If he wants to eat the cat, that's actually an improvement... Fanservice. I always thought it was "Thag", for some reason.
His penultimate secret is pretty cool. An obvious trope, but sure to delight.
Genius. Although only appropriate with characters who know their antagonists.
A great read as always. I've got some barbarians in the works too, and another half-orc, from a 3.5 game I'm in, but before that, I wanted to do a writeup of his religious order. I'll post it soon.
Grorag was a fun character to write up, and he's fun to play.
I've toyed with the idea of writing a few backgrounds in first-person. I already have Nyy, though with that I just used what the player had given me.
As for his secret, it may be an obvious trope, but tropes are not bad. As I use the secrets of my NPCs as adventure hooks, it helps to have some things that are easy to use. In fact, I recommend looking at various tropes as story ideas or story elements.
Would you be willing to post up the religious order TMB-style?
What I find most frustrating about 4E is that I can see it includes the D&D game I've always wanted to play, but the game is so lathered in tatical combat rules that I have thus far been unable to coax the game I want out.
Grorag was a fun character to write up, and he's fun to play.
I've toyed with the idea of writing a few backgrounds in first-person. I already have Nyy, though with that I just used what the player had given me.
Would you be willing to post up the religious order TMB-style?
Well yes, that would be the point of posting it here. The CharDev boards are not my personal blog, naturally. On that note, I should probably just bite the bullet and do it. It's imperfect, but postable.
Mighty Order of Saint Yav the Lightbringer Suborder of Kordian Church, CG/Unaligned "If you're reading this, you know the power of a person doing something for themselves. Now you're ready for the next step." Holy Symbol: A compass rose, with a sword and scroll laying atop it. Background: Spoiler:Show
"I am called Lightbringer not from some tricks of swordplay or piety, but from my navigation through pits of darkness deeper than any grave." 1.Yav was a Aasimar of humble beginnings, abandoned at birth by a panicked nun who found herself ravished by an angel. 2. He endured the worst exploitation a child can, before struggling to freedom as a gladiator, soldier, medic, and finally adventurer. 3. It was here, it's said, that he found the Wisdom of Kord. His own strength had served him well through many hardships, so why not celebrate it? 4. Later in life, Yav led the unification push that joined most of the northern barbarians under the banner of Kord (and anti-imperialism). At the foot of the mountains, he built his enormous temple, the Hall of the Mighty. 5. After death, Yav ascended to Ysgard, where he was judged to have borne enough trials to serve Kord as a demigod. His former Temple became the center of his worship, although most of the Barbarians remained "traditional" Kordians.
"My skill is legendary for good reason, and without it I might have failed many times over. But it is meaningless to do things like I would, when with a little training, doing them like you would may prove far better." Short: The order is content to occupy it's corner of the world, keeping the barbarians pious as a solid bastion against the goblinoids and monsters of the region. Medium: Yav's faith is distinct from vanilla Kord worship in his stressing of martial preparedness over sporting pastimes. He is somewhat more encouraging of cooperation for a common cause, although still preaches that the faithful must perfect themselves. At some point, the particular talents of the order should be depicted. Long: Eventually the secrets below must come out, and there will be turmoil both inside the order, and with another faith. Longtime foes will naturally use this opportunity to exact revenge.
"The hardest part of any fight is the confidence to win it, something no god can help you with. Moreover, you should not trust any that offer..." 1. Known (to the clergy): Yav's father, Azizciil, was an angel in service to Pelor who bestowed his radiance on a young nun, then never gave it another thought. Father and son finally met many years later, and began a duel to the death. Yav hacked his sire to within an inch of his life, then calmly walked away. The story Pelor's faithful hear is different, making relations between the two orders frosty at best. 2. Unknown (to the clergy): In addition to all his great deeds and wise sermons, Yav was homosexual. This fact pained him acutely, but he saw it as one more burden to struggle with. He said little of the matter, and his few lovers were men of similar stoic character. Nevertheless, the tolerance espoused by the Lightbringer's dogma is well known, even if the reasons behind it aren't.
