The Sons of Rathgar and other BS...
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So, as promised, a little history of me, my buds, and Narfell. Way back in 2004ish, myself and some friends were young and hardcore gamers who had played a lot of NWN together.
You would know these guys by their more popular PCs: Scutum, Thad Dvvags, Uthger, and Uthgar.
It was Scutum who had done some poking around and found Narfell. Funny thing is, Scutum was the only one of us with some real RP knowledge. The rest of us assumed we were going to take our dungeon smashing skills to a new place. heh…
After creating some characters, we set out to do some adventuring in Narfell. Keep in mind that we were party chatting completely OOC. We found a cave, got into a scrape, and one of us ended up dying. I think it was me. Kuker popped onto the scene in full DM splendor and offered to rez me and tried to explain to us the nature of an RP server.
I wasn't getting it. I found it ridiculous that someone was actually pretending to be the toon they were driving in a game! I started running all over the cave "l33t-speaking" like an idiot until my party shut me up under ban threats by Kuker.
We eventually got the picture, rolled new characters, and stepped gingerly into the RP world of Narfell.
More to come...
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As everyone who plays here knows, Narfell has a way of transforming the characters in it. UthgEr's ambitious nature led him to seek out fame as a militia captain in Norwick while UthgAr's wanderlust kept him out in the wild and acting like a 7 foot Mowgli (and out of in-game politics). I tried to build on this by making 'Gar more of an outdoors man and tried to found the Heyokarr Nars barb guild before kids, jobs, and real life start interfering with my free time.
At the tale end, Uthger's popularity was such that 'Gar was frequently getting confused as Uthger by other players. Not only did this make me crazy, but this also drove 'Gar further out into the fringes where he was RP'd has seeking his roots with the Nars tribes. As part of a small story line, Gar was eventually re-rolled as Brightsword (his new Nars name due to his glowing great sword).
Some fun facts: Thad Dvvags (Scutum's ever present and ever quiet ranger companion) is meticulous when he types. His grammar and his spelling must be perfect and this caused him to always be late to the conversation in Narfell. THIS is why Thad rarely spoke. He'd start typing a reply to something, look up, and find that the conversation had already moved on.
The player behind Thad was also the player behind that crazy, pyromaniac elf named Coal. If anyone remembers him.
The player behind Uthger HATED RP. It took a very long time to convince him to play and stick with it. In the end, I think the militia thing was what really drew him in.
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I'm not entirely sure everyone stayed with those first characters. I know I didn't. Being a total RP newb, my first character was a dwarf fighter named Hydra Hardwater and was built to survive Narfell. Hydra didn't last long. I soon learned that there weren't many clerics on the server at the time and we were frequently getting hammered by eruptions at the well and Ashan's invasions. My Meta-Cleric, Jay Falantile was born.
Falantile was a bit of a cheat as I RP'ed him as myself. He was quite forgettable as a character until a battle broke out and the party needed a good war medic.
It took a few months of playing, but when I finally caught on to the whole RP thing I needed a hook to keep a friend playing with us. That's when I came up with the concept of Uthger and Uthgar (I honestly had no idea that 'Uthgar' was an in-game deity…duh.) The intent was to create characters that gave us an outlet for our naturally chaotic natures.
They were cast as the sons of an Uthgardt father and a Nars mother orphaned as babes and who grew up as spoiled wards of Norwick. We needed a way to explain our callous and reckless natures.