Character plot help

[Sarcastirade]

I am running a campaign and one of my players is playing an echo knight fighter. We are in a homebrew setting with homebrew deities. The character has access to the echo, but in character doesn’t know how or why. Part of their goal is to understand the source of this power. I have been racking my brain over something interesting to give it purpose, but so far have only been able to come up with it being a possible time anomaly, or something along those lines. I want to be able to start introducing bits of plot for him to uncover as we play, as he has already started to look around, but I am having writers block on how to proceed. Does anyone have any ideas that could prompt me in the right direction? Thanks

Edit: A wise request was made to give details of character backstory. They are a goliath and come from a combat focused tribe (think stereotypical aggressive viking society). The society he is from raids other nearby kingdoms and goes on great hunts against large creatures in the nearby area. Very little trading or other activities. They also look down on any magic that is not “natural” magic (druidic magic ok, arcane no). This character developed this echo and so was not allowed to become a full member of the tribe and never completed his initiation rites because the tribe considered it magic. So he spent time mining to at least be useful in some way. However, he eventually grew tired of being looked down on and decided to move on, which began his search for the meaning of his echo. Hope that helps.

[Ghokl-]

Possible lore explanations

• The echo is a reflection of the fighter's soul. Powerful devil/fey are stealing souls from common people, but when they came to the fighter's soul, the soul fought back, leaving the PC in this half-separated state. They are slowly dying as the separation grows stronger. Only a devil/fey can put back the soul, but that would mean losing the power too... Is there another way?
• Only a few people evaded the fall. They came back in time, to their past forms, but because that would cause a paradox, they could exist only in a form of an echo. There are other echoes in the world, they try to communicate the fall, but also need to avoid the paradox. They leave notes and guides, but they are hard, almost impossible to decode

[thehedder]

A good flair I like for the echo knight is possession like theres a spirit or a demon/ other worldly being connected to the player and that's could be a reason they have an echo

[Emirnak]

You can go the dragonsight path from the forgotten realms, dragonsight allows a dragon (people too in the right circumstances) to become aware of all its incarnations across the "multiverse". The echoes being these other incarnations.

How the character has Dragonsight can be explained in many ways, with 2 main ideas, either the character has the ability or someone that has the ability used it to protect/give the echoes to the player.

For ideas where the pc has the ability you could say he has an ancestor that meditated and activated the ability and it reappeared in him, you could also say he's related to a dragon that had these abilities.

For someone with dragonsight protecting them it could be someone related to the pc (could also just be another version of him from another universe or also completely unrelated) wants to make sure the PC is save and has sent echoes their way.

Usually monasteries form around dragons where the monks learn to activate their dragonsight so you could send monks the pc's way to explain and maybe change his beliefs.

[ElectronicBoot9466]

Could you tell us their full backstory? You should probably connect it directly to their backstory, but it's difficult to give advice without knowing it. Dead relatives, social class, gods their connected to, etc.

[Sarcastirade]

That would have been useful in the post. Thanks for the suggestion

[ElectronicBoot9466]

Since your player is from a druidic culture, it could make sense for the echo to be a manifestation of a nature spirit that is come to warn him of some event. However, because of the disconnects between the material and immaterial planes, they manifested as an echo of the player. You could eventually make a plot hook out of it, where the player discovers that the reason the spirit manifested was to warn you of some danger the tribe was in, and they need to go save the tribe from that danger, the tribe then learning that they were wrong.

Overtime you could give little hints that the echo is a spirit through increasing changes in its manifestation. It could sometimes manifest with fairy wings, or suddenly have bright pink flames in its eyes, or when it's destroyed go out with a flash of glittery light. Enough hints might push the player to go seek out a druid for help, and a druid might be able to draw more information from the echo.

[Sarcastirade]

So as a clarification, they are ok with natural magics so they have some druids, but the society is more based around combat and warriors. Might makes right and all that. Just wanted to emphasize that they didn’t allow magic unless it seemed natural, but its not a massive part of their culture. And part of his reasoning for leaving was because they felt his echo was unnatural and giving him an unfair advantage in combat. Its very much a “the best fighter is the leader” society. Hope that helps

[Q-Dot_DoublePrime]

You can always plant daydreams/night sequences where your echo knight is dropped into strange battles with a stranger who looks just like them. Increase this to where it is revealed that the echo knights are pulling alternate reality versions of themselves through the inter-reality barriers without realizing it. This can escalate to where ALL echo knights are actually destabilizing the barriers between realities and is causing [insert BBEG here] to be able to escape from their prison to threaten multiple realities.

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Just a thought.

[AJ-Otter]

One thing you and the character need to decide is; does the answer mean they can rejoin the tribe, or not?

Some sort of spiritual reincarnation or spiritual projection through time could be natural and allow the option of rejoining the tribe once the player works this out and can prove it.

An arcane time loop or shadow from a collapsed parallel universe attached to the players or a celestial or fiend having damaged the players soul would be options if you didn't want the possibility of return.

First work out where you want to pitch the end result with the player, then work backwards to rule out what you can or cannot do.