"Many have walked the path before you, and only some of them still draw breath. I could never learn the unique qualities of them all, but I love every one for the choice they have made." *1.(Lightbringer) Lenorel Hiltwhistle, Female Half-elf, CG/UA. The only Lightbringer since the original's ascendance, she served a long time under Yav, originally as a henchman in his adventuring days. While aware of her late lord's problems, she lacks them herself, and has been married many years to a local (and ironically, pacifist) potter. *2. Alaric (the Barbaric Cleric), Male Half-orc , CG/un. A traveling adjudicator and priest currently in pursuit of stolen funds, Alaric is an anomaly, equally respected by the highland mountain orcs, barbarians, and the townsfolk who live in the temple's shadow. Sadly, that's not much. *3.Kasparov, Male human, CE. Shaman of the goldenwren tribe, who are one of the few holdouts of Shamanic Animism. He desires to turn back the hegemony of the Kordians as much as possible, to better keep his tribe (and others!) under his own thumb. If the fallen Azizciil had reason to help him, things could get very dangerous for the order.
"Take joy in keeping your life, not taking your foe's." In contrast to the hulking quasivikings the temple of Kord usually produces, Yav's clergy are more like Spetsnaz, boastful and physical, but capable of switching into competant and deadly warriors when they see the need. Halflings that find Kord worship daunting sometimes find their way easier as clergy, or laity of Saint Yav. Mannerisms: "-But show no respite, in combat or cards. Better a cripple than a coward." As with Kord, Yav's clerics favor the greatsword, and a rare few learn the use of the mercurial kind carried by their founder. They observe many of the same rituals, and have cordial (heh) relations with Lendor's priests, often joining forces to curtail an especially hasty move from The Mighty One's followers. They make sparing use of white dragonhide.
On the GHwiki, there's a unattributed reference to a Yav Lightbringer building a huge temple to Kord, and converting hundreds with an inspirational leaflet. He exists, as far as I can tell, only in that paragraph. Serving one of the few deities to exist in all 4 editions, Yav seemed more deserving of expanded treatment than most footnotes, so I gave him a religion of his own, when all I really needed was a way to justify my selection of War and Luck domains. Such is the plight of the DM turned playa.
The quotes are intended as transcripts of his fabled leaflet, which is why there are no references to Yav as a deity- he wasn't yet! If you think it sounds akin to a self-help guide written by a war hero, I've done my job right. Peter O' Toole was a huge influence on 'my' Yav's bearing.
Well yes, that would be the point of posting it here. The CharDev boards are not my personal blog, naturally. On that note, I should probably just bite the bullet and do it. It's imperfect, but postable.
:embarrass Whoops. I missed the implication that that was your plan all along...I thought you were talking about making a write-up for your own personal use.
What I find most frustrating about 4E is that I can see it includes the D&D game I've always wanted to play, but the game is so lathered in tatical combat rules that I have thus far been unable to coax the game I want out.
No worries, I suppose I could have been more clear.
I'm pretty much a total convert though, insofar as I use the TMB template for anything background related now. The best feature I've found is that it limits the scale of the project. The MOoSY would've been way longer without it, and not touched the high points I wanted it to.
No worries, I suppose I could have been more clear.
I'm pretty much a total convert though, insofar as I use the TMB template for anything background related now. The best feature I've found is that it limits the scale of the project. The MOoSY would've been way longer without it, and not touched the high points I wanted it to.
I learned long ago that the first Rule of DMing is "Never force yourself to create more than you must".
Sometimes, we DMs like to get pretty verbose on a thing we're working on, and, after a while, we may lose sight of what it was we were trying to accomplish. Or we write and write on a backstory, and then have to work on something else (or RL interferes), and by the time we get done with the distraction, whatever inspiration we had has flown by.
I like the fact that the TMB encourages spending a little bit of time on multiple aspects of a character. It's easy enough to expand on a part if you feel it hasn't gotten sufficient coverage, and also helps people concentrate on parts that they may not have thought much about. It also isn't difficult to add or remove sections.
What I find most frustrating about 4E is that I can see it includes the D&D game I've always wanted to play, but the game is so lathered in tatical combat rules that I have thus far been unable to coax the game I want out.
