I'm going to be making several posts for characters I've made. Some of them I have already created as D&D characters and signed on to campaigns. Others I haven't yet, but they all exist in the D&D universe(or a version of it at least). I know about the backstory thread, have posted there, and have gotten/received greate feedback. I'm breaking my posts out though because A: I feel like I'm hijacking the thread, and B: I'm legitimately collecting feedback from readers regarding the characters and my writing, and given how much I'm posting, it will be easier for me to keep track if it if I have separate threads for each character and their story. So here's the first one. I think this one presents better with Short story first, and then the backstory content.
Ruckus Elfwyn
The big kids bow:
“Your just a smelly dwarf! You're just a smelly dwarf! You’re not an elf! You’re not an elf!”, the children gathered around young Rucks Elfyn chanted in a sing song chorus.
He didn’t understand why they were so mean to him. He just wanted to play with the other elf children. He was an Elf to after all…. Why couldn’t they just all be friends and play together? He knew he looked a little different from them, but his mamma had told him to pay that no mind, and not the other children bother him.
It did bother him though. He wouldn’t do that to them. If he was like the other children, he would invite all the other children to play in the group! It wouldn’t matter how different anyone was. He didn’t really know what it was like to have friends, but he thought it would be the best thing in the whole world! Why wouldn’t you want to have everyone as a friend?! He didn’t understand that. He would let anyone play with him… He would let everyone play with him and play together and be happy…. Why wasn’t the world like that? Why was the world and everyone in it so mean?
He had asked his mama this before, and she had said some things that he didn’t really understand. His mama did that a lot. He didn’t think she was trying to be mean. She just didn’t understand that he didn’t understand.
“haha!”, Ruckus giggled when he thought that last thing. Thoughts like that made him laugh, and that made him feel better.
The moment of happiness was short-lived though as Ruckus was then pushed from behind by one of the mean Elf kids. His mama had told him to be careful, and to not let his bad feelings take control of him, but he couldn’t help.
“STOP! BEING! MEAN! TO! MEEEET!”, he screams as he jumps up and throws himself on top of the boy, tackling him to the ground. Everything is bad feelings, and yelling, and hurting and then he is pushed off by the boys friends. All he wanted was for them to be his friends… He’s afraid they will all start hurting him together now, but they don’t. They help up the boy who he had been on top of, who is crying harder than even Ruckus was, and they all give him a look that hurts him even more than all the name-calling, the teasing, the hitting, and the kicking. They look like they are scared of him, and they all run away.
Ruckus would never want any of them to be scared. He didn’t mean to hurt the boy. Even though the boy had pushed him down. He just wanted to be their friend! Why did the world have to be mean! Someone needed to change that! Someone needed to make the world less mean, and make it so all the children played together and would be nice to each other. Then he remembered something…
“The only thing that changes the world one way or the other is little Ruckus is strength”, lady Elfwyn had told him during one of those times when most of what she said he didn’t understand. This he had understood though.
“Sometimes the change is good. Sometimes the change is bad, but it’s always a strength of some kind that makes the change.”, she had continued, and this he had also understood. You had to be strong to change things. If you weren’t strong to change things, then someone else could be that strong, and that someone else could want to make things change to be even more bad. He wanted them to change to be good, so he needed to be strong.
Ruckus stops crying and wipes away his tears. He walks over to the bows that the older boys were practicing with earlier. Not the ones for him and the other little Elf children. The ones for the older boys. He picked up one of the arrows for the bigger bows and looked at the targets they were shooting them at. Not the closer ones for the little kids. He did like the mean teacher old teacher(she kept saying he was a dwarf too, he just didn’t say he was smelly) had taught him and tried to draw the bow back. It was really hard. Harder than the little bows he was used to. He wanted to do it though. He needed to be strong! He wanted things to be better for him and for everyone, and he needs to get STRONG!
THWIP!!
Ruckus had been aiming at first, but drawing the bow had been so hard he had closed his eyes during the struggle of pulling the string back. He had squinted them hard like the little muscles of his face would all join in and help him pull the string back, so that when he let it go, his eyes were still closed.
CHUDD!!!
