So this is my fist ever character and our campaign is basically demons have taken over the world. So here is my first attempt at a character and was wondering what you guys thought of my backstory or if you could help me with it a little bit. I was thinking about doing a sorcerer w/ poison as my Ancestry (did i do this right? lol)
Andrew Oswalt was a treasure hunter and explorer. He traveled the world looking for some of the most storied and lost artifacts. One time while exploring the Caves of Zumakalis for an ancient bonesaber he stumbled off a ledge. Andrew survived the fall because he fell into a lake at the bottom of the cave.
He realized that there was a grave at the bottom of the lake. Andrew swam to the bottom of the lake and found a large snake headstone and with his small shovel and a couple of trips up and down for breath he uncovered a chest. He returned to the surface were he opened the chest with his ol trusty crowbar Betsy to find an old copper and green book that was wrapped in a lock, unfortunately it was not a lock but a snake similar looking to the headstone and bit Andrew in the neck.
Andrew fell to the ground and was immediately paralyzed and slipping, into cardiac arrest saw the snake that bit him slither out of the chest and turn bright green and luminescent and vanished into the book. The book then opened. Andrew astonished with what he saw and dieing, closed his eyes and prepared himself to die…... only to strangely awaken what felt like a few moments later.
He checked his neck and found no snake bite, but did find the book laying opened covered in dust and no snake. Confused if what he saw was real he kicked the book to check for snakes. Andrew was terrified of snakes. He picked up the book and saw that the text of the book was written in Draconic, which oddly enough he could translate. When he began to read the book the text would become translatable only to him. He also knew this book like the back of his hand as if he had read the book a million times. It was bound to him.
This book once belonged to Zumakalis herself an ancient Draconic sorcerer from the jungle known for her art in poison and love for nature. This book contains powerful spells that Andrew now had knowledge of, to fight Demons that had once destroyed Zumakalis, her jungle and people and this was her dying gift to whoever found her tomb and scripter.
Andrew Oswalt did not know that he had gone missing for 40 years, He didn't believe in demons or that they existed and had never seen one but also did not question the writings of Zumakalis and the knowledge of them that he now has. When Andrew finally found his way out of the cave he was stunned to see massive army of demon soldiers marching on the old grounds of Zumakalis. Andrew knew what he had to do. He had to stop the demons, not just for Zumakalis but his world as well.
Daerthel Barreldregs; Hill Dwarf Way of the Drunken Master monk
Owned and operated the Beerbeard Brewery & Tavern, the most popular bar in town. The citizens loved the tavern and the tavern keeper and people made the trek from neighboring towns just to stock up on Daerthel’s ales and liquors and share a story with the friendly proprietor. That is until the orcs came. Wreaking havoc and destruction the orcs laid waste to the town, including the Beerbeard. Daerthel saw horrors that day he can never forget. He barely escaped with his life but his life’s work was reduced to ash. Limping his way into the hills under the cover of the smoke from his past life burning around him, he found shelter in a nearby monastery where he tried to find a way to deal with his trauma through asceticism and discipline but nothing helped except the bottom of a glass of ale. Seeing the futility of this endeavor he wanders off to find meaning, and mead, elsewhere, taking with him the remnants of his training and the ghosts of his past.
Lia never had a good life. She was shunned by her father from the day she was born. But that's what happens when you are the bastard child of a High Elf lord and his human servant. She spent her youth in a large room with very little to keep her entertained. She was around ten or so when she began to sneak out of the room to explore. The girl never adventured too far from the room, just in case she needed to hurry back. Over the next twelve years, Lia became incredibly skilled in her sneaking, which in turn made he more brazen. Not only would she sneak out now, she would also steal some things. It was during one of these excursions that she was caught. And by none other than her father. He was furious at her blatant lack of respect for him and the people she stole from. And not wanting to tarnish his name, Lucian exiled both Lia and her mother.The young woman felt bad for causing this to her mother, but she was told not to worry And within a year, Chein had found a job working as a bar maid at the local tavern.
It was during this time that Lia's mother met her future husband. He was an adventurer that had stopped in the town for a couple of days. The man had left to finish what he needed to do and soon returned to Eck River. The two were soon wed and Lia's sister was born not long after. When Mei (Lia's younger sister) turned eight, Lia began to teach her everything she knew about being sneaky. About five or six years after that, their mother passed away. Their father then raised them until they were both old enough to live on their own. During this time, the two joined the local thieves guild and were mentored by it's leader. Now that Lia is a full member, she decided to follow in her adoptive father's footsteps and become and adventurer.
Here is the backstory for my backup character. It is not fully finished and is all subject to change but it is what I've got.
Ben Baronton (Name still up for change) was abandoned when he was young. He was taken in by an orphanage for a few years before he left to try and make a living by stealing. 2 years after this his luck ran out and he was seen stealing from a Rick noble. After being chased by the noble's guards for a while he was visited by a strange figure with glowing eyes. He said that he could save him if he was to give him something.
A year after that he saw the man again while he was traveling down a road at midnight. The man held a chain out infront of him. As he touched the chain his mind was filled with visions of a powerful evil. He suddenly had an overwhelming urge to summon his new master, which he has been trying to do ever since.
Our DM is still working out the logistics of the world and where certain towns and cities are, so this is a little vague but I'm still proud of it :>
This will be my first long term D&D character in about two years too, so I decided to go pretty foundational in terms of race and class and make a Halfling Fighter so I can get back into the swing of things
Her name is Orna Leagallow, and she is a very very small Halfling. Like 2'7" tall Halfling. I very much imagine her to be the Tyrion Lannister of the party. Small in stature, but loyal and feisty once you have done enough to win her trust. The one thing you first notice about her outward appearance aside from her height is a long scar that runs down the middle of her forehead, across the bridge of her nose and down her left cheek.
Her core family consists of her parents and an older brother of two years. She got her scar on her face in her early teenage years, when a member of a gang that's based near the village she lives in broke into her family's house, the bottom floor of which is the blacksmith shop she spent almost her entire childhood in learning how to forge and fight with various bladed weapons. She even made the shortswords she fights with herself in that very shop. She had gone upstairs, into the floor of the shop the family uses as their sleeping quarters, after an argument with her brother and had been in her room when she heard the door being broken down, yelling and sounds of a struggle. She crept to the stairs with one of her shortswords in her hand, saw her brother protecting her mum and someone in black fighting with her dad. All she could think of was leaping to help, brandishing her sword and running to her dad's aid. The attacker responded by whipping a dagger he had taken off of the display on the wall across her face, essentially slashing her face open. Her parents and her brother all told her to flee, and so she did. She took off over to a neighboring city, got someone to heal her face and tried to start making a living. She hasn't been back home since she left, as she's afraid that either she'll find her family dead or the gang will still be there and waiting to kill her. Although she'll slowly become more determined to find her family and defeat he gang as the story goes on.
I'm very excited to play around with her smithing background and more of her personality and story as I get more information about the world and figure out her backstory more but I hope you enjoy what I have so far :>
I wanted to share my first character created through the D&D Beyond.
Rasmuss:
I was delivered to the school as a young child, the school was the only family I ever had. None of the students at the school ever knew our real parents; the school was the only home we had. My teacher had a connection with the Dwarf settlement near the school, and I would accompany her on her many visits. We were taught that the laws of Magic were greater than the laws of the land, it was our role to seek answers to questions, to always ask: 'What am I not seeing?', and it wasn't Magic that was destructive, it was the person using it.
One day, I was sent on a task from my Master to deliver correspondence to the Dwarf clan chief.
On my return, the school was on fire. The teachers, my friends, and my Master were all dead. I collected what I could and left for the only other place I felt comfortable; the Dwarf settlement. They gave me sanctuary and allowed me time to heal make a plan. I don't know who was behind it, or why the school was destroyed, but I will find those responsible and make them pay for their crimes.
In the meantime, I need to hide and keep moving between towns and villages. Searching for clues that will one day lead me to the answers I seek.
I'm new to the game. In the middle of my first campaign ever. But I've been starting more for upcoming games. This is my favorite though. She's an Aarakocra rogue. Her name is Raven "Jynxie" Clawtorn. She's never felt like she fit in and was always treated as an outsider from the other kids. Calling her a jynx, hence the nickname "Jynxie". She looks nothing like the others with her jet black feathers, and she's more mischievous by nature and finds trouble easily. She found out that she was "adopted" when her parents came across a destroyed Raven Birkdfolk village. There was no other survivors, and her egg was the only one left undestroyed because it was hidden and protected under her birth mothers body as her last effort to protect her child before her death. Her mother was wearing an amulet. So her "parents" took the amulet along with the egg to hopefully find answers to her past when she was old enough. But now since she found this out earlier, she's on her adventure on her own to discover who she is.
It seems like a lot of us in this thread are new to the game! Well, here’s the attempt of a noob who’s only recently started learning the lore. If there are inconsistencies, then I’d be grateful to anyone who pointed them out.
The character is a half-elf warlock named Normanir (call him “Norm” at your own peril). His human mother and wood elf father tried to make things work out for his sake, but his father was unreliable and unable to adapt to life in a town and eventually left. The human side of his family provided a stable and secure household, but their strict rules and mores broke whatever fey, free-spirited aspects Normanir had in his personality. He wasn’t a noble, but he grew up educated and refined.
His illusions were shattered when he found out that his family performed demonic rituals in their basement. In an inverse of the “my family died tragically” trope, Normanir killed his own family - not because demons are evil, but because he’d been raised to hate chaos and couldn’t accept his family’s inconsistency. Instead of contacting forces of good, he proactively made a pact with a mid-tier pit fiend and negotiated so deftly that he ended out with a better end of the deal than the devil did.
He’s spent the subsequent years roaming for demonic cults to destroy, believing in the Blood War like a true zealot. He occasionally shatters the faith of an odd celestial-worshipper here or there, but his unreasonable over-reaction to any mention of the Abyss means he’d even cooperate with lawful good-aligned (though not chaotic) cleric or paladins if doing so helped him to eradicate demonic influence.
Could use some help creating a backstory for my character I'm pretty new to D&D and this is what I have so far so if anyone wants to finish it out for me I would greatly appreciate it and you can change what ever but hes a gnome artificer.
Mogs a tinkerer by trade spent many of his young years building warforged machines with his mentor Sylvis. But there was a trouble when the warforged were complete for the people who wanted them the buyers killed my mentor and thought they had killed me as well and left the shop looking like someone had ransacked the place. now all that I have left is my mentors pocket watch that once was filled with life and would turn into a tiny clockwork dragon and fly around the shop but it hasnt had life in it since he was murdered and his journal is the only other thing left with ideas, blueprints for creations he never had the chance to build and every now and then notes about interactions with other people around town or that he met in the world in other cities who owed him favors/coin.
Another moderately new player here, though at the moment I'm DM:ing for my group. This is a great thread, very nice to see other peoples ideas and motivations for characters. Here's my tabaxi wizard, Ra'shu White-eye, which I'll probably play when I return to being a player if our campaign allows it.
Ra’shu hails from the northern tundra where she was part of a hunter-gatherer tribe of tabaxi. She was a shaman for her people, guiding and counseling them and keeping their traditions alive. One day hunters of the tribe brought three injured humans to their camp. They were nearly frozen to death but were brought back from the brink by the expert care of the tabaxi. One of them was a skilled wizard and a researcher of ancient cultures. To show his appreciation, he taught his language to Ra’shu and others who were willing to learn while his group recovered and shared stories from his home far to the south.
After a few weeks rest the humans were strong enough to travel back to the south and so they departed. The wizard, who had grown fond of Ra’shu, gave one of his spellbooks to White-eye as thanks for saving him and his companions. She studied the book with feverish interest as she had never encountered anything like this before: spells to produce fire with a word and a gesture, to turn stone to wood, to move objects from a distance with a thought. A wondrous world opened to her as she delved deeper to the secrets the small tome held. After a few years, she had learned everything the single tome had to offer. Her thirst for arcane knowledge had only grown and, with a wistful farewell to her tribe and family, she wandered to the southern lands to find the wizard, so she could learn more about magic, with the dog-eared spellbook with her full of her own scribbles and notes.