Here we are with one of the Biggest Bads from my campaign, one of the Seven themselves. He's the one, the only:
The Ten-Minute Background of Verkinx Kazrael, The Nightmare Prince
Step 1: "Ah, the merry revels of the evening! How I remember the feasts of yore, as those children of dreams would make sweet love in shady bowers, and the wine ran free while the songs of praise were sung. Sing me a melody, will you not? A tune to ease my mind?" --Kazrael, to a pair of travelers who accidentally wandered into his domain while he was in a playful mood.
1) There was a time when the name of Verkinx Kazrael would have been breathed with reverence, instead of invoked as a curse. He was The Lord of Dreams, The Piper At The Gates of Dawn, The Trickster, The Lord of Faerie. He was a being of majesty, a golden satyr of handsome aspect and capricious joy. But he was cruel, as well. He lacked empathy, and played his games without pity or remorse for those with whom he played.
2) It may be that, at one time, he was not always so cruel. It would be comforting to believe he crafted the mortal race of Eldar, that would be come the elves and eladrin and drow, out of some sense of love, and a desire to see what they would become. But just as likely, they were crafted from pride, and a desire to improve upon the races the others of The Seven were crafting, making them prettier, more magical, and longer-lived simply to say that his children were better. He did not craft them alone. His consort (never his wife) Lolth aided in their creation just as much as he, but Lolth was ever distant and unknowable, even before her slide into insanity, and he was very active in the affairs of the Eldar, and so they loved him. Or at least loved the gifts he provided, for the eldar were very much their father's children, and were people of many passions, but little empathy.
3) And so the ages turned. And there was terrible war, when the Abyss appeared and the demons crawled from it. Andros, the First Child, creator of the humans, was slain, and his spirit became a part of The River of Life, source of all souls, to become a part of the mortals he so loved. And the Seven, well, they tasted true evil during the war, and this taste may have tainted them. As the ages passed, the spirit of creation and collaboration that had guided the actions of previous ages gave way to a quiet struggle for another reason. Power. The Seven, and the Elemental Titans, and even The Nomad and The First Generation became obsessed with who was dominant, and who was beneath. And as above, so below. The Eldar races came to lord over the other creations of the Seven, and they began to claim the superiority of their design gave them the right to rule. And this struggle grew worse, as the desire for power, and the selfishness, and the pride, and all the manifold sins that the demons had released with their entry into creation poisoned the very natures of the Gods themselves.
4) Did these flaws exist before the demons came? Perhaps. But perhaps they would not have awakened as they did without the demons for a focus. And the ill-will between the various gods turned to hate, and finally war. The Elemental Titans rose up against the Seven, angered that their contributions to the creation of the universe were not respected, and the Seven fought back, and became even more petty and cruel as a defense. And then the battle shattered the One World, and the First Generation, roused to fury, stripped the Elemental Titans of their forms, and banished their spirits to the Elemental Chaos. Then The Nomad left creation. Why he left, none can say. Perhaps he was disgusted with the actions of his children. Perhaps he feared they would turn upon him next. Perhaps he was simply tired of his creation, and sought to make a new one. Perhaps he wished to fight the source of the demons and stop their evil once and for all. Perhaps it was all of these things, or none. Who can say? But The Nomad left, and the First Generation and The Seven were left behind to rebuild.
5) The Gods could not agree on how the world should be rebuilt, so three worlds were made from the ruins of the old. One, a world of magic and dreams, was built around The River of Life, Source of All Souls, as a place of wonder and awe by the gods more fascinated with moving on. Another, a place of shadows and entropy, was built around the River of Time, the river that breaks down all and flows back into the River of Life, by the more morose gods who brooded over the failures of the previous ages. And the Middle World was crafted between, as much made of solid as shadow and wonder, where the Seven could meet, a neutral ground for all things to live. And so, for a time, there was peace of a sort.
6) But the evil that festered in the hearts of the Seven, that lead to the Shattering in the beginning, had not died. It grew worse. For without the Elemental Titans to focus their hate, the gods turned on each other. They slipped deeper and deeper into madness. Kazrael was the most affected by his rule. As the patron of Dreams and Inspiration, he drifted further and further from reality, and his inspirations became horrors that he inflicted on his domain, the Feywild. If one ever is curious as to why the Feywild is as strange and dangerous as it is today, look no further than the mad Lord of Dreams attempting to put his visions into reality. But worse than this raving lunacy, which only spawned horrors, were the horrors he inflicted on his own children, the Eldar, for his amusement, believing them to be gifts.
