What kind of character/person do you think this could be.
......
He is a humanoid, human-looking male of approximately 18 years old. He has spent his life living with his mother in a nomadic tribe that migrates from one part of the desert to the other on a continuous cycle.
Although he and his mother lived with this tribe, it was apparent, just by the colour of their skin that they were not born as part of it. Furthermore, whenever the tribe would stop at a watering hole or an oasis, his mother would keep him far away from the water, so that in his entire life, he has never seen more than one cup of water at a time.
Not long after his supposed 18th birthday, the tribe had stopped at a watering hole to give their animals a drink and fill their water skins, and as usual, the boy and his mother were setting up camp some way off, out of sight of the water.
As the day wore on and the rest of the tribe had not returned to camp for the night, the boy and his mother began to get concerned. The boy wanted to go and see what was taking them so long, but his mother insisted that they must remain where they are and wait patiently. An argument ensured and eventually to satisfy her son and to stop him from storming off in the direction of the watering hole, the mother said that she would go.
It was already getting dark when she left, and it must have been going on midnight when she still had not returned. By now, the boy was getting frantic, his entire family had gone to the watering hole, and none of them had come back - he had to go, he had to find out what had happened to his loved ones, and so after muttering his apologies to his mothers sleeping bag, the boy stepped out of their tent and started in the direction he had seen his mother disappear in, hours before.
It took him perhaps 15 minutes at a slow trot to reach the watering hole, and when he got there, his mother and most of the tribe were missing. The only person there was a young girl, lying face down in the pool. The boy recognised her instantly from the red silk sash that he had given her only a week before - she was his childhood friend, and the silk sash was a gift he had given her, as proof of his worthiness to be her mate.
As the boy waded into the water to retrieve the body of his friend, his eyes turned black - not just black, but as black and impenetrable as the void and the water around him began to hiss and boil with such ferocious vigour that for a moment, it sounded like a scream. Then there was silence, and at that moment, between the tick and tock, a voice spoke to the boy.
"That traitorous hag was wise to hide you here, but I have found you at last, and you will NOT escape from me again!"
A thin cold tentacle wrapped itself around the boy, and the drowned girl and pulled them both down beneath the surface and into a strange and alien aquatic world, where the boy found to his amazement, that he could breathe as though the water filling his lungs was air and the motion of the water and light-reflecting all around them, made rhe dead girl seem as though she was alive again.
......
So based upon this, who and what do you think this boy might be?
Please feel free to completely disregard this, but there is a logical plausibility issue with this backstory!
I don't know what he's supposed to be, but the idea that an 18 year old man has never seen more than one cup of water at a time means he would have to be extremely pliable or scared of his mother. It doesn't seem plausible to me that he would have obeyed what seems like a truly baffling instruction otherwise - by the time he's 15 he should probably be disobeying her.
Also, you might want to consider that in a desert you need about 4-10 litres of water per person per day (8-20 pints), plus the larger amounts of water needed for pack animals, and it isn't really plausible to stop out of sight of the water in a desert - you have to take the animals there. You can often see large water sources like an oasis from miles away!
These are just things that you might want to think about and add in further detail to explain how it was possible, as his avoidance of water seems to be key to him not knowing what he is. But I do think that it's a really interesting character backstory!
What kind of character/person do you think this could be.
......
He is a humanoid, human-looking male of approximately 18 years old. He has spent his life living with his mother in a nomadic tribe that migrates from one part of the desert to the other on a continuous cycle.
Although he and his mother lived with this tribe, it was apparent, just by the colour of their skin that they were not born as part of it. Furthermore, whenever the tribe would stop at a watering hole or an oasis, his mother would keep him far away from the water, so that in his entire life, he has never seen more than one cup of water at a time.
Not long after his supposed 18th birthday, the tribe had stopped at a watering hole to give their animals a drink and fill their water skins, and as usual, the boy and his mother were setting up camp some way off, out of sight of the water.
As the day wore on and the rest of the tribe had not returned to camp for the night, the boy and his mother began to get concerned. The boy wanted to go and see what was taking them so long, but his mother insisted that they must remain where they are and wait patiently. An argument ensured and eventually to satisfy her son and to stop him from storming off in the direction of the watering hole, the mother said that she would go.
