PDA

View Full Version : strangest character backstory ever?



steam_mage
2009-09-02, 05:03 PM
In my current campaign, three of the players have gotten together and collectively written the strangest backstory for their characters I've ever seen.

One of the characters is a lich named Lucious. Before he became a lich, he was a king, and had fathered a child (a son). The queen managed to get infected with vampirism, and then put down by a group of clerics of Pelor. Lucious was outraged and had all of them killed.

During an attempt to raise the queen, a shapeshifted Rakshasa psion managed to switch places with the body. The rakshasa had been hired to kill the queen, impersonate her, and spy on the king from this privileged position.

A few years in, the rakshasa had realized he was in love with Lucious. He revealed himself to Lucious, and the king discovered that he returned the rakasha's love.

Later, the son (remember the son?), was possessed by a powerful ghostly wizard. Lucious underwent the ritual for lichdom, to gain the power to drive the spirit from his son. Unfortunately, the rakshasa did another of those 'bait and switch' tricks, and Lucious's intended phylactery was replaced with the rakshasa's psi crystal. This was to give the rakshasa power over the newly created lich.

Has anyone seen another backstory quite so overdone?

Elfin
2009-09-02, 05:05 PM
...Is there a question? :smallconfused:
Wait, what exactly is the point of this thread?

lsfreak
2009-09-02, 05:05 PM
What. The. ****.

Also, was there a question involved?

sofawall
2009-09-02, 05:12 PM
Wall of poorly written text with the next comments telling me it's ridiculous and pointless?

Yeah, tl;dr.


EDIT: I read it. What. The. ****.

cezyou
2009-09-02, 05:30 PM
My brain....It burnssss....

Starscream
2009-09-02, 05:33 PM
...someone is going to turn out to be someone else's twin, right? Or at least a long lost brother with amnesia? Who is also a Psion?

Milskidasith
2009-09-02, 05:33 PM
I'm going to join the "What. The. Quadruple asterisk." group.

This is just poorly written and overly complicated.

cezyou
2009-09-02, 05:35 PM
...someone is going to turn out to be someone else's twin, right? Or at least a long lost brother with amnesia? Who is also a Psion?

Or the entire kingdom will be homo, and then the human race dies out because of it.

weenie
2009-09-02, 05:41 PM
Well, I once had a sorcerer who was a half-elf, only both his parents were humans. No one found this strange though, and he lived happily in his village until some day a dragon came by and burned & killed the whole village. He then swore he would avenge his parents, but someone killed the dragon before him.. True story.

Myshlaevsky
2009-09-02, 05:49 PM
I think it needs more Ghost Wizard.

Raz_Fox
2009-09-02, 05:49 PM
Don'treadthetextdon'treadthetextdon'treadthetextdo n'treadthet...

Aaaaah! I read.

valadil
2009-09-02, 06:00 PM
Okay, in my current campaign three people I know have created the strangest and most complicated backstory I've ever heard of. A girl is playing a male lich named Lucious who, when alive, had a son with the queen of his country. She was later infected with vampirism and killed by a bunch of clerics of Pelor. Lucious was outraged and had all the clerics killed. However before the queen could rise, her body was destroyed by a rakasha who had been hired to kill her, impersonate her and find out as much about the king as he can.

A few years later the rakasha relized he was homosexual and was in love with Lucious. He revealed himself and Lucious realized he was also homosexual and in love with the rakasha.

Later Lucious's son was possesesed by a powerful wizard ghost and Lucious underwent the ritual to become a lich so that he could drive out the spirit. But not before the rakasha (who's also a psion by the way) replaced the intended phlyacthry with his psi crystal to grant him sway over Lucious.

Is this more readable? I didn't correct this to be pedantic but because I think it's an interesting topic and resent the fact that people are dismissing it because the original post was poorly written.

Anyway, this particular backstory is among the most bizarre and over the top I've read. Each sentence is more ludicrous than the last. I'm not sure I'd allow this in one of my games, but it has its place.

My strangest character was definitely Digger. He was an undertaker in a Deadlands game. I usually play characters with a bit of comedy (well, internal comedy - my characters make jokes, but they themselves are not jokes). Digger drew laughter, but it was of the nervous kind. He was so creepy that the only response was to laugh to break the tension.

It took me a while to get into his head and I certainly wasn't ready to do so when I wrote up his backstory. So I didn't. I wrote about my character from the point of view of an NPC who tried to murder my character. It was fun to write, although I'm still not satisfied with the ending. Here's Digger (http://gm.sagotsky.com/?page_id=21).

Myou
2009-09-02, 06:02 PM
So your player likes bad yaoi fanfics?