7) Eventually, his madness took him too far. One day, he cloaked himself and went among his people, ignoring the pain his monsters and his madness had brought them. He encountered a warrior and a rogue arguing over the proper way to woo a lady. Thinking it would be a grand game, he decided to join them, and propose a challenge: that whoever could use their preferred method of wooing to seduce the fairest maiden in the land would be declared the winner. Once this was done, he traveled ahead of them, and spoke with the fairest maiden herself. He kept his identity cloaked, and encouraged her to reject any suitors, which she did. He then encouraged her to play with the suitor's affections, teasing them with her charms, until they were mad with lust. Then he encouraged her to set them against each other, and she did so, and the two suitors fought to the death to win her affections. And over their cooling corpses, he danced, and declared himself the winner of the challenge, and revealed himself to the maiden, who was horrified by what she had done. He then sought to claim what he felt was rightfully his from the maiden, and when she denied him, he took her by force, raping her and leaving her bleeding. And, when his seed bore fruit, he inflicted another insult on her, and took the child that was born from their union to raise as his own, ripping her from her mother's own arms while laughing.
8) And this was his undoing, for the tale of this spread. And anger boiled among the Eldar, for though this was among the least of his atrocities, the Eldar would stand no more abuse from their own lord. But the Eldar were not united in their rage. Some Eldar simply wanted to leave the mad lord's domain, to escape his madness. And they left the Feywild for the world, and became the Elves, who live in exile to this day. Most Eldar either believed their lord was not as bad as others, and sided with him, either out of tradition or misguided love. And then there were those Eldar who would take no more abuse, and arose up in arms, lead by the very maiden that Kazrael had ravaged. And there was war.
9) The Eldar were not alone in rising up against their Gods, as the other Seven had become just as bad or worse, and the uprisings spread across creation. Nine powerful mortals rose as leaders among their races. These Nine Heroes had powers unheard of, and though the war went poorly at first, they gained more and more ground. The angelic hosts themselves turned against the Seven, as they could no longer bear the suffering their masters were inflicting on those they had been charged to protect and guide. The Seven tried to strike down the Nine, repeatedly, but somehow these mighty heroes always managed to escape their doom. The nine mortals banded their forces together, and the Seven turned to their own parents, the First Generation, for help, but the Lord of Time and the Lady of Life would not aid their wayward children any longer, and the Seven were left to their own devices. In the end, they lost.
10) Kazrael was captured and bound by the Nine, who had grown as powerful as he. They had become Gods themselves by this point, and stripped him of his place as god of Inspiration. He watched the woman he had wronged take his daughter from him, as he had taken her before, and this he could not bear, for she was the only thing for which he felt the slightest shred of empathy, even love. So he called upon his remaining powers, and called a horrible curse down on all those Eldar who had turned against him, and even the Eldar who had stayed at his side, so great was his hatred. Only the Eldar who had exiled themselves were spared his wrath. He transformed the angels who had served him into monsters, and charged them with destroying the eldar he cursed, as well as all their descendants, cutting them off forever from the dreams he had bestowed upon them as gifts, dooming the Eldar to slow decline, as they now had no dreams to use as inspiration.
11) And then he was tossed into The Shrieking Hell, a place he had built as a cage for the demons long ago and abandoned when the Abyss was sealed. It was meant as a place of torment, according to his own ideas of what torment would be, and so was the perfect prison for him. And with him went many of the monsters he had built (though not all). His dreameaters, however, could not be captured and contained, and they plague the world to this day, but that is cold comfort to Kazrael, who is trapped, forced to endure the shrieking winds that strip his thoughts from him and leave only madness behind, and blast his skin, ruining his former beauty. Like all the hells, the Shrieking Hell is unfinished, and there are times when he can send his consciousness out into creation, to hear the worship of those who still pay him fealty. But such respite is only temporary. So he works, filling the minds of mortals with madness, urging those with sick minds to free him, so that he may take revenge, granting what power he can to those who would dare to make deals with his kind in order to seduce them to his cause. And he waits, watching a world he has come to despise prosper without his guidance, and hates.