It was already getting dark when she left, and it must have been going on midnight when she still had not returned. By now, the boy was getting frantic, his entire family had gone to the watering hole, and none of them had come back - he had to go, he had to find out what had happened to his loved ones, and so after muttering his apologies to his mothers sleeping bag, the boy stepped out of their tent and started in the direction he had seen his mother disappear in, hours before.
It took him perhaps 15 minutes at a slow trot to reach the watering hole, and when he got there, his mother and most of the tribe were missing. The only person there was a young girl, lying face down in the pool. The boy recognised her instantly from the red silk sash that he had given her only a week before - she was his childhood friend, and the silk sash was a gift he had given her, as proof of his worthiness to be her mate.
As the boy waded into the water to retrieve the body of his friend, his eyes turned black - not just black, but as black and impenetrable as the void and the water around him began to hiss and boil with such ferocious vigour that for a moment, it sounded like a scream. Then there was silence, and at that moment, between the tick and tock, a voice spoke to the boy.
"That traitorous hag was wise to hide you here, but I have found you at last, and you will NOT escape from me again!"
A thin cold tentacle wrapped itself around the boy, and the drowned girl and pulled them both down beneath the surface and into a strange and alien aquatic world, where the boy found to his amazement, that he could breathe as though the water filling his lungs was air and the motion of the water and light-reflecting all around them, made rhe dead girl seem as though she was alive again.
......
So based upon this, who and what do you think this boy might be?
late teen? weird thing about water? water based powers? percy jackson is who first sprang to mind?
I'd imagine the character would be a water genasi, if only to explain why he can breathe underwater. Plus it's a race that can conceivably pass for human but would still look different enough to make people look twice.
Malagaz makes a great point. We may consider “adulthood” to start around age 18, but historically the age of majority would have been considered somewhere between 13-16. The story has a little more believability if the character were younger.
Please feel free to completely disregard this, but there is a logical plausibility issue with this backstory!
I don't know what he's supposed to be, but the idea that an 18 year old man has never seen more than one cup of water at a time means he would have to be extremely pliable or scared of his mother. It doesn't seem plausible to me that he would have obeyed what seems like a truly baffling instruction otherwise - by the time he's 15 he should probably be disobeying her.
Also, you might want to consider that in a desert you need about 4-10 litres of water per person per day (8-20 pints), plus the larger amounts of water needed for pack animals, and it isn't really plausible to stop out of sight of the water in a desert - you have to take the animals there. You can often see large water sources like an oasis from miles away!
These are just things that you might want to think about and add in further detail to explain how it was possible, as his avoidance of water seems to be key to him not knowing what he is. But I do think that it's a really interesting character backstory!
I will admit that those are quite major plot holes. I don't really know how to answer those questions in a way that makes sense though. At least not without changing the entire premise of the story.
I had a couple of things in mind while trying to write this
1. The mother knows the truth about who her son is
2. The boy has no idea who he really is
3. The mother is hiding her son for selfish reasons
4. The thing he is being hidden from finds him
I was trying to come up with something that explained why he has powers and things, without giving him too much of a backstory. I was aiming for something like "his past has made him who he is, but it is the future that defines him".
In other words, I was trying to limit his backstory to the the just the event that resulted in the realisation/awakening of his potential, and let his front story make him into whatever he became.
Perhaps I need to do more work on this one.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
A caffeinated nerd who has played TTRPGs or a number of years and is very much a fantasy adventure geek.
So this sounds like a very on-the-nose Lurker in the Deep warlock, so much so I'd be surprised if you didn't have this in mind and it was all a coincidence.
The 'never seen more than a cup of water' bit is so far-fetched as to be nonsensical, I assume that and the desert tribe thing are to justify the whole never being exposed to the patron thing you've got going on.
If you want to go the 'unknown pact' route with LitD patron, you could make it even simpler/more coherent:
Characters parent was a warlock of the lurker in the deep
The pact is hereditary (explains how the child could have entered into it without knowing)
Patron can only extend their influence through saltwater (means no silly 'cup of water' thing)
The pact bearing parent is dead/missing, remaining parent raises character far away from the sea
Character, never knowing why they're forbidden by their parent from visiting the ocean/joining the navy/travelling the world/whatever, grows up having never seen the sea
Parent dies/vanishes or character leaves home
Immediately does the thing they were told not to, as all children are wont to do
Gets snatched up by patron
It's funny you say you don't want to give him "too much of a backstory" and then write eight paragraphs. If you want a simple backstory, chronological bullet points work well
Please feel free to completely disregard this, but there is a logical plausibility issue with this backstory!
