When I first read the adventure, the King of Feathers (KoF) appeared to be little more than an interesting boss monster that a party could eventually face in Omu. There’s nothing wrong with that. I even had it in mind that one of the party members could look to retrieve a trophy from the KoF, as evidence of his growth as a knight.

Over time, as the party approached Omu, I grew less keen on the idea and started looking instead to make the KoF more than just a beast.

First off was to flesh out how he would mechanically work as an NPC, and I decided that using him like a dragon might be an easy enough approach. It would allow him to Shape Change in the same way an Adult Gold Dragon could. His ‘humanoid’ appearance would be an Aarakocra, since he’s the King of Feathers. Building on this, I wanted him to be a legendary being, so looked for ways to tie him to Ubtao’s barae.

It’s easy enough to declare him a friend of the barae, and to say that he was present when Mezro was spirited away. I decided that he’d been asked by the barae to stay behind and hunt down Ras Nsi, as only then could Mezro return to the world. For 5 years, the KoF pursued this quest, operating out of Omu. He witnessed the arrival of the trickster gods and how they changed the Omuans. Working with a small group who remained loyal to Ubtao, he worked to track down Ras Nsi, until the day that Acererak came.

We’ll say that he fought with the city, attempting to fend of Acererak’s armies, but that he was bested in combat and Acererak laid a curse upon him. The KoF would be trapped in his own body, watching through his own eyes whilst someone else took control, using him as a savage beast to deter adventurers and prying eyes from Omu. However, this also means that over the last 100 years, he’s witnessed most things that take place in Omu, and is now a Saja N’baza sort of Lore Giver for the party to find in Omu. Provided they can lift the curse.

I don’t want the curse lifting to be too arduous or too much of a distraction. In fact, I’m happy for it to be something the party can even do by accident. To keep it simple, we’ll have it that beating him in combat once (again) will be sufficient to free him of the curse. Maybe just have a dark spirit flee from his body when he falls, and have him rouse as if from a slumber a few moments later. If the battle was as harrowing as I expect it to be, the rousing will probably scare the party that he’s up for round two. This will only last a moment though as he Shape Changes to address them in conversation, likely thanking them for lifting the curse.

He can share the history of Ras Nsi if needed, but maintain that Mezro is destroyed in order to protect his friends. He can tell the party how nine trickster gods came to Omu and turned the Omuans cruel in Ubtao’s absence. He could share how the Lich came to Omu, enslaved the city to build the Tomb and killed their nine gods. He knows that the Yuan-Ti arrived sometime after this, and that one day Ras Nsi slithered into the city and rose to command them.

Hopefully, all this helps frame Omu for a party of adventurers and serves as a mechanism for getting a rich history into their hands that otherwise only the DM would know, and gives an awesome creature an even greater presence in a campaign.

Let me know what you think. I hope this isn’t too much of a ramble, and I hope I covered everything I was aiming to.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.