The sound of the arrow hitting the target made Ruckus jump a little bit with a scare. Not a bad scare that made you want to cry and hide under the bed, but one that usually made you laugh after you did. He didn’t feel like laughing though. He was still too sad, and then he saw the arrow. It had made it all the way to big kids target and was in the spot marked all red they called the booollseye. They didn’t even have the red mark on the little kid targets he used with the other elf kids. They just wanted them all to hit the target, and almost nobody could. Ruckus could though, and the other children hadn’t liked that. He remembers now that is when they started teasing him earlier. That makes him want to cry again, so he stops…. He wanted to change things. He wanted to make things good. He needed to be strong.
Ruckus grabs another arrow from the rack. The big kid ones.
Ruckus notches the arrow and pulls the string back. It’s hard… but not as hard as before. He does it without squinting. He keeps is eyes open.
Ruckus aims at the target. The big kid target. THWIP! CHUD! Ruckus looks at the target. He hit the target again this time. Not right on the booolseye, but close to it. The words of his mama go through his mind again but shorter. Clearer. “Only strength changes the world.”
Ruckus grabs another arrow off the rack. The big kid one.
Ruckus was orphaned as a dwarf and raised by a kind(not really and actually a racist bastard) old elvish ranger lady who lived a solitary life in the mountains. She was an outcast herself due to being really racist towards dwarves. Elves and dwarves, in general, have their beef, but she was so hardcore about it she was kicked out of the rangers and became a druid. Embraced by the nature-loving and just generally down to earth druids at first, eventually, the same thing happened, and she ended up alone in the mountains. That’s where she came across a poor orphaned Mountain Dwarf with just the name Ruckus written on a sign around his neck. He couldn’t even speak yet. She really hated dwarves, but for some reason, little Ruckus just tugged at her heart strings. Long story short, she raised him as her own. Teaching him the ways of the Elvish Rangers and Druids... but she hated dwarves, like with a passion(btw there has never been any revealed legit reason for this hate… at all) so she told Ruckus that he was an Elf like her. She raised him speaking Elvish and he speaks dwarfish like an Elf who did a half ass job of learning it as a second language. He was a little tall and nimble for a dwarf; which is pretty standard for Mountain dwarfs, but he didn’t know that, and with some strict training she managed to teach him some druid magic. Very specific spells that allowed him to make it seem like he could do more than he actually could than he in fact(Control flame), and protect and heal himself and others around him, because although unreasonably racist, Old lady Elfwyn was no fool. She knew she was raising someone who likely be having his ass beaten.. A lot. All this plus a healthy focus on Acrobatic training helped keep up the illusion that Ruckus Elfwyn was in fact an Elf. As Ruckus got older though, this fact became harder and harder to hide, so finally she had to tell him the truth….
He had a very rare life threatening condition that caused him(an Elf of course) to gradually and slowly turn start looking like a Dwarf as he grew older. This did cover the lie forever with little room for debate, because it’s not exactly easy for someone in this context to confirm the legitimacy of a medical diagnosis, but it had a consequence. Ruckus is fiercely loyal. Ride or die loyal with anyone he has become close with. The thought this condition was going to kill him(she said it was life threatening) made him not concerned for himself, but for her. What would she do when he was gone?
He set out right away from home on a quest to find a cure for Elvitiligo, and considers everything else a side quest. Often pointing that out in fact, regardless of the nature or importance of the current quest the group is on. Having been beaten up while growing up a dwarf among mostly elves who knew he was not a dwarf, he developed a very peculiar tick that is known as Tourette Syndrome. He at times will randomly twitch and yell out profanity(in elvish of course). This generally doesn’t happen during moments of stress or conflict but rather when everything is chill and people are calmly talking. Because of this. Ruckus isn’t invited to a lot the meetings when the crew is accepting new quests. That’s fine with him. That’s just a side question anyway….
In general, Ruckus hates dwarves. Not as much as old lady Elfwyn, but enough for it to be awkward. Having lived a mostly solitary life with her, he has very little actual life experience to base any legitimate hate on. Instead it’s all distilled 2nd hand from the constant griping of Lady Elfwyn always complaining about “those damn smelly dwarves”. This gets him into trouble constantly, but those who are close to him know not to even bother with the argument anymore. Let Ruckus think he’s an Elf. He’s not hurting anyone.. Well himself, but not that much.. well often and a lot, but hey pick your battles.