I don't know what he's supposed to be, but the idea that an 18 year old man has never seen more than one cup of water at a time means he would have to be extremely pliable or scared of his mother. It doesn't seem plausible to me that he would have obeyed what seems like a truly baffling instruction otherwise - by the time he's 15 he should probably be disobeying her.
Also, you might want to consider that in a desert you need about 4-10 litres of water per person per day (8-20 pints), plus the larger amounts of water needed for pack animals, and it isn't really plausible to stop out of sight of the water in a desert - you have to take the animals there. You can often see large water sources like an oasis from miles away!
These are just things that you might want to think about and add in further detail to explain how it was possible, as his avoidance of water seems to be key to him not knowing what he is. But I do think that it's a really interesting character backstory!
I will admit that those are quite major plot holes. I don't really know how to answer those questions in a way that makes sense though. At least not without changing the entire premise of the story.
I had a couple of things in mind while trying to write this
1. The mother knows the truth about who her son is
2. The boy has no idea who he really is
3. The mother is hiding her son for selfish reasons
4. The thing he is being hidden from finds him
I was trying to come up with something that explained why he has powers and things, without giving him too much of a backstory. I was aiming for something like "his past has made him who he is, but it is the future that defines him".
In other words, I was trying to limit his backstory to the the just the event that resulted in the realisation/awakening of his potential, and let his front story make him into whatever he became.
Please feel free to completely disregard this, but there is a logical plausibility issue with this backstory!
I don't know what he's supposed to be, but the idea that an 18 year old man has never seen more than one cup of water at a time means he would have to be extremely pliable or scared of his mother. It doesn't seem plausible to me that he would have obeyed what seems like a truly baffling instruction otherwise - by the time he's 15 he should probably be disobeying her.
Also, you might want to consider that in a desert you need about 4-10 litres of water per person per day (8-20 pints), plus the larger amounts of water needed for pack animals, and it isn't really plausible to stop out of sight of the water in a desert - you have to take the animals there. You can often see large water sources like an oasis from miles away!
These are just things that you might want to think about and add in further detail to explain how it was possible, as his avoidance of water seems to be key to him not knowing what he is. But I do think that it's a really interesting character backstory!
I will admit that those are quite major plot holes. I don't really know how to answer those questions in a way that makes sense though. At least not without changing the entire premise of the story.
I had a couple of things in mind while trying to write this
1. The mother knows the truth about who her son is
2. The boy has no idea who he really is
3. The mother is hiding her son for selfish reasons
4. The thing he is being hidden from finds him
I was trying to come up with something that explained why he has powers and things, without giving him too much of a backstory. I was aiming for something like "his past has made him who he is, but it is the future that defines him".
In other words, I was trying to limit his backstory to the the just the event that resulted in the realisation/awakening of his potential, and let his front story make him into whatever he became.
Perhaps I need to do more work on this one.
Ok so I''ll offer up some potential solutions and maybe one of them might inspire you to find something that works.
He has been told all his life that he has a rare disease, e.g. allergic to water and so has been given (either actually, or he just believes to be) fermented goat milk to drink as long as he can remember. This semi-intoxicated state has resulted in him being lethargic before now.
He has always been told that there was some kind of badness lurking in the water, waiting to claim him. Fear has kept him away.
He actually has been fine with water all his life, and this event is something new
His tribe have told him he is a holy being, and must not sully himself with bathing, and they always brought things to him. He is about to find out he really isn't...
He has had some kind of magical, impossible to remove cursed blindfold on all his life. It falls off when the event occurs
He was actually blind, and the event gives him sight for the first time (or regains his sight)
There are definitely ways around the water issue, I think you just need to be creative!
So this sounds like a very on-the-nose Lurker in the Deep warlock, so much so I'd be surprised if you didn't have this in mind and it was all a coincidence.
The 'never seen more than a cup of water' bit is so far-fetched as to be nonsensical, I assume that and the desert tribe thing are to justify the whole never being exposed to the patron thing you've got going on.
