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Ironing the laundry...characters?

Posted: Thu Nov 13, 2014 12:05 pm
by Kaote Bruchedaine
I've been looking over some of the roleplay threats and spying a few I'd like to jump into but before I do I figured I would hope for some help in ironing out some of my characters before I stick my neck out. So I figured since over the past couple days I have already been sticking my neck out and risking the chance to look foolish I may as well just go all out and just do it right.

So I have a been doing small scale RPs, mostly one on one with these characters. That being said when it's one on one people tend to be more forgiving of design flaws than when it's in a group. So I figure I should lay the characters out here and see what is said about them before I try to inject them into some plots. Some of these characters I know won't quite be welcomed here or won't fit in quite well but I figure if I am going to pull out a couple characters to get advice I might as well do all the laundry at once.

That being said I intend to not only state a bit about the character as it is now, I am also going to explain my thought processes behind how the character came to be. Not all of what is said below will be relevant anymore but will explain a bit of my thought processes that lead to the (final?) results.

[b:3w15ybug]Kaote Bruche'Daine[/b:3w15ybug] - My primary muse, the very character I tend to think through even as I read the novels. There have been more than a few times I have had to go back and re-read a couple pages because my mind gets so lost in the 'What would Kaote do here?' line of thought that my mind forgets to progress the words my eyes are scanning. This will likely be the character I will have the hardest time making changes to but on the other hand when I start RPing here it will be my main as well. This is my oldest of my existing characters I still care to play. Others came before but they got dropped or gutted as my knowledge expanded and I found that some of those older characters had such large flaws that they actually conflicted with canon.

Kaote's first incarnation was born with the concept of a refugee fleeing a massacre with a handful of other fairly common soldier/adventure types and simply happening across an Eilistraee glade purely by chance while still being chanced by a horde of <insert generic enemy here> and thus, end up making their stand fighting side by side with those within the glade. After all what sort of decent socially respectable adventurer would continue to flee while knowing that doing so is going to bring doom upon innocents that just happen to be in the way?

That incarnation was played out once, and in that scene. It flopped and was shelved so I could work on it more. The next thing I did with that incarnation is come up with the idea that I wanted him to have a tower shield that was slotted. When his Bastard Sword was fitted into the slot the shield could absorb magics or energy and then discharge it through the short in a sort of ray attack. Yes, anime inspired. But no matter how I folded it, twisted it, tore it, or glued it back together I could never get the shield&sword combo to be explained or justified in quite a way I could find myself pleased with. So this incarnation was finally shelved with no intentions of ever returning to it.

So I went on to make the next incarnation but I swore I wanted to somehow make sure a tower shield was included in this character at all costs. So instead I decided I would start with the shield and see just how I might be able to build a character around it. So I came up with a shield I loved without making it an actual powerful relic. Now I truly don't know much about the pen and paper or table top but I think my final results is quite acceptable as a minor relic. The final results was a Tower Shield with three ability I believe to be minor enough that most should find no issue with. Firstly, the shield itself will regenerate from damage. The second ability would allow it's owner to communicate with Eilistraee; not unlike various prayer tools I've heard are almost common. The third and final ability is a minor illusion. An image of Eilistraee is on the face of the shield in mid dance. When the shield is in a person's line of sight but is not the focus of their attention the maiden appears to actually be dancing across the shield but remains motionless once focused on. I expected the shield would have some people bickering at me about it being any of a dozen problems. But as I look at it I can't see anything that would give Kaote any unfair advantage in battle unless his opponent can't fight with a dancing woman on the shield.

