Loyalty Mission

The Hero has a useful ally who's helping them on The Quest and may even be a nominal part of their crew or organization. Their goals more or less align with the rest of the cast and they have a decent working relationship, but there's some concern that they might be a Fair-Weather Friend. Maybe they're Not in This for Your Revolution or are Hired Guns who're Only in It for the Money. Maybe they'd love to dedicate themselves fully, but they've got some pressing matter that prevents them from giving it their full attention. Maybe their backstory and motivations are mysterious. It's uncertain whether they'll be A Friend in Need when the chips are down... or maybe it is certain that they won't. What to do?

Go on a Loyalty Mission.

This is a Side Quest that's not directly related to the main goal of the protagonists, but secures the loyalty of one or more members of the group. To them, It's Personal and helping them complete this task converts them from an ally of convenience into a True Companion. Narratively, it also provides a way to explore the character's backstory and motivations and/or give them A Day in the Limelight.

Common Loyalty Missions include rescuing or avenging loved ones, saving hometowns, Finding The Cure, killing Arch Enemies, retrieving personal Upgrade Artifacts or Ancestral Weapons, giving advice on internal conflicts, or more than one of the above. In video games, completing Loyalty Missions may unlock new abilities or cosmetic options for the ally.

Commonly undertaken by Magnetic Heroes and/or Character Magnetic Teams. Compare Recruitment by Rescue, when a character is first recruited by rescuing them from danger. A Sub-Trope of Fire-Forged Friends. In video games, it is usually a Companion-Specific Sidequest and may be part of a larger system including Relationship Values and Level-Up at Intimacy 5. Also related to Because You Were Nice to Me.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• One Piece:
  • Nami was one of the first to join the Straw Hats (after Zoro), but as a shameless thief who is openly Only in It for the Money, her loyalty is somewhat suspect. It's not until Luffy and the crew free her hometown from Arlong that she truly becomes one of the True Companions.
  • Nico Robin follows much the same pattern. She is introduced as a villain and joins the crew under suspicious circumstances. After the Straw Hats declare war on the World Government to rescue her, she reveals her mysterious past and truly joins the crew.

Film

• Han Solo of Star Wars originally joins the Rebel Alliance as a Hired Gun who is Only in It for the Money and the Trope Namer for Not in This for Your Revolution. He has a change of heart at the end of A New Hope, but is still unable to commit fully to the Rebellion due to a bounty placed on his head by Jabba the Hutt, and in The Empire Strikes Back sets off to pay off his debt and clear the bounty but is captured before he can do so. It's not until the debt is... rather forcibly cleared by Luke, Leia, and the gang in the beginning of Return of the Jedi that he's free and clear to kick Imperial ass and woo beautiful princesses.

Literature

• In the The Jungle book of The Oregon Files, after Lawless is outed as The Mole (albeit a reluctant one) and performs a Heel–Face Turn, the crew goes to New Orleans to save his daughter, even though it doesn't contribute to the case in any way. Juan Cabrillo is just that kind of a man.

Live-Action TV

• Arrow: An example of a failed Loyalty Mission in the first-season episode "Home Invasion." Oliver fails one of these by prioritizing protecting Laurel from a hitman over helping Diggle take down Deadshot, the man who killed Diggle's brother, without so much as a "sorry, buddy, I can't be in two places at once" to give Dig the heads-up that he's on his own, causing Diggle to take a 10-Minute Retirement from the team. However, by the second season he had gotten a lot better at this sort of thing: in "Keep Your Enemies Closer," Ollie drops everything to travel with Diggle to Russia and track down Deadshot. Diggle tells Ollie that he didn't ask for his help, and Ollie replies that he didn't need to. Diggle's look of gratitude says it all. He does the same sort of thing in Season 3's "Corto Maltese," despite having very serious problems of his own to deal with at the same time.

