#RPGaDay2022 – Day 26: Why 4?
Today’s question for #RPGaDay2022 is a look at motivations…. but whose? The question asks us to consider why our character (or, of course, characters) do what they do. Like all the questions, this one has a lot of places to go and maybe more perspectives to come from, but it can play it cool and collected and hang out in a pithy one-liner if you want it to. After all, we cannot give away all of our/their secrets, right… or can we? Should we?
To come right out with it and be blunt about it, Il is motivated by hate. Of course, he sees it as a love of what is being lost, but given that he generally operates on a basis of violence, it is hard to justify his perspective of his own actions. He hates the spread of the Empire and he opposes it, with violence. He perpetrates act of theft for the purposes of arming and transporting other soldiers in the growing war against it. If these were not enough, he engages in major acts of destruction intended to cripple or cease the production of military materiel. To through some fuel on the fire, he has been inducted into the teachings of a former Jedi and can find no reason in them as of yet to turn the other cheek to the darkness of an organization with a Sith Lord as a visible hatchet man.
How often do people paint themselves as good because they oppose something worse or worse, simply something which they despise?
Is this what is meant by living long enough to see yourself become the villain?
Playing Il raises some interesting moral and philosophical questions.
Is it better to lead the fight when the tools nature has given you are those of violence, or is it better to educate endangered populations to reject their oppressors without overt violence? What does a resistance built on love look like? Does the math of casualties and injuries belong in questions of morality? Can we justify killing thousands to save millions if the perceived heroism of our actions teaches succeeding generations the wrong lessons?
Why does Il Han-Na Eintz do what he does?
Three main reasons: he is good at it, it’s personal, and he doesn’t know any other way.
Casting Shadows 
All of my characters are motivated by doing the right thing. Even in video games I cannot make a evil character and continue on that path for more than a few minutes of play. We create heroes, not villains… because the word is full of villains and not so many heroes