A year-and-a-half passed as she travelled south, until one day she found herself at the gates of Markhul, a wealthy trade city with two large rivers flowing through it. In the city, there was Tower, an academy for wizards and mages and of arcane knowledge where she finally met the familiar wizard. He was delighted to see his friend and the passion White Eye had accumulated for the arcane arts. After pulling a few favors, Ra'shu was accepted to the academy as a student. For the next seven years, she immersed herself in her studies, focusing on material and elemental manipulation through arcane means. The more she learned, the more her thirst for knowledge grew and she started to ponder larger and deeper questions. In the end, her questions boiled down to a single, comprehensive mystery: The nature of the multiverse and the manipulation of it. Unable to find a satisfactory answer inside the walls of the Tower, he embarked on a mission to find forgotten magic and artifacts in hopes to finally unravel the deepest nature of magic. In addition, Ra'shu began to search for a way to extend her natural lifespan: she had only a couple of decades left to live before she became too old to travel and her quest would be impossible to be finished during a single lifetime.
White Eye is usually friendly and polite, respecting the weird customs others may have, although she has no patience for rude behavior. He follows the local laws and is ready to enforce them if necessary. As a former shaman of her tribe, he is used to advising others, even when they do not really want it, and is always ready to support and guide her friends and loved ones. Above all, he is fiercely loyal and goes out of her way to keep his word.
White Eye, or Ra’shu to her close friends, is an old tabakshi with a thick gray fur with small dark stripes and a cream-coloured belly and throat. His ears are black and pointed with small tufts of fur on top. Her right eye is the colour of amber while his left eye is milky white and blind. A thick long tail trails behind her, often betraying his emotions even when she tries to hide them. While traveling he wears rough leather armour with light fur trimmings whereas in larger towns and cities she wears simple but well-made, baggy clothes. In official meetings, like council meetings or when talking with a high-ranking noble, he wears her blue-and-silver arcane college robes.
He's a forest gnome wizard. He grew up in a large family as the youngest child. He has two obsessions in his life: Magical knowledge and fame. Like many gnomes, he also has a lust for adventure. As soon as he was able, Zebedee decided to leave home to explore the world.
Along the way, he started writing his own travel book called "Gnomeward Bound: An Incredible Journey" The book is mainly exaggerations, outright lies and claiming his companions deeds as his own.
He's a skilled wizard, but tends to like showing off with his magic in combat, picking something that may look good rather than actually thinking tactically and using his spells wisely (Using mage hands to throw an Intellect Devourer around rather than just killing it). He doesn't really think about the consequences of his actions. He's greedy, especially when it comes to magical items.
So far, he's managed to alienate his entire team by claiming credit for their first victory (Saying they helped "a little") and trying to take the role as leader. He's not a bad guy, despite his faults. He's friendly (but arrogant) quickly step in to help someone in trouble, even if it's partly so he can lap up the praise and attention afterwards.
Tayn of Darkwood. Lvl 10 human Life Cleric of Lathander. Retired.
Ikram Sahir ibn Malik al-Sayyid Ra'ad, Second Son of the House of Ra'ad, Defender of the Burning Sands. Lvl 9 Brass Dragonborn Sorcerer + Greater Fire Elemental Devil.
Viktor Gavriil. Lvl 20 White Dragonborn Grave Cleric, of Kurgan the God of Death.
Well, I am new here on beyond. But here for those who are interested, here are the story of my changeling dual class Monk/Sorcerer.
Light shone on this one, and woke one up. On a stone altar with a bleeding right arm, and with the thin air of mountains filling ones lungs. Scattered around the Altar was corpses, some blackened and some bloody. They look around and saw no one alive other than themselves. But......who are they? Vix? That is the name we know are ours, and a look on the armor of the dead ones, reflect what we are. White skin and hair, with black holes for eyes and a blank face like the one a child would draw with their finger on white sand. We are a changeling.
But other than that, we do not know. We have knowledge of how to use the power of Ki, how to use magic and how to talk and read a few languages, but how we got that knowledge or the history of ones past, this one does not know. How?
The corpses are of humans, high elves, dragonborn and a single other changeling like ourselves, but dead. Signs of a battle and scorch marks of an explosion could bee seen. markings in red for a ritual that this one does not know. So we take the round things of silver that we can find on the dead, for we know somehow that they are used as payment, and then put the corpses on a pile to burn, for this one feel that is right.
We journey down the mountain until we reach the bottom, and are greeted by the great blue of the sea, for we are at the coast. And thus, we follow it. After hours has passed, we see a village and a cabin on the outskirts with a single fishing boat outside. We hesitate, but hunger wins. And so we use our powers and make a face of a young human, one that looks so innocent. And we knock.
And elder couple of man and woman we think? Opens the door, with curious looks on us. "Hello, I am a traveler with nowhere to go and with a hunger taking hold of me. Can I bother to ask of you for some food? We can pay in silver..."
The couple smiles and let us in, and says we do not have to pay for food. And they see our wound and the woman treat our wound after we have eaten. "Why would you show such kindness to me? You do not know me" Their answer was that they believe that someone so polite could not be bad. We feel shame in tricking them with our false face, and decide to tell them the truth, all of it. Their shock over seeing our true face and hearing what little we remember caused them worry and fear. But in the end they said. "You have a new beginning, so start a new and make it your own. If you want, you can live here with us until you feel that you want to continue searching for answers." And we are touched by their kindness, so we ask if we can stay? The answer be a yes.
We have now lived here for 2 years. They taught us how to sail and fish, and we on their behest have taken the face of the same young man we had been when we knocked on their door. We love the sea and we love the life we have in the village. As we go out a and sing and drink with the other fishers. We laugh in their face when they lose in games against us. And the music we sing with them sounds horrible as we drink that sour drink, but who cares! We are free and happy, beating up any ******* who dares insult our friends.
Going to the city to sell our fish with the elder couple is always fun. We see new races, and can use your knowledge in language. And when no one is looking, we change our race to try and sell it to others of the same race, as they trust their own more. Or we turn into beautiful men or women and seduce blushing wifes and husbands charmed by our looks, And it is damn fun to see them fall for our tricks, hook, line and sinker! HAHAHAHA! Gold we go home with, laughing over how easily a smile from a beautiful person can make selling so easy.
But our new life threatened, as a new lord takes over the fief, rising taxes for city and village both. We see how guards search through our friends house, in search of gold. We saw how they found nothing that could pay for their taxes. But the guards do not believe our friend, and cut him down when they do not hear what they want to hear. We look in shook, and want to kill those ********! But we cant. Not without putting the kind couple in danger. So we kept on walking with teeth grinding.
Another and another of of the fishermen gets killed in the name of the lords greed. Why can't they understand that the taxes is too high for us to pay! Not even we who sell our fish so well with the couple can barely pay it. This has to end! I am going to kill that fu***** lord!
We travel in to the city and observe the castle of the lord. And after some preparations, we get a highly placed guard drunk and knock him out. Naked in the forest with their ass bare for any wolf take a bit off. As we take his form and walk in in his clothes. As we sneak around, we find children locked up in a dungeon, and instantly know from the fear in their eyes, why they are here. THAT SHI* STAIN OF A LORD! FU**! Anger fills us, but we use this to our advantage. As we take the form of a child and appear in front of the lords room. His lustful delight in seeing us disgust us, but we keep the role of a frightened child. And as he turn around for second, we change form and strangle him from behind with the sheets from the bed. As he falls dead to our feet. We hide him and take his form. We order the children to be freed. and for all the lords treasure to be moved and hidden. And have the guards who killed our friends executed. After that we take the lords body and hang him from a noose in his room, while writing a scribbled suicide note fitting of a madman.
We return to our village with gold, giving back what was taken in taxes, and giving what half of what remained to the families of those who were killed. The villagers thank us from the bottom of their hearts and a feast is arranged. And we have never felt happier. With the half of the gold that is left, we buy ourselves a sailing ship and hire our friends to become our crew. And since that day we transport goods and sail the seas singing shanties.
And that is the backstory of Vix. Sailing the seas and searching for adventure on both land and sea.
What do you all think? Was it a bad or good backstory? I want you to be honest, no matter if it is bad or good. Also, if anyone have tips and suggestions I would love to hear them
Hi guys! New player here. I created a wizard, I hope you like his backstory:
Hailing from the mystic isles of Agarath, an obscured kingdom nestled on the edge of the forgotten continent, Melchizedek was once a novitiate of the Phrontistery of the Arcane Order. The Agarathi are usually reticent people. They keep their knowledge, culture and lifestyle to themselves and only venture off their homeland to keep up with the times.
Most Agarathi spend their lives never even leaving the continent. However, the young Melchizedek was never content with the life of seclusion and study. Just few years as novitiate, he struck a friendship with a visiting foreign elder sage and asked to vouch for him as an escort in order to escape his mundane lifestyle on the continent. The boy left Agarath with eyes gleaming wanderlust.
Unbeknownst to him, the sage was actually one of the Ten Fingers of Zahhak, high priests to the enigmatic Dark Lord of Time and Chaos. What he meant for the boy as goodwill was a facade for replacing the vessel of the ailing old wretch's soul. The ritual possession took two years. The boy's consciousness drifted to and from the void, slowly losing self and soul. Lucky for the boy, the wretched fool croaked before the ritual was complete, reclaiming his soul and body.
Yet he cannot even rejoice in the midst of his triumph. His hair is now ashen gray, his mind burdened with secrets of time and dark tidings. An ominous grimoire made of human skin occasionally haunts his dreams. But the worst of it all, his ventures towards the void during the ritual caught the eye of Zahhak, for now he is less one servant and an apostate armed with the knowledge of his dark plans runs loose. The hounds are set free and his hunt begins.
Years went by, the boy survived and is now a man and an Initiate of Hurmuz, the sworn enemy of Zahhak. He scours the land for knowledge and seeks the path of enlightenment to free him from his burden.
New member, long-time DM here! We have a mechanic in one of my campaigns that functions a lot like the Dragon Age companions system. For each "quest," the characters can take an ally with them to fill out their party (to balance the fact that they're 3 kobolds). That ally character is role-played by me, but they run them in combat. My favorite of these characters is Willow.
Willow grew up training in a githzerai monastery, and from a young age proved to be a formidable combatant. They were the strongest, fastest, & brightest student around - and they knew it. On more than one occasion, Willow's cocky attitude got them into trouble. After a particularly nasty loss of control in a sparring match (they knocked a younger student out cold), Willow was assigned to a nearby village for medical work. They resented the assignment, and ignored their master's instructions while treating patients. Their carelessness resulted in catching a disease that none at the monastery could treat. The illness left their bones frail and caused their muscles to deteriorate. Willow was no longer able to fight. Instead, they were forced to focus on their meditation and psionic ability. Over time, Willow grew to accept their disease as punishment for their foolhardiness, and grew exponentially both as a monk and as a person. By the time they had reached adulthood, they were deemed fit to train younger students. Their first disciple was a human, just like Willow. And, like Willow, she was cocky & self-assured. When Willow was forced to leave the monastery (won't get in to that), their disciple, Elka, vowed to find them when she completed her training.
The best subclass to the best class in the game being naturally College of Lore, I made this guy! I keep an in-character journal of our sessions and wrote the backstory in the same style, so I hope it's somewhat readable. The art below was made by the wonderful Olympia, check her out: https://olympiaaurion.weebly.com/art.html
With the Lord of Knowledge as my witness, I, Professor Alistair, formerly of clan Clethtinthiallor, hereby profess that the underlying is the whole truth and nothing but the truth, written in the form of annals for posterity's sake.