At least she likes yaoi. :smallwink:

Grumman
2009-09-02, 06:04 PM
okay in my current campaign three people i know have created the strangest and most complicated backstory i've ever heard of. a girl is playing a male lich named lucious who when alive had a son with the queen of the land he lives in, she was later infected with vampirism and killed by a bunch of clerics of pelor lucious was outraged and had them all killed however before the quen could rise her body was destroyed by a rakasha who had been hired to kill her, impersonate her and find out as much about the king as he can. a few years later the rakasha relized he was homo sexual and was in love with lucious, he revialed himself and lucious relaized he was also homo sexual and in love with the rakasha. later lucious's son was possesesed by a powerfull wizard ghost and lucious underwent the ritual to become a lich to grant him the power to drive out the spirit. but not before the rakasha (who's also a psion by the way) replaced the intended phlyacthry with his psi crystal to grant him sway over lucious.
So your campaign has degenerated into bad slash fanfiction?

sofawall
2009-09-02, 06:05 PM
It's not so much that it's poorly written as it's nigh-unreadable.

Fhaolan
2009-09-02, 06:15 PM
My attempt at copy-editing so those people who are having difficulty can read:


In my current campaign, three of the players have gotten together and collectively written the strangest backstory for their characters I've ever seen.

One of the characters is a lich named Lucious. Before he became a lich, he was a king, and had fathered a child (a son). The queen managed to get infected with vampirism, and then put down by a group of clerics of Pelor. Lucious was outraged and had all of them killed.

During an attempt to raise the queen, a shapeshifted Rakshasa psion managed to switch places with the body. The rakshasa had been hired to kill the queen, impersonate her, and spy on the king from this privileged position.

A few years in, the rakshasa had realized he was in love with Lucious. He revealed himself to Lucious, and the king discovered that he returned the rakasha's love.

Later, the son (remember the son?), was possessed by a powerful ghostly wizard. Lucious underwent the ritual for lichdom, to gain the power to drive the spirit from his son. Unfortunately, the rakshasa did another of those 'bait and switch' tricks, and Lucious's intended phylactery was replaced with the rakshasa's psi crystal. This was to give the rakshasa power over the newly created lich.

Has anyone seen another backstory quite so overdone?

This is the best I can do. It would have been easier with the names of the other characters. In the story there is one definite PC (Lucious), and three other characters (the Queen, the Rakshasa, and the possessed Son), and I'm assuming that the Rakshasa and the Son are the other two PCs, with the Queen being completely dead... I think.

The only one I've seen, and I'm not sure this competes, was a character who was his own reincarnation. Basically, he believed that he would keep going back and redoing his own life over and over again until he got it right. He did not know what it was that he was doing wrong, so he was doomed to repeat the same life over and over again until something he did differently broke the cycle. Sorta a 'Groundhog Day' over an entire lifetime rather than a single day.

Guancyto
2009-09-02, 06:19 PM
I would guess the OP just doesn't speak very good English (since what he's talking about is, well, not a backstory). Nothing wrong with that, even if this reads like a bad soap opera with D&D concepts thrown in.

Jergmo
2009-09-02, 06:19 PM
The butler was phone. :thog:

Lycan 01
2009-09-02, 06:50 PM
Almost every character in every party I've run has had a weird backstory. DnD examples include, but are not limited to...


Lewie, Unaligned Human Paladin of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. He was one of the three founding members of our DnD world's Pastafarian religeon - himself, an uncle of some sort who took command as the High Priest of the Noodly One, and the guy who cooks the spaghetti dinners. Lewie's mission was to go out and try to recruit new people into his faith, and bring "shiney things" back to his uncle. We worked together for this backstory, and I was totally okay with. He just reached level 3, and he's converted about 7 NPCs to Pastafarianism.

Vexas, Chaotic Evil Halfling Warlock. Why would a Halfling have evil magic abilities? Well, we discussed it, and finally concluded that his dad was a Lich and his mom was a Halfling adventurer. Oh, and his mom was also a necrophiliac. Do the math... :smalleek:

woodenbandman
2009-09-02, 06:54 PM
Is the character's name Ebony Darkness Black Dementia Raven Way?

My strangest backstory is just one of a character who is a member of an order of people who don't talk ever and worship a god of music and creation and destruction. My characters tend to be more oddball in-play than out. Still serious though.

chiasaur11
2009-09-02, 07:15 PM
Well, I once had a sorcerer who was a half-elf, only both his parents were humans. No one found this strange though, and he lived happily in his village until some day a dragon came by and burned & killed the whole village. He then swore he would avenge his parents, but someone killed the dragon before him.. True story.

Wait.

True? Isn't it a DnD campaign?

Or is there something the mainstream media isn't telling us?