Step 2: "Ah! Cruel jests of fate! Your music, alas, soothes me not. It is as the strangled screech of a gutted cat as it lays dying by the side of a stream. Whatever is the mater? Do I frighten you? Did you not expect the old tales, of old god who makes these woods his home, to be true? Ah. I see. You did not. You thought they were but myth, an airy nothing given the form of words, and thought it safe to trespass in my demense. Therefore, I will teach you a lesson, so that you will remember that sticks and stones may break your bones, but words will leave you bleeding. The lesson begins...thus." --Kazrael, to the two travelers, before the screaming started.
1) Verkinx Kazrael is one of the big sources of evil fey in my game, as well as general weirdness and trippy dreams. He way wind up being the ultimate villain of this campaign, aside from The Dark Reaper and the Queen of Air and Darkness. 2) That said, there's a question of how much of his actions he's responsible for, being so insane, and if he can be redeemed. An epic quest if there ever was one...make the God of Madness sane once more!
Step 3: "Why? You would dare ask me WHY!? Am I not the demon you expected to find, the one whose tales you have been fed since before you could walk!?YOU!! MADE!! ME!! THIS!! WAY!! And now, now you question why I act as demons should!? ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED BY YOUR DEVIL JESTER!? Scream, then! Scream and bleed for you ignorance!" --Kazrael to the male, when asked why he flayed the skin from the woman then caused a thorny rosebush to grow from her muscles, as she cried in anguish beside them.
1) Despite being utterly insane and bent on revenge against creation, The Nightmare Prince would be the least destructive of the Seven to get free. Of course, that's a lot like saying one hurricane is less destructive than another; good for a comparison, but not meaning much to those who have to suffer his wrath. Still, most of his maliciousness is caused by his lack of empathy for the rest of creation, and the rest is spurred by the fact that he is batsh*t insane. Conceivably, finding a way to reach him (possibly by appealing to his love for his daughter Jillian or demonstrating the damaging effects his mania have caused). Possible, but likely hellishly difficult.
2) Kazrael's madness comes in three parts, and he switches between these aspects at random. There is the part of him that is utterly amoral, caring only about his own self-indulgent pleasures and basking in the adulation of his creations; this aspect is the one most thought of when people think of Kazrael. Then there is a part that is cruel and bent on revenge, that only cares about punishing those that defied him as well as all creation through the infliction of torments mental and physical. It is this aspect that warlocks typically manage to get in contact with. The final aspect remembers what it once was, lamenting the loss of his once divine stature and loathing the cruel devil-thing he has become in the millennia since his incarceration. This aspect tries to emulate the (somewhat) more magnificent Kazrael of old, and may act noble or regretful over what he has done, sparing those his other aspects have tormented. This aspect of Kazrael is, however, the least stable and most prone to sudden and devastating mood swings before being subsumed into one of the other aspects again. These aspects are at war.
3) Kazrael's prison is not very secure. The first layer of his prison, which manifests as a haunted wood, can touch the world, much like the Feywild can. It isn't enough to allow the Devil Lord to escape, but it IS enough to let him manifest an avatar. This misty half-realm is mutable, changing according to the Devil Lord's wishes, but the Avatar cannot venture from it. Sometimes creatures accidentally cross over into this realm, and find themselves lost in a haunted, deadly wood filled with malicious fey monsters, malevolent landscapes that seem eager to torment them, and, if they are very, very unlucky, an appearance from Kazrael's Aspect, which amuses itself with tormenting the unlucky travelers that blunder into his presence.
Step 4: "Screams! Cries and anguish! HATE!...terror...They could not see...they blamed ME! I gifted them so! it was the dreams...what dreams may come?...did they hate the dreams so? WHY!? Tell me WHY! They could build such castles in the sky! I gave them that! I! games...what games we'd play...game...was it a game, to her? to take away my little girl? Was it a game she played on me?...were we ever playing? TELL ME! TELL!! ME!!" --Kazrael, ranting, as the man watches in mute horror.