I was born 53 years before the date of writing in the early spring, in the nation known as Tymanther, in eastern Faerûn. My family, the clan Clethinthiallor, held a large homestead just outside of Djerad Thymar. The clan was of some prominence, as our chief purpose was to breed the warhorses used by the Tymantheran military. What I mostly recall, however, was our music and our stories. Every night, after the work was done and the horses were stabled, we would sit around the fire, dozens of my blue-skinned kin adorned with the silver falcons, playing our makeshift instruments and singing the tales of our forebears. It was a simple time, a time of peace and kindness, a side of our kind that no other dokaal [red. 'two-legged', humanoid] usually gets to see. My mother was named Nacoria, and she was a true prodigy where the rearing and raising of warhorses was concerned. She would breed strong, obedient and fearsome creatures that were the pride of our clan. Who my father was, I never knew. Our young were raised by the clan as a whole. Direct familial bonds were of little import. I vaguely recall that our clan leader, Xharvasar, may have been the sole progenitor during his tenure, but whether he is my father I could not say.
It did not last. One night, mere weeks before my 16th year of life and my induction into adulthood, we were attacked. A skirmish of some sort, far too close to the walls of Djerad Thymar. Tymantheran law dictates that any clan on the outskirts of a djerad [red. clanhold] is obligated to protect the outer walls until organised help would arrive. I was awoken in the dead of night by my older brother Alyxos, who pushed a sword in my hand and shouted for me to follow him. In the darkness, we ran through the fields. I recall horses whinnying, seeing the lightning breath of my kin and smelling the ozone and the burnt flesh. Our foe I hadn't yet laid eyes on, but soon I saw and heard their approach. I froze in place, Alyxos running thirty or forty feet ahead of me, still shouting for me to follow, to help. I did not. I could not move a muscle. The enemy was soon upon Alyxos, a whirlwind of gleaming blades and icy magic. I watched unmoving as Alyxos fought bravely, but was cut down. I remember distinctly how he looked back at me, his eyes locked with mine in anger and disappointment, as his head was separated from his shoulders. All I could do was run. I ran away from our homestead, away from Djerad Thymar, away from Tymanther. I don't remember much of my travels West, just that I quickly resolved that I could never return. My act of cowardice cost me the life of my brother and probably more members of the clan.
I made my way west until I found the great blue sea and Waterdeep, the city of Splendors. From scrap I built myself a barely functioning lyre and did the only thing I knew how; make music and sing. I played and sang and collected enough coppers to cobble together one sparse meal most days. It wasn't much of a life, but my songs managed to put a smile on the face of most. One day, an elderly elf approached me while I was playing and listened for most of the day. After I was done playing, she introduced herself as Idaara, handed me three gold pieces and asked for translations of the songs, as she couldn't understand Draconic. I was a bit shy, but her kindness calmed me after a while. She showed me to a small bookshop that she owned in the South Ward, offered me tea and dinner for the night, while I sat and transcribed the songs into Common. By the time I was done, it was late in the evening and Idaara offered me a place to stay for the night. That night became two, then four, and then several months. I worked in the bookshop and sometimes played songs to entertain the customers. In my time there I also read most of what the bookshop had to offer. Idaara and I taught each other our native tongues and she became as a mother to me.
One day, while I was playing to some young halfling children who had come to the shop, a well-dressed middle-aged human gentleman entered. He talked in hushed tones with Idaara, who, after my playing was finished, introduced me to him. Professor Hamish Tallowgrass, as he was called, was a professor at a prestigious Bardic college called New Olamn. He extended to me an invitation to audition and perhaps enroll in the college, as he thought I was very talented. And so I did. New Olamn became my new home. I was by far the only Strixiki [red. Dragonborn] who attended, and that came hand in hand with no small amount of prejudice. It was here, during my many hours of lonesome study, that I first came upon mention of Oghma, the God of Knowledge, and his Celestial emissaries. The idea of these beings of pure goodness, the true moral guide for any mortal, who served the Lord of all Knowledge, was fascinating to me. Clearly, these beings were by their definition good, and served knowledge itself, therefore they must know what it means to be good! And this, I vowed, I needed to know as well. My studious efforts doubled, I dedicated myself to gathering knowledge of all kinds, but mostly to the beings of the upper planes, those Celestials. My delving into the deepest reaches of Celestial lore, combining it with my exploration of this knowledge through song, eventually started manifesting itself as manipulations of the very Weave of the material plane. I was able to perform rudimentary magic! Needless to say, I delved into this topic as well, learning as much as I could about the field of Arcana and slowly but surely cultivating my own abilities as well. After my time as a student was complete, I never again wanted to leave. I applied for a teaching position and within five years I was offered a tenured position with a lot of security.
The leadership of New Olamn isn't always too happy with a Strixiki on staff, but my students like me well enough I suppose! Professor Tallowgrass passed away a little over a decade before the time of writing this. Shortly before he wrote to me, telling me about the existence of a secret organisation of knowledge-keepers and guardians of information called the Harpers. He requested that I take his place as an agent in this organisation, to 'get me out of that dusty office once in a while'. He closed his letter with a question; "Is it better to be brave unthinkingly, recklessly, or a to be a coward who learns from it?" I was never able to answer this question before he passed away, and I carry his letter on my person to this very day. I followed Hamish' advice and sought out a representative for the Harpers. I assured them of my resourcefulness and showed them the magic that had come to me. I was definitely not the only bard among the Harpers, and contact with others like myself was invigorating. Over the past years I have been taking expeditions for the Harpers, carrying out small missions and, forsooth, doing some good in the world! I can scarcely believe it myself... The reason for writing this short and concise history of my life thus far, is because I have been tasked with a grievous mystery. The renowned Shield Dwarf historian Brudenthal, with whom I have a vague passing familiarity, has gone missing while traveling from [] to Waterdeep with an invaluable collection of tomes of Dwarven history. I am to set out in the direction of Red Larch, to scout the surrounding area and deduce what may have happened to him, all under the guise of 'field work' so to speak! Let's hope it isn't anything more serious than roving bandits, shall we...
Here is another example of a character's instruction manual. As with all of my characters, there is a lot of mundane. This character has one stickler in its life, though. As an experiment, I made heavy use of RNGs for this.
Description:
You have a typical height and weight expected of Halflings. You are past middle age but not remotely elderly, yet. In addition to your Description Characteristics ((Male, black irises, black hair, fair skin)), you sport a full but trim beard uncommon for Halflings. Your hair is of a medium, easily-manageable length. Your skin is weathered. You wear clothes appropriately sized for Halflings. You wear a weathered trenchcoat even in warmer climes and also an equally weathered woodsman cap. Stuck in the cap, there is an old, dilapidated feather of a sea bird like a seagull or albatross. You carry a wood-axe ((throwing axe)), still appropriately sized for a Halfling. You wear cuffed boots appropriate for wading such as for fishing.
Your hands appear wrapped or bandaged.
Backstory basics.
When you are away from home, you go by the nickname, the Woodsman. You consider yourself a brawler. ((The Woodman's technically a Monk class.))
Your common story about yourself is that you were born from the heartwood of a massive tree and had to break out of the tree before you could gasp your first breath of air. You immediately spotted a woodsman chopping down trees and, in a rage for the offense, you snatched his axe from him mid-swing and chopped him down instead. You see people in the same way that people see trees: potential firewood. None of that is true in the slightest, of course.
Someone might find you in a tavern. If so, the person might see you drinking and laughing with others, telling wild and completely untrue tales, or having a great time in a brawl that you may have encouraged if not out-right instigated. While you take comments about your size in stride, you will use the excuse to throw some punches. Brawls are fun.
If someone finds you outside of a tavern, you are probably heading to a tavern or to the docks. If someone finds you at the docks, you are probably heading to a tavern. On the rare chance that someone finds you outside of a port town, you are probably heading to a port town with a tavern. There is a theme here.
Despite this, you never get so drunk as to not enjoy the revelry — a heavy buzz at the most.
Outside of the other possibilities, you might be either looking for work or already working for coin. Likely, you will seek mercenary work, but coin is coin, and a simple job pays as do the dangerous ones, albeit not as much.
For the final possibility of encountering you in the world, you will be working on a ship as passage fare. The ship’s purpose is mostly immaterial. You are not against some privateering, but you try to avoid outright piracy. You enjoy never staying put in any land for long. There is too much of the world left to see, and that is just considering what can be found on the coasts.
On an aside, you can read and write, but you have difficulty with mathematics beyond simple addition and subtraction.
To date, you never told anyone your real history of your family nor your real history of your time as a pirate on the seas. You do not see any reason to do that. You make up weird and crazy stories that nobody will likely believe.
Backstory details - not to be revealed lightly.
Backstory: Family
Your real name is Quoumo Goodearth. You were born in the port town of Shoun in the region of Luiren with the devastating Spellplague all but forgotten ages prior. You are the fourth of five children and the only male in the offspring. You are currently 70 years old which is just beyond middle age for a Halfling. Your mother, Alaine, is a diplomat of Shoun and resides with your father, Vlorn, in Lurien’s capital city of Beluir. Your father repairs enchanted items as his trade. Both of them are getting on in their years, but they seem like they’ll be around for quite a while longer.
As common in Luiren, you were raised to follow the Halfling god, Brandobaris, but specifically one of the many loose variations of the teachings, focusing on the deity's ability for wit rather than the traits of deception, speed, and boldness. The family is not dogmatic about the religion. Though, mice are still considered sacred to a degree among your family. It is not a religion that you follow now.
Your younger sister, Eida, the youngest of the bunch, is a healer in Shoun. She is happily “dating” several local men there. Somehow, she manages to have no children of her own, yet. Your parents are proud of her trade but do not approve of her lifestyle. They are still on good terms with Eida, regardless.
You first older sister, Pennie Goodbarrel, the third oldest of the bunch and middle child, works as a guard for the city farm in Chethel with her husband, Chester Goodbarrel. They also do not have any children, yet. Your parents approve of Chester but insist that Pennie’s “clock is ticking,” whatever that means.
Your next older sister, Marigold Elderberry, the second-born, is a hunter in Lluirwood. She lost her husband, Ambroise, to the ghosts of Thruldar at the northeast end of the Lluirwood. She is never specific about what happened. She has two sons, Bruno and Kipp. Kipp, the younger, is also a hunter in Lluirwood. Bruno is usually in jail for anything from assault to theft but no murder... yet. Your parents fear that Bruno is headed down a dark road. Marigold gave up on trying to change Bruno’s ways.
Your oldest sister, Harriet Underfoot, married into the Underfoot family and owns a farm with her husband, Lynn. Your parents like Lynn well enough but sometimes think that the money gets to your sister’s head once in a while. She lives rather extravagantly. The Underfoot family includes two sons and a daughter, all still in their teens which makes them rather young in Hafling years. Your parents were once worried that Harriet was barren given how long it took Lynn and Harriet to conceive, but out popped three adorable, if slightly spoiled, children just over a year apart from each other: first Kellan, then Julia, and lastly, Marcus.
When you were a child back when your mother was an attaché to the minister of Luiren and would have to travel out of Luiren with your father, you and your siblings would be in the care of your aunt, Nora Goodearth, the much older sister of your father. It was always like a little vacation for you five. Nora adored you all and would admittedly spoil the lot of you. She was a weaver, was never married, and had no children of her own. She has passed on peacefully from old age many years ago.
Your mother had no siblings and you never knew any of your grandparents.
With a parent in the occupation of diplomacy, you and your sisters received some education in Shoun. As mentioned previously, you can write, but numbers beyond basic addition are right out.
The tight-knit town in those days didn't have the classist attitude that some of the larger towns did. Everyone was friends with everyone. There was a time when you felt you knew everyone by name. Now, many people have moved on or passed on. Many more moved in, and the town is quite a sizeable, bustling cultural center by the sea.
You often write to your family and your nephews and nieces, except for Bruno who is never in any place you can predict. Your whole family — including husbands, nieces, nephews, and your youngest sister’s current fling — gets together for a day if you are in Luiren, again except for Bruno. The Underfoot trio of kids love to hear your wild stories.
With the exception of Marigold’s troubles, there is really nothing particularly fascinating to tell about your family... and quite frankly, you like it that way. As wonderful a world it is, home is a place to get away from it all without drama.
Backstory: the Woodsman and the Sea
To that matter, you fell in love with the sea from living in a port town and listening to the sailors tell wild tales — a few stories being surprisingly and fascinatingly true though you believed it all to be true at the time. While your sisters were pursuing men for marriage, you would be found in the tavern pursuing a drink and a story. You did not have the habit of holding a job for long, especially if it was hard labor. Your mind was always on the sea.
