What inspired your character?
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When I create a new character, I usually take an existing concept, and build on it. Of course, the character at some point takes a life of its own and develops in ways I hadn't planned, but at least in my case there is always a framework that serves as parting point composed by the amalgamation of several concepts, characters, or even existing real life people, all put together to fit nicely into a new little creation.
So I'm curious to know what did you use as model, or inspiration to create your characters, and how did that work out for you.
I'll start with my least known character, Thierulf Arguyle, and add others as the thread goes.
Thierulf is a Lathanderite Knight of the Order of the Aster, a Lathanderite Order of roaming knights that search the world for settlements in distress (and damsels!) to bring Lathander's light, and end their woes.
Where does he come from? Well at the time I created Thierulf, I was addicted to Warhammer, the tabletop strategy game, and particularly the Bretonnian army. There was a unit called "Quest Knight", which were young knights with just basic equipment that went in search for the Holy Grail. They roamed the world undoing any evil they came across until they become deserving of finding the Holy Grail. Then it was offered by the Lady of the Lake usually in some quiet forest pond, and allowed these brave projects of hero to ascend and become Grail Knights.
The name was shamelessly stolen from a hero Grail Knight from the Bretonnian history, Duke Thierulf of Lyonesse
As for the aesthetics, who hasn't played Soul Blade/Soul Calibur? Siegfried anyone? Here it is, just in case:
I put that into my head with a bit extra from here and there, added my own spice to the formula, gave it a shake, and voilà, I got my own Quest Knight in Narfell, now a young and enthusiastic Knight of the Aster, in search for evil to undo. He even got to save a damsel in mistress from the big bad red dragon named Rass and later married her (the Lady, not Rass!). He then retired to a quiet home life, although he's still in my character list. Not a bad outcome I'd say.
So what about you, where did your character come from, and where did he/she end up? Let's hear it!
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Cray is an amalgamation of 3 basic archetypes…
Primarily the professional, loyal and lawful gangster.
With a hooligan side to him.
And an innate desire for acquisition.
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Elaine Xixia Rayfe
Elaine was directly inspired by being the daughter of who she is, so that saved me most of the brainstorming about family, procedence and general background. I didn't even choose the name, because she had already been named by her parents ICly, when she was born two years before she turned into a PC. The class, build, stats and many RP choices are directly inherited from Lorelai and Jerrick. She is a werecat sorceress because that's what her mother is, and she's bullheaded and stubborn because that's what her dad is. The wild beauty of her mother, and the crimson hair and impossibly intense blue eyes of her father. Selûne, because of her mother, and because she protects Elaine from the Beast going loose. Even her stat points were allocated in a way they would resemble her parents, to the point that I copied the Charisma and Intelligence of her mother, and the Strength and Constitution of her father. The other two I filled with what points I had remaining, and all puzzled well together.
I would have loved for Elaine to be a PnP Wild Sorceress, a class that sadly does not exist in NWN, but it's basically a mix of sorcerer and druid - you give up on some sorcerer spells in exchange for some druid healing spells. Since it's not possible to give any sort of healing to a sorceress, the only option would be dual classing into cleric (Selûne doesn't accept druids) and that would completely ruin her concept as I didn't want her to have anything to do with the whole cleric/faithful RP burdens and responsibilities. In fact, I didn't want her to have anything to do with the words "burden" and "responsibility" at all. So I went with full Sorceress, but not taking any damaging spells (beyond the basic Magic Missile), to be more of an invisible helping hand that can turn dire situations in favour of her friends.
For her personality, I got some pointers from Kallethen (Lorelai's player), and made her to be be bossy and very sure of herself, but also chaotic and untameable. A wild, carefree spirit and a people person. Keeping away from taking nuking spells helped me to also keep away from the temptation of creating a powerhouse sorcerer that could solo the whole server, which also meant that Elaine would remain more true to that people person nature. She would always travel in group and do everything with friends and allies because she'd enjoy the company, but also need it. As I usually do with my characters, I gave her some strengths and some flaws to try and make her a more alive, breathing character, and that's how Elaine Xixia Rayfe took her first steps into Narfell.