If you want to go the 'unknown pact' route with LitD patron, you could make it even simpler/more coherent:
Characters parent was a warlock of the lurker in the deep
The pact is hereditary (explains how the child could have entered into it without knowing)
Patron can only extend their influence through saltwater (means no silly 'cup of water' thing)
The pact bearing parent is dead/missing, remaining parent raises character far away from the sea
Character, never knowing why they're forbidden by their parent from visiting the ocean/joining the navy/travelling the world/whatever, grows up having never seen the sea
Parent dies/vanishes or character leaves home
Immediately does the thing they were told not to, as all children are wont to do
Gets snatched up by patron
It's funny you say you don't want to give him "too much of a backstory" and then write eight paragraphs. If you want a simple backstory, chronological bullet points work well
Truth be told, I hadn't thought of that at all. I was trying to come up with this person who gets his power from water, via the intermediary of an ancient water entity. That and the fact that he grew up with his mother in a desert tribe, was all we were supposed to know about this character, and all he was meant to know about himself.
His story was supposed to be a search for the truth. The truth about why his mother and tribe had vanished, why his fiance had to die, why the entity would claim her corpse and so on, and he was meant to discover all that and more about himself organically, as I played through his story, letting the situations he finds himself and actions/decisions he takes, create his character.
That is different to how I usually play, as I usually play characters that for all intents and purposes, are fully formed, minus legondary status. All the characters that I have played over the last 6 to 8 months though, have been flops that haven't lasted more than a few sessions, or died off half way through a one-shot.
So I really wanted to try something different and I remembered reading an article about front story a little while ago and thought I'd give it a shot and turn up with of a few hooks, a name, class and race, and basic details, let him become whatever he became.
The desire to want to know my character and fill out his character sheet and backstory with little intricate details, is hard to resit though.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
A caffeinated nerd who has played TTRPGs or a number of years and is very much a fantasy adventure geek.
So this sounds like a very on-the-nose Lurker in the Deep warlock, so much so I'd be surprised if you didn't have this in mind and it was all a coincidence.
The 'never seen more than a cup of water' bit is so far-fetched as to be nonsensical, I assume that and the desert tribe thing are to justify the whole never being exposed to the patron thing you've got going on.
If you want to go the 'unknown pact' route with LitD patron, you could make it even simpler/more coherent:
Characters parent was a warlock of the lurker in the deep
The pact is hereditary (explains how the child could have entered into it without knowing)
Patron can only extend their influence through saltwater (means no silly 'cup of water' thing)
The pact bearing parent is dead/missing, remaining parent raises character far away from the sea
Character, never knowing why they're forbidden by their parent from visiting the ocean/joining the navy/travelling the world/whatever, grows up having never seen the sea
Parent dies/vanishes or character leaves home
Immediately does the thing they were told not to, as all children are wont to do
Gets snatched up by patron
It's funny you say you don't want to give him "too much of a backstory" and then write eight paragraphs. If you want a simple backstory, chronological bullet points work well
Truth be told, I hadn't thought of that at all. I was trying to come up with this person who gets his power from water, via the intermediary of an ancient water entity. That and the fact that he grew up with his mother in a desert tribe, was all we were supposed to know about this character, and all he was meant to know about himself.
His story was supposed to be a search for the truth. The truth about why his mother and tribe had vanished, why his fiance had to die, why the entity would claim her corpse and so on, and he was meant to discover all that and more about himself organically, as I played through his story, letting the situations he finds himself and actions/decisions he takes, create his character.
That is different to how I usually play, as I usually play characters that for all intents and purposes, are fully formed, minus legondary status. All the characters that I have played over the last 6 to 8 months though, have been flops that haven't lasted more than a few sessions, or died off half way through a one-shot.
So I really wanted to try something different and I remembered reading an article about front story a little while ago and thought I'd give it a shot and turn up with of a few hooks, a name, class and race, and basic details, let him become whatever he became.
The desire to want to know my character and fill out his character sheet and backstory with little intricate details, is hard to resit though.
It's fine for the character to not know the answers. He develops as he learns them. But if you (and perhaps more importantly, the DM) don't know the answers then how can the truth ever be revealed? After you create your character, it's down to the DM what s/he throws in your path. Maybe you could take your mysterious background to the DM, let them tweak it a little, and have them know the truth but you don't? I have a very similar situation: a paladin in my group doesn't know the source of her divine favour. The player is happy for me to make it whatever I want it to be and wants to discover it along the way, just as you do. So far he keeps encountering the ghosts of orphans he thought he'd once saved from an orphanage (in his backstory), but little does he know, they're all dead and their collective energy is what fuels his quest for vengeance. We've had some really disturbing and spooky moments because of it, but that is reliant on me, the DM, implementing them and knowing what the story is.