The tales of a wide range of gods with incredible histories gave you the idea that there's more to it all than just mice and Brandobaris' wit. You decided to consider other possibilities of worship.
The sailors of the sea began to change to a more revelrous lot as the shipping trade with Luiren grew. You changed with it and took to brawling as a sport. You have a knack for it. At the time of your first departure from Luiren, brawling was not yet a problem in Shoun. They were mostly events that ended friendly with a round or two bought by the last few who had still been fighting. Now, tavern fighting in all of Luiren is criminal.
Brawling is how you were first hired to be a bodyguard aboard a ship. The ship was heading to the islands of Lantan, and you jumped at the chance to travel the seas. While trouble was expected which is why you were hired, it turned out to just be an uneventful though long journey. Your parents were fearful until you sent them a letter of the wondrous things you saw in Lantan. The idea of sailing to fascinating places was solidified by the experience.
You took many different jobs while sailing. You even tutored children in their letters on some of the journeys... and the children once tried to tutor you in numbers, unsuccessfully.
Your love of the sea was momentarily tested. During a slow, careful passage through the Dragon Coast, an emerald-eyed Human passenger caught your fancy, and at the time, you considered it a mutual fancy: Lady Stanford-Bristol who was heading home from a visit with her family. She was only a foot and a half taller than you. It was a strange but exciting romance while it lasted. There were three main reasons why that relationship ended: She was married and never intended to divorce her husband, intending to keep your relationship a secret if you stayed with her. Your parents would accept your choice but never actually approve of a Human, much less adultery. Lastly, the sea was always calling to you. Yet for a long while after you returned to the sea, you sometimes wondered what she was doing in her manor with an undesirable oaf of a husband from an arranged marriage. Though now in your more-jaded years, you very rarely wonder who she's doing instead... sometimes with just the slightest tinge of jealousy.
During that same passage through the Dragon Coast, you became friends with Clerebold Bentham, a Human warlock. Even with all your experiences seeing magic elsewhere, you were still fascinated with the weird things he could do seemingly as easy as breathing. You tried to get him to teach you magic as he could do, but his explanations of why that was not possible never made sense to your mundane understanding. To sate your curiosity of magic, he taught you some simple things in magical ways that did not require magic. ((This is the Ki ability and the Woodman’s understanding of it is oversimplified.)) It seemed like magic. So, you accepted it... to a point.
You stole his grimoire in an attempt to teach yourself more. The next thing you remember is waking up in the ship’s kitchen with a crowd of passengers around you including Lady Stanford-Bristol and Clerebold. Even though some of the passengers told you that Clerebold saved the ship and your life, the crew of the ship set him off alone in a dinghy with his shredded grimoire (that apparently was your fault somehow), the clothes he was wearing at the time, and nothing else. That is when you first learned about the stigma surrounding warlocks, and your meddling exposed him to the crew and passengers. Lady Stanford-Bristol told you that she thought your destruction of the grimoire upset whichever devil or demon owned Clerebold’s soul and that destroying the tome was the reason you were not sent away with him despite everyone knowing that you were friends with him, thinking you deliberately risked your life to destroy a demonic tool when discovering it.
After the journey (and relationship) ended, you decided that no demon or devil owned Clerebold’s soul, and you likely, though unintentionally, helped to doom an innocent man and a friend to the depths of the Dragon Coast. You wondered where these demons and gods were when people needed their help. Your temperament took a slight course correction with that dose of reality, and you began taking jobs mostly as a mercenary. For a while, you took up with a privateer crew who had methods a little more extreme than you were used to doing, but you grew to like it. A little shame can go a long way to help a person change and turn outward to violence.
Your ability to fight got you praise from the First Mate (which was consequently the only name he called himself) along with a little advice to being a pirate. ...which you thought you all were privateers until that moment. First Mate told you that you needed an idiom of your own. Since you had already spent a year as a pirate though innocently, you decided to embrace the extra self-loathing and go all-in with the extreme violence. In the rare cases where you were to lead a crew, you would insist on dismembering the enemy and burning the pieces. For that, you earned the nickname, the Woodsman. You even purchased an axe and hat to sell the look. It is not a well-traveled moniker, but very occasionally, you meet someone who heard stories about the dreaded Woodsman.
The next time you returned home after being the Woodsman for the first time, the Underfoot trio were not impressed with your stories. You omitted a lot. At the time, you told yourself that is was to keep the children from being frightened, but when you could not tell the rest of your family about your life as the Woodsman, you decided it was time to reel it in so to speak. A little more shame can go a long way to help a person change and turn inward to self-reflection.
Backstory: The Woodsman today
Now using the pirate persona of the Woodsman, you are able to take some of the riskier jobs, and you can keep your involvement in those jobs away from your family, but your outright butchery and piracy ended. Yet, your stories to your family are more fantasy than fact ever since your revelation, a habit that you continue in the taverns and on the seas. Your two lives are separate, and a little glamorized self-promotion of the Woodsman here and there could not hurt with getting good pay.
You place no faith in the gods or any extraplanar being. You believe that they will do whatever they will without any counsel from mortals, and you will do whatever you can. You believe that there are still valuable lessons to learn from some of their stories, especially Brandobaris. Some habits die hard, and you still let mice alone even though you're certain that no wrath of Brandobaris would come to pass otherwise.
...and now, the Woodsman needs some coin. You are probably spending much of what you earned in a tavern brawl.
OOC - Behind the curtain.
This character is a level 3 Stout Halfling Monk with a -1 INT bonus. ("Monk" is just the game's ruleset. The character is a brawler. Let me explain.) I consider the character's ability to drink as part of the advantage and resistance against poisons. The character has a Chaotic Neutral alignment which is going against my preference of "actions decide alignment," but this character is an experiment. The Chaotic alignment was decided by the Background. Much of the character's life as the Woodsman comes from the Sailor Background with the characteristics picked by RNG. Much of the character's life in general was also RNG generated regarding parents, siblings, and frenemies. In essence, RNGs gave me LEGO blocks, and I pieced them together. I "re-rolled" the backstory RNG until there were almost no tragedies in the family due to my preference for mundane origins. I think that the -1 INT allows me to create a misunderstanding of what Ki is and how it works, essentially re-naming the Monk class as a Brawler. The enemy warlock from a friend RNG'd "LEGO block" gave me the opportunity to find a place to fit it in the story. ...and the rest, as sometimes said, is history.
Thus ends the initial phase of this RNG experiment.
EDIT: Reorganization for better roleplay management...
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider. My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong. I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲 “It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
Ok, so this is my second character in my friends' homebrewed world. The basic premise of the world is that it was destroyed after the Elves went to war with the Gods, with only pockets of easily habitable land (and civilization) surviving under protective "domes", with everything around them being just harsh wilderness filled with monsters. There is no magic in this world, only "powerful crystals" that offer magical-like properties. My DM is very secretive about them, so I cannot say more than I suspect they are the shard remains of the "Gods of Old". I got to play a half-elf assassin, which is a very hard-to-get race (I had to succeed a DC-18 roll for it).
In the pre-war society of old, Rhien Zanros started out as any half-elf would. In a loving family of four – his parents, himself and an older brother. Life was good. However, war leaves scars in every family, his included. With Rhiens father, a beast-man commander of great renown, dead within the first weeks of fighting and the echoes of war encroaching ever closer to his household, Rhiens older family members decided to undergo the Deep Sleep, hoping to awake at friendlier times, expecting to sleep no more than 5 years. That will not be the case.
When he awoke 200 years later, Rhien quickly realized the world he knew was long gone – the abundant elven colonies lost to time and elves themselves becoming myths in their own right. Rhien understood that if he were discovered in this more... primitive time, he would probably end up on a stake as a demon or worse – a dissection table. Forced to blend into human society he now searches for his lost family, hoping that at least someone is still alive.
During the academy, Rhien was singled out due to his quick (some would say almost catlike) reflexes and good instincts. He ended up selected for the “Corvus program” – a group of assassins/secret police, the “public secret” that keeps the other noble families and enemies of the King awake at night. Rhien distinguished himself there as well, with the elven sword technique his father and older brother taught him coming useful, if seemingly unorthodox. While this half-elf has succeeded in the program, he was still not a member of the Corvus group, only an initiate at best. His handler sent the elf to “get some blood under his fingers” in the field with a promise to “give him some real work” if he succeeded in the task.
The best subclass to the best class in the game being naturally College of Lore, I made this guy! I keep an in-character journal of our sessions and wrote the backstory in the same style, so I hope it's somewhat readable. The art below was made by the wonderful Olympia, check her out: https://olympiaaurion.weebly.com/art.html
With the Lord of Knowledge as my witness, I, Professor Alistair, formerly of clan Clethtinthiallor, hereby profess that the underlying is the whole truth and nothing but the truth, written in the form of annals for posterity's sake.
I was born 53 years before the date of writing in the early spring, in the nation known as Tymanther, in eastern Faerûn. My family, the clan Clethinthiallor, held a large homestead just outside of Djerad Thymar. The clan was of some prominence, as our chief purpose was to breed the warhorses used by the Tymantheran military. What I mostly recall, however, was our music and our stories. Every night, after the work was done and the horses were stabled, we would sit around the fire, dozens of my blue-skinned kin adorned with the silver falcons, playing our makeshift instruments and singing the tales of our forebears. It was a simple time, a time of peace and kindness, a side of our kind that no other dokaal [red. 'two-legged', humanoid] usually gets to see. My mother was named Nacoria, and she was a true prodigy where the rearing and raising of warhorses was concerned. She would breed strong, obedient and fearsome creatures that were the pride of our clan. Who my father was, I never knew. Our young were raised by the clan as a whole. Direct familial bonds were of little import. I vaguely recall that our clan leader, Xharvasar, may have been the sole progenitor during his tenure, but whether he is my father I could not say.
It did not last. One night, mere weeks before my 16th year of life and my induction into adulthood, we were attacked. A skirmish of some sort, far too close to the walls of Djerad Thymar. Tymantheran law dictates that any clan on the outskirts of a djerad [red. clanhold] is obligated to protect the outer walls until organised help would arrive. I was awoken in the dead of night by my older brother Alyxos, who pushed a sword in my hand and shouted for me to follow him. In the darkness, we ran through the fields. I recall horses whinnying, seeing the lightning breath of my kin and smelling the ozone and the burnt flesh. Our foe I hadn't yet laid eyes on, but soon I saw and heard their approach. I froze in place, Alyxos running thirty or forty feet ahead of me, still shouting for me to follow, to help. I did not. I could not move a muscle. The enemy was soon upon Alyxos, a whirlwind of gleaming blades and icy magic. I watched unmoving as Alyxos fought bravely, but was cut down. I remember distinctly how he looked back at me, his eyes locked with mine in anger and disappointment, as his head was separated from his shoulders. All I could do was run. I ran away from our homestead, away from Djerad Thymar, away from Tymanther. I don't remember much of my travels West, just that I quickly resolved that I could never return. My act of cowardice cost me the life of my brother and probably more members of the clan.
I made my way west until I found the great blue sea and Waterdeep, the city of Splendors. From scrap I built myself a barely functioning lyre and did the only thing I knew how; make music and sing. I played and sang and collected enough coppers to cobble together one sparse meal most days. It wasn't much of a life, but my songs managed to put a smile on the face of most. One day, an elderly elf approached me while I was playing and listened for most of the day. After I was done playing, she introduced herself as Idaara, handed me three gold pieces and asked for translations of the songs, as she couldn't understand Draconic. I was a bit shy, but her kindness calmed me after a while. She showed me to a small bookshop that she owned in the South Ward, offered me tea and dinner for the night, while I sat and transcribed the songs into Common. By the time I was done, it was late in the evening and Idaara offered me a place to stay for the night. That night became two, then four, and then several months. I worked in the bookshop and sometimes played songs to entertain the customers. In my time there I also read most of what the bookshop had to offer. Idaara and I taught each other our native tongues and she became as a mother to me.