Optimystik
2009-09-02, 08:12 PM
The butler was phone. :thog:

FGSFDS
n the other hand, I'm in favor of gay Rakshasa

Captain Six
2009-09-02, 08:14 PM
I haven't made to many strange backstories. Mostly I make 'mundane' ones but really work hard to give them impact or make them unique even if it is something that could happen to anyone. Scratching my head for a strange character I have to settle with the barber. I never got to play him but the backstory and stats are set up (30 point buy, easily alterable) and in my characters folder for later use.

Anyway this character was a halfling rogue. He was a barber. He was lanky with an angular face and a scowled look. He tended to sit hunched with odd postures, spoke sharply and was very reserved in terms of word count. All around kind of creepy. I don't really know where he came from, he himself refuses to say and never says his name, just claiming to be a barber. The party could reach epic level, each member spouting off title after title and listing every accomplishment they achieved. The barber would simply state, "And I'm a barber." Cutting hair is what he did, first and foremost.

Now the barber did get off to a rough start, looking like a psycho and all. Even though he would use knives to cut hair when scissors would clearly be the best choice eventually word got around that he didn't slit your throat as he worked. It helped that he was really fraking good at cutting hair, Skill Focus and everything. This made him popular with the noble class. Hair cuts were a necessary risk for them, they HAD to look good. Barbers were also utilized as assassins thanks to the vulnerability of the noble in question. And so many family heads went to my barber character. The assassin's guild did not like that and he found his barber shop burned down.

Berserk mode switched to yes. The barber took his barbering knives and declared that he would, ironically, hunt down and kill every assassin he met. With knives. In their face. He would use the money gained from these excursions to rebuild his shop and resume his work in peace.


It may not be the origin with the most template stacking or quirkiest magical phenomenon but I believe it deserves a mention just for his... frankly insane justification for adventuring.

erikun
2009-09-02, 08:23 PM
This doesn't seem terribly strange - just meandering and unusual. Let me see if I can get the highlights out of it.

1.) Lucious (PC) had a wife (queen, later vampire) and a son.
2.) The Wife was killed by clerics for being a vampire. Lucious killed the cleric.
3.) Lucious began searching for a way to bring his Wife back to life.
4.) Rakshasa (psion) appeared and pretended to be the dead Wife.
5.) Rakshasa revealed himself to Lucious, and the two had hawt yaoi smecks.
6.) The Son became possessed by a ghost.
7.) Lucious became a lich to drive off the ghost.
8.) Lucious's phlyacthry is the Rakshasa's psicrystal.

The backstory isn't terribly bad, as it does have plenty of meaty plothooks. Honestly though, if I was presented with this, I'd have a few questions which need answering first. Namely...

A.) How did the Rakshasa manage to impersonate the dead Wife? Suddenly walking back into your house with a "Honey, I'm alive!" makes most people suspicious.
B.) After finding out that the Rakshasa wasn't his wife, what made Lucious say "What a nice piece of tail" rather than, say, "WHY HAVE YOU BEEN IMPERSONATING MY WIFE!?!?!"
C.) How does being a lich help drive off a ghost? Is his Son still possessed?


Besides, if you want confusing, most of my freeform RPs will top this no problem. I had one character who was dating a girl, who turned out to be a (magically transformed) guy, who turned out to be his sister, and who's mother was also their sibling. Full sibling, not half sibling. Without time travel.

I'm still trying to figure that one out.

9mm
2009-09-02, 08:23 PM
Two words: Dwarfless Beard

Optimystik
2009-09-02, 08:42 PM
B.) After finding out that the Rakshasa wasn't his wife, what made Lucious say "What a nice piece of tail" rather than, say, "WHY HAVE YOU BEEN IMPERSONATING MY WIFE!?!?!"

Presumably, the niceness of said tail, which precluded further questioning and demanded closer examination.

...Much closer...

Skorj
2009-09-02, 08:44 PM
I'm a character who's name you probably know. I'm 9/16th elf, 6/16th human, and 1/16th powerful outsider, but people call me "half elven". My twin brother is dead, but his great great etc. grandson has the hots for my daughter, which I find a bit creepy. Still, the guy has that tiny fraction of powerful outsider, which makes him quite wise and powerful as men go, and he'll probably be a great king or something one day if he ever stops being a slacker, so I put up with him hanging around my house.

Who am I?

Mando Knight
2009-09-02, 08:45 PM
Elrond. That was easy.

Thajocoth
2009-09-02, 08:47 PM
Fudrik Bleebert of Klemball and Germalkin of Clan Fongel the Half-Minotaur Gnome Fighter.

Why the long name? DM said that's the format of Gnomish names. First name, middle name of mother's side and father's side of Clan clan name. He uses Fudrik Bleebert when away from home.

