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Topic subjectCharacter Challenge - The Setup
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2975, Character Challenge - The Setup
Posted by Rahsael on Wed 31-Dec-69 07:00 PM
Now that the last Challenge character has deleted, here are the characters and the basic plot:

Strange lights appeared in the sky and seers and soothsayers were stricken with terrible headaches and an inability to see beyond themselves. Even the gods were affected.

Only one foreign seer remained unaffected by this debilitating disease: Argothus the Sickly.

The Hamsah Merchant’s Guild hired Argothus to give it an edge in its dealings. But after traveling from far away to Hamsah Mu’tazz, he chose to disregard the contract, as he would serve only Fate.

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At the same time, several strange people surfaced:

* Dorlangan *
Dorlangan was a failed mage. He obsessed over his studies, but simply wasn’t good at it. He was deadly serious about his work, spent immense amounts of time at it, and was utterly convinced he was very good at what he did. In fact, he was utterly incompetent.

It wasn’t that he was dangerous. It’s just that he was a drain on time and resources at the High Tower of Sorcery, where he had received an apprenticeship due to family connections (gem business). After numerous attempts at remediation, he was expelled for being so mediocre. They told him it was as much for his good as the Tower’s.

He conducted experiments on his own, convinced that he would change everything and maybe even create a new school of magic. He felt it in his bones, and he felt it in the earth. He became psychologically addicted to magic and eventually destitute. He had a psychotic break and returned to the High Tower, attempting to steal magical items and perhaps do harm to those who had wronged him.

As cruel, ironic fate would have it, an instructor caught Dorlangan and turned him into an experiment. The instructor, who knew Dorlangan well, performed a dampening ritual on the svirfneblin, removing his ability to perform magic, and shifting his brainwaves to a frequency incompatible with magical objects. As an unintended consequence, Dorlangan very much enjoys being around magical objects - he gets a sort of high out of it.

One day, as he wandered the mountains near Udgaard, friendless and alone, he came across an unconscious dwarf.

“What’s your name?” he asked the dwarf.

“Nossos,” the dwarf mumbled, over and over again.

“I guess that’s what we’ll call you,” Dorlangan said.

The dwarf is an amnesiac who remembers very little and has circular scars covering his body.

Dorlangan followed Nossos to the Battlerager’s village. He really likes Nossos. Vast amounts of magical treasure make their way through the Village (albeit to be destroyed). Additionally, this is a chance to get back at that High Tower for taking away what he loved most. Of course, there’s the small matter of hiding your past and true motivations...

Dorlangan might try to trick others into giving him magical objects to destroy… so he can hide them and fawn over them, without actually destroying them. He might occasionally bungle the murder of a mage on purpose, if he thinks he can make it look like an excusable accident.

* Nossos *
Nossos awoke in the mountains of Udgaard as he was being dragged to civilization by a svirfneblin named Dorlangan. He does not remember much of anything; he has vague memories of a farm and a mine and a small village, but faces are muddy and names are nonexistent. He will not recognize Akan or any other city in Thera, though some might seem almost familiar, maybe in spirit, but not in actual substance. He suspects that he may have a family somewhere, and a trade; he might find himself particularly adept at one trade or another, to be chosen by you, based on whatever medieval or dwarven-type trade you’d like to do some Googling about. “Nossos” might not be his name, but it was the word he was mumbling, over and over, when Dorlangan found him. Now, people call him that. He has strange, circular scars all over his body that look almost like injuries sustained from an octopus attack.
He becomes physically upset, angry, and ill upon coming in contact with magic. He is revolted by it and resistant to it, beyond many of his kin.

He will be drawn to the Battleragers and feel a strong sense of belonging there. Additionally, he will want to find out who he is and where he is from. He suspects he may have had a family.

* Idmund and Admund *
Two mysterious children who wandered for an uncertain amount of time in a dark and decaying forest full of monsters before making a deal to escape with a shadowy beast. The beast let them out of the wood on the condition that they find two souls to replace theirs. Idmund was a bit more serious and angry. Admund was a bit happier and more gentle. The memories of their home seemed distant to them, and they only remembered fragments at first - their mother and father.

To outsiders, they were creepy. They always said “we” instead of “I” and called each other “brother” or “sister,” and use that word often.