One day, while I was playing to some young halfling children who had come to the shop, a well-dressed middle-aged human gentleman entered. He talked in hushed tones with Idaara, who, after my playing was finished, introduced me to him. Professor Hamish Tallowgrass, as he was called, was a professor at a prestigious Bardic college called New Olamn. He extended to me an invitation to audition and perhaps enroll in the college, as he thought I was very talented. And so I did. New Olamn became my new home. I was by far the only Strixiki [red. Dragonborn] who attended, and that came hand in hand with no small amount of prejudice. It was here, during my many hours of lonesome study, that I first came upon mention of Oghma, the God of Knowledge, and his Celestial emissaries. The idea of these beings of pure goodness, the true moral guide for any mortal, who served the Lord of all Knowledge, was fascinating to me. Clearly, these beings were by their definition good, and served knowledge itself, therefore they must know what it means to be good! And this, I vowed, I needed to know as well. My studious efforts doubled, I dedicated myself to gathering knowledge of all kinds, but mostly to the beings of the upper planes, those Celestials. My delving into the deepest reaches of Celestial lore, combining it with my exploration of this knowledge through song, eventually started manifesting itself as manipulations of the very Weave of the material plane. I was able to perform rudimentary magic! Needless to say, I delved into this topic as well, learning as much as I could about the field of Arcana and slowly but surely cultivating my own abilities as well. After my time as a student was complete, I never again wanted to leave. I applied for a teaching position and within five years I was offered a tenured position with a lot of security.
The leadership of New Olamn isn't always too happy with a Strixiki on staff, but my students like me well enough I suppose! Professor Tallowgrass passed away a little over a decade before the time of writing this. Shortly before he wrote to me, telling me about the existence of a secret organisation of knowledge-keepers and guardians of information called the Harpers. He requested that I take his place as an agent in this organisation, to 'get me out of that dusty office once in a while'. He closed his letter with a question; "Is it better to be brave unthinkingly, recklessly, or a to be a coward who learns from it?" I was never able to answer this question before he passed away, and I carry his letter on my person to this very day. I followed Hamish' advice and sought out a representative for the Harpers. I assured them of my resourcefulness and showed them the magic that had come to me. I was definitely not the only bard among the Harpers, and contact with others like myself was invigorating. Over the past years I have been taking expeditions for the Harpers, carrying out small missions and, forsooth, doing some good in the world! I can scarcely believe it myself... The reason for writing this short and concise history of my life thus far, is because I have been tasked with a grievous mystery. The renowned Shield Dwarf historian Brudenthal, with whom I have a vague passing familiarity, has gone missing while traveling from [] to Waterdeep with an invaluable collection of tomes of Dwarven history. I am to set out in the direction of Red Larch, to scout the surrounding area and deduce what may have happened to him, all under the guise of 'field work' so to speak! Let's hope it isn't anything more serious than roving bandits, shall we...
So this is my fist ever character and our campaign is basically demons have taken over the world. So here is my first attempt at a character and was wondering what you guys thought of my backstory or if you could help me with it a little bit. I was thinking about doing a sorcerer w/ poison as my Ancestry (did i do this right? lol)
Andrew Oswalt was a treasure hunter and explorer. He traveled the world looking for some of the most storied and lost artifacts. One time while exploring the Caves of Zumakalis for an ancient bonesaber he stumbled off a ledge. Andrew survived the fall because he fell into a lake at the bottom of the cave.
He realized that there was a grave at the bottom of the lake. Andrew swam to the bottom of the lake and found a large snake headstone and with his small shovel and a couple of trips up and down for breath he uncovered a chest. He returned to the surface were he opened the chest with his ol trusty crowbar Betsy to find an old copper and green book that was wrapped in a lock, unfortunately it was not a lock but a snake similar looking to the headstone and bit Andrew in the neck.
Andrew fell to the ground and was immediately paralyzed and slipping, into cardiac arrest saw the snake that bit him slither out of the chest and turn bright green and luminescent and vanished into the book. The book then opened. Andrew astonished with what he saw and dieing, closed his eyes and prepared himself to die…... only to strangely awaken what felt like a few moments later.
He checked his neck and found no snake bite, but did find the book laying opened covered in dust and no snake. Confused if what he saw was real he kicked the book to check for snakes. Andrew was terrified of snakes. He picked up the book and saw that the text of the book was written in Draconic, which oddly enough he could translate. When he began to read the book the text would become translatable only to him. He also knew this book like the back of his hand as if he had read the book a million times. It was bound to him.
This book once belonged to Zumakalis herself an ancient Draconic sorcerer from the jungle known for her art in poison and love for nature. This book contains powerful spells that Andrew now had knowledge of, to fight Demons that had once destroyed Zumakalis, her jungle and people and this was her dying gift to whoever found her tomb and scripter.
Andrew Oswalt did not know that he had gone missing for 40 years, He didn't believe in demons or that they existed and had never seen one but also did not question the writings of Zumakalis and the knowledge of them that he now has. When Andrew finally found his way out of the cave he was stunned to see massive army of demon soldiers marching on the old grounds of Zumakalis. Andrew knew what he had to do. He had to stop the demons, not just for Zumakalis but his world as well.
Daerthel Barreldregs; Hill Dwarf Way of the Drunken Master monk
Owned and operated the Beerbeard Brewery & Tavern, the most popular bar in town. The citizens loved the tavern and the tavern keeper and people made the trek from neighboring towns just to stock up on Daerthel’s ales and liquors and share a story with the friendly proprietor. That is until the orcs came. Wreaking havoc and destruction the orcs laid waste to the town, including the Beerbeard. Daerthel saw horrors that day he can never forget. He barely escaped with his life but his life’s work was reduced to ash. Limping his way into the hills under the cover of the smoke from his past life burning around him, he found shelter in a nearby monastery where he tried to find a way to deal with his trauma through asceticism and discipline but nothing helped except the bottom of a glass of ale. Seeing the futility of this endeavor he wanders off to find meaning, and mead, elsewhere, taking with him the remnants of his training and the ghosts of his past.
Name: Lia Shin
Gender: Female
Race: Half-elf
Class: Rogue 2 / Ranger 1
Background: Secret
Lia never had a good life. She was shunned by her father from the day she was born. But that's what happens when you are the bastard child of a High Elf lord and his human servant. She spent her youth in a large room with very little to keep her entertained. She was around ten or so when she began to sneak out of the room to explore. The girl never adventured too far from the room, just in case she needed to hurry back. Over the next twelve years, Lia became incredibly skilled in her sneaking, which in turn made he more brazen. Not only would she sneak out now, she would also steal some things. It was during one of these excursions that she was caught. And by none other than her father. He was furious at her blatant lack of respect for him and the people she stole from. And not wanting to tarnish his name, Lucian exiled both Lia and her mother.The young woman felt bad for causing this to her mother, but she was told not to worry And within a year, Chein had found a job working as a bar maid at the local tavern.
It was during this time that Lia's mother met her future husband. He was an adventurer that had stopped in the town for a couple of days. The man had left to finish what he needed to do and soon returned to Eck River. The two were soon wed and Lia's sister was born not long after. When Mei (Lia's younger sister) turned eight, Lia began to teach her everything she knew about being sneaky. About five or six years after that, their mother passed away. Their father then raised them until they were both old enough to live on their own. During this time, the two joined the local thieves guild and were mentored by it's leader. Now that Lia is a full member, she decided to follow in her adoptive father's footsteps and become and adventurer.
Here is the backstory for my backup character. It is not fully finished and is all subject to change but it is what I've got.
Ben Baronton (Name still up for change) was abandoned when he was young. He was taken in by an orphanage for a few years before he left to try and make a living by stealing. 2 years after this his luck ran out and he was seen stealing from a Rick noble. After being chased by the noble's guards for a while he was visited by a strange figure with glowing eyes. He said that he could save him if he was to give him something.
A year after that he saw the man again while he was traveling down a road at midnight. The man held a chain out infront of him. As he touched the chain his mind was filled with visions of a powerful evil. He suddenly had an overwhelming urge to summon his new master, which he has been trying to do ever since.
Our DM is still working out the logistics of the world and where certain towns and cities are, so this is a little vague but I'm still proud of it :>
This will be my first long term D&D character in about two years too, so I decided to go pretty foundational in terms of race and class and make a Halfling Fighter so I can get back into the swing of things
Her name is Orna Leagallow, and she is a very very small Halfling. Like 2'7" tall Halfling. I very much imagine her to be the Tyrion Lannister of the party. Small in stature, but loyal and feisty once you have done enough to win her trust. The one thing you first notice about her outward appearance aside from her height is a long scar that runs down the middle of her forehead, across the bridge of her nose and down her left cheek.
Her core family consists of her parents and an older brother of two years. She got her scar on her face in her early teenage years, when a member of a gang that's based near the village she lives in broke into her family's house, the bottom floor of which is the blacksmith shop she spent almost her entire childhood in learning how to forge and fight with various bladed weapons. She even made the shortswords she fights with herself in that very shop. She had gone upstairs, into the floor of the shop the family uses as their sleeping quarters, after an argument with her brother and had been in her room when she heard the door being broken down, yelling and sounds of a struggle. She crept to the stairs with one of her shortswords in her hand, saw her brother protecting her mum and someone in black fighting with her dad. All she could think of was leaping to help, brandishing her sword and running to her dad's aid. The attacker responded by whipping a dagger he had taken off of the display on the wall across her face, essentially slashing her face open. Her parents and her brother all told her to flee, and so she did. She took off over to a neighboring city, got someone to heal her face and tried to start making a living. She hasn't been back home since she left, as she's afraid that either she'll find her family dead or the gang will still be there and waiting to kill her. Although she'll slowly become more determined to find her family and defeat he gang as the story goes on.
I'm very excited to play around with her smithing background and more of her personality and story as I get more information about the world and figure out her backstory more but I hope you enjoy what I have so far :>
I wanted to share my first character created through the D&D Beyond.
Rasmuss:
I was delivered to the school as a young child, the school was the only family I ever had. None of the students at the school ever knew our real parents; the school was the only home we had. My teacher had a connection with the Dwarf settlement near the school, and I would accompany her on her many visits. We were taught that the laws of Magic were greater than the laws of the land, it was our role to seek answers to questions, to always ask: 'What am I not seeing?', and it wasn't Magic that was destructive, it was the person using it.
One day, I was sent on a task from my Master to deliver correspondence to the Dwarf clan chief.
On my return, the school was on fire. The teachers, my friends, and my Master were all dead. I collected what I could and left for the only other place I felt comfortable; the Dwarf settlement. They gave me sanctuary and allowed me time to heal make a plan. I don't know who was behind it, or why the school was destroyed, but I will find those responsible and make them pay for their crimes.
In the meantime, I need to hide and keep moving between towns and villages. Searching for clues that will one day lead me to the answers I seek.
I'm new to the game. In the middle of my first campaign ever. But I've been starting more for upcoming games. This is my favorite though. She's an Aarakocra rogue. Her name is Raven "Jynxie" Clawtorn. She's never felt like she fit in and was always treated as an outsider from the other kids. Calling her a jynx, hence the nickname "Jynxie". She looks nothing like the others with her jet black feathers, and she's more mischievous by nature and finds trouble easily. She found out that she was "adopted" when her parents came across a destroyed Raven Birkdfolk village. There was no other survivors, and her egg was the only one left undestroyed because it was hidden and protected under her birth mothers body as her last effort to protect her child before her death. Her mother was wearing an amulet. So her "parents" took the amulet along with the egg to hopefully find answers to her past when she was old enough. But now since she found this out earlier, she's on her adventure on her own to discover who she is.
It seems like a lot of us in this thread are new to the game! Well, here’s the attempt of a noob who’s only recently started learning the lore. If there are inconsistencies, then I’d be grateful to anyone who pointed them out.
The character is a half-elf warlock named Normanir (call him “Norm” at your own peril). His human mother and wood elf father tried to make things work out for his sake, but his father was unreliable and unable to adapt to life in a town and eventually left. The human side of his family provided a stable and secure household, but their strict rules and mores broke whatever fey, free-spirited aspects Normanir had in his personality. He wasn’t a noble, but he grew up educated and refined.
