Current Campaign: 🩸Evil Durge🩸

Dark Promise's "end goal" (before getting amnesia) is the same goal as all Dark Urges: kill everything in the world, then die. Her name is a reference to this. Bhaal named her 'His dark promise of death,' meaning 'His guarantee of the apocalypse.' Her name is a reminder of the purpose He created her for.

Dark Promise has attached a lot of meaning to this destiny of hers. She was taught that the origin of mortal life --- the creation of the sun --- was an act of treason that ruined the cosmic balance. Because of this, mortals are doomed to suffer. They develop violent instincts to survive, yet these very instincts doom them to chaos, conflict, and death. In this way, mortal nature creates a "dark promise" of self-destruction. Dark Promise dreams that she will be the fulfillment of this cycle: the mortal who brings violence to its fullest extent, and in doing so ends the cycle. She will free everyone from the tortures of life.

Dark Promise constructed this belief over years of service to Bhaal. In truth, she's always been disinclined to Bhaal's religion. Her deepest personal values are order and clarity, which Bhaal's whole "murderous ecstasy" thing goes against. For her, His tenets are hard to swallow and His teachings are full of contradiction. However, Dark Promise has both conscious and subconscious reasons to nonetheless pursue the destiny Bhaal gave her.

On the subconscious level, Dark Promise is motivated by guilt.

As it is with any Dark Urge, the Urges overtook Dark Promise when she reached the cusp of adulthood and forced her to kill her family. More specifically to her story, Bhaal used the Urge to push Dark Promise into massacring her enclave. Dark Promise has never forgiven herself for this. Even knowing that Bhaal leveraged the Urge to push her over the edge, Dark Promise blames herself for not resisting. Dark Promise not only killed people she knew and loved, but she turned on the goddess she'd sworn to serve. So, along with the personal trauma and guilt, Promise fears that she's tarnished her soul. Given her upbringing, the idea that her soul is worthless in the eyes of the divine frightens her more than anything. Her apocalyptic destiny is her way of assuaging this fear. The carnage at her enclave (and all that came after) might be horrific, but she can live with it if it was all necessary for her destiny. Dark Promise hopes that in freeing her kind (mortalkind) from suffering and preventing their wrongdoing forever, she will finally redeem her soul. The more horrors she commits in Bhaal's service, the more she relies on this fantasy. Whenever she doubts Bhaal, she tells herself that whatever guilt and misery she feels is not a red flag, but a noble sacrifice she makes for the benefit of mortalkind.

On the conscious level, Dark Promise is motivated by fear of Bhaal.

Specifically, Dark Promise fears losing herself to the Dark Urge. The Urge manifests in her as a haze of bloodlust that gnaws at her self-control and emotional stability. From a young age, the Urge has terrified Dark Promise. She feels terrible mental anguish at the mental state the Urge inflicts and the persona it ascribes to her. Bhaal knows this and uses it to control her. He threatens to override her mind with the Urge if she betrays or fails Him. So, on a conscious level, Dark Promise pursues her goal in order to protect herself from Bhaal.

In my evil AUs for Dark Promise, her end goal remains the same. However, in her main campaign, her goal and motivations change drastically.

In her main campaign, Dark Promise forgets the philosophy she's built over years of justifying Bhaal's commands. What she's left with are her most basic principles: life is suffering, death is peace. And as she interacts new people, she rediscovers her values in their most basic form: suffering is bad, peace is good. She is not willing to stick with a vague philosophy, though. One thing that's consistent across every AU is that Promise always needs something to believe in. Amidst all the haze and confusion of her brain injury, she wants more than anything to find out the difference between right and wrong.

By the end of the adventure, she strongly believes that peace is possible in mortal life. From there, her main goal and motivation is to uphold peace in whatever way she can.

Once she knows her goal, Promise is willing to sacrifice anything. The best example is her choice to save Orpheus. She knows that the githyanki are suffering under Vlaakith, then finds herself with the power to return their prince to them. The price of becoming illithid is immaterial to her. If she has the opportunity to help an entire people find peace, she is only happy when she's done all she can to help.

In this campaign, her name changes from "Dark Promise" to "Promise," because that's all she could remember. I really like how it works out symbolically, though. Promise is consistently occupied with duty and purpose. However, where she started off seeking unattainable perfection in death, she now cherishes life for creating harmony out of chaos. All of her determination is now unfettered "promise" that she is happy to dedicate to whatever form of peace crosses her path.

Question for the creator: What do you feel when you think of your OC (pride, excitement, frustration, etc)?

Ohhhhhg. Everything. With the evil AUs.... ohhh. sorrow. With the main campaign... OUUGHGH pride & glee!!