful world of flesh and a sacred world of spirit.
We’re all stuck down here in the fleshy sin-world, but we should try to get up to a spiritual realm.
To us, the Outside is that realm of spirit. Our archonic ancestors were booted out of it for some crime or another, probably having to do with the creation of our family. So we need to redeem ourselves, or at least treat others better than we’ve been treated.
Except nothing is accepted for free. Look, we’re not demons. We have no interest in torturing you or scourging your sins from your soul. It’s just that charity isn’t what it used to be. At one time you could give someone some cash and they’d be grateful, but now everyone assumes it’s part of a con. And maybe it is, because we’re doing it for our own self-interest in getting out of his sinful world. But that self-interest needs to be evident. So we do good, but we have to charge for the privilege. Sure, it looks like temptation, but that’s just how we have to play the game.
Of course, not everyone agrees that salvation comes with a price tag, but others in the family argue that if everyone’s going to assume you’re a drug dealer, and you’re handing out drugs anyway, you might as well get paid for it. Besides, if you’re an idealist in an imperfect world, you need money, power, and beauty in order to change the world.
Munificents possess a unique Inheritance, should an Outcast focus primarily on their family Path. Whenever they try to persuade someone, they’re not only a little better at it than most people, but they have a unique Trick which allows them to find out what their target’s innermost desire is, and what they would do to get it. They become inadvertent confidants of just about anyone, which gives them the perfect opportunity to give that person their fondest wish, or blackmail them as leverage to get what the Outcast truly wants.
Play a Munificent if you want to…
… be rich, famous, and/or beloved.
… spark deep and dangerous emotions in others.
… strike a balance between self-delusion and crass materialism.
Robert Byung-Gil
When Robert was young, he didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life. He knew he was handsome and that people liked him, but that just made things too easy for him to really settle down and figure out what to do with the years in front of him. One thing he knew for sure, however, was that when other people liked him and paid attention to him, he felt a warmth and excitement that nothing else could top. Even when he became an adult and took a wide variety of drugs instead of paying attention to his extremely expensive college education, no high could beat when someone truly cared about him or loved him for something he did for them.
His life came grinding to a halt when his parents were killed in an airplane crash, as their private jet disappeared somewhere in the Andes mountains and was never found again. Suddenly Robert found himself alone, afraid, and very, very rich. He never found a career that kept his interest for long enough, so he decided to become the one thing that brought him joy — a philanthropist.
Soon after he became wealthy, however, he realized that everyone wanted a piece of him. It was like everyone was snatching his money out of his almost faster than he could donate it, and he was in danger of losing everything to his days of charity and his nights of excess. Soon he realized that nice guys didn’t get to be rich, and certainty couldn’t stay rich, so he found ways to flatter, deceive, and con investors and his fellow elites to give him even more money which he could pass on to those who needed it more.
He ended up making a lot of enemies amongst his so-called “peers” in the ranks of the wealthy, but many realized they couldn’t stay mad at this beautiful, charming man for long. So they would inevitably accept his deep and heartfelt apologies, come back to his parties, and listen to his latest investment schemes which would take just a mere few million dollars to get off the ground….