Now... The Gnomes & Minotaur happen to inhabit the same islands in this world, but they don't really cross much. Here's his backstory:

"I was raised by my mother, Grenda Folly of Klemball and Germalkin of Clan Fongel, in Gralharder in a small Gnomish town. She never spoke of my father, changing the subject if I ever asked about him. Due to my size, horns, snout and fur, I assume he's a Minotaur, who are also populous in Gralharder. Growing up, I was given plenty of opportunity to show my peers my strength. I enjoyed fighting like it was a sport.

Not really able to fit in with my particular skills and size, I chose to explore and see what else is out there. I came across a minotaur in the area, Valun of Athak, who I wound up sparring with. Seeing that I enjoyed fighting and had the ability for it, but had never actually gotten any sort of formal training, he wound up offering to train me formally while I worked for him. When my training was complete, I travelled to the mainland to continue my exploration.

Along the way, between Fauchard and Ashtar, I discovered that a small band of Fauchard's soldiers were going to retaliate against a group who had recently raided a nearby Warrior Tomb. I offered them my help and soon after we had found the group. I made my way to the group's orcish leader. He mentioned his name, Fewmaster Trock, during the course of our banter. After I slew him, I took his armor as my prize. I helped the group of soldiers carry back that which was stolen and they gave me some compensation for my help before I moved on.

And in my travels, I eventually wound up here..."

Your first question might be "Why does Fudrik's mother have the same father's side name as Fudrik?" This is related to his mother's wish to have Fudrik's father simply not exist to Fudrik. The blank needed to be filled with something...

A second question might be "Why is that paragraph regarding Fewmaster Trock there?" The DM wanted any item over 1000gp in our BG. The's +1 Mythril Full Plate. Also, Fewmaster means Sergeant in I think Orcish in this world.

The usual question, however, can be answered with any of the following: Enlarge Person, Reduce Person, Various divine healing spells or some disfigurement that I simply didn't mention. Also, unlike either of his parents, Fudrik is Medium sized.

Starbuck_II
2009-09-02, 08:50 PM
This doesn't seem terribly strange - just meandering and unusual. Let me see if I can get the highlights out of it.

1.) Lucious (PC) had a wife (queen, later vampire) and a son.
2.) The Wife was killed by clerics for being a vampire. Lucious killed the cleric.
3.) Lucious began searching for a way to bring his Wife back to life.
4.) Rakshasa (psion) appeared and pretended to be the dead Wife.
5.) Rakshasa revealed himself to Lucious, and the two had hawt yaoi smecks.
6.) The Son became possessed by a ghost.
7.) Lucious became a lich to drive off the ghost.
8.) Lucious's phlyacthry is the Rakshasa's psicrystal.

The backstory isn't terribly bad, as it does have plenty of meaty plothooks. Honestly though, if I was presented with this, I'd have a few questions which need answering first. Namely...

A.) How did the Rakshasa manage to impersonate the dead Wife? Suddenly walking back into your house with a "Honey, I'm alive!" makes most people suspicious.
B.) After finding out that the Rakshasa wasn't his wife, what made Lucious say "What a nice piece of tail" rather than, say, "WHY HAVE YOU BEEN IMPERSONATING MY WIFE!?!?!"
C.) How does being a lich help drive off a ghost? Is his Son still possessed?


Besides, if you want confusing, most of my freeform RPs will top this no problem. I had one character who was dating a girl, who turned out to be a (magically transformed) guy, who turned out to be his sister, and who's mother was also their sibling. Full sibling, not half sibling. Without time travel.

I'm still trying to figure that one out.

The OP ships Rucious I see. I ship Sakshasa myself. :smallbiggrin:

7th lvl scrub
2009-09-02, 08:52 PM
...someone is going to turn out to be someone else's twin, right? Or at least a long lost brother with amnesia? Who is also a Psion?

I wish I could play a psion with amnesia...

"Sure I can kill you with my brain, if I could ever figure out how to."

Skorj
2009-09-02, 08:53 PM
Elrond. That was easy.

Yup, and about par for the course in terms of weird character backstories. The trope is older than the game. :smallbiggrin:

The Deej
2009-09-02, 09:01 PM
*Reads OP*
...
Perhaps one should research Detect Homosexual or Gaydar.

Also, did you mean Rakshasa? 'Rakasha' is rather similar to the name of a character in my group that ate a baby. And no, she wasn't evil. No need for this to get any weirder.

erikun
2009-09-02, 09:04 PM
So I heard you like unusual backstories. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E2%80%94All_You_Zombies%E2%80%94) Wow, I really should do something like that sometime. :smallbiggrin:

Crow
2009-09-02, 11:37 PM
I like it.

chiasaur11
2009-09-03, 12:25 AM
So I heard you like unusual backstories. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E2%80%94All_You_Zombies%E2%80%94) Wow, I really should do something like that sometime. :smallbiggrin:

So that's what's with the gender bending items in first edition!