I usually also draw a lot of inspiration from a picture or character for the physical appearance of my characters. In this case, it was Nidalee that lured me in with her mix of wild, beautiful and dangerous. I know Nidalee is brunette and not redhead. Nobody's perfect, not even her.
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Both Lycka and her daughter Nica were "organically grown" in that great consideration was taken to their parents traits and characteristics, as well as IG friendships and influences in terms of role models outside the family. Lycka, born from a barbarian and a fighter/weapon master, had very obvious martial pedigree yet rebelled as children do by going in a different direction. Influenced heavily by Ragnhild's bardic friends, Eowiel and Ocean in particular, the little Lycka grew up enamoured with song and story and turned out to be a bard herself, if a rather front-line able one. She's not as strong as either of her parents, but also not quite the typical weenie-armed bard, and her one fighter level represents much of her heritage. She wouldn't be who she is without it.
Nica is in part inspired by my own niece, who's always struck me as a remarkably thoughtful child in contrast to her very impulsive sister, and in part by Lycka and Aelthas' good friend (and frequent babysitter) Yu Shei, a quiet Selunite monk that I imagine as a person of welcome peace and quiet in a chaotic bardic household. Nica's build also mirrors much of her parents law of avarages in stats, and her long-term plan is to master the weapon master's trademark whirlwind move, displayed by both her father and grandfather. I see it as Nica's attempt to honour her roots, though in her own separate way.
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Shallyah was really a mix of concepts, but there were a couple of factors that influenced most heavily. One was the League of Legends character, Riven. From Riven I took the physical appearance, the monkish/weaponmaster concept (one of Riven's abilities is called "Ki Burst", go figure), and the combat style in general. Riven is a melee fighter with high mobility and devastating close range attacks. She can also dodge most abilities directed at her through her combat mechanics and can sustain quite some damage before going down. She has an inbuilt ability to shield herself from incoming damage, and while she is not a pure "tank" stereotype, her mobility and kit allow her to be a very good frontliner and initator. I tried my best to pass these traits into the Narfell version of Shallyah, where she has a Great Axe instead of a Great Sword simply to put more differences between Riven and Shallyah, and allow the latter to feel a little more unique. Here's a picture of Riven:
The ones that interacted with early Shallyah may remember how she prefered to not wear leg armor to keep her high mobility in combat, until the Defenders forced leg armor on her.
Another great influence was the song "Nikita" by Elton John (youtube link to the song) - I just love that song and it added substance to the concept I was creating. "Oh I saw you by the wall / ten of your tin soldiers in a row / with eyes that look like ice on fire / the human heart a captive in the snow".
The rest were bits that added from here and there, with a fitting background and origin, emphasized on some traits of her personality and gave her weaknesses in others. Gave her things to fear, and things to strive for, and finally Shallyah was born.
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So, the idea for Markus came up when I was speaking with another player about how we were lacking on a rather important sector of our population, so I just rolled a character to help fix that little issue. I just had a reaaaaaaly basic concept (I didn't even have a name for him), but scrolling through the portraits I found one of my favourite musicians, the bassist Marco Hietala. It looked perfect for the char I was rolling, and thus Markus was born.
Legan is a character I rolled when the entire server was playing dwarves. I didn't want to be left out, so I randomly chose a dwarven city, randomly generated a name and worked a backstory from there.
As for Elvewyn, that was Yana's fault xD watching her train Mathías made me want to roll something like it, except a bit different. So one day, as I was watching Karate Kid for the Nth time, the character of Mr Myiagi gave that final spark and the elven monk Elvewyn Di'Mastine sprung to life.
Vera followed pretty much the same pattern as Legan, except it was gnome week ;-). Random gnomish town, semi-random name and here we go!
My latest two characters, William and Amithralia are two other concepts I just came up with on a boring day. I was roaming aimlessy through the map and ended up on the Temple of Kelemvor for some reason and thought "There's really a lot of gear for a kelemvorite here…" and from that came William. Amithralia was pretty much the same, except the inspiration came from the voice set. I was going to roll a noble elven rogue. But when I scrolled down to "Elf, female noble" (or something like that) the char made a bunch of references to Mystra, so I changed the class to Cleric and kept pretty much everything else.
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I always figured marty would be a cross between Cindy Lauper and Vasquez from Aliens.