Next came the task of building the character around the shield. At this point i came upon more issues of throwing away so many ideas it was frustrating. But eventually I came to the one question. How does the human come into the following of Eilistraee. My idea finally came to me while reading The Thousand Orcs. My answer was to have him as a survivor of village orcs steam rolled. Not specifically in that novel, but just in general. So then I began building the story with orcs coming against a human frontier town. The type of frontier town you would logically expect to exist. Rather than to be made up of farmers daughters and drunken idiots it was mostly semi-retired adventuring types so when a large orcish raid comes down on the village there was a real fight rather than a fish shoot. Battle turning upon the rival of an Eilistraeen Hunting Party. In the wake of the battle more than a few orphans were left behind, Kaote among them. Kaote was then to be adopted by one of the hunting party.

Old enough to have a reasonable idea of what had happened but young enough to have not fallen victim to the racial prejudices that are so easily accidentally passed from parent to child. Now as for her adopted mother, I have deliberately come up with very little for her. I have simple since assumed that she was a convert not an Eilistraeen born. I have also since tossed the idea in the pot that her heart was never quite into the hunts. (PUT AWAY YOUR PITCHFORKS!) So while she felt she was obligated to contribute something to the religious community it need not be her own sword. So upon her adopting Kaote she gave up the hunts and instead turned her focus to the idea of training and guiding the next generation of followers through slightly most domestic means. The mother has never been given a name, or a former house, or a former city of origin. Nor even how long she had been converted or her age. Though seeing as she is looking a bit towards the idea of retirement perhaps...

Raised by a Drow mother, formerly a priestess of Lolth, I have been of the opinion that he would be taught a little bit of thought from both cultures. Not any of the religious aspects but a bit of the mood of competition. Taught that as a human training up in a Drow colony he will be shunned and spurned by most of his peers and that in the end he should be expected to ignore them for in the end his duty will be less about pleasing his peers and instead protecting Eilistraee's interests. To do what is right and just even if it means some feelings or local laws get bruised along the way.

It was at this point that my lack of knowledge tended to, and still tends to, disallow me to give the character a total finish. Thus leaving it somewhat open ended. I have humored various forms of "graduation" depending on who I am RPing with and what the mood is there. As I understand it Eilistraeen groups are to sparse and spread out to justify a formal school so it's quite likely that each colony, group or what not has their own 'coming of age' or 'graduation' method which may even be dynamic depending on the needs of the moment. But there are a couple I've humored myself perhaps the most reasonable of which would have students pit against each other in exhibition matches. Win or lose does not matter for the goal of which is to impress one of the priestesses enough to have her be willing to take you out on the hunt with her.

Balls. That got longer than I expected.

[b:3w15ybug]Alu'kaun[/b:3w15ybug] I maybe spelling that name wrong, it's been an insanely long time since I did anything with this character other than dust off the spot on the mental shelf where it sits.
Alu'kaun is a character I expect might get crucified here bit I'll put it out anyway.

Alu'kaun was built as a Drow Quasi-deity. Some of you may recall a couple years ago I asked what people thought of the idea of Quasi-diety characters which lead to a conversation about Hercules and left me dumbfounded in the dust. This character was born from a single idea and never got fleshed out much. The idea that made me want to play this character was that I wanted to see a character that could actually serve as a messenger for Eilistraee. Lolth has 100,001 handmaidens where as Eilistraee has... Veladorn. Now since Eilistraee tends to have a more hands on leadership style meaning receiving a messenger might be decidedly less dramatic for an Eilsitraeen Priestess than having a Yochlol show up would be for a Lolthite. Even so I still had it in my mind it might be a decent thing for there to be some sort of 'right hand' she could send to be of assistance when intervention is needed but showing up personally is not feasible.

Now as a Quasi-deity that would mean he would require one deity as a parent. At the time I had read something I don't believe to be canon about some deities seeing fit to personally damage the dignity of ranking followers of other religions. That, while as dark as ever, was what I used for what little backstory I do have for this character. With Vhaeraun as his father as his mother being an unwilling Eilistraeen Priestess is how I justified his coming into existence. The birth having cost his mother her life he was first inspected to insure he would have unfettered free will. TO make sure there was nothing to bind him to Vhaeraun's control. Once that was insured he was raised...By Eilistraee? By the Priestesses? I never bothered to decide because by the time I got this far I came to realize it would be insanely difficult to get RP for this character and most likely any further work would be self gratification wasted for it would never see the light of day.