1) Jillian Maeve, the Queen of Air and Darkness, was Kazrael's daughter. Even when Jillian was "rescued" from Kazrael's service during the March of the Nine she idolized him, though she recognized his damaged nature. It is widely believed that before her death at the hand of The Dark Reaper she was plotting to find a way to cure his madness and free him from his imprisonment, not necessarily in that order. It is likely that, were the pieces of her soul to be reunited, she would resume this task.
2) The cult of Kazrael call themselves The Chosen, and primarily consist of dark faerie creatures that idolize the "liberating madness" Kazrael's touch is supposed to provide. Cells of Chosen perform random acts of violence and chaos in the name of their lord, for no other reason than sick amusement. There is another, darker branch, however. It focuses on The Dreameater aspect, and tends to use acts of terror and violence as tools. Many warlocks and assassins who venerate the Nightmare Prince find themselves drawn to the teachings, if not full membership, of this sect, and it is disturbingly common among Eladrin and Drow who have been lost to The Madness.
3) The followers of Kazrael famously do not get along well with those who worship The Dark Reaper, even in instances where their goals might intersect. In fact, Chosen are very likely to help expose necromancer cabals. This probably extends from the rage Kazrael has for those who worship the god who slew his daughter.
Step 5: "Go. Now. Run far, far from here, and mock your jester no more." --Kazrael to the male traveler, who ran as fast as his legs could carry him.
1) "Once, I had a mighty, golden form, a powerful and virile being of angelic countenance and cloven hooves, with stars shining from the depths of my eyes and graceful horns curling from my brow. The satyrs were made in my image, after all, but they paled in comparison to my true form."
"But then came the war. That hateful, burning b*tch! She struck me down, breaking my jaw, destroying my face. My handsome face! I could not bear it, so I covered the lower half of my face with a leather scarf-cloak. But the worst was yet to come, for I was tossed into the Shrieking Hell, to be blasted and scored by the hellish wind. My hands became scabbed and worn to the bone by climbing, so I sharpened them to claws and wrapped the rest. And the gold of my form faded to a dull silver, while my skin grew tainted and dark, absorbing the blackness around me, and the suns in my eyes dimmed to glowing embers peering from the depths of hollow sockets. And my form, so lithe and powerful, shrived, until I was left as but a twisted, emaciated husk!"
"Danced, I did, and sang, and played...music gone, snatched away by shrieking winds...voice strangled, now only a rasping, hideous whisper...grating, nightmare thing...clawed demon...hideous! HIDEOUS THING! warped...broken...But I can become myself again, for a time. Only for a time...never forever..."
2) "In a fey place did Kazrael a stately pleasure dome decree...where once a sacred river ran, though caverns measureless to man, down to a sunless see...it was a miracle of rare device! A pleasure-dome of crystal ice! And the chidlren danced, and sang, and played...and gift upon them I would lay! And all who saw me standing there would bow and cry "Beware! Beware! His blazing eyes and golden hair!"...and they would weave around me thrice, and close their eyes in holy dread, for I on honey-dew hath fed, and drunk the milk of paradise!"
3) "And so the ungrateful children turned on my, and all I had given them. I, who had given them dreams beyond wonder! I, who carved them from ice and wind! I, who helped them build their empires and gave them the secrets of the universe itself! They used their dreams to turn on me, trapping me in snares of thought and memory. So it was only fitting, wasn't it? That I turn their dreams against them, poisoning them forever. I turned their greatest strength into their most powerful horror..."
Ah, Kazrael. One of the most developed of the seven, because I played him as a character in a PbP chatroom for several years, as well as using him as a background villain in my main game.
There are a few different versions of Kaz's story running around my groups of friends, mostly because many of his elements developed over time as I got more ideas and discarded older ones.
In the very, very beginning, Verkinx was just a name that i thought sounded cool for a god of assassins. I cribbed it from an episode of Xena: Warrior Princess, but it mutated over time. Verkinx was one of 5 elder demons who had fought the gods and lost, and had created a runeblade that would act as a key to summon him back to the mortal plane. The blade was in the hands of a scarred wizard called Jester, and it was trying to turn him into a vessel. Jester was panning on going back in time and...