Video Games

• Baldur's Gate franchise:
  • In the original Baldur's Gate, Minsc joins your party on the condition you help him save Dynaheir. If you do so right away, the two of them join your team permanently (unless dismissed), but putting it off for too long makes Minsc leave the party after some time.
  • Nearly every companion in Baldur's Gate II eventually approaches you for help with something and leaves if you fail to assist them. Jaheira has troubles with the Harpers, Anomen receives news that his sister is murdered, etc. Some companions, like Nalia and Valygar, can only be recruited after you complete their respective missions.
• Frog gets this twice in Chrono Trigger:
  • He first joins Crono and Lucca as a Guest-Star Party Member to rescue Queen Leene, but then retreats to a swamp to mope because he failed to prevent her from being kidnapped in the first place. Fetching the Hero Medal and reforging the Masamune snaps him out of his funk and gets him to join the party permanently.
  • Much later, freeing the ghost of his old friend Cyrus from its torment gives Frog additional closure and, incidentally, the Masamune a much-needed power boost.
• Dragon Age: Origins uses this for nearly all your companions, except for Dog who does not join you until after you save his life (unless you were a human noble, then Dog starts the game in your party).
  • Sten agrees to accompany you after you free him from a cage and save him from Darkspawn. His loyalty can be earned little by little over time, but the only occasion you get to see him smile is after a long and annoying quest to retrieve his lost sword, at which point he makes it pretty clear he respects you as a leader.
  • Alistair wants to find his half-sister. This does not work out very well for him, but he really appreciates your helping him out with it. You are given the opportunity to make a serious change to his outlook and personality after you do it.
  • Morrigan asks you to investigate her mother, Flemeth, and eventually to steal her book of spells.
  • Leliana is attacked by her former lover/partner-in-crime, whom you must eventually confront.
  • Oghren wants to rekindle a romance with an old flame of his.
  • Wynne wishes to make peace with a former student of hers that she scared off during her early days as an instructor.
• Downplayed in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, where several followers will only join you on a permanent basis after you go on a specific side mission with them.
• In the Fallout series:
  • Companion quests in Fallout: New Vegas function this way. They range from helping Boone make peace with his past to upgrading ED-E to convincing Raul to either pick up his guns again and defend the weak or to gracefully accept that his glory days are gone. All of them involve you advising them on a major decision about their life, with each decision effecting a different perk and/or new gear and that characters ending the Modular Epilogue.
  • Fallout 4 continues the tradition, with four of your companions having personal quests that unlock when you reach enough Affinity with them. Cait seeks a cure for her addiction to Psycho, Nick Valentine seeks closure on a very personal case, Curie seeks to become human, and MacCready seeks both to get rid of his Gunner harassers and to find a cure for his son. Danse has a variant in that it is instead unlocked while following the main questline with the Brotherhood of Steel and it can end with him being killed if the player doesn't take careful steps to prevent it.
• Final Fantasy franchise:
  • Final Fantasy VI: Several optional Side Quests in the World of Ruin count:
    • The Cyan's Nightmare sequence purges all fear and doubt from Cyan's mind and provides closure with his departed wife and son, unlocking all of his SwordTech techniques.
    • The player can take Strago to hunt the legendary monster Hidon and avenge his old friend who has been (seemingly) mortally injured by the beast. The fight also gives him the opportunity to learn the Blue Magic "Grand Train," which is on par with Ultima as one of the game's most powerful magic attacks.
    • Shadow is a strictly temporary (and usually optional) party member throughout the World of Balance. By making sure he safely escapes the Floating Continent, rescuing him from the Cave on the Veldt, and tracking him down at the Dragon's Neck Coliseum, you can gain his loyalty for the rest of the game and also find out some of his backstory via Dream Sequence.
    • Helping Terra free the town of Mobliz from the demon Phunbaba in the World of Ruin frees her from protecting the town and allows her to dedicate herself to the party full-time... and also resolves her confusion over her ability to love and shows her what she's fighting for, doubling the duration of her Morph ability.
    • To get Sabin's ultimate Blitz ability "Phantom Rush" (originally called "Bum Rush" in the SNES translation) you have to find his teacher who's been missing and presumed dead since before Sabin's introduction.
    • Locke went searching for a cure for his dead girlfriend in the Phoenix Cave. To find him and make him join, you need to find this cure. The treasures Locke gives you when you meet are a nice bonus.
  • Final Fantasy VII:
    • When Red XIII originally joins the party, he agrees to accompany them only as far as his hometown of Cosmo Canyon. Upon arriving there, he and the party fight through a dungeon full of vengeful ghosts in order to discover the truth about his estranged father. Afterwards, he joins the True Companions permanently.
    • Yuffie is a young thief and ninja who joins the party under suspicious circumstances and obviously plots to rob them blind. If the party wanders near her hometown of Wutai, she does just that, leading to a Side Quest involving tracking her down and ultimately rescuing her from Don Corneo. Afterward, she rejoins the party fully committed to their cause, although she still plans to rob them of their Materia after the main quest is over. Completing this quest also gives her the option of taking on a series of challenging one-on-one fights culminating with a duel with her father that unlocks her final Limit Break.
• Fire Emblem: Three Houses has bonus missions centering around one or two characters, often even involving students from multiple houses. These missions generally focus on the relationship between these particular characters and/or resolve some problem plaguing one or both of them. Rewards generally include relic weapons that only one of the characters in the mission (or a character with the same Crest) can use properly, other rare items, and special support battalions. On the Blue Lions route completing Dedue's is necessary for him to survive the Time Skip.