[b:3w15ybug]Kel’Tyrr Baenre[/b:3w15ybug] Now I know some of you groaned at the previous character and more of you will groan at this one still. My only excuse I care to come up with is I spend a lot of time sitting around wondering ‘what if’ rather than actually sitting down and RPing things out. Well that and I was deliberately trying to design a character that had higher than normal odds of sharing a blanket with a Lolthite priestess.

Kel’Tyrr was born from yet another somewhat obscure ideas I found while prancing through various disconnected pieces of canon(fanon?) lore I happened to be reading. In this case it was something related to the exceptional rare case in which a ‘chosen’ is born with a relic or some such thing. Literally born holding the item. I seem to believe the reference I saw was indeed referring to Lolth or perhaps over the years my memory has been obscured with my own thoughts twisting what I read so long ago.

The relic item in this case end up being a dagger I have come to call Drider’s Fang. A Semi-sentient weapon much like a Priestess’ scourge that also secretes a sort of Drider Venom. Stealing a bit from Kaote I figured it might be nice if this dagger allowed him to hear Lolth’s call. Part of the reason for all of this was I wanted to try to produce a character that could gain the ear of a Lolthite Priestess without being overly powerful to the point of being a pinnacle of destruction to be swung at will. Admittedly I was thinking of Triel herself as the target while thinking this over.

So with the idea of earning the favor of a priestess in mind, and the relic in mind I looked at what I had so far. Being able to hear Lolth would mean the Priestesses might listen to him a bit more but still would not gain him favor. Having a relic dagger like that would get them to avoid whipping him quite as much but in the end would not earn him favor. So I had to give him something to offer that would be unique. So I then came to the idea that perhaps Yvonnel herself could never truly figure out if he was a blessing or curse to her house so he was sent away. Thus the idea was born for him to become a one man supply route between Baenre and the surface. Take money from Beanre and head to the surface. Find what house Baenre wanted from the surface world, buy it if it’s for sale and steal it if it’s not.

As for Eilistraeen interaction.. Obviously it was never my first intention with this character but about half the RPs I have done with this character has been with Eilistraeen character so I have since decided I could make this possible through making sure he negotiates for his life by speaking from his wallet rather than his dagger. I fairly well figure even though he has a large investment in the wellbeing of his house if he is quick with words and slow with the knife then perhaps he can stand to make a profit off such encounters. Trade a map of some lower ranking house for a handful of wands that while common on the surface just might be rare back home, as well as his freedom of course.

At one point I also decided I wanted to make him Heterochromatic simply because the idea fascinated me at the time. One eye yellow, the other eye ice blue. And yes the Yellow eye was a deliberate nod to Jarlaxle partially because at the time one partner was bickering at me for teasing her with a character that was like Jarlaxle but not just going all the way and playing Jarlaxle for her.

Kel’Tyrr 2.0 was born one day in which I had planned to toss the whole traveling merchant/thief thing out and instead make him a priest of Lolth but that idea never grew beyond a 5 minute conversation for the partner I was supposed to do that for disappeared forever.

Re: Ironing the laundry...characters?

Posted: Fri Nov 14, 2014 2:18 am
by Bhaern Quel
All interesting ideas, though deities do not tend to fit in well.

As for play, Yes there are many things that started and some lasted fairly long. Alas there have not been much active play recently. Some of the plays you have looked at had a last post a year ago or longer. Many of the players likely have not logged in the last three months, if not longer.

I would like to see some role play pick up, however right now I , it appears, likely the only person that will role play with you is unless traffic picks up. There clearly are a few that might interest you, but depending on which role play you want to revive it clearly would need some adjustment for time.