His illusions were shattered when he found out that his family performed demonic rituals in their basement. In an inverse of the “my family died tragically” trope, Normanir killed his own family - not because demons are evil, but because he’d been raised to hate chaos and couldn’t accept his family’s inconsistency. Instead of contacting forces of good, he proactively made a pact with a mid-tier pit fiend and negotiated so deftly that he ended out with a better end of the deal than the devil did.
He’s spent the subsequent years roaming for demonic cults to destroy, believing in the Blood War like a true zealot. He occasionally shatters the faith of an odd celestial-worshipper here or there, but his unreasonable over-reaction to any mention of the Abyss means he’d even cooperate with lawful good-aligned (though not chaotic) cleric or paladins if doing so helped him to eradicate demonic influence.
Darbakh - Duergar troublemaker [Pic 1] [Pic 2] [Story 1] [Story 2]
Quorian - half-elf watcher
PM me the word ‘tomato’
Could use some help creating a backstory for my character I'm pretty new to D&D and this is what I have so far so if anyone wants to finish it out for me I would greatly appreciate it and you can change what ever but hes a gnome artificer.
Mogs a tinkerer by trade spent many of his young years building warforged machines with his mentor Sylvis. But there was a trouble when the warforged were complete for the people who wanted them the buyers killed my mentor and thought they had killed me as well and left the shop looking like someone had ransacked the place. now all that I have left is my mentors pocket watch that once was filled with life and would turn into a tiny clockwork dragon and fly around the shop but it hasnt had life in it since he was murdered and his journal is the only other thing left with ideas, blueprints for creations he never had the chance to build and every now and then notes about interactions with other people around town or that he met in the world in other cities who owed him favors/coin.
Another moderately new player here, though at the moment I'm DM:ing for my group. This is a great thread, very nice to see other peoples ideas and motivations for characters. Here's my tabaxi wizard, Ra'shu White-eye, which I'll probably play when I return to being a player if our campaign allows it.
Ra’shu hails from the northern tundra where she was part of a hunter-gatherer tribe of tabaxi. She was a shaman for her people, guiding and counseling them and keeping their traditions alive. One day hunters of the tribe brought three injured humans to their camp. They were nearly frozen to death but were brought back from the brink by the expert care of the tabaxi. One of them was a skilled wizard and a researcher of ancient cultures. To show his appreciation, he taught his language to Ra’shu and others who were willing to learn while his group recovered and shared stories from his home far to the south.
After a few weeks rest the humans were strong enough to travel back to the south and so they departed. The wizard, who had grown fond of Ra’shu, gave one of his spellbooks to White-eye as thanks for saving him and his companions. She studied the book with feverish interest as she had never encountered anything like this before: spells to produce fire with a word and a gesture, to turn stone to wood, to move objects from a distance with a thought. A wondrous world opened to her as she delved deeper to the secrets the small tome held. After a few years, she had learned everything the single tome had to offer. Her thirst for arcane knowledge had only grown and, with a wistful farewell to her tribe and family, she wandered to the southern lands to find the wizard, so she could learn more about magic, with the dog-eared spellbook with her full of her own scribbles and notes.
A year-and-a-half passed as she travelled south, until one day she found herself at the gates of Markhul, a wealthy trade city with two large rivers flowing through it. In the city, there was Tower, an academy for wizards and mages and of arcane knowledge where she finally met the familiar wizard. He was delighted to see his friend and the passion White Eye had accumulated for the arcane arts. After pulling a few favors, Ra'shu was accepted to the academy as a student. For the next seven years, she immersed herself in her studies, focusing on material and elemental manipulation through arcane means. The more she learned, the more her thirst for knowledge grew and she started to ponder larger and deeper questions. In the end, her questions boiled down to a single, comprehensive mystery: The nature of the multiverse and the manipulation of it. Unable to find a satisfactory answer inside the walls of the Tower, he embarked on a mission to find forgotten magic and artifacts in hopes to finally unravel the deepest nature of magic. In addition, Ra'shu began to search for a way to extend her natural lifespan: she had only a couple of decades left to live before she became too old to travel and her quest would be impossible to be finished during a single lifetime.
White Eye is usually friendly and polite, respecting the weird customs others may have, although she has no patience for rude behavior. He follows the local laws and is ready to enforce them if necessary. As a former shaman of her tribe, he is used to advising others, even when they do not really want it, and is always ready to support and guide her friends and loved ones. Above all, he is fiercely loyal and goes out of her way to keep his word.
White Eye, or Ra’shu to her close friends, is an old tabakshi with a thick gray fur with small dark stripes and a cream-coloured belly and throat. His ears are black and pointed with small tufts of fur on top. Her right eye is the colour of amber while his left eye is milky white and blind. A thick long tail trails behind her, often betraying his emotions even when she tries to hide them. While traveling he wears rough leather armour with light fur trimmings whereas in larger towns and cities she wears simple but well-made, baggy clothes. In official meetings, like council meetings or when talking with a high-ranking noble, he wears her blue-and-silver arcane college robes.
New player here, here's my first character.
Zebedee Hallow
He's a forest gnome wizard. He grew up in a large family as the youngest child. He has two obsessions in his life: Magical knowledge and fame. Like many gnomes, he also has a lust for adventure. As soon as he was able, Zebedee decided to leave home to explore the world.
Along the way, he started writing his own travel book called "Gnomeward Bound: An Incredible Journey" The book is mainly exaggerations, outright lies and claiming his companions deeds as his own.
He's a skilled wizard, but tends to like showing off with his magic in combat, picking something that may look good rather than actually thinking tactically and using his spells wisely (Using mage hands to throw an Intellect Devourer around rather than just killing it). He doesn't really think about the consequences of his actions. He's greedy, especially when it comes to magical items.
So far, he's managed to alienate his entire team by claiming credit for their first victory (Saying they helped "a little") and trying to take the role as leader. He's not a bad guy, despite his faults. He's friendly (but arrogant) quickly step in to help someone in trouble, even if it's partly so he can lap up the praise and attention afterwards.
@TaipeiBlade - "GNOMEWARD BOUND"!!!!!!
Perfect!
Tayn of Darkwood. Lvl 10 human Life Cleric of Lathander. Retired.
Ikram Sahir ibn Malik al-Sayyid Ra'ad, Second Son of the House of Ra'ad, Defender of the Burning Sands. Lvl 9 Brass Dragonborn Sorcerer + Greater Fire Elemental Devil.
Viktor Gavriil. Lvl 20 White Dragonborn Grave Cleric, of Kurgan the God of Death.
Anzio Faro. Lvl 5 Prot. Aasimar Light Cleric.
Well, I am new here on beyond. But here for those who are interested, here are the story of my changeling dual class Monk/Sorcerer.
Light shone on this one, and woke one up. On a stone altar with a bleeding right arm, and with the thin air of mountains filling ones lungs. Scattered around the Altar was corpses, some blackened and some bloody. They look around and saw no one alive other than themselves. But......who are they? Vix? That is the name we know are ours, and a look on the armor of the dead ones, reflect what we are. White skin and hair, with black holes for eyes and a blank face like the one a child would draw with their finger on white sand. We are a changeling.
But other than that, we do not know. We have knowledge of how to use the power of Ki, how to use magic and how to talk and read a few languages, but how we got that knowledge or the history of ones past, this one does not know. How?
The corpses are of humans, high elves, dragonborn and a single other changeling like ourselves, but dead. Signs of a battle and scorch marks of an explosion could bee seen. markings in red for a ritual that this one does not know. So we take the round things of silver that we can find on the dead, for we know somehow that they are used as payment, and then put the corpses on a pile to burn, for this one feel that is right.
We journey down the mountain until we reach the bottom, and are greeted by the great blue of the sea, for we are at the coast. And thus, we follow it. After hours has passed, we see a village and a cabin on the outskirts with a single fishing boat outside. We hesitate, but hunger wins. And so we use our powers and make a face of a young human, one that looks so innocent. And we knock.
And elder couple of man and woman we think? Opens the door, with curious looks on us. "Hello, I am a traveler with nowhere to go and with a hunger taking hold of me. Can I bother to ask of you for some food? We can pay in silver..."
The couple smiles and let us in, and says we do not have to pay for food. And they see our wound and the woman treat our wound after we have eaten. "Why would you show such kindness to me? You do not know me" Their answer was that they believe that someone so polite could not be bad. We feel shame in tricking them with our false face, and decide to tell them the truth, all of it. Their shock over seeing our true face and hearing what little we remember caused them worry and fear. But in the end they said. "You have a new beginning, so start a new and make it your own. If you want, you can live here with us until you feel that you want to continue searching for answers." And we are touched by their kindness, so we ask if we can stay? The answer be a yes.
We have now lived here for 2 years. They taught us how to sail and fish, and we on their behest have taken the face of the same young man we had been when we knocked on their door. We love the sea and we love the life we have in the village. As we go out a and sing and drink with the other fishers. We laugh in their face when they lose in games against us. And the music we sing with them sounds horrible as we drink that sour drink, but who cares! We are free and happy, beating up any ******* who dares insult our friends.
Going to the city to sell our fish with the elder couple is always fun. We see new races, and can use your knowledge in language. And when no one is looking, we change our race to try and sell it to others of the same race, as they trust their own more. Or we turn into beautiful men or women and seduce blushing wifes and husbands charmed by our looks, And it is damn fun to see them fall for our tricks, hook, line and sinker! HAHAHAHA! Gold we go home with, laughing over how easily a smile from a beautiful person can make selling so easy.
But our new life threatened, as a new lord takes over the fief, rising taxes for city and village both. We see how guards search through our friends house, in search of gold. We saw how they found nothing that could pay for their taxes. But the guards do not believe our friend, and cut him down when they do not hear what they want to hear. We look in shook, and want to kill those ********! But we cant. Not without putting the kind couple in danger. So we kept on walking with teeth grinding.
Another and another of of the fishermen gets killed in the name of the lords greed. Why can't they understand that the taxes is too high for us to pay! Not even we who sell our fish so well with the couple can barely pay it. This has to end! I am going to kill that fu***** lord!
We travel in to the city and observe the castle of the lord. And after some preparations, we get a highly placed guard drunk and knock him out. Naked in the forest with their ass bare for any wolf take a bit off. As we take his form and walk in in his clothes. As we sneak around, we find children locked up in a dungeon, and instantly know from the fear in their eyes, why they are here. THAT SHI* STAIN OF A LORD! FU**! Anger fills us, but we use this to our advantage. As we take the form of a child and appear in front of the lords room. His lustful delight in seeing us disgust us, but we keep the role of a frightened child. And as he turn around for second, we change form and strangle him from behind with the sheets from the bed. As he falls dead to our feet. We hide him and take his form. We order the children to be freed. and for all the lords treasure to be moved and hidden. And have the guards who killed our friends executed. After that we take the lords body and hang him from a noose in his room, while writing a scribbled suicide note fitting of a madman.
We return to our village with gold, giving back what was taken in taxes, and giving what half of what remained to the families of those who were killed. The villagers thank us from the bottom of their hearts and a feast is arranged. And we have never felt happier. With the half of the gold that is left, we buy ourselves a sailing ship and hire our friends to become our crew. And since that day we transport goods and sail the seas singing shanties.
And that is the backstory of Vix. Sailing the seas and searching for adventure on both land and sea.
What do you all think? Was it a bad or good backstory? I want you to be honest, no matter if it is bad or good. Also, if anyone have tips and suggestions I would love to hear them
Hi guys! New player here. I created a wizard, I hope you like his backstory:
Hailing from the mystic isles of Agarath, an obscured kingdom nestled on the edge of the forgotten continent, Melchizedek was once a novitiate of the Phrontistery of the Arcane Order. The Agarathi are usually reticent people. They keep their knowledge, culture and lifestyle to themselves and only venture off their homeland to keep up with the times.
