To see the light…

“Tell me, what stars do you see?” She gestured to the heavens grandly.

“Can you see the Hydra, it’s many heads gnashing at the heavens?  Can you see the warrior, said to face the hydra in the end times?  Can you see the urn, or the river, or even the bloody western guide? No, of course you can’t.  It’s the middle of the day.  The light is strong now.  All is bright.  No, it is only in darkness that a light shines.  If you want to find which lights shine the brightest, then everything else must be made dark.  Then, and only then can you see.”

I’ve been thinking through what I think is a D&D campaign plot lately.  The essential story is this: The land is ruled by a terrible despot.  Stuff of generic evil emperor, all evil all the time jazz.  The twist is- The tyrant is a priest of a good diety.  The diety granted the priest a vision of a truly terrible evil to come, one that would wipe out all of the land (scale as necessary).  Unfortunately, the land had no true heroes to call on in the face of such things.  Normal searching wasn’t bringing about true heroes.  Mostly fortune seekers and layabouts.  And so… a light shines brightest in the dark.  The emperor consolidated power, took over, and became a tyrant to flush out the best of the brightest so that they could face the true challenge.

I’m not sure what the “bigger evil is”.  I started thinking about this in the context of Ravenloft though, and suddenly: double twist!(!)  There is no greater evil and the priest is simply doing evil to flush out their own undoing.  They are arisen time and time again by the Dark Powers to rule this island of evil with an iron fist.

It could be an interesting moral play about how much evil one is willing to do for “the greater good” sort of thing.