Ruckus fell into the Pirating life eventually by happenstance when he was mistaken for being a pirate already due to his Tourette syndrome acting up so much. A nearby Pirate crew overheard him having a particularly loud episode and thought that nobody but a Pirate would be swearing that much at apparently at nothing… He was immediately accepting as one of their own. Initially reluctant due to being raised a very honorable elf ranger/druid, he quickly realized that galavanting around the high seas with a crew of people who liked to drink as much as him, and seemed to have no real direction and thus ended up in many random places, was actually the perfect place to hopefully run across the cure for his Elvitiligo.
In his actually surprisingly short time as a pirate he has managed to lose an eye. This makes him look the part way more than actually fit it, and he is at best an amateur Pirate and not a really good one considering the honest nature of druids and elves in general. He has made several friends(at least he considers them that) that he would almost die for, and most importantly know better than to argue with him about the Elvitiligo(you won’t win). Bottom line is that he’s got to survive so he can take care of Old Lady Elfwyn, and is willing to take significant injury(he’s used to it and has healing magic) to protect his crew, but he does have to live for Old LE.
As for losing the eye, that happened fairly recently during a bet that required Ruckus to perform a feat of horse acrobatics common to the elvish rangers he claims to be. Thus proving that was in fact, ”an Elf Ranger/Druid, and not a damn smelly dwarf!”. He was drunk(on elvish mead of course), and had a bottle in hand. Being a Pirate party. This was not the kind of party you put your mead down at. If you were lucky it wouldn’t be there when you got back. If you were unlucky, it was still there and you drank it(because pirates don’t waste Booze) and… well yeah you don’t put your mead down at a Pirate party and Ruckus knew this already. He decided to double down and claim he was going to pull it off mead in hand and not spill a drop…. He lost his eye. On the mead bottle. (Side note: Ruckus only drinks Elvish Booz, and will never under any circumstances regardless of how thirsty drink anything dwarven). He claims this doesn’t prove anything though because since there was money involved(he lost 1 GP his life savings at the time) it had to be some dark dwarf magic or something like that that caused him to fail the triple back flit arrow show he attempted.
The Tourette syndrome is not in control of the player but the DM. During appropriate times the DM will make a roll with whatever modifiers they choose to determine if Ruckus has an outburst. If he does, then player improvs the outburst and limits it to only 1 sentence max.
Ruckus is in possession of an odd assortment of items that mostly were given to him by Old LE. They are various levels of usefulness and were mostly given to him in order to perpetuate the lie of Ruckus being an Elf. The most cherished among these is his Magic Elvish Dagger(actually dwarven) that was given to him the day he left home. The dagger so he was told has been handed down through the Elfwyn line for generations, but in actuality it is a dwarven dagger. This was stolen from an old lover of LE; who happened to be a dwarf. After he scorned her, she stole that and many other things from him and this is the reason Old Lady Elfwyn hates dwarves so much. Ruckus is totally unaware of all of this.
Other items and their status:
Ring of Animal Influence, Ring of Evasion, Ring of Protection, Ring of Jumping
Gruul Guild Signet - Doesn’t know that the compelled duel effect of this often gets him into fights. He just thinks people are picking fights because they are jealous of him being an Elf with magical powers.
Orzhov Guild Signet - Doesn’t realize that pretty much any time someone gives into him and agrees that he is an Elf, that it was this rings effect kicking in.
Ring of mind shielding - Helps perpetuate the lie of Ruckus the elf by shielding him from various forms of magic and detection that would in fact prove he is a dwarf.
All of the above is worn by him. He thinks they are not magical and doesn’t know how to consciously use them. The slight benefits they give him at seemingly random times he attributes to his being an Elf with magical powers. DM creates mechanic and controls the activation of all those items.
Elfwyns old Ranger gear(modified to fit a dwarf obviously)
Boots of Elvenkind - wearing them but doesn’t know what they do. Just knows they are elvish, and they actually are!
Cloak of Elvenkind - Same story as boots.
Efficient Quiver - Standard issue for the Elvish Rangers LE was part of. Ruckus actualy can use this, but doesn’t realize it can be used to store other things besides arrows. He doesn’t know how to tell how much are left though, so is usually very surprised when he runs out of arrows.