Most Agarathi spend their lives never even leaving the continent. However, the young Melchizedek was never content with the life of seclusion and study. Just few years as novitiate, he struck a friendship with a visiting foreign elder sage and asked to vouch for him as an escort in order to escape his mundane lifestyle on the continent. The boy left Agarath with eyes gleaming wanderlust.
Unbeknownst to him, the sage was actually one of the Ten Fingers of Zahhak, high priests to the enigmatic Dark Lord of Time and Chaos. What he meant for the boy as goodwill was a facade for replacing the vessel of the ailing old wretch's soul. The ritual possession took two years. The boy's consciousness drifted to and from the void, slowly losing self and soul. Lucky for the boy, the wretched fool croaked before the ritual was complete, reclaiming his soul and body.
Yet he cannot even rejoice in the midst of his triumph. His hair is now ashen gray, his mind burdened with secrets of time and dark tidings. An ominous grimoire made of human skin occasionally haunts his dreams. But the worst of it all, his ventures towards the void during the ritual caught the eye of Zahhak, for now he is less one servant and an apostate armed with the knowledge of his dark plans runs loose. The hounds are set free and his hunt begins.
Years went by, the boy survived and is now a man and an Initiate of Hurmuz, the sworn enemy of Zahhak. He scours the land for knowledge and seeks the path of enlightenment to free him from his burden.
New member, long-time DM here! We have a mechanic in one of my campaigns that functions a lot like the Dragon Age companions system. For each "quest," the characters can take an ally with them to fill out their party (to balance the fact that they're 3 kobolds). That ally character is role-played by me, but they run them in combat. My favorite of these characters is Willow.
Willow grew up training in a githzerai monastery, and from a young age proved to be a formidable combatant. They were the strongest, fastest, & brightest student around - and they knew it. On more than one occasion, Willow's cocky attitude got them into trouble. After a particularly nasty loss of control in a sparring match (they knocked a younger student out cold), Willow was assigned to a nearby village for medical work. They resented the assignment, and ignored their master's instructions while treating patients. Their carelessness resulted in catching a disease that none at the monastery could treat. The illness left their bones frail and caused their muscles to deteriorate. Willow was no longer able to fight. Instead, they were forced to focus on their meditation and psionic ability. Over time, Willow grew to accept their disease as punishment for their foolhardiness, and grew exponentially both as a monk and as a person. By the time they had reached adulthood, they were deemed fit to train younger students. Their first disciple was a human, just like Willow. And, like Willow, she was cocky & self-assured. When Willow was forced to leave the monastery (won't get in to that), their disciple, Elka, vowed to find them when she completed her training.
I pay only in 2 cent increments.
-Sable
The best subclass to the best class in the game being naturally College of Lore, I made this guy! I keep an in-character journal of our sessions and wrote the backstory in the same style, so I hope it's somewhat readable. The art below was made by the wonderful Olympia, check her out: https://olympiaaurion.weebly.com/art.html
With the Lord of Knowledge as my witness, I, Professor Alistair, formerly of clan Clethtinthiallor, hereby profess that the underlying is the whole truth and nothing but the truth, written in the form of annals for posterity's sake.
I was born 53 years before the date of writing in the early spring, in the nation known as Tymanther, in eastern Faerûn. My family, the clan Clethinthiallor, held a large homestead just outside of Djerad Thymar. The clan was of some prominence, as our chief purpose was to breed the warhorses used by the Tymantheran military. What I mostly recall, however, was our music and our stories. Every night, after the work was done and the horses were stabled, we would sit around the fire, dozens of my blue-skinned kin adorned with the silver falcons, playing our makeshift instruments and singing the tales of our forebears. It was a simple time, a time of peace and kindness, a side of our kind that no other dokaal [red. 'two-legged', humanoid] usually gets to see. My mother was named Nacoria, and she was a true prodigy where the rearing and raising of warhorses was concerned. She would breed strong, obedient and fearsome creatures that were the pride of our clan. Who my father was, I never knew. Our young were raised by the clan as a whole. Direct familial bonds were of little import. I vaguely recall that our clan leader, Xharvasar, may have been the sole progenitor during his tenure, but whether he is my father I could not say.
It did not last. One night, mere weeks before my 16th year of life and my induction into adulthood, we were attacked. A skirmish of some sort, far too close to the walls of Djerad Thymar. Tymantheran law dictates that any clan on the outskirts of a djerad [red. clanhold] is obligated to protect the outer walls until organised help would arrive. I was awoken in the dead of night by my older brother Alyxos, who pushed a sword in my hand and shouted for me to follow him. In the darkness, we ran through the fields. I recall horses whinnying, seeing the lightning breath of my kin and smelling the ozone and the burnt flesh. Our foe I hadn't yet laid eyes on, but soon I saw and heard their approach. I froze in place, Alyxos running thirty or forty feet ahead of me, still shouting for me to follow, to help. I did not. I could not move a muscle. The enemy was soon upon Alyxos, a whirlwind of gleaming blades and icy magic. I watched unmoving as Alyxos fought bravely, but was cut down. I remember distinctly how he looked back at me, his eyes locked with mine in anger and disappointment, as his head was separated from his shoulders. All I could do was run. I ran away from our homestead, away from Djerad Thymar, away from Tymanther. I don't remember much of my travels West, just that I quickly resolved that I could never return. My act of cowardice cost me the life of my brother and probably more members of the clan.
I made my way west until I found the great blue sea and Waterdeep, the city of Splendors. From scrap I built myself a barely functioning lyre and did the only thing I knew how; make music and sing. I played and sang and collected enough coppers to cobble together one sparse meal most days. It wasn't much of a life, but my songs managed to put a smile on the face of most. One day, an elderly elf approached me while I was playing and listened for most of the day. After I was done playing, she introduced herself as Idaara, handed me three gold pieces and asked for translations of the songs, as she couldn't understand Draconic. I was a bit shy, but her kindness calmed me after a while. She showed me to a small bookshop that she owned in the South Ward, offered me tea and dinner for the night, while I sat and transcribed the songs into Common. By the time I was done, it was late in the evening and Idaara offered me a place to stay for the night. That night became two, then four, and then several months. I worked in the bookshop and sometimes played songs to entertain the customers. In my time there I also read most of what the bookshop had to offer. Idaara and I taught each other our native tongues and she became as a mother to me.
One day, while I was playing to some young halfling children who had come to the shop, a well-dressed middle-aged human gentleman entered. He talked in hushed tones with Idaara, who, after my playing was finished, introduced me to him. Professor Hamish Tallowgrass, as he was called, was a professor at a prestigious Bardic college called New Olamn. He extended to me an invitation to audition and perhaps enroll in the college, as he thought I was very talented. And so I did. New Olamn became my new home. I was by far the only Strixiki [red. Dragonborn] who attended, and that came hand in hand with no small amount of prejudice. It was here, during my many hours of lonesome study, that I first came upon mention of Oghma, the God of Knowledge, and his Celestial emissaries. The idea of these beings of pure goodness, the true moral guide for any mortal, who served the Lord of all Knowledge, was fascinating to me. Clearly, these beings were by their definition good, and served knowledge itself, therefore they must know what it means to be good! And this, I vowed, I needed to know as well. My studious efforts doubled, I dedicated myself to gathering knowledge of all kinds, but mostly to the beings of the upper planes, those Celestials. My delving into the deepest reaches of Celestial lore, combining it with my exploration of this knowledge through song, eventually started manifesting itself as manipulations of the very Weave of the material plane. I was able to perform rudimentary magic! Needless to say, I delved into this topic as well, learning as much as I could about the field of Arcana and slowly but surely cultivating my own abilities as well. After my time as a student was complete, I never again wanted to leave. I applied for a teaching position and within five years I was offered a tenured position with a lot of security.
The leadership of New Olamn isn't always too happy with a Strixiki on staff, but my students like me well enough I suppose! Professor Tallowgrass passed away a little over a decade before the time of writing this. Shortly before he wrote to me, telling me about the existence of a secret organisation of knowledge-keepers and guardians of information called the Harpers. He requested that I take his place as an agent in this organisation, to 'get me out of that dusty office once in a while'. He closed his letter with a question; "Is it better to be brave unthinkingly, recklessly, or a to be a coward who learns from it?" I was never able to answer this question before he passed away, and I carry his letter on my person to this very day. I followed Hamish' advice and sought out a representative for the Harpers. I assured them of my resourcefulness and showed them the magic that had come to me. I was definitely not the only bard among the Harpers, and contact with others like myself was invigorating. Over the past years I have been taking expeditions for the Harpers, carrying out small missions and, forsooth, doing some good in the world! I can scarcely believe it myself... The reason for writing this short and concise history of my life thus far, is because I have been tasked with a grievous mystery. The renowned Shield Dwarf historian Brudenthal, with whom I have a vague passing familiarity, has gone missing while traveling from [] to Waterdeep with an invaluable collection of tomes of Dwarven history. I am to set out in the direction of Red Larch, to scout the surrounding area and deduce what may have happened to him, all under the guise of 'field work' so to speak! Let's hope it isn't anything more serious than roving bandits, shall we...
Here is another example of a character's instruction manual. As with all of my characters, there is a lot of mundane. This character has one stickler in its life, though. As an experiment, I made heavy use of RNGs for this.
Description:
You have a typical height and weight expected of Halflings. You are past middle age but not remotely elderly, yet. In addition to your Description Characteristics ((Male, black irises, black hair, fair skin)), you sport a full but trim beard uncommon for Halflings. Your hair is of a medium, easily-manageable length. Your skin is weathered. You wear clothes appropriately sized for Halflings. You wear a weathered trenchcoat even in warmer climes and also an equally weathered woodsman cap. Stuck in the cap, there is an old, dilapidated feather of a sea bird like a seagull or albatross. You carry a wood-axe ((throwing axe)), still appropriately sized for a Halfling. You wear cuffed boots appropriate for wading such as for fishing.
Your hands appear wrapped or bandaged.
Backstory basics.
When you are away from home, you go by the nickname, the Woodsman. You consider yourself a brawler. ((The Woodman's technically a Monk class.))
Your common story about yourself is that you were born from the heartwood of a massive tree and had to break out of the tree before you could gasp your first breath of air. You immediately spotted a woodsman chopping down trees and, in a rage for the offense, you snatched his axe from him mid-swing and chopped him down instead. You see people in the same way that people see trees: potential firewood. None of that is true in the slightest, of course.
Someone might find you in a tavern. If so, the person might see you drinking and laughing with others, telling wild and completely untrue tales, or having a great time in a brawl that you may have encouraged if not out-right instigated. While you take comments about your size in stride, you will use the excuse to throw some punches. Brawls are fun.
If someone finds you outside of a tavern, you are probably heading to a tavern or to the docks. If someone finds you at the docks, you are probably heading to a tavern. On the rare chance that someone finds you outside of a port town, you are probably heading to a port town with a tavern. There is a theme here.
Despite this, you never get so drunk as to not enjoy the revelry — a heavy buzz at the most.
Outside of the other possibilities, you might be either looking for work or already working for coin. Likely, you will seek mercenary work, but coin is coin, and a simple job pays as do the dangerous ones, albeit not as much.
For the final possibility of encountering you in the world, you will be working on a ship as passage fare. The ship’s purpose is mostly immaterial. You are not against some privateering, but you try to avoid outright piracy. You enjoy never staying put in any land for long. There is too much of the world left to see, and that is just considering what can be found on the coasts.
On an aside, you can read and write, but you have difficulty with mathematics beyond simple addition and subtraction.
To date, you never told anyone your real history of your family nor your real history of your time as a pirate on the seas. You do not see any reason to do that. You make up weird and crazy stories that nobody will likely believe.
Backstory details - not to be revealed lightly.
Backstory: Family
Your real name is Quoumo Goodearth. You were born in the port town of Shoun in the region of Luiren with the devastating Spellplague all but forgotten ages prior. You are the fourth of five children and the only male in the offspring. You are currently 70 years old which is just beyond middle age for a Halfling. Your mother, Alaine, is a diplomat of Shoun and resides with your father, Vlorn, in Lurien’s capital city of Beluir. Your father repairs enchanted items as his trade. Both of them are getting on in their years, but they seem like they’ll be around for quite a while longer.