It's an ace choice for a time travel campaign, though, as you don't have to worry about someone killing your grandpa. And anyone trying it gets even more paradoxes than normal.

Typewriter
2009-09-03, 12:40 AM
Did I miss the third character? You said the Lich and the Rakshasa, but who was the third? I'm kind of confused....


I've had a few somewhat crazy characters. Ones of interest would be:

The genie raised by dwarves:

A dwarven genie

As the Dwarves began to dig deeper and deeper into their mountain home they found not only gold and other valuable metals - they found relics. Items of beautiful design, and a small amount of items whose wonder were not in their apparent worth, but what lay within.

Reork, the dwarf who had been placed in charge of the excavation of these relics and was cleaning one - a lamp - when the room swirled and filled with smoke. When the smoke cleared a large bearded man stood before him.

"I thank you for freeing me, my good man. As is custom for my people I am bound to provide you with 3 wishes."

Reork who was very knowledgable about most things, and had read some about Genie in his time. He became weary. Usually only efreeti were able to grant wishes, and a wish from an efreeti usually came with a bit of fire and pain. The Djinni, seeing the obvious discomfort and fear on the dwarves face decided to settle him down.

"Hahaha. No, no, no my good man. I am Djinn. A noble Djinni, one of few of my kind capable of granting wishes. With my power I was hailed as a leader to my people. But an angry Efreet - a leader to his people - captured me and banished me, as well as all of my belongings to a place we'd never be found. Praise the dwarves for finding me and all my treasure."

Now the dwarf wasn't scared. He was feeling very....dwarven at this point in time. He and his people had done all of the work excavating these things. They were the property of the dwarves now. But he knew that there would be no way to convince the Djinni of this. Well maybe one way...

"Very well, Genie. For my first wish I want you to grant control and or possession of anything I say to the dwarven people.", the dwarf wished.

The genie became angry, but granted the wish. He and the dwarf began to bicker over who should have had right over the treasures. Finally the argument ended, with both sides incredibly bitter. The genie was told that he could return home, but that when the dwarf summoned him he was to come. The genie agreed.

The genie decided that the next time the dwarf wished for something he would take a page out of the efreetis guidebook. That dwarf would pay.

After several months Reork and his wife were promoted due to the fine work he had done on his job. They moved into a nicer house, and things went well. Eventually - something went wrong. All dwarves of such status as Reork were given finely crafted decorative axes. Reorks was stolen and pawned off by his brother.

Desperate to get it back, Reork summoned the Genie. The Djinii, who had been living happily at home had had a child with his long-missed wife in the months since - was holding his child when he was summoned, bringing his infant along. Reork explained his desire to get his weapon back. With anger in his heart, the Djinn summoned the axe to his hand and threw it violently at Reork - just as Reorks wife stepped into the room. As soon as she saw her husband in danger she leapt into the path of the blade. It cleaved her nearly in two, and still cut deeply into her husband. She died instantly. Reork, dying and in tears of sorrow told the genie, "That in your hands is now in possession of the dwarven people, as is my right to dictate per my first wish. And my third wish is that you may never enter any dwarven halls again."

Then he died.

The genie, anguished, but under the control of magic he had summoned - disappeared back to his native plane - leaving only his infant child behind.

When they found the child they assumed it was Reorks. He had been acting strangely over the last few days, because his weapon had gone missing, but nobody had known that. Now they all assumed it was because his wife had given birth. Care of the child was handed over to Reorks slightly crazy brother.

Given the bizarre nature of Reorks (as he was named) parents deaths none of the dwarven people were surprised when he began to appear to be cursed, superstitious as dwarves tend to be. By the age of 5 he was the height of most full grown dwarven adults. When he learned he could fly, his uncle, whom had raised him like a father, was very distraught. "Dwarves 'r meant ta be on the earth, not gallivanting above like some fairy princess. Ach." After a while his uncle, who was a crafter of several things and had begun teaching him the art of weapon crafting told him he had something else to learn. "If ye're going to be flying around relying on that ingrained -ach- m.a.g.i.c. then you better have a backup plan. Unreliable stuff, that. I have a hobby, and I think it may help you out." It turns out that he would occasionally go up to the highest points in tehe mountain and leap down. But he had created something he called a parachute to help slow his fall. When questioned about his earlier comments on dwarves supposed to be 'staying on the ground' he merely muttered to himself.

Reork learned how to create a parachute, and always wore it. He walked very slowly, so he flew whenever possible. He became somewhat of an oddity. It was clear to look at him - with his toned muscles, and large braided beard - that he was of dwarf descent, but a dwarf who walked around with a parachute on? And he was 6 ft. tall. He was more than fullgrown at the age of 40. Such things were unheard of for a dwarf. It had started as an oddity, but now it was getting to people. They were starting to get afraid his curse would rub off on others.

