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[Laufey]

Bhaal scowled through the haze of souls. Their numbers were thinning. Of course, he’d lost quite a few to their bloodlust. He’d been particularly fond of his cute evil pixie daughter, but he couldn’t really expect the pixie community to put up with a homicidal pixie when she gave into his suggestions so readily and came up with creative fatal pranks of her own. She had been doomed to begin with, which was a shame. When…if he ever regained power, he would remember how much fun that had been and possibly work something out to get her back. Things were not looking good at the moment. He had too many evil children. While this would amuse him if he were free to roam and pillage the world, it was disruptive to his current plan. In the end, only one would live, and that one would be offered his power. If that one were evil, then they would claim his power, dooming him forever. If that one were good, then they would reject that power, but still doom him, because the good would rather rip their own eyes out than give someone the power of murder. He needed someone who walked the line in between. He would continue to encourage recklessness with his evil and good children alike, though less in the good children: perhaps they could be corrupted. He needed someone loyal, trustworthy, with a sense of duty but without the thoughtless hatred of all evil. He needed someone sensible, yet unafraid to kill. He needed an unusual occurrence, a neutral alignment.

Heh, I love the idea of an evil pixie Bhaalspawn. I can just see her fluttering about, poking people's eyes out with a toothpick or something.

As for his former plan- it had seemed like such a good idea at the time. Of course, at that time, he had been a tall healthy god, raw power soaking every pour, evil radiating from him like the smell of sweat filling a room. He had long lived with it, but even then the sheer power he possessed had made him giddy. His optimistic solution to death sounded so good: He would not die, he would live on through his children, they would inherit his power, and he would gain it back through their deaths. At the time, he had taken for granted that his high priestess would not risk betraying him. His current state of existance was hardly enough to make him feel giddy. He’d had years of nearly powerless misery to think about this supposedly flawless plan.

Ah, poor little Bhaal - what a 'Doh' moment he's in for.

He had bound himself to his many offspring. He felt their strong emotions, and he could feed those emotions in turn, but there was a price. When they died, he both felt pleasure at the growing essence pooling and pain at their death. As they died, he had less and less influence on the actual world, though he could feel the power growing. He had spread his power to his offspring and as they grew, they added their own power to his, and when they died, their power returned to a pool, along with his. It was like loaning out money with high interest, but the problem with doing this was that you had to have a steward to collect this money and interest and keep from stealing it out from under you. Once upon a time, he’d thought his high priestess would never dare; or that she would believe she couldn’t…now he had come to another conclusion.

I enjoyed your Bhaal pov - it almost made me sympathetic towards the old bastard.