Talk to your DM, present your ideas and see if they fit into the world. Were a player to present your backstory to me, I'd raise the points that I already have here, agree some modifications with you, and then choose where the power comes from or what the patron is.
One tiny word of caution: when you give someone else charge of your story, you may not like the outcome. What if the DM reveals in your third adventure that you just had an overprotective mother who had a fear of you drowning, and that the incident at the oasis was random? Hopefully your DM is a good storyteller but as a player, I'd probably suggest the answers to them as well, even if the character doesn't know the answers. But if you can trust your DM to tell a great story it should be a fun experience!
What kind of character/person do you think this could be.
......
He is a humanoid, human-looking male of approximately 18 years old. He has spent his life living with his mother in a nomadic tribe that migrates from one part of the desert to the other on a continuous cycle.
Although he and his mother lived with this tribe, it was apparent, just by the colour of their skin that they were not born as part of it. Furthermore, whenever the tribe would stop at a watering hole or an oasis, his mother would keep him far away from the water, so that in his entire life, he has never seen more than one cup of water at a time.
Not long after his supposed 18th birthday, the tribe had stopped at a watering hole to give their animals a drink and fill their water skins, and as usual, the boy and his mother were setting up camp some way off, out of sight of the water.
As the day wore on and the rest of the tribe had not returned to camp for the night, the boy and his mother began to get concerned. The boy wanted to go and see what was taking them so long, but his mother insisted that they must remain where they are and wait patiently. An argument ensured and eventually to satisfy her son and to stop him from storming off in the direction of the watering hole, the mother said that she would go.
It was already getting dark when she left, and it must have been going on midnight when she still had not returned. By now, the boy was getting frantic, his entire family had gone to the watering hole, and none of them had come back - he had to go, he had to find out what had happened to his loved ones, and so after muttering his apologies to his mothers sleeping bag, the boy stepped out of their tent and started in the direction he had seen his mother disappear in, hours before.
It took him perhaps 15 minutes at a slow trot to reach the watering hole, and when he got there, his mother and most of the tribe were missing. The only person there was a young girl, lying face down in the pool. The boy recognised her instantly from the red silk sash that he had given her only a week before - she was his childhood friend, and the silk sash was a gift he had given her, as proof of his worthiness to be her mate.
As the boy waded into the water to retrieve the body of his friend, his eyes turned black - not just black, but as black and impenetrable as the void and the water around him began to hiss and boil with such ferocious vigour that for a moment, it sounded like a scream. Then there was silence, and at that moment, between the tick and tock, a voice spoke to the boy.
"That traitorous hag was wise to hide you here, but I have found you at last, and you will NOT escape from me again!"
A thin cold tentacle wrapped itself around the boy, and the drowned girl and pulled them both down beneath the surface and into a strange and alien aquatic world, where the boy found to his amazement, that he could breathe as though the water filling his lungs was air and the motion of the water and light-reflecting all around them, made rhe dead girl seem as though she was alive again.
......
So based upon this, who and what do you think this boy might be?
A caffeinated nerd who has played TTRPGs or a number of years and is very much a fantasy adventure geek.
GOO or Kraken warlock definitely. Makes a pact to save himself or his mother.
Race - variant human or half-elf? Perhaps he has hidden tiefling features like hellboy filing down his horns.
Please feel free to completely disregard this, but there is a logical plausibility issue with this backstory!
I don't know what he's supposed to be, but the idea that an 18 year old man has never seen more than one cup of water at a time means he would have to be extremely pliable or scared of his mother. It doesn't seem plausible to me that he would have obeyed what seems like a truly baffling instruction otherwise - by the time he's 15 he should probably be disobeying her.
Also, you might want to consider that in a desert you need about 4-10 litres of water per person per day (8-20 pints), plus the larger amounts of water needed for pack animals, and it isn't really plausible to stop out of sight of the water in a desert - you have to take the animals there. You can often see large water sources like an oasis from miles away!
These are just things that you might want to think about and add in further detail to explain how it was possible, as his avoidance of water seems to be key to him not knowing what he is. But I do think that it's a really interesting character backstory!
late teen? weird thing about water? water based powers? percy jackson is who first sprang to mind?
I'd imagine the character would be a water genasi, if only to explain why he can breathe underwater. Plus it's a race that can conceivably pass for human but would still look different enough to make people look twice.