And yeah, it was a complicated story for an NPC who never actually showed up in my high school D&D game. Still, I had the idea on the back-burner for years. Eventually, I convinced a friend of mine to draw up a picture of some of my elder demons for another game I was running. He took inspiration from Raziel, the protagonist of the Soul Reaver series. And I thought that was really cool, so I rolled with it. I had a great visual for my demon gods, and all way right with the world.
A few years later, I actually started hanging around a gaming chatroom called Shards. I developed some characters there, but I was still young, so today I look back on most of them and see how Mary Sueish they are. Back then, though, I had no idea. I ran another game, and began my fist attempt on pulling all the stuff I had created for my high school game into a coherent setting. One of the players of that game was an artist, so I asked her to do some drawings for me based on the demon lords, who by this time I had decided were actually the previous gods of the setting turned evil (this was actually a major campaign secret). She transformed Verkinx Kazrael from a Raziel knock-of into a truly creepy demon, adding horns, cloven hooves, and a tail to the mix. I really, really liked this picture, and I still refer to it sometimes (though now I use it more to describe Tayce, as Kazrael has wandered from that image).
At this time, I was also playing Kazrael online on Shards, and this is where is personality and past really began to come alive for me. With the help of a very dear friend I met through Shards, Kazrael solidified into a wonderfully complex personality. Most of the elements I consider a part of Kazrael's lore emerged from using him online as a character. Perhaps, being a god, he was a bit of a villain-sue, but he developed more the more I played him. It helped that the friend I mentioned is also a very talented artist, and she solidified his look on her own, and those are the images I use when I think of Kaz.
The final bit of characterization came from my reading of Changeling: The Lost, and its depiction of the True Fey as minor gods in their own realms. Everything about them reminded me of how I had set Kazrael up, so I moved from having Kazrael be a fallen demon who occasionally used fairy servants to a fairy god. Not much changed, really...the process was more an effort of tightening down the assumptions I'd previously made about the character, and providing a full, coherent backstory of things I had previously been a bit vague about.
What I find most frustrating about 4E is that I can see it includes the D&D game I've always wanted to play, but the game is so lathered in tatical combat rules that I have thus far been unable to coax the game I want out.
I was gonna post my PC earlier tonight, but for some reason it never happened. Now I'm glad I waited.
So yeah! Cosmology! And thornbush muscles! And... Red Text! A good show all around I daresay.
I'm curious if the final boxes are blank because you haven't got all the details finalized yet, or if they're largely irrelevant to a being of this magnitude/ timespan. Just thinking out loud here, but one idea might be to write the three personas as his contacts- It'd be keeping with the idea of 2 allies-His wrath and whimsy, and one enemy- his original self.
This might be the best one so far, if only because he's a such a key part of his own story in a way mere mortals can't be.
1. She's an oddball of a Warforged, standing 4'7'', and having both cat and humanoid female features, in the likeness of the pagan tribe goddess Utezciu. She has a mischievous, arrogant, and lazy personality in homage to her goddess. Many of her tribe's Warforged were modeled after their pagan gods and goddesses.
2. She came from a tribe of wild catfolk who had captured a creation forge and learned of its secrets from bargaining with its keeper in exchange for his life and freedom. These catfolk value their pride's safety and wellbeing over honor or the safety of others.
3. A Warforged named Caladine led a rebellion against their catfolk creators when unequal treatment of the Warforged showed a blatant hypocrisy in the catfolk's creeds. Jaguar and a few others fought on the side of the catfolk, but most of the Warforged converted to Caladine's side.
4. As a result, the catfolk tribe is decimated and scattered across the nations. Jaguar left the other Warforged behind to look for her tribe, who she remains loyal to. To support herself, she thieves upon people who flaunt excess wealth or clearly don't need what she does, and never targets children or those in need. As a result, she has no particular favor toward good or evil, but instead follows her own set of morals defined from the creeds of her tribe.
5. She became fasinated with the concept of a Paladin when she first encountered one in the midst of a robbery. To her tribe, all warriors were holy warriors, but the concept of one devoting himself even further to the cause seemed strong and admirable to her. The confused Paladin answered her questions hesitantly, having cornered her, and the grateful Jaguar returned what she stole before fleeing (using the Paladin's shock as a distraction). From that day forth she determined that she too would devote herself moreso to her goddess than before. In Jaguar's case, this meant more thievery, mischief, and the protection of her allies (which proved relatively few in the streets).