* Imogrezio *
Imogrezio was raised by his human mother on the road. His mother was a singer and storyteller, whose tales were big and elaborate and beautiful. They traveled from town to town with her tales of heroism, of evils banished, of star-cross’d lovers, of stuffy scholars tricked by lovable scoundrels, of love and the common man winning. He would sing songs between her tales, often recounting the story she just told. Imagine how heartbroken Imogrezio was when he grew a little bit older and discovered none of those tales were true. One of the cruelest things about life as a half-drow is that the parents often die while the children are still children. Such was the case with Imogrezio and his mother. (She never shared with him the story of his father; she instead told a tall tale involving a spider and a butterfly fighting, and both dying, that seemed far too bizarre to be true.) Imogrezio thought about carrying on with the family business, going from town to town concocting and telling tales about nonexistent heroes. It seemed a horrid existence to him. No. If those stories were not true, he would MAKE them true! He would vanquish the great evils and love beautiful women. He would swindle the arrogant and charge into combat, freer than the wind and with a voice twice as lovely. The Inn of the Eternal Star would give him a place to call home, and the connections he would need to make these stories become reality.

* Muzabbak *
Muzabbak El Azahr is the child of an extremely wealthy merchant family from Hamsah Mu’tazz. He made the common, and serious, error of mistaking wealth and privilege for intelligence and talent. He never respected the teachers brought to him from all over the world, and constantly demeaned those of lower social status. When his father, the family patriarch, died, he was forced to take over the family business - which he was simply not cut out for. He began studying the forbidden art of conjuration in secret, attempting to teach himself how to bargain with couriers due to the Sultan’s strict regulations. But conjuration is a tricky art, and, by random chance, the spell opened the door for a terrible demon lord who used magic to bind the foolish and weak-willed Muzzabak.

Now, Muzzabak is an agent of a demon whose name he does not know. He only understands that whatever it is is incredibly ancient and has some unfinished business on this plane that dates back to the dawn of time. He wanders, trembling with growing power, but in a state of constant terror, dreading the moment when his master will return with a new command for him. Muzzabak wants to gain enough power to keep his demon lord happy, hoping one day to turn on the powerful being and win his freedom back. He is a bit of a glutton who enjoys the finer things. He wants comfort and luxury. On the other hand, he is constantly terrified of invoking the wrath of his demon lord, who has not revealed its face or name to Muzzabak. He also fantasizes about keeping his family’s business afloat. He may try to sell things using his family name, but his transactions are sloppy, unreliable, and disjointed. He may over-rely on couriers.He refuses to praise any god in any way, for fear of upsetting the demon lord. He gets giddy - thrilled - when he encounters luxury. He might slip into his old arrogant, condescending ways when in comfortable and opulent environments. He occasionally vomits dead bees. He does not eat bees. He feels insects crawling inside his skin; they may or may not be real

* Lyrentia *
Lyrentia D’Nakht was a Necromancer of the ancient Armies of Order, spoken of in Theran lore. She was a rank-and-file researcher, assigned to the creation of the anti-magic forces that would later become the Battleragers. She performed her work in a laboratory, through which volunteer soldiers (and, toward the end, questionably acquired townspeople, primarily of nonhuman races) were locked in cages and tanks and bombarded with magical energies and potions in attempts to foster resistance to sorcery. She was given a share of the remains, which she used for her own side experiments. Her body bears the signs of a pregnancy and childbirth, but her memories of a baby are muddled. Her husband was a distant and serious Order Mage who played a relatively small role in her life beyond giving her a child. (You can expand on the family drama as much as you’d like. Give the man and child names, etc. as you please) Lyrentia fought off Chaos Mages during a battle near the laboratory one night. Several Chaos Mages cornered her in a graveyard near the laboratory, and she wove spells furiously, nearly killing them all. But they channeled a dispersal spell together against her and her undead, sending her not only through space, but through time. She arrived on a recent day, and the first thing she saw was the sun rising and flashing a thousand eerie colors. Her magical talents remain intact, but her memories of the incantations were scrambled by the trauma of extreme time-travel. The present-day gods are foreign to her. She knew only of the Lord of Order and magic, Rahvin, and Derit, the god of Shadows. She sees Scion as a mating of the two, and Empire as a place that reminds her of her former station. Motivations: Lyrentia has a deep dislike for Entropy and a sense of both pity and disgust for the Battleragers, which she sees as the result of the Order Mages’ failures on the lab and their ensuing departure from order by accepting help from demons without the proper precautions in place. She wants to find out how things went wrong for her late comrades. She wants to find out what happened to her baby, and whether her family line still continues today. She wants to destroy the chaos mages, and find a solution to the Battlerager problem. And she wants to find a new place from which to begin experimentation. She has a need to create.She might be too orderly at times. Hypercritical. Excessively tidy and neat, and in need of a plan. You might want to pick some sayings, “A place for everything and everything in its place” etc. When she goes underground, she occasionally hears the ancient dead speaking to her.