• In the Knights of the Old Republic series:
  • In Knights of the Old Republic, most party members have personal quests that can be unlocked by talking to them and learning their backstory, though the rewards are usually little more than Experience Points and resolution to their character arcs.
  • Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords steps it up by allowing you to change their class at the end — specifically, by training them as a Jedi. It was also intended to affect whether or not they'd survive the Very Definitely Final Dungeon, but the game's Christmas Rushed release prevented that from being implemented.
  • In Star Wars: The Old Republic, only one of each storyline companions (generally the first companion you get) has actual quests that requires you to go to other places while other characters' storylines simply have you talking to them once their approval is high enough. However, the end of their storylines generally involve them dedicating themselves to you, or at acknowledging that they respect you, generally with the promises of training your successors/heirs.
• Mass Effect:
  • Mass Effect 2 is the Trope Namer. Every party member gives you a mission to help sort out a personal issue they have. If completed successfully, said party member will give their full loyalty and support to Shepard, which in turn unlocks a power or skill unique to them and increases their chances of surviving the Suicide Mission at the end of the game. It also unlocks matching uniforms based on Cerberus designs. If you successfully complete all of the Loyalty Missions, your crew will go from a Ragtag Band of Misfits to a unified fighting force. Despite being listed as main missions, the loyalty missions are technically optional as it is possible to complete the final mission without doing them. However, each disloyal squadmate drastically decreases your chances of surviving, to the point that if you don't do any of the loyalty missions at all, you will still be able to complete the suicide mission, but your entire party will be massacred to the last man, including Shepard, by the time it's over.
  • Mass Effect 1 had an early version of the Loyalty Missions in the form of sidequests given to you by your alien squadmates. How important the sidequest is to the plot varies depending on the quest and character. In the case of both Wrex and Tali, their respective sidequests are important when completed as Wrex's sidequest can help you convince him to stand down on Virmire without needing high Paragon/Renegade points, and Tali's sidequest is what helps her complete her Pilgrimage. On the other hand, Garrus' sidequest ultimately doesn't change anything, as even if you convinced him to be a more Paragon By-the-Book Cop in this game, he still acts as a Renegade Cowboy Cop come the second game.
  • Mass Effect: Andromeda has them, although unlike Mass Effect 2 they only serve as A Day in the Limelight and unlock high-end powers.
• Octopath Traveler: To recruit other party members, you have to complete the first chapter of their story before they join your party, as starting their story will prevent everyone else's story from continuing until their first chapter is finished.
• As you save the Saints in Saints Row IV, the boss can join them on personal loyalty missions that, when complete, enables them to have superpowers just like the boss. Also, securing the loyalty of your entire crew is required to unlock the Golden Ending.
• The Director's Cut version of the Dragonfall expansion for Shadowrun Returns has loyalty missions for all of the runner members of your crew where you help them resolve issues from their past. Unusually for this trope one of the loyalty missions is not a side quest but one of the main missions of the game that gives the loyalty reward if Dietrich accompanies you. Hong Kong follows a similar structure in this matter, including that one character's mission is a regular run that happens to be against the people who stole his greatest work, and as such, bringing him gets the loyalty reward.
• In Shin Megami Tensei Liberation: Dx2, every playable character can unlock a personal sidequest by getting to a certain point in the main story and then fulfilling a specific requirement. Each character then gets to run a personal errand with you, increase their level cap by 20, and unlock some special skills once they're done.
• Subverse: After reaching a certain point in the main plot (specifically, "The Break"), waifus with Devotion Level of 30 or higher will approach the Captain with a personal request, which leads to a short "Devotion Quest" consisting of dialogue and one or two combat encounters you must defeat with that waifu. Completing a waifu's Devotion Quest gives no special gameplay benefits, but it does unlock her final sex scene.
• Valkyria Chronicles, starting with the second game, has sidequests for each squad member, expanding on their backstories and characterization. (In the fourth game, each "Squad Story" is shared by three members) Upon completion, the squad member's negative Potentials are generally replaced by positive ones (e.g. "Darcsen Hater" changing to "Reconciliation", "Coward" becoming "God of Battle", and so on).
• In the Xenoblade Chronicles series:
  • Xenoblade Chronicles X has these, called "Affinity Missions." They're your main source of recruiting additional party members, and later ones enable the Player Character to learn the other characters' signature Arts.
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Torna ~ The Golden Country has a storyline example when the party detours to Gormott to find out what happened to Lora's mother. It has no direct impact on the battle with Malos, but serves to give her closure and introduce a personal antagonist to Lora in the form of Gort.

Western Animation

• In the final season of Avatar: The Last Airbender, Zuko has finally made a Heel–Face Turn and joined the Gaang, but nobody fully trusts him since they've been burned by him before (pun not intended). Aang, Sokka, and Katara each then get an episode (or two-parter, in Sokka's case) where they and Zuko go off on their own to deal with personal matters. Lampshaded in the first part of the finale, where Toph immediately offers to partner with Zuko so she can have her own "life-changing field trip".

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