One day his uncle told him that he needed to leave. Flee, before the fear of the others turned to anger. So he did. He left for the new world!


He used a dwarven warpike with a loop on the back end. He strung a piece of rope through it and into the pull string of his parachute. If he was knocked out while flying he would drop the pike, pulling the rope and deploying the parachute, preventing the falling damage from doing him in.



I also played a Airship Captain whose airship doubled as an orphanage(the guy was a Saint), and he used to leadership to get his crew (http://loungeoftheimmortals.com/downloads/Peeps.xls) which was fully realized.

EDIT:

So I heard you like unusual backstories. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E2%80%94All_You_Zombies%E2%80%94) Wow, I really should do something like that sometime. :smallbiggrin:

Why would you do that to me? Why, oh why, did I click that link...

BobVosh
2009-09-03, 01:32 AM
Luscious? You name is Luscious? (http://www.sluggy.com/images/comics/030921b6.jpg)

Yukitsu
2009-09-03, 02:07 AM
Current character has the oddest of my backstories.

Fhyrtu Branchia (Unit Number FF8249-09v12)

Was raised on a planescape planet somewhere around Faerun far into the campaigns past on a world under constant civil war. The government turned to human experimentation, trying to perfectly infuze living creatures with great magical affinities to battle magic, going by the theory that a location bombarded with magic will create living spells, and so humans bombarded with spells would become somehow attuned to those spells.

While obviously destructive spells were favoured, they tended to leave corpses rather than useful soldiers, so they instead went with psychological weapons, creating the first succesful rage based soldier after 36 years of research. He could feel nothing but pure anger, tearing enemies limb from limb with such ferocity that barbarians regarded them with a degree of worry. They were produced en masse within the year and sent out to fight and die by the hundreds. Those few that survived conflicts were often torn apart by eachother, removing the need of extrication.

Eventually, they resorted to a newer, more stable form of soldier based around terror tactics, creating them by "infusing" living beings with the spells scare, phantasmal killer, and others, keeping them alive with living revivify oozes. They were kept obedient through the potions of immunity to fear rationed out to the top performers after every battle, where the rest were kept in a drugged, catatonic stupor. Other types of course existed, emphasizing joy, sorrow and calm, each with a different task on the battlefield, from uplifting freindly moral, to crushing the enemies will to fight on, to controling the emotional wrecks that this nation referred to as weapons.

No soldier would volunteer to join the ranks of these damned souls, so the government started taking those orphaned by the war, changing them into monsters to be pushed to the front. My character and her older brother were two such individuals pressed into this service, both to become weapons of fear. However, before they could be completed, the collective array of weapons finally rebelled under the control of the calm spells, utterly destroying the society that spawned them.

The living weapons scattered through the multiverse, many of them utterly mad with uncontrolled emotions. Most died within a few years, purged by their own instability, while others were slain by roving adventurers or war parties. Only a few remain to this day, and of them only the newest models. They were cursed before release to never find true death, lest they defeat their own cursed emotions, though dying reduces their power and destroys their memories (much like the nameless one). My character, for instance, cannot find true death until she dies with courage.

Over the decades, the remainder found that as they were more spell than human (Elan as the race) they no longer physically aged. My character was recently slain by another of her kind who refers to herself as Eris, an individual of rage. She was brought back to life on a far off backward planet, not knowing who, or even what she is. Raised at an academy of magic as a skilled necromancer and illusionist, she has learned the arts of herbalism to ensure that she always has a steady stream of drugs to counteract the terror caused in her heart by her own cursed existance.

She has been fighting tyrants, capturing slave owners, and demonstrating to them the full extent of her hatred for those that bear a similarity to the corrupt nation that spawned her. She doesn't know why she hates them, but as she adventures, she has been getting closer and closer to the answer as to just who she is.

This is probably one of my favourite characters out there. :smallbiggrin: She's so horrible, but at the same time, I can't help but feel a little sorry for her. Looking at my post though, probably too long. Oh well. :smalltongue:

She was inspired in many ways by Alma Wade from F.E.A.R.

FerhagoRosewood
2009-09-03, 01:33 PM
Lewie, Unaligned Human Paladin of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. He was one of the three founding members of our DnD world's Pastafarian religeon - himself, an uncle of some sort who took command as the High Priest of the Noodly One, and the guy who cooks the spaghetti dinners. Lewie's mission was to go out and try to recruit new people into his faith, and bring "shiney things" back to his uncle. We worked together for this backstory, and I was totally okay with. He just reached level 3, and he's converted about 7 NPCs to Pastafarianism.

Awesome. I had a similar idea, only with a cleric. Kudos.

And Captain Six, that character design of the barber is greatness.