* Lorente *
The son of a Barovian vampire hunter, famous across the Eastern Continent for his adventurousness and chastity (he slew a harem of female vampires and resisted their charms). He saw his father become corrupted by gold and fame, and watched the virtue that initially drove him to do his work fade. Lorente grew up around silver weapons and other weapons tailored toward undead-slaying. Though he never accompanied his father on his missions, the man would come home drenched in blood, wake Lorente, and force the boy to pray with him. The Vampire Slayer spoke of an ancient weapon that had the power to end undeath forever, and he vowed to seek it. But then a woman and her half-drow son began showing up to talk about his exploits. The woman was a storyteller, and she spread his story. With fame came wealth; he began to enjoy celebrity and the luxury that accompanied it, and his crusades ended. He instead accepted money to tell his stories for entertainment. Lorente’s father gave in to hiring prostitutes and drinking wine. Lorente found his father dead one night. He conquered undead horrors, but not his own alcoholism. Lorente blames the storyteller and her half-drow son (he doesn’t remember their names) for making his father famous, leading to his demise. The young man forsook the wealth and the luxury, and took to a life of solitude in nature, seeking to find what truly enlivens his soul. Lorente’s mother left when he was five years old. He only has faint memories of her. She seemed troubled, but loving. His father told him that she died, but refused to otherwise discuss her. Her name was Soreina Lydwich. YOUR CHOICE: Sphere Passion Padwei follower or Sphere Spirit Ergush follower. Motivations: To fully understand what went wrong with his father To finish his father’s work of destroying undead abominations To find the mysterious ancient weapon that would end undeath forever To find and expose the woman with the half-drow son who ruined his father To learn more about his mother Description Guidelines: He’s a young hermit who has forsaken all wealth. Quirks: Really disturbed by the undead. Really irritated by people who purport to be heroes Really irritated by gloryhounds

* Theorendus *
Theorendus was born in a place where the sun never rose.

It was a colorless place, ruled by things unseen. It was a miracle that he lived to adulthood - a miracle attributable to the members of his tribe there. It was desolate and oppressive, but beautiful, in a way. Ruins and ancient contraptions littered the vast and barren expanses - ruins that made Theorendus’ imagination go wild. He wanted to fix them. To live in them. To use them as they were meant to be used by those who had built them.

But this was not the way, said those of his tribe. This life was all he knew, until he discovered there might be more. As the young centaur hunted in the darkest woods of this primordial place, he came across two dark-haired children who stood on two feet and huddled together close. He stalked them close; it was not clear if they would be good food. He saw them speak to something in the dark - what it was, he could not make out. And then, he saw brush part, and they stepped through. He followed them, and came upon a strange void.

When he found his way out, Theorendus was terrified. Rich colors and light flooded his senses. After some time adjusting, he discovered the cities of Thera and was enchanted - most unusual for a centaur.

To see the cities, he took work running errands for the Hamsah Mu’tazz-based El Azahr Trading Company until the patriarch died and the inept son took over, ran it into the ground and went mad. A group of former coworkers began working as bounty hunters and invited Theorendus to join them.

He was pleased to be part of this great, living contraption, where every part served some purpose to keep it all going. Then came Soreina Lidwych.

The bounty was high, all things considered. Theorendus tracked her down to apprehend her. She tried to run. He drew his weapon. She was dead. He felt some sorrow; it was the first woman he had killed. It was only after he turned in her scalp that Theorendus learned her abusive husband had issued the contract, claiming she had stolen a ring - her wedding ring.

This put Theorendus in an unexpectedly dark place. He considered ending his life, but, thinking the place that he came from was Hell, feared he would be sent back to the darkness. He decided to devote his life instead to discerning the difference between guilt and innocence, goodness and wickedness,through worship of Einoh. He would never go back to the dark.

Motivations:
- Make up for his past sins
- Protect the innocent
- Strive to define goodness and contemplate restraint and reason in a set of moral writings throughout his life
- Preach order as a virtue
- Stay out of hell

He becomes genuinely upset at violence, even if it is to protect those of the Light. He will fight valiantly, but accept no honor for it. He is likely to sternly lecture anyone who congratulates another on violence, for it is not violence that should be celebrated, but the privilege of living to enjoy another day, and help others do the same.

He believes Order is a virtue.
He sees a city as a single, giant organism, and sees the beauty of nature within it.

* Cedlizurn *
A racist descendant of the D’Nakht family, cast out for being half-drow. He agrees with most of what his family believes, but makes an exception for the drow. All other races are inferior, and he is rather passionate about this. He routinely sabotaged non-human and non-drow students at the High Tower of Sorcery, including a svirfneblin who was stripped of magical powers as a result. After Lyrentia’s death, he started hearing her ghost speaking to him…

...but this never amounted to much.