"I made war upon these lands before your people knew words, elf."
So I was trying out speeches and stuff, in various situations, and I was playing with the elvish disdain for short-lived mortals. But couldn't I turn the tables? What about something older than elves?
"I have watched the mountains rise and fall, and I now hear the butterfly tell the mayfly, 'Oh, your life is too short to attain wisdom."
The original idea was some sort of ancient construct, old beyond comprehension, posing as a human or something. Of course, if you're going to have anything like that, there must be plot.
So this guy was made in ancient wars before the era any current knowledge. Some sort of mechanical soldier. Not entirely unlike Alclune, in terms of body and mind and stuff. In the millenia since, he has raised empires, done great works, watched all he created turn to dust over the ages, and basically wandered aimlessly. I mean, a mechanical person built with a purpose is quite literally purposeless once the purpose has ended. What is life for a war-bot when the war they were built for has long since ended, and the bones of the civilizations involved has long turned to dust.
This raises interesting questions, of course: What does it mean to be so old and so purposeless? What would you do?
I avoided those... for now.
In the original conception, he was working with some people to retrieve an ancient artifact made by some eldritch horror of myth, long, long ago. The elves, being pricks (how else do we know they are elves?), are defending this object, warning the young humans not to tamper with powers beyond their comprehension. Old construct finally speaks up, and tells them off. Oh, telling off self-important youngsters - it never gets old.
"Your great grandmother's grandmother was a nice old lady when I met her. She was polite, she was respectful of her guests. If your great granddaughter's granddaughter meets me, I wonder what I might say of you to her? When the winds of time scour the words you carve into stone, and all word of your passing fades from memory... what then shall I say of you? How do you want to be remembered?"
There are other things, too. The original conception was, in fact, both villainous (in the long-term planning sort of way) and philosophical. He was the self-same eldritch horror who built the artifact in the first place, and cursed the elves to watch over it forever. He also is fully capable of making badass boasts, concerning martial prowness built up seemingly since the dawn of time, but...
Well, omnipotence is no fun - no fun for the reader, the writer, or the character. So I introduced that in some ancient struggle, during a more active period of his existence, he made a deal to never harm the descendants of some hero (or something), in exchange for that hero's surrender (or something). Cue a few million years of interbreeding, and he is bound by his word (very lawful, ain't he) to basically raise his hand to harm anyone. Ever.
Which, I suppose, is why the the current era he's not seen as malevolent. He's unwilling to commit any violent act, and unwilling to advocate for some violent act. It provokes an interesting thought for me as to how it could be that he keeps to his word over time. Forever is a very long time.
Possible explanations:
1. He's innately lawful: Cheap trick of having a construct character might be that he is physically incapable of going back on his word. (C: One would think that he would overcome this somehow - self-reprogramming?)
2. There is a magical compulsion: This isn't even neccesarily magical. What if he has override codes, and the protagonist of long ago had him hard-program himself? Or simpler, just a magic spell that, like magic spells do, says he can't harm the children of people. (C: Same problem as before. Also means that there are magical boundaries of what he can do, and cannot do, which is different from a pure promise in that it isn't measured by what he thinks, it's measured by what the spell thinks. Which is boring.)
3. He has strong beliefs: Really strong beliefs. This is my personal favorite, though 4. improves upon this. It's just... badass to cling to your word for even a few million years. Of course, there can be more reasons than just badassness to do this. Perhaps him keeping to the same rules, and same promises for millions of years helps him be himself - things change, and I would entirely understand an immortal wanting to get some grip on something solid and eternal about himself. So one of his eternal traits, from then onwards, is that he never commits an action that causes harm. That's pretty defining for a character, and that's truth both as him being a character in a book and being defined, and him being defined in his own eyes.
4. Mix them! Maybe he has a natural lawful bent, but the reason for that is because he wants to be who he is, rather changing as the times change. Or maybe the hero made some sort of magical compulsion on him. The magic eventually rotted, but he decided to keep to his word anyway, as it had become part of his identity. The advantage to this is that it implies character growth. "A man chooses, a slave obeys." If he does not have choice, then his actions are meaningless. However, having good reason can also exist if you mix things.
Let's take that thought a bit further, and make a thread out of his inwillingness to harm.
Original construct is willing to harm people.
Change 1 (magical promise): Construct is not able to harm people, due to magic.
Change 2 (magic rots): Construct is able to harm people, but chooses not to, due to philosophy or identity retention, etc.
Change 3 (Speculative circumstances): Construct chooses to harm people (just once?), because something is more important than his philosophy or identity retention.
Note that the changes aren't character development. Character development is what happens in between, and is reflected in how the construct responds to the changes. Also note this is a form of building badassness, if done that way - Obviously the choice to never harm anyone has to be done for incredibly important reasons. Therefore, the choice to break his word now means that whatever he broke his word for logically has to be more important than any previous reason he has had to break his word in the last few millennia since when the magic rotted.
That last bit there illustrated why I feel that choice is important. That wouldn't be true if he simply overcame his magically compulsion or internal programming to, say, kill someone who was threatening someone he has come to care about (picking something generic). I mean sure, The Power of Love > Programming is great. But that's really just him doing something because he was now able to do it, not because of any personal struggle. I prefer it, anyway.
Tangental things:
In Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance, the main enemy is the Seraphim, an alien race. There religion is based off reaching enlightenment through a very buddhism sort of philosophy/lifestyle called "The Way". Pacifistic, among other things. Which is standard fare. But put "main enemy" and "pacifist searching for enlightenment" together, and you have a question of why they are attacking... and how. Any question is an opprotunity, and the writers of SupCom managed to go both ways. The Seraphim believe that only one species can reach enlightenment, and so any other species (i.e. Humans) who seek enlightenment have the potential to damn their entire species forever. Which is a reasonable reason to attack, if feeling a bit made-up.
But the part I like is that the warriors basically damn themselves for eternity so they can provide the rest of the Seraphim the chance to reach enlightenment, ascend, etc. Let's go over that again: The Seraphim Warriors fully know that they are permanently damning themselves the moment they take violent action against any living creature. And they make a crusade to exterminate every last man, woman and child of humanity.
I can only wonder how the christian crusades would have gone if the pope told people that they were eternally damning themselves to hell by killing muslims in the foreign land. Would they find that 'freeing' the holy land was worth the sacrifice of their immortal soul? Not so sure.
Meaningful choices - they are nifty.