1. Jaguar seeks to reunite with the scattered remnants of her lost catfolk tribe, and will protect any lost member she comes across. If she comes across a catfolk of different origin, there may be momentary confusion.
2. Jaguar seeks vengence upon Caladine, for what in her eyes, was a betrayal of the pride.
1. Jaguar absolutely hates housecats. She views them as weak creatures that mock the proud heritage and warrior nature of a true cat. She finds their status as pets insulting, but is more insulted at the pet than the owner. If the pet is content to remain a pet, then it deserves to be so.
2. While she searches all over for her lost tribe, not all of them may be happy to see her and may be biased against all Warforged after the events that took place.
3. Her goddess, Utezciu, isn't one of the major gods normally worshipped and may actually be a quite powerful and bored fey who harnesses wild magic to grant divine power to her followers. She IS a patron of trickery, either way, and may have actually caused the rebellion Caladine led.
1. Peregrine, a bird-shaped Good-aligned Warforged cleric who fought alongside Jaguar against Caladine. Peregrine is modeled after the catfolk's bird-like goddess of hunt and family, and is actually one of the rare goofups, as he has a female form, but developed a male personality. Not that this matters much to others, but it is a sensitive issue to him personally. His location is currently unknown at this time, but if Jaguar finds him he could offer services with his divine magic and rituals.
2. Jasper Limberlocks, Lawful Good Halfling Paladin of Bahamut. He's the Paladin Jaguar met in a back-alley one day and inadvertently inspired her own Paladin career. He's laid back most of the time, but goes to work wherever he sees injustice and evil strike. He is wary of Jaguar, but not openly hostile unless he sees her commit an obvious crime in his eyes. Otherwise, the rogue who asked about the ways paladinship and returned her stolen goods makes him curious more than anything. Under the right conditions, he could become an actual friend, but is an occasional nemesis due to her thieving ways.
3. Caladine, Good-aligned Barbarian/Feylock. One of the older Warforged from his tribe, he routed the catfolk who treated the Warforged in their tribe as second-class citizens, drove them away, and claimed their land for his people. He claims the inspiration came to him in a dream where Avandra granted him the power to break free. This is dubious because a. Warforged don't sleep, let alone dream, and b. the origin of his powers doesn't seem to be divine. Nevertheless, it's what Caladine believes, and because of the countless catfolk killed in the rebellion, Jaguar has marked him as an enemy of the pride, and by proxy, HER enemy. His appearance resembles a humanoid lion with a great mane made of stone.
1. Jaguar remembers the first sound of blades drawing and catfolk screaming as the liberation battle began. Lacking a true nose, she could not smell the blood or smoke, but she remembers the sight of it all too well.
2. Jaguar recalls the first time she stepped into an actual city, and all the strange and wonderous prey-er, people she saw for the first time. Not to mention the shinies. Oh goodness, the shinies.
3. Jaguar will never forget the time she met the Paladin who first inspired her to become a more devout warrior herself.
I was gonna post my PC earlier tonight, but for some reason it never happened. Now I'm glad I waited.
So yeah! Cosmology! And thornbush muscles! And... Red Text! A good show all around I daresay.
I'm curious if the final boxes are blank because you haven't got all the details finalized yet, or if they're largely irrelevant to a being of this magnitude/ timespan. Just thinking out loud here, but one idea might be to write the three personas as his contacts- It'd be keeping with the idea of 2 allies-His wrath and whimsy, and one enemy- his original self.
This might be the best one so far, if only because he's a such a key part of his own story in a way mere mortals can't be.
The boxes are blank because it's 7 am and I have to work today. I have details that go there, but this was a massive undertaking to begin with (I started this monster sometime around 1 am) so I'm going to bed before I finish everything. I like your idea, though, and I might use it, though I was planning on a few other "contacts" such as cults and Exarchs and the like.
What I find most frustrating about 4E is that I can see it includes the D&D game I've always wanted to play, but the game is so lathered in tatical combat rules that I have thus far been unable to coax the game I want out.