Bag of holding - A very handy item.. If he knew how to use it. Stolen by LE from the same dwarf she got the dagger from, she gave it Ruckus when he left home. With no idea on how to properly use it, he hardly ever pulls the desired item out of it, and several very handy ones are currently lost inside. When socializing Ruckus is often digging through the bag trying to fine one “Elvish” artifact or another that will prove he is in fact an Elf.
Bag of Tricks - Another very handy item if Ruckus knew how to use it properly. Given to him to make him think he had the power of “summoning” by LE. -Currently lost in bag of holding.
Bun-Bun of soothing - Don’t ask. No really don’t. -Currently lost in the bag of holding. Ruckus is very upset about this.
Spell Scrolls/Acid vial/Random Cloths/etc. - All of this is lost in the bag of holding including most of his money, and whenever he tries to pull out either the bag of tricks(his summoning totem) or the Bun-Bun of soothing(don’t ask), he usually gets one of these items at random, or something he had no idea he had but is equally useless for the task at hand. Item pulled is determined by DM roll, and can have a slight chance of pulling something actually useful of the DMs choosing and discretion.
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I'm going to be making several posts for characters I've made. Some of them I have already created as D&D characters and signed on to campaigns. Others I haven't yet, but they all exist in the D&D universe(or a version of it at least). I know about the backstory thread, have posted there, and have gotten/received greate feedback. I'm breaking my posts out though because A: I feel like I'm hijacking the thread, and B: I'm legitimately collecting feedback from readers regarding the characters and my writing, and given how much I'm posting, it will be easier for me to keep track if it if I have separate threads for each character and their story. So here's the first one. I think this one presents better with Short story first, and then the backstory content.
Ruckus Elfwyn
The big kids bow:
“Your just a smelly dwarf! You're just a smelly dwarf! You’re not an elf! You’re not an elf!”, the children gathered around young Rucks Elfyn chanted in a sing song chorus.
He didn’t understand why they were so mean to him. He just wanted to play with the other elf children. He was an Elf to after all…. Why couldn’t they just all be friends and play together? He knew he looked a little different from them, but his mamma had told him to pay that no mind, and not the other children bother him.
It did bother him though. He wouldn’t do that to them. If he was like the other children, he would invite all the other children to play in the group! It wouldn’t matter how different anyone was. He didn’t really know what it was like to have friends, but he thought it would be the best thing in the whole world! Why wouldn’t you want to have everyone as a friend?! He didn’t understand that. He would let anyone play with him… He would let everyone play with him and play together and be happy…. Why wasn’t the world like that? Why was the world and everyone in it so mean?
He had asked his mama this before, and she had said some things that he didn’t really understand. His mama did that a lot. He didn’t think she was trying to be mean. She just didn’t understand that he didn’t understand.
“haha!”, Ruckus giggled when he thought that last thing. Thoughts like that made him laugh, and that made him feel better.
The moment of happiness was short-lived though as Ruckus was then pushed from behind by one of the mean Elf kids. His mama had told him to be careful, and to not let his bad feelings take control of him, but he couldn’t help.
“STOP! BEING! MEAN! TO! MEEEET!”, he screams as he jumps up and throws himself on top of the boy, tackling him to the ground. Everything is bad feelings, and yelling, and hurting and then he is pushed off by the boys friends. All he wanted was for them to be his friends… He’s afraid they will all start hurting him together now, but they don’t. They help up the boy who he had been on top of, who is crying harder than even Ruckus was, and they all give him a look that hurts him even more than all the name-calling, the teasing, the hitting, and the kicking. They look like they are scared of him, and they all run away.
Ruckus would never want any of them to be scared. He didn’t mean to hurt the boy. Even though the boy had pushed him down. He just wanted to be their friend! Why did the world have to be mean! Someone needed to change that! Someone needed to make the world less mean, and make it so all the children played together and would be nice to each other. Then he remembered something…
“The only thing that changes the world one way or the other is little Ruckus is strength”, lady Elfwyn had told him during one of those times when most of what she said he didn’t understand. This he had understood though.
“Sometimes the change is good. Sometimes the change is bad, but it’s always a strength of some kind that makes the change.”, she had continued, and this he had also understood. You had to be strong to change things. If you weren’t strong to change things, then someone else could be that strong, and that someone else could want to make things change to be even more bad. He wanted them to change to be good, so he needed to be strong.