But while digging around Youtube for a vid of "Go Tell it on the Mountain" I found a clip of Peter Paul and Mary. Mary Travers is really Marty to a T. I've even made Druid/Jewish jokes in game - and Travers is Jewish! Watching her in the clip was weird - like watching a 60s version of Marty! The looks, being socially active, leaning left politically - the whole package.
Even went to the trouble (an entire 2 mins of trouble) knocking up a new photoshopped Mary Travers Marty avatar.
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Well I guess I should poke at what hen was started from.
Hen was created to be the back-up and support for my good friends first character on narfell. He rolled a half-orc warrior and I rolled an elven rogue and we went along slayingly as you could say. I never had anything that hen was based on back then she was simply an embodiment of what I wanted to play.
Now from then is not much different however I have molded her the last few years after some of favorite Anime characters along with my own twisted sense of reality.
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@922c8e1e83=Lucidious:
@922c8e1e83=MasterBAD:
@922c8e1e83=Oddba11:
Double post. Hello again!
Who are you, again?
no wait, who are you again?
also, who are you, again as well?
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@de57036a30=MasterBAD:
@de57036a30=Oddba11:
Double post. Hello again!
Who are you, again?
no wait, who are you again?
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@5a047ca62a=Oddba11:
Double post. Hello again!
Who are you, again?
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Double post. Hello again!
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Kence was part of a grander scheme that FUArch came up with, then ultimately bailed on when he found a server that suited it better. So we killed him off and let him atrophy in my Vault. A year or two later, I requested to have him restored so I could have "Herald" rise from the ashes.Herald was a social experiment, nothing more, nothing less. I wanted to see how people would react to a character that exhibited all signs of "evil," from his clothes, to his portrait, to his home and friends.
However, he was never openly evil, nor did any of his actions give people any indication that he was a bad person. The reactions he got astounded me. I wanted to see how much OOC interactions affected the way people perceive a character IC. It shocked me. I could say Herald killed babies to somebody OOC, then, inevitably, somebody else would bring it up IG and I'd just roll with it, even though the "evil" act had never happened. Herald never did too much, the rumor mill built him up to be more than I had ever intended, and at some point I figured it'd be much more fun to just play Herald out than roll up a new evil character and do it the "right" way.
After a while, I figured that I'd write his journal from a completely nonbiased perspective to see how much that would affect his interactions with people, and, sure enough, people would mention his journal entries to him. His personality, manner, demeanor and everything else about him were shaped entirely by interaction. When I first played him, he was just an empty husk of a character to see what worked and what didn't work with "evil" in an RP server. So, in answer to the question, my inspiration for Herald was each and every one of you. And I was quite happy with the way he turned out. And I thank everybody who contributed to him, because I can't imagine ever playing a character who was more enjoyable.
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Rith Phoenixfeather
Rith is the character that I've actively played the most, althought I have seldomly played her in both B8 and B9. She was created back in the spring of 2003 and was my second character to stick around, after Tassabra which I created in October-November 2002, at the very dawn of Narfell.
Back then I got along very well with a Narfell member named Razare, who was also the player of Vinessa, a PC villain that caused quite some havoc and whose name was pronounced with fear back in the day. When Vinessa was finally defeated for good, Razare wanted to play something different than a villain, and thought of a priestess of Lathander. Speaking with him, we thought it was a cool idea to roll two sisters, Careena and Rith Phoenixfeather, both nobles from Suzail that tired of pompous nobles and rules of etiquette, decided to leave the commodity and luxury of their station to pursue their idealistic view of a world of love and joy. These optimistic, fiery and beautiful priestesses wanted to inspire and renew hope in the beaten land of Narfell with good intentions and good actions.
A few months after they were created, Razare started having to focus heavily on his school grades and university, so unfortunately he had to completely drop Narfell for his own good (I hope everything's going great for you Razare, wherever you are!).
As for the name… back then I played MTG -a lot- and there was one multicoloured dragon card that fit with the background of fiery, kind, instinctive and interdependent of the character I was creating. The name of the dragon is Rith the Awakener, so that worked.
And so, a few months over ten years ago now, a Lathanderite priestess was born.