As common in Luiren, you were raised to follow the Halfling god, Brandobaris, but specifically one of the many loose variations of the teachings, focusing on the deity's ability for wit rather than the traits of deception, speed, and boldness. The family is not dogmatic about the religion. Though, mice are still considered sacred to a degree among your family. It is not a religion that you follow now.
Your younger sister, Eida, the youngest of the bunch, is a healer in Shoun. She is happily “dating” several local men there. Somehow, she manages to have no children of her own, yet. Your parents are proud of her trade but do not approve of her lifestyle. They are still on good terms with Eida, regardless.
You first older sister, Pennie Goodbarrel, the third oldest of the bunch and middle child, works as a guard for the city farm in Chethel with her husband, Chester Goodbarrel. They also do not have any children, yet. Your parents approve of Chester but insist that Pennie’s “clock is ticking,” whatever that means.
Your next older sister, Marigold Elderberry, the second-born, is a hunter in Lluirwood. She lost her husband, Ambroise, to the ghosts of Thruldar at the northeast end of the Lluirwood. She is never specific about what happened. She has two sons, Bruno and Kipp. Kipp, the younger, is also a hunter in Lluirwood. Bruno is usually in jail for anything from assault to theft but no murder... yet. Your parents fear that Bruno is headed down a dark road. Marigold gave up on trying to change Bruno’s ways.
Your oldest sister, Harriet Underfoot, married into the Underfoot family and owns a farm with her husband, Lynn. Your parents like Lynn well enough but sometimes think that the money gets to your sister’s head once in a while. She lives rather extravagantly. The Underfoot family includes two sons and a daughter, all still in their teens which makes them rather young in Hafling years. Your parents were once worried that Harriet was barren given how long it took Lynn and Harriet to conceive, but out popped three adorable, if slightly spoiled, children just over a year apart from each other: first Kellan, then Julia, and lastly, Marcus.
When you were a child back when your mother was an attaché to the minister of Luiren and would have to travel out of Luiren with your father, you and your siblings would be in the care of your aunt, Nora Goodearth, the much older sister of your father. It was always like a little vacation for you five. Nora adored you all and would admittedly spoil the lot of you. She was a weaver, was never married, and had no children of her own. She has passed on peacefully from old age many years ago.
Your mother had no siblings and you never knew any of your grandparents.
With a parent in the occupation of diplomacy, you and your sisters received some education in Shoun. As mentioned previously, you can write, but numbers beyond basic addition are right out.
The tight-knit town in those days didn't have the classist attitude that some of the larger towns did. Everyone was friends with everyone. There was a time when you felt you knew everyone by name. Now, many people have moved on or passed on. Many more moved in, and the town is quite a sizeable, bustling cultural center by the sea.
You often write to your family and your nephews and nieces, except for Bruno who is never in any place you can predict. Your whole family — including husbands, nieces, nephews, and your youngest sister’s current fling — gets together for a day if you are in Luiren, again except for Bruno. The Underfoot trio of kids love to hear your wild stories.
With the exception of Marigold’s troubles, there is really nothing particularly fascinating to tell about your family... and quite frankly, you like it that way. As wonderful a world it is, home is a place to get away from it all without drama.
Backstory: the Woodsman and the Sea
To that matter, you fell in love with the sea from living in a port town and listening to the sailors tell wild tales — a few stories being surprisingly and fascinatingly true though you believed it all to be true at the time. While your sisters were pursuing men for marriage, you would be found in the tavern pursuing a drink and a story. You did not have the habit of holding a job for long, especially if it was hard labor. Your mind was always on the sea.
The tales of a wide range of gods with incredible histories gave you the idea that there's more to it all than just mice and Brandobaris' wit. You decided to consider other possibilities of worship.
The sailors of the sea began to change to a more revelrous lot as the shipping trade with Luiren grew. You changed with it and took to brawling as a sport. You have a knack for it. At the time of your first departure from Luiren, brawling was not yet a problem in Shoun. They were mostly events that ended friendly with a round or two bought by the last few who had still been fighting. Now, tavern fighting in all of Luiren is criminal.
Brawling is how you were first hired to be a bodyguard aboard a ship. The ship was heading to the islands of Lantan, and you jumped at the chance to travel the seas. While trouble was expected which is why you were hired, it turned out to just be an uneventful though long journey. Your parents were fearful until you sent them a letter of the wondrous things you saw in Lantan. The idea of sailing to fascinating places was solidified by the experience.
You took many different jobs while sailing. You even tutored children in their letters on some of the journeys... and the children once tried to tutor you in numbers, unsuccessfully.
Your love of the sea was momentarily tested. During a slow, careful passage through the Dragon Coast, an emerald-eyed Human passenger caught your fancy, and at the time, you considered it a mutual fancy: Lady Stanford-Bristol who was heading home from a visit with her family. She was only a foot and a half taller than you. It was a strange but exciting romance while it lasted. There were three main reasons why that relationship ended: She was married and never intended to divorce her husband, intending to keep your relationship a secret if you stayed with her. Your parents would accept your choice but never actually approve of a Human, much less adultery. Lastly, the sea was always calling to you. Yet for a long while after you returned to the sea, you sometimes wondered what she was doing in her manor with an undesirable oaf of a husband from an arranged marriage. Though now in your more-jaded years, you very rarely wonder who she's doing instead... sometimes with just the slightest tinge of jealousy.
During that same passage through the Dragon Coast, you became friends with Clerebold Bentham, a Human warlock. Even with all your experiences seeing magic elsewhere, you were still fascinated with the weird things he could do seemingly as easy as breathing. You tried to get him to teach you magic as he could do, but his explanations of why that was not possible never made sense to your mundane understanding. To sate your curiosity of magic, he taught you some simple things in magical ways that did not require magic. ((This is the Ki ability and the Woodman’s understanding of it is oversimplified.)) It seemed like magic. So, you accepted it... to a point.
You stole his grimoire in an attempt to teach yourself more. The next thing you remember is waking up in the ship’s kitchen with a crowd of passengers around you including Lady Stanford-Bristol and Clerebold. Even though some of the passengers told you that Clerebold saved the ship and your life, the crew of the ship set him off alone in a dinghy with his shredded grimoire (that apparently was your fault somehow), the clothes he was wearing at the time, and nothing else. That is when you first learned about the stigma surrounding warlocks, and your meddling exposed him to the crew and passengers. Lady Stanford-Bristol told you that she thought your destruction of the grimoire upset whichever devil or demon owned Clerebold’s soul and that destroying the tome was the reason you were not sent away with him despite everyone knowing that you were friends with him, thinking you deliberately risked your life to destroy a demonic tool when discovering it.
After the journey (and relationship) ended, you decided that no demon or devil owned Clerebold’s soul, and you likely, though unintentionally, helped to doom an innocent man and a friend to the depths of the Dragon Coast. You wondered where these demons and gods were when people needed their help. Your temperament took a slight course correction with that dose of reality, and you began taking jobs mostly as a mercenary. For a while, you took up with a privateer crew who had methods a little more extreme than you were used to doing, but you grew to like it. A little shame can go a long way to help a person change and turn outward to violence.
Your ability to fight got you praise from the First Mate (which was consequently the only name he called himself) along with a little advice to being a pirate. ...which you thought you all were privateers until that moment. First Mate told you that you needed an idiom of your own. Since you had already spent a year as a pirate though innocently, you decided to embrace the extra self-loathing and go all-in with the extreme violence. In the rare cases where you were to lead a crew, you would insist on dismembering the enemy and burning the pieces. For that, you earned the nickname, the Woodsman. You even purchased an axe and hat to sell the look. It is not a well-traveled moniker, but very occasionally, you meet someone who heard stories about the dreaded Woodsman.
The next time you returned home after being the Woodsman for the first time, the Underfoot trio were not impressed with your stories. You omitted a lot. At the time, you told yourself that is was to keep the children from being frightened, but when you could not tell the rest of your family about your life as the Woodsman, you decided it was time to reel it in so to speak. A little more shame can go a long way to help a person change and turn inward to self-reflection.
Backstory: The Woodsman today
Now using the pirate persona of the Woodsman, you are able to take some of the riskier jobs, and you can keep your involvement in those jobs away from your family, but your outright butchery and piracy ended. Yet, your stories to your family are more fantasy than fact ever since your revelation, a habit that you continue in the taverns and on the seas. Your two lives are separate, and a little glamorized self-promotion of the Woodsman here and there could not hurt with getting good pay.
You place no faith in the gods or any extraplanar being. You believe that they will do whatever they will without any counsel from mortals, and you will do whatever you can. You believe that there are still valuable lessons to learn from some of their stories, especially Brandobaris. Some habits die hard, and you still let mice alone even though you're certain that no wrath of Brandobaris would come to pass otherwise.
...and now, the Woodsman needs some coin. You are probably spending much of what you earned in a tavern brawl.
OOC - Behind the curtain.
This character is a level 3 Stout Halfling Monk with a -1 INT bonus. ("Monk" is just the game's ruleset. The character is a brawler. Let me explain.) I consider the character's ability to drink as part of the advantage and resistance against poisons. The character has a Chaotic Neutral alignment which is going against my preference of "actions decide alignment," but this character is an experiment. The Chaotic alignment was decided by the Background. Much of the character's life as the Woodsman comes from the Sailor Background with the characteristics picked by RNG. Much of the character's life in general was also RNG generated regarding parents, siblings, and frenemies. In essence, RNGs gave me LEGO blocks, and I pieced them together. I "re-rolled" the backstory RNG until there were almost no tragedies in the family due to my preference for mundane origins. I think that the -1 INT allows me to create a misunderstanding of what Ki is and how it works, essentially re-naming the Monk class as a Brawler. The enemy warlock from a friend RNG'd "LEGO block" gave me the opportunity to find a place to fit it in the story. ...and the rest, as sometimes said, is history.
Thus ends the initial phase of this RNG experiment.
EDIT: Reorganization for better roleplay management...
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider.
My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong.
I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲
“It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
Ok, so this is my second character in my friends' homebrewed world. The basic premise of the world is that it was destroyed after the Elves went to war with the Gods, with only pockets of easily habitable land (and civilization) surviving under protective "domes", with everything around them being just harsh wilderness filled with monsters. There is no magic in this world, only "powerful crystals" that offer magical-like properties. My DM is very secretive about them, so I cannot say more than I suspect they are the shard remains of the "Gods of Old". I got to play a half-elf assassin, which is a very hard-to-get race (I had to succeed a DC-18 roll for it).
In the pre-war society of old, Rhien Zanros started out as any half-elf would. In a loving family of four – his parents, himself and an older brother. Life was good. However, war leaves scars in every family, his included. With Rhiens father, a beast-man commander of great renown, dead within the first weeks of fighting and the echoes of war encroaching ever closer to his household, Rhiens older family members decided to undergo the Deep Sleep, hoping to awake at friendlier times, expecting to sleep no more than 5 years. That will not be the case.
When he awoke 200 years later, Rhien quickly realized the world he knew was long gone – the abundant elven colonies lost to time and elves themselves becoming myths in their own right. Rhien understood that if he were discovered in this more... primitive time, he would probably end up on a stake as a demon or worse – a dissection table. Forced to blend into human society he now searches for his lost family, hoping that at least someone is still alive.
During the academy, Rhien was singled out due to his quick (some would say almost catlike) reflexes and good instincts. He ended up selected for the “Corvus program” – a group of assassins/secret police, the “public secret” that keeps the other noble families and enemies of the King awake at night. Rhien distinguished himself there as well, with the elven sword technique his father and older brother taught him coming useful, if seemingly unorthodox. While this half-elf has succeeded in the program, he was still not a member of the Corvus group, only an initiate at best. His handler sent the elf to “get some blood under his fingers” in the field with a promise to “give him some real work” if he succeeded in the task.
Jeff
i was raised by a wise old octagon
I love the visualization of your character!
Darbakh - Duergar troublemaker [Pic 1] [Pic 2] [Story 1] [Story 2]
Quorian - half-elf watcher
PM me the word ‘tomato’