Ruckus stops crying and wipes away his tears. He walks over to the bows that the older boys were practicing with earlier. Not the ones for him and the other little Elf children. The ones for the older boys. He picked up one of the arrows for the bigger bows and looked at the targets they were shooting them at. Not the closer ones for the little kids. He did like the mean teacher old teacher(she kept saying he was a dwarf too, he just didn’t say he was smelly) had taught him and tried to draw the bow back. It was really hard. Harder than the little bows he was used to. He wanted to do it though. He needed to be strong! He wanted things to be better for him and for everyone, and he needs to get STRONG!
THWIP!!
Ruckus had been aiming at first, but drawing the bow had been so hard he had closed his eyes during the struggle of pulling the string back. He had squinted them hard like the little muscles of his face would all join in and help him pull the string back, so that when he let it go, his eyes were still closed.
CHUDD!!!
The sound of the arrow hitting the target made Ruckus jump a little bit with a scare. Not a bad scare that made you want to cry and hide under the bed, but one that usually made you laugh after you did. He didn’t feel like laughing though. He was still too sad, and then he saw the arrow. It had made it all the way to big kids target and was in the spot marked all red they called the booollseye. They didn’t even have the red mark on the little kid targets he used with the other elf kids. They just wanted them all to hit the target, and almost nobody could. Ruckus could though, and the other children hadn’t liked that. He remembers now that is when they started teasing him earlier. That makes him want to cry again, so he stops…. He wanted to change things. He wanted to make things good. He needed to be strong.
Ruckus grabs another arrow from the rack. The big kid ones.
Ruckus notches the arrow and pulls the string back. It’s hard… but not as hard as before. He does it without squinting. He keeps is eyes open.
Ruckus aims at the target. The big kid target. THWIP! CHUD! Ruckus looks at the target. He hit the target again this time. Not right on the booolseye, but close to it. The words of his mama go through his mind again but shorter. Clearer. “Only strength changes the world.”
Ruckus grabs another arrow off the rack. The big kid one.
Ruckus was orphaned as a dwarf and raised by a kind(not really and actually a racist bastard) old elvish ranger lady who lived a solitary life in the mountains. She was an outcast herself due to being really racist towards dwarves. Elves and dwarves, in general, have their beef, but she was so hardcore about it she was kicked out of the rangers and became a druid. Embraced by the nature-loving and just generally down to earth druids at first, eventually, the same thing happened, and she ended up alone in the mountains. That’s where she came across a poor orphaned Mountain Dwarf with just the name Ruckus written on a sign around his neck. He couldn’t even speak yet. She really hated dwarves, but for some reason, little Ruckus just tugged at her heart strings. Long story short, she raised him as her own. Teaching him the ways of the Elvish Rangers and Druids... but she hated dwarves, like with a passion(btw there has never been any revealed legit reason for this hate… at all) so she told Ruckus that he was an Elf like her. She raised him speaking Elvish and he speaks dwarfish like an Elf who did a half ass job of learning it as a second language. He was a little tall and nimble for a dwarf; which is pretty standard for Mountain dwarfs, but he didn’t know that, and with some strict training she managed to teach him some druid magic. Very specific spells that allowed him to make it seem like he could do more than he actually could than he in fact(Control flame), and protect and heal himself and others around him, because although unreasonably racist, Old lady Elfwyn was no fool. She knew she was raising someone who likely be having his ass beaten.. A lot. All this plus a healthy focus on Acrobatic training helped keep up the illusion that Ruckus Elfwyn was in fact an Elf. As Ruckus got older though, this fact became harder and harder to hide, so finally she had to tell him the truth….
He had a very rare life threatening condition that caused him(an Elf of course) to gradually and slowly turn start looking like a Dwarf as he grew older. This did cover the lie forever with little room for debate, because it’s not exactly easy for someone in this context to confirm the legitimacy of a medical diagnosis, but it had a consequence. Ruckus is fiercely loyal. Ride or die loyal with anyone he has become close with. The thought this condition was going to kill him(she said it was life threatening) made him not concerned for himself, but for her. What would she do when he was gone?