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@eafeb3451a=The_Rose_Of_Teroldys:
Awww, good old Olenin… and the Wellington was Captain Maynard, Fonic
Yesssssss! Thank you. I remember now, I named him after the Wine Gum manufacturer.
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Robyn
Robyn was my first character that I brought into Narfell. I wanted to create a person from “the wrong side of the tracks”. She would be young, fiercely self-sufficient with a bad upbringing, but well intentioned. I went for Ranger for the self-sufficient part of her, and Fighter to get the feats needed for archery. She changed over a period of time, and I let her grow older as she matured and time marched on. I started her at age 16, and she’s left Narfell now in her late 30’s.Maya
Maya was originally intentioned a Barbarian bard, singer of the praises of Uthgar. She was to be a larger than life person, very simplistic, whose views were based on feelings rather than intellect. I gave her a very poor Intelligence, yet a very high Strength and Charisma to account for this. Something happened along the way though, and the Bard idea was abandoned when the whole “Champion of Tempus” thing happened through a series of DM events. Even though I retired her, she remains to this day my favorite character I ever played in Narfell.Yolande
I created Yolande about the time the whole “Muahahah Evil” was in vogue on the server. That whole concept really bugged me. I wanted to play an Evil character that very weak in appearance, but very powerful in influence. I focused all her sorcerers powers on mind affecting abilities, including two slots I sacrificed for RP type powers that had no bearing on combat. This made her remarkably weak adventuring, but very powerful in certain key areas. She managed to influence two Peltarch elections, and was responsible for helping destroy the Gypsy Camp. She used the Black Sails for her own personal agenda, all the while forming relationships with very powerful people. She had a high Intelligence and Wisdom, and very high Charisma. I have her “Still Spell” so she could influence people with just her words.Yana
Yana actually started off as an NPC in the Sisterhood, where the Sisters, including Maya, raised her. If you read Maya’s journals, you can see stories that include her.At some point I asked the DM team if I could play her, and received approval. I was originally going to make her an Arcane Archer, but decided that there should be more warrior influence in her life, and eventually had her become a martial artist. In essence, she became a weapon forged by Maya’s influence, which I thought appropriate.
Diadne
I wanted to create a character that was religiously passionate, yet not a cleric. One of the things that bugs me is when I see a level 10+ cleric on the server, yet have NO idea who they follow. I wanted to create a character that through reputation and bearing everyone knew who she followed and what her beliefs were.I decided on Sorcerer for a “Themed Powers” approach, and had originally settled on Talos. I was going to have her take the wind and lightning spells appropriately. But at the last minute I changed it to Kossuth, because Talos had too many negative RP influences. Kossuth was neutral.
Diadne was intentioned to be pure sorcerer, but actually finding one of the artifacts (Blessed Sword of Kossuth) in her backstory changed all that. Then when Mariston Thel offered to teach her to use it, I took the opportunity to change the characters direction.
Myrrha
I created Myrrha when I was bored and felt silly. I wrote a long back story and sent it to the DM team for approval. I was surprised when it was.Myrrha is one of the old spirits of Narfell who was forced by the blight to come to the humans for help. She used all her power to change shape, and now she can’t go back. She’s a primal spirit, flighty, chaotic and full of whimsy.
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This seems fun. Confession time:
Jerrick: Jerrick was inspired by one of the first DnD characters I ever played, and how I'm -really- bad at RP'ing a lower ability score than I would actually have. I talk too much. He was a Druid, which I fell in love with.
That being said, I always ended up 'leading' campaigns, even with low cha/int/wis characters, and would have to chalk it up to instinct when the DM teased me about it, because I LOVE puzzles, and figuring stuff out by asking the right questions, and checking out the right leads. When the rest of my IRL pals would just shrug, I would keep on it.
Jerrick was originally going to be a full Druid, but upon finding out I couldn't use a bow or metal, I also learned that the Deity I picked had sort of a wiggle-room clause for her rangers. So poof. Ranger level. That ended up with me including that in his backstory, and fleshed him out immensely.
Then I found out that Druids were not exactly strong. I died a lot. In doing so, I met a lot of people (Most of whom were helping retrieve my battered corpse), and ended up getting to tag along in the back of a LOT of groups, and eventually, my +0 cha, +0 (11) int, Druid Ranger, was solving puzzles, finding the right questions, and generally starting to show leadership qualities.
