Guard-Nah. He's presented as 20th-level only because that's how I build all my characters. If I were to play him, I'd want to start as a 1st-level fighter/1st-level druid with the following backstory:
Originally he was created to serve a very wealthy individual as a private and personal carriage driver with an inbuilt bodyguarding functionality. The wealthy individual was a Khoravar of House Medani with the Mark of Detection. She was a consummate negotiator who enriched herself by taking tiny percentage shares of large trade deals that she facilitated and which had an ongoing element. By the time she was thirty years of age, she had amassed an income of thousands of gold coins a month that would continue unabated into perpetuity, as long as the deals continued.
She also had a passion for exploring her fey ancestry, and so when a curious offer was made to her to negotiate an alliance between a Valenar sage and the emissary of an Archfey, she had Guard constructed specifically to bring her to this auspicious meeting. The event was held at a grand structure in the jungles of Xen'drik. Luminaries of the Valenar were in attendance and they all took their rightful places, based on station, prestige and honour, around the two massive menhirs upon which sat a plinth stone. Mystical runes of giant-kind adorned the monoliths but no-one seemed to know exactly what it was, or where the emissaries of the Archfey were or when they would be arriving.
Guard can't recall much after his arrival with his mistress. He recalls large creatures laying waste to the Valenar host and having his limbs torn off, but other than that, it was his first few months of being alive only to then drift off into an unconscious bliss and awake many years later, covered in vines, moss, funghi and various burrowing insects. He was awoken by a prodding gnome who desperately needed to bathe and was covered in almost as many 'growths' as he was. The gnome muttered strange and random things but was kind enough to use some sort of magic to regrow his limbs and then promptly disappeared into the undergrowth.
With his mistress deceased, he didn't quite know what to do with himself. So he just... stood. A year, two, three, he's not quite sure, went by with the gnome randomly appearing and disappearing every few months to lambast him about improper timing, fey meddlings, and portals. He started sprouting small growths and harboured a nesting bird species of some type for awhile. It wasn't until a couple of monkey-like creatures started treating him like a god that he decided enough was enough, and so he told them to go have their sex rituals elsewhere; to his mild amusement and the monkey's great shock, they understood him and they ran off screaming about the end of the world. When the gnome came by again, a few days later, he decided to strike up a conversation to which the gnome seemed entirely unperturbed by.
The pair had a frictious relationship and squabbled about pretty much everything but from the gnome, Guard learned all about the world and its creatures. For several years, they tended to the animals and plants around the structure. They weeded, killed off parasitic species, did some controlled burns, etc. It was a very mundane existence where next to nothing exciting occurred however given that he had no other meaningful experiences to draw on, he had very little to compare it to, and so resigned himself to continuing in it, right up until the portal exploded into existence and the gnome said, "FINALLY!" and jumped through it.
This left Guard with a choice of which his decision is his most significant regret to this day: he followed the gnome. Now he's in a completely different land with people who have never seen his type before and where they have stupid names for their cities like Water Deep. He's trying to figure out and find his way, but the gnome was nowhere to be found and the portal had closed behind him, so he just goes around protecting plants and animals like he did before, mumbling about being 'too old for this shit'. When asked how old he is, he repeats what the gnome told him, only because he wouldn't otherwise know, and when he tells them that he's 2,232 years old, they balk and act incredulous to which he then replies, 'If you weren't going to believe me then why did you bother me with the question?'
Guard-Nah. He's presented as 20th-level only because that's how I build all my characters. If I were to play him, I'd want to start as a 1st-level fighter/1st-level druid with the following backstory:
Originally he was created to serve a very wealthy individual as a private and personal carriage driver with an inbuilt bodyguarding functionality. The wealthy individual was a Khoravar of House Medani with the Mark of Detection. She was a consummate negotiator who enriched herself by taking tiny percentage shares of large trade deals that she facilitated and which had an ongoing element. By the time she was thirty years of age, she had amassed an income of thousands of gold coins a month that would continue unabated into perpetuity, as long as the deals continued.
She also had a passion for exploring her fey ancestry, and so when a curious offer was made to her to negotiate an alliance between a Valenar sage and the emissary of an Archfey, she had Guard constructed specifically to bring her to this auspicious meeting. The event was held at a grand structure in the jungles of Xen'drik. Luminaries of the Valenar were in attendance and they all took their rightful places, based on station, prestige and honour, around the two massive menhirs upon which sat a plinth stone. Mystical runes of giant-kind adorned the monoliths but no-one seemed to know exactly what it was, or where the emissaries of the Archfey were or when they would be arriving.
Guard can't recall much after his arrival with his mistress. He recalls large creatures laying waste to the Valenar host and having his limbs torn off, but other than that, it was his first few months of being alive only to then drift off into an unconscious bliss and awake many years later, covered in vines, moss, funghi and various burrowing insects. He was awoken by a prodding gnome who desperately needed to bathe and was covered in almost as many 'growths' as he was. The gnome muttered strange and random things but was kind enough to use some sort of magic to regrow his limbs and then promptly disappeared into the undergrowth.
With his mistress deceased, he didn't quite know what to do with himself. So he just... stood. A year, two, three, he's not quite sure, went by with the gnome randomly appearing and disappearing every few months to lambast him about improper timing, fey meddlings, and portals. He started sprouting small growths and harboured a nesting bird species of some type for awhile. It wasn't until a couple of monkey-like creatures started treating him like a god that he decided enough was enough, and so he told them to go have their sex rituals elsewhere; to his mild amusement and the monkey's great shock, they understood him and they ran off screaming about the end of the world. When the gnome came by again, a few days later, he decided to strike up a conversation to which the gnome seemed entirely unperturbed by.
The pair had a frictious relationship and squabbled about pretty much everything but from the gnome, Guard learned all about the world and its creatures. For several years, they tended to the animals and plants around the structure. They weeded, killed off parasitic species, did some controlled burns, etc. It was a very mundane existence where next to nothing exciting occurred however given that he had no other meaningful experiences to draw on, he had very little to compare it to, and so resigned himself to continuing in it, right up until the portal exploded into existence and the gnome said, "FINALLY!" and jumped through it.
This left Guard with a choice of which his decision is his most significant regret to this day: he followed the gnome. Now he's in a completely different land with people who have never seen his type before and where they have stupid names for their cities like Water Deep. He's trying to figure out and find his way, but the gnome was nowhere to be found and the portal had closed behind him, so he just goes around protecting plants and animals like he did before, mumbling about being 'too old for this shit'. When asked how old he is, he repeats what the gnome told him, only because he wouldn't otherwise know, and when he tells them that he's 2,232 years old, they balk and act incredulous to which he then replies, 'If you weren't going to believe me then why did you bother me with the question?'
"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."
― Oscar Wilde.
"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."
― Oscar Wilde.
That is an amazing back story! I love it!
Professional computer geek
I like it! Epic picture too!