Frerezar
2009-09-03, 01:39 PM
Wanted to be a halfling in an only human game. The DM allowed me to play a little person instead and told me i would be despised by society.
So his backstory was spending the first 18 years of his life living in a box with 2 holes, one for eating and one for ...well you know. He was able to scape when he discovered his awesome draconic sorcerer powers after learning how to talk from a parrot that became his familiar.

Elfin
2009-09-03, 01:55 PM
And Captain Six, that character design of the barber is greatness.

Seconded. :smallbiggrin:

DragoonWraith
2009-09-03, 01:58 PM
The only one I've seen, and I'm not sure this competes, was a character who was his own reincarnation. Basically, he believed that he would keep going back and redoing his own life over and over again until he got it right. He did not know what it was that he was doing wrong, so he was doomed to repeat the same life over and over again until something he did differently broke the cycle. Sorta a 'Groundhog Day' over an entire lifetime rather than a single day.
My current character was raised from birth believing that he is the reincarnation of the Kobold equivalent to the Godfather. His name is Vito Corleone, but in Quenya instead of Italian...

Mystic Muse
2009-09-03, 02:10 PM
here's my current character background unless my DM rejects it. I think it's pretty weird. it's in bold.

Auvryvyrae belongs to an old tribe of Drow, or rather Belonged to. The tribe is long gone. Originally she belonged to a rather large Drow city but it was destroyed. Nobody is quite sure how it was destroyed but she didn't stay there long. Only long enough to get a brand of a spider devouring the moon upon her wrist. The moon is a symbol representing Correlon and The Spider represents. She was later picked up by a simple tribe of dark elves. Auvryvyrae didn't stay there what an elf would consider long but she learned their ways. They knew nothing of the gods, their mother lolth or their father correlon. All they knew was death, Trickery, destruction and Chaos and that's what they worshipped. She rose quickly through the ranks of the warriors in her tribe using techniques none of them had seen or heard of before. She eventually became leader and as was customary for the leader of their tribe once she became about eighty years old (fifteen by our human norms.) she was given a ring symbolizing her strength and her devotion. The ring shows a cloud of darkness enveloping a landscape. Unfortunately Disaster struck yet again. Demons attacked her tribe and slaughtered most of them. She is the only one left that she knows of. She tried to lead her tribe against the demons but the demons were strong and her tribe was caught in the middle of the night when many of them were sleeping. They killed a few but their weapons were weak against the demons flesh and they could not harm most. When it was clear it was a lost cause some of what remained of her people convinced her to leave them behind. She was their greatest hope of continuing their customs since she was their strongest warrior. She continued life on the edge. She tried finding shelter among the elves and the Drow but none were willing to take her in. She was hated by the elves and she was seen as a curse among the Drow. She is known as Iiralara and Dhaunarra among her own people. Drow insults meaning plague queen and death harbinger. The elves consider her a horrible beast due to her relation to Lolth. Some were almost willing to allow her until they heard her name which means “blood of the overseer.” . One day a woman who looked rather like a drow but with ashen skin instead of the more black they normally have and black hair approached her. “so, you want revenge on the person or person's who killed your tribe? I can help you with that. But in return I ask two favors of you..” “who are you?” “I am Eris goddess of Chaos.” “how do I know you're not lying?” “If I promise you something and you promise me something in return but I break my promise then you are released from the contract which hardly benefits me.” “fine what is the first condition?” “you have to worship me and only me. However I should mention that I'm not like other gods. I am the pure embodiment of chaos and so I care not for your alignment. Only your worship” “that sounds fine but what's the nature of your second request?” “I shall make you my avatar. You have direct contact to me and me to you. While I will forgive you for ignoring me if it goes outside your principles I will not stand for you always ignoring me.” “what will you do if I always ignore you?” “let's put it this way. In space, nobody can hear you scream. Here on Earth/(whatever your campaign world is called) it won't matter.” “okay so why will you allow me to occasionally follow my principles?” “because a follower who only does what I say is too predictable and Chaos is all about unpredictability.” “anything else I should know?” “one thing your name means blood of the overseer. That's me not Lolth. T.T.F.N” she said and she disappeared. Auvryvyrae (who's alternate name is Emily in case nobody can remember her name) has been doing her bidding ever since.



who else's background do you know that has a winnie the pooh reference?:smallsmile:

kestrel404
2009-09-03, 02:46 PM
This one wasn't DnD, but Conspiracy X (a modern day world in which aliens, psionics and magic are real, different factions of the US government are at war with each other to determine which global conspiracy will control the populace, and the PCs worked for the 'good' one).