Oops.
I chalked it up to Wisdom
and soldiered on, being a part of a large number of groups eventually.Jerrick, was the kind of guy I wanted to be. Fit in everywhere, a known name, always trusted, always useful, and I played him for something like 8-9 years I think.
Well worth the trip!
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Awww, good old Olenin… and the Wellington was Captain Maynard, Fonic! As for inspiration for Ashena, that was all pretty much done for me by the Teroldys family creator, Syied, right down to her name, class and faith, all I had to insert into her was my own understanding of who this person was. I started her out as very young, sweet, earnest and ~very~ idealistic - wondering to myself how long such innocence would last, wondering also how long I could manage to make RP with such heavy restrictions as that of a Tormish paladin fun - but so far it has proved a remarkably rich experience.
And no, she's not entirely jaded yet.
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I really never know where I'm going when I start a character concept. Rico and Sirion both started out as jokes, but I started to put more of myself into them, selectively, and they rounded out and surprised me.
Ethan I did entirely improvised, down to his stories and backstories. It was a fun exercise, but it wore on me fast. I'm just not that kind of guy.
Rico Swift began as attempt to see if I could make a paladin fall. Apparently I failed, as the guy is so milquetoast good he sells his soul and the demon gives it back because it tastes bad. He's built on every little idealistic and romantic thought I have in my head. He's the part of me that's five years old, watching Reeve play Superman on TV broadcasts, given an adult mind and body.
Sirion is also me, but a different part. He's the intellectual part of me, almost pinched off into a vacuum. He has a conscience, possibly keener than most. He's never worried about making a mistake…he's worried about every possible outcome leading to a mistake. Now, if I draw any inspiration for how I play him, it's the unlovable but entirely correct asshole prevalent in modern television. Cumberbatch's Sherlock. Laurie's House. Gordon Ramsey (and all British...huh). Which in and of itself isn't new...it's just the modern spin on the counterculture protagonist doing his fish out of water thing with an incredulous degree of success. It's the same thing that built the entire cop drama genre starting with Dirty Harry. Sirion's got a code of ethics as well. Some of it's distinctly elven. Some of it's self imposed because it gives him a way to challenge himself. You might compare Sirion to Ozymandias from Watchmen too. I never meant for that, but it fits.
Notice how I've left out words like good and evil. Not because I don't personally belief in such, but because I believe in such as a purely human construct (in other words, we do it to each other). The concept of evil is entirely subjective to the course of human history. As for whether or not it would come up in another sentient species is a source of good debate.
Maybe these reveal a little more about me than I'm aware, but I can't help but pour myself into them.
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My characters mostly grew out of a single idea or arbitrary concepts that flew into my head for long enough to manifest itself in NWN. There are many that never got that far. I daydream a lot, often at work, and that gave me plenty of time to flesh out a character, but in terms of what inspired them, it was always very loose.
I often used film and TV actors to get a solid idea of the appearance, then I would flesh out backstory and character traits to varying degrees of detail. Moira started life as a Morrigan (Dragon Age) clone and had essays of background written up, and the more I researched Rashemen the more I added.
Olwyn had.. er… a name and a subrace; otherwise most of her background was written ad hoc (Olwyn literally spawned from my interpretation of a paragraph in the book of exalted deeds).
Kamilah was originally a male bard, played on another server. Said bard died pretty pathetically, but I liked the concept of an avant-garde bard in Faerun so much that I wrote him a twin sister into his backstory and played her instead.My NPCs were usually a bit more clear-cut, although I pretty much winged 90% of my DM events so the characters were usually just designed to fit the scenario (i.e. Wouldn't a bashful, idiotic newbie of a guard really bring the most of this situation). Some survived the event and graduated to a second dimension of personality, sometimes accompanied by a backstory! (re: Olenin). Since I needed names fast they were often ripped straight from books.
The key exception being the surly Naval Officer guy with the horse (Selgaunt) and the gnomish assistant (Forbes?). I cannot for the life of me remember that guy's name (does anyone remember?) as I didn't write it down outside of the DM forums. But he was basically a carbon copy of Stephen Fry's portrayal of Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington in Blackadder the Third.
