Music is a complex thing. I don’t think anyone can really predict what will make a song connect with audiences in a way that makes it stand the test of time instead of fading into obscurity. Something within the song has to connect to the audience and resonate with them. For me – it’s when a song tells a story, or serves a purpose of telling part of a larger story. And I know this is where my enjoyment for stage musicals comes from – the songs are a medium of imparting story to the audience. Sometimes it’s heavy handed and laughable, but when it hits, it hits hard. Today I want to take a look at a certain song from a well known musical and see if we can find an adventure, or maybe more accurately, an NPC within its lyrics.
Ask ten theater fans what they think of Les Misérables and you’ll get fourteen different answers. And regardless of what you think you can’t deny it has a certain… je ne sais quoi (if you’ll pardon the turn of phrase) for it to have stuck around for as long as it has and been adapted as many times as it has. And there’s a lot of themes in this show that can be borrowed and adapted for a stirring adventure, but I’m going to shine a light, or several lights as it were on a song (and character) that deserved much better than what it recently got.
Javelin is the name of an infamous warforged bounty hunter that is in the employ of certain special interests within the realm of Mechanus. They are sent to bring in law-breakers who may fly under the radar of the other Inevitables but nevertheless need to be brought to justice. Named so because once set on a path they fly straight and cannot be bent from it by anything; it is often believed that the warforged was actually given the same basic programming as a Zelekhut, such is their duty to seeing justice be served. Once they have been given the scent of a law-breaker, they will pursue their quarry to the ends of the earth, no matter how long it takes in order to bring that individual to justice. No one knows who sends Javelin on their missions, but they are often sent when a small crime will have unintended ripple effects in the future – a stolen loaf of bread is the domino that leads to the overthrow of a government.
Of course with Javelin, I am drawing heavily from Javert, a police inspector and primary antagonist within the show, a man who obsessively dogs Jean Valjean through his entire life, convinced that a criminal can never change his ways. He has an absolute loyalty to the law and demands nothing but respect for authority and his life is one “of privations, isolation, self-denial, and chastity – never any amusement.” He does what he does because he knows that it is right, and not for any sort of personal satisfaction. And so in “Stars” he lays bare his worldview, giving admiration to the stars for “holding their course and their aim” in the night sky and returning season after season to their appropriate place in the sky. He also speaks about falling stars, and if they so fall, they experience “the sword” and they fall “in flame,” allusions to both the biblical Lucifer and how he feels anything that goes against the natural order (aka lawbreakers) should be punished. And so he swears by what he sees as these stalwart sentinels in the night sky that he will not rest until he sees his quarry once again behind bars.
Of course this immutable view of people and the law is ultimately his undoing – in stalking Valjean for years, he is forced to watch his quarry do numerous acts of good, including saving the life of a young man. This stands in direct opposition with Javert’s belief that he is nothing more than a brutal ex-convict who will commit crimes again and again. (And to be fair, Valjean doesn’t do overmuch to help prove Javert entirely wrong.) But in the end, Javert finds that he cannot act both legally and morally by arresting Valjean and his entire worldview crumbles because of this.
Javelin could be a very fun recurring NPC to dog the heels of your players as they go through the campaign. We all know that PCs aren’t always on the right side of the law and make shall we say… “legally dubious” decisions from time to time. It wouldn’t be hard to find something that they’ve done that this special interest might want them out of the picture for, especially if destiny seems particularly active around these characters. Javelin would show up at the worst possible time for the PCs, but also in situations where they could witness the party being particularly heroic, running counter with the facts that given to them when they were ordered to hunt the party down. And maybe through the course of the game, they find evidence that the masters that Javelin serves aren’t who they think, but instead a group attempting to bring about a very specific future by taking certain key players within the history of the realm “off of the gameboard” with their implacable agent. If they can break Javelin’s programming, will they have a new ally? And what contingency plans do they have in place in case their agent is compromised?
Now let’s close this piece out with the song that inspired this, shall we? Now there’s plenty of renditions of this song, but I’m going to draw your attention to one of my favorites, as performed by the incomparable Terrence Mann. And remember – there’s likely an adventure in your favorite music. You just have to find it.
Ben Erickson
