Life and Death of NPCs

== Memorable NPCs ==
If you are looking to make / have an NPC you'd like players to remember and return to consider:
*Giving them a simple name or nickname. Lord High Chancellor Brigum Heady Revington the Third, Esq. is a fine name, but players will remember maybe one of those words, so if you call him The Chancellor or Chancellor Revington you'll be in a good place.
**"Dr Malando Zevvran: the Left hand of Tiamat and Head of AIMS" is normally just called "The good Doctor" or "Malando".
*Give them at least one clear motive and goal. It's fine to have more complex and hidden motives and goals as well (and most complex NPCs should) but there should be an obvious side of the character for the players to bounce off of and interact with. A simple way to do this is often to adopt an archetype for the NPC the same way you would with a PC. Though clear subversions of those archetypes can make for just as if not more interesting characters.
**E.g. A barbarian that wants to hit things and drink. A barbarian that is tired of fighting and is trying to atone for the deaths they've caused.
*Have them show up. The NPC will have to show up, probably more than once. So it's a good idea to have them involved in different aspects of your plot.
*Have them do things or at least have other NPCs know and tell the players that they have done things. NPCs that sound active are more likely to leave an impression on players though counter-intuitively players don't normally want to sit there and watch your NPC do cool stuff, they want to do cool stuff.
**E.g. The mysterious knight that stands before them is said to have slain a dragon in single combat. (but if a dragon showed up and the NPC killed it by themselves a lot of players would feel a little cheated, cool NPCs assisting is a different but more complicated technique in this vein).
*Give them opinions. Doesn't really matter about what, though think of them in the context of the world of Athesia and what they might know / care about. Have those opinions colour the way they talk to PCs.
**E.g.The southern plains lord that hates the dwarves from the north and doesn't hesitate to let the dwarven PCs in the party know that.
*Give them things the players want. (Preferably that they won't get by killing the NPC).
**E.g. assistance, secrets, political power or positioning (as well as well guarded material things).
*Have them help the players, even if they are supposed to be evil (especially if they are supposed to be evil). Players will often remember helpful NPCs quite quickly (because they will return to ask for more things if you give them something or offer them something).
*Have them steal from the players. This is a cheaper tactic and I recommend that what is stolen is retrievable in one mission slot, but players will go to the ends of the earth for something that has been stolen from them. Far more so than almost anything else you could do to a character. Though it does need to be something that matters and that can be trickier to do in Athesia.
*Know the PCs. Irritatingly the best thing is to know many of the things I've discussed above (motives, goals etc) about the players you are playing against. An NPC that is aware of these things and explicitly helps or hinders them is going to be more memorable than anything else. While this can be tricky in Athesia, consider during the briefing part of your mission quickly asking for each PCs drive and goals (things that players should have thought about at least once during creation), eventually this will be something that you can learn by heart.
== Deaths of NPCs ==
If you have an NPC that you don't want players to fight and / or kill you can: 
*Try to present them as an insurmountable challenge, (there are quite a few NPCs that players have never openly considered fighting due to being described as very powerful).
*Increase the NPC's complexity (especially if they're suppose to be evil). Players tend to have a harder time trying to engage in fighting NPCs that have complex motives (and talk to the players about their goals and ambitions, if they ask the players directly for help a fair few will try to do so without thinking).
**E.g. a typical noble is less interesting than a noble that only cares about personal profit or their subject's safety.
*Have them talk through a proxy. Realistically many of the more Machiavellian NPCs that players would love to just pound are likely by definition to engage with stooges or go-betweens.
**E.g. talking to the evil politicians secretary rather than getting a meeting with them directly, or an evil wizard taunting PCs with magical letters that they use like a speaker phone.
If you have important NPCs for your plot that players seem insistent on just killing:
*Try to work out the plot if that character died. Before you think "but there can't be a plot without them" consider that almost any story can be told around or in conjunction with a death.
**E.g. Your plot is about talking to a specific evil deity and to do that they need to convince an evil priest to help them. The player characters kill the priest. Now any number of things can happen: The evil deity sends things to kill the players, the priest is resurrected as a puppet of the deity and the players now have to deal with that creepy mess, the deity's plan isn't hindered by the death of this priest and the players are told so by reading his journal and must now find a new plan, the players are marked by the evil deity and now must find a way to be cleansed or slowly succumb to the deities bidding, the priest's death was the last step in a ritual to summon said deity and now the players need to deal with that.
*Try to find something for the players to do (preferably in advance, assume players might kill any NPC they meet) as a result of or instead of interacting with the NPC so that the plot can continue. If you feel you've written a plot that simply does not function without a specific character, then the plot can now be about the death of that character and the consequences of the player's actions.
*As a last resort, have that NPC only be a figurehead or otherwise unimportant facade to the real scheme or plot.