Why this character ended up weird:
I wanted to play a tough-as-leather old military campaigner. I decided that he served in the Vietnam war, and was still in the service. The GM decided that the basic character creation rules didn't give enough character points, so as we were making characters (after I'd started writing backstory) he anounced that you got an extra character point for every year of your character's age. I did a quick check - the second oldest character was early 30s. My character was late 50s. I decided that to prevent my character from dominating the game I needed to blow some of those extra points.

So I went book diving and found the most expensive merit in the game: Focus. This turns you into the focus of supernatural magic, allowing you to 'will things to happen', increasing thelikelihood that magic will happen in your vicinity, and generally making you a supernatural badass. Right next to this was the most expensive FLAW in the game. It gave the same number of points, and depended on the local magic rating (a value automatically increased by the Focus merit) to basically screw over the character every time they tried to do something.

I took them both, and then continued working on my backstory.

Backstory:
Early in his life, David was a fairly normal child. But when he reached adolescence he started having 'accidents'. When he was nearly run over by a car, he suddenly found himself sitting on his neighbors roof, a hundred yards away - who then called the police on him. When he was attacked by a gang of bullies at school, they were somehow lit on fire - which led to his near expulsion from school. These 'accidents' became so annoying that David actively tried to suppress them and keep them from happening. For a while, they went away.

When the Vietnam war rolled around, David was just leaving school with few prospects for a future. Seeing all the recruiting posters, he decided to join the military.

It was when he was out in the field and his recon team was ambushed that it happened. He doesn't remember it, but the events of that afternoon shaped his outlook on life for years (until the other PCs got ahold of him, really). He stood in the rear of the group, acting as their radio man, when suddenly bullets rained around him and into his friends. Within seconds, everyone else was dead or dying. A Charlie emerged from the water next to him with a knife. He panicked. He reached for the power that he'd forced himself to never use again. And suddenly, all of his allies were there again, defending him, killing at his command - and still quite dead. The zombies he raised went on to slaughter and destroy dozens of hidden Vietcong around him - leaving the swamp he was in a bloody mess. Then he fainted.

He suppressed the memories of that day, but the military noted in his record that he was 'one of the weird ones'. Far from being a mark against him, this led to several officers taking an interest in him and his eventual conscription into one of the great conspiracies. Despite his insistence that there was no such thing as 'magic' or 'the supernatural', he steadily rose in rank within the military and maintained his status as a man to be watched. Eventually, he was placed in charge of a group of misfits, also members of the great conspiracy (the other PCs, I was the only one to spent character points on the 'rank' trait so I ended up in charge).

The reason he's so weird:

I took two merits:
Combat hardened (He'd seen enough combat not to be phased by someone shooting at me)
Focus (The most expensive merit in the book. I took it to make the most expensive flaw in the book worse.)
I took a bunch of flaws, most of them designed to prevent me from taking advantage of Focus:

Haunted (the most expensive flaw in the game) - whenever my character was in danger or a critical situation (combat, stealth rolls, that sort of thing), the GM would secretly roll a d6. On a roll less than or equal to the local magic rating (usually a 1, but because I was a focus it was automatically at least a 2), an evil ghost would attempt to get me killed somehow. Basically, this resulted in a roll on the wild magic table, with the result affecting me as negativey as the GM could manage.
Skeptic - didn't believe in magic or psionics. So I couldn't invoke the Focus power's main ability - which was essentially barely-controlled wild magic.
Bad Habit - he was a cigar-man. Not addicted, but he always had a cigar (often unlit) clenched between his teeth.
Flashbacks - These were worse than standard Vietman flashbacks, and the inspiration for the whole 'repressed zombie incident' portion of the backstory.
Bad Dreams - For obvious reasons
Repressed memories - Same

To go along with the Haunted theme, I also tanked the character's Luck trait.

What was hilarious was that the rest of the party was mostly a collection of Magic and psionics wielders - which I didn't believe in. And as the leader, I was in charge of planning operations. So I told them all to 'stop pretending to be special and just use the darn guns I'd brought'. My character ended up their mind-controlled puppet as often as not. They eventually decided that their highest priority was to get me counselling.

steam_mage
2009-09-03, 03:04 PM
thanks for the helpfull rewrites and i thought i'd add that during a previous campaign lucious was once chained up by a chain devil....in the midle of a deeper darkness spell...when he was alone...he had the still spell feat and he had prepared a sugestion spell...ill let you geuss how that went.

oh and i forgot to mention that when the ghost wizard was driven out of the son his spellcasting ability remained so he's a 17th level wizard at 10 years old... lucious hasnt yet told him that his 'mommy' is actually a gay transvestite/transexual rakasha

Optimystik
2009-09-03, 03:07 PM
oh and i forgot to mention that when the ghost wizard was driven out of the son his spellcasting ability remained so he's a 17th level wizard at 10 years old... lucious hasnt yet told him that his 'mommy' is actually a gay transvestite/transexual rakasha

Thank you and good night