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Malagaz makes a great point. We may consider “adulthood” to start around age 18, but historically the age of majority would have been considered somewhere between 13-16. The story has a little more believability if the character were younger.
My thought is an Aberrant Mind Sorcerer.
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I will admit that those are quite major plot holes. I don't really know how to answer those questions in a way that makes sense though. At least not without changing the entire premise of the story.
I had a couple of things in mind while trying to write this
1. The mother knows the truth about who her son is
2. The boy has no idea who he really is
3. The mother is hiding her son for selfish reasons
4. The thing he is being hidden from finds him
I was trying to come up with something that explained why he has powers and things, without giving him too much of a backstory. I was aiming for something like "his past has made him who he is, but it is the future that defines him".
In other words, I was trying to limit his backstory to the the just the event that resulted in the realisation/awakening of his potential, and let his front story make him into whatever he became.
Perhaps I need to do more work on this one.
A caffeinated nerd who has played TTRPGs or a number of years and is very much a fantasy adventure geek.
So this sounds like a very on-the-nose Lurker in the Deep warlock, so much so I'd be surprised if you didn't have this in mind and it was all a coincidence.
The 'never seen more than a cup of water' bit is so far-fetched as to be nonsensical, I assume that and the desert tribe thing are to justify the whole never being exposed to the patron thing you've got going on.
If you want to go the 'unknown pact' route with LitD patron, you could make it even simpler/more coherent:
It's funny you say you don't want to give him "too much of a backstory" and then write eight paragraphs. If you want a simple backstory, chronological bullet points work well
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I think he has a nasally voice with a kind of Boston accent.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
again,this sounds like percy jackson.
Water Genasi Warlock
Ok so I''ll offer up some potential solutions and maybe one of them might inspire you to find something that works.
There are definitely ways around the water issue, I think you just need to be creative!
Truth be told, I hadn't thought of that at all. I was trying to come up with this person who gets his power from water, via the intermediary of an ancient water entity. That and the fact that he grew up with his mother in a desert tribe, was all we were supposed to know about this character, and all he was meant to know about himself.
His story was supposed to be a search for the truth. The truth about why his mother and tribe had vanished, why his fiance had to die, why the entity would claim her corpse and so on, and he was meant to discover all that and more about himself organically, as I played through his story, letting the situations he finds himself and actions/decisions he takes, create his character.
That is different to how I usually play, as I usually play characters that for all intents and purposes, are fully formed, minus legondary status. All the characters that I have played over the last 6 to 8 months though, have been flops that haven't lasted more than a few sessions, or died off half way through a one-shot.
So I really wanted to try something different and I remembered reading an article about front story a little while ago and thought I'd give it a shot and turn up with of a few hooks, a name, class and race, and basic details, let him become whatever he became.
The desire to want to know my character and fill out his character sheet and backstory with little intricate details, is hard to resit though.
A caffeinated nerd who has played TTRPGs or a number of years and is very much a fantasy adventure geek.
It's fine for the character to not know the answers. He develops as he learns them. But if you (and perhaps more importantly, the DM) don't know the answers then how can the truth ever be revealed?
After you create your character, it's down to the DM what s/he throws in your path. Maybe you could take your mysterious background to the DM, let them tweak it a little, and have them know the truth but you don't?
I have a very similar situation: a paladin in my group doesn't know the source of her divine favour. The player is happy for me to make it whatever I want it to be and wants to discover it along the way, just as you do. So far he keeps encountering the ghosts of orphans he thought he'd once saved from an orphanage (in his backstory), but little does he know, they're all dead and their collective energy is what fuels his quest for vengeance. We've had some really disturbing and spooky moments because of it, but that is reliant on me, the DM, implementing them and knowing what the story is.
Talk to your DM, present your ideas and see if they fit into the world. Were a player to present your backstory to me, I'd raise the points that I already have here, agree some modifications with you, and then choose where the power comes from or what the patron is.
One tiny word of caution: when you give someone else charge of your story, you may not like the outcome. What if the DM reveals in your third adventure that you just had an overprotective mother who had a fear of you drowning, and that the incident at the oasis was random? Hopefully your DM is a good storyteller but as a player, I'd probably suggest the answers to them as well, even if the character doesn't know the answers. But if you can trust your DM to tell a great story it should be a fun experience!