What is the weirdest origin story you’ve ever encountered?

[DRD1812]

It was the idea of sorcerer bloodlines (http://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/family-ties) that got me started on the topic, but I suspect that there's weirder homebrew out there than crossblooded psychic kitsune. So how about it, gang? What is the weirdest origin story you’ve ever encountered?

[Acanous]

Weirdest origin story? I once had another player show up with an origin that seamlessly fit in with mine-
I had a backstory where a red dragon burned down my village and killed my parents, and now I was questing to be come stronger and take revenge. He had a story where his parents were wizards that got scry N die’d by a dragon that had foreseen them becoming rivals to its power.

Now funny thing, when I toss a dragon in a backstory, I use a dragon name generator and name the thing for better immersion.
Turned out we either used the same name generator or just fluked into it, but we both gave the dragon the same name.

So this dragon that might have just been a jealous recluse if guy 2 was alone, or a marauding menace if I was alone, became this elder power which killed people because it’s paranoid and powerful, like some sort of malevolent force of nature that ambushes you when it thinks you might become a threat... and going from maybe a mid game side quest to end game boss.

[Karl Aegis]

It's got to be the dude seeking eternal life, but decides, "Hey, I'm gonna kill myself." Why cut your life short when your actual goal is to live a long time?

[ExLibrisMortis]

It's got to be the dude seeking eternal life, but decides, "Hey, I'm gonna kill myself." Why cut your life short when your actual goal is to live a long time?
That is either stupid, or some serious lawyering, or both. Was his strategy to come back as a ghost who is chained to the world by its desire to live forever (i.e. a desire that is neverending by definition)? I mean, spontaneous animation is a one-in-a-billion longshot, but you do get eternal life conscious existence.

[heavyfuel]

A player that wanted really really badly to play lizardfolk in one of my games. There were no lizardfolk, so he came up with this backstory on how he's from a distant land and whatever. Nothing too out of the ordinary.

The problem is that he died in literally 1 hour of gameplay after failing a jump check. He went through all the trouble of finding a race not on the pre-approved races, convincing me to let him use it, writing a backstory on word, e-mailing it to me, to die in one hour. Oh, he also had a penalty to Jump checks, so I'm even sure why he decided to jump.

My campaigns aren't even very lethal, all other players survived by making non-idiotic choices like using ropes for safety and stuff.

[Darrin]

Oh, he also had a penalty to Jump checks, so I'm even sure why he decided to jump.


And the tragically ironic part... Lizardfolk have a +4 racial bonus on Jump checks.

[Oracle71]

I created a wizard character similar to "groundhog mage" build (from the old Weekly Optimization Showcase series of posts from the old WOTC forums). Basically, using a combination of the collegiate wizard feat, uncanny forethought feat, and MotAO to be able to spontaneously swap out wizard spell slots for any spell from his very large spellbook. I designed the build and named him, and then I realized something: his name was almost exactly the same as a much older wizard character I had made who lived during the age of Netheril in FR.

So, my new character actually BECAME my old character! He became one of the powerful epic archwizards of Netheril, who set up a contingency in case he got killed, whereby his soul would be transferred to a clone body that was kept in a secret sanctum. Unfortunately, he died during the fall of Karsus, along with a lot of the other Netherese wizards, and the disruption of the weave caused his contingency to go slightly awry. Instead of growing a new body and being completely ready to reenter society within a few days, his body took 1700 years to regenerate. His "collegiate wizard" feat was actually him relearning all of the magic that he commanded in his previous life, and his versatility with his spell slots was actually him combining the traditions and teaching from his Netheril days and the modern Realms. The 17 centuries of clone regeneration fueled itself by draining his personal power (XP) away, until none was left, so he was starting the new campaign as a 1st level character .

[DRD1812]

My current dude in a Ravenloft game is a legacy character. She's basically an Elizabeth Swan clone: daughter of the governor of Jamaica on an alternate Earth, likes to go slumming with pirates, etc. The legacy is the weird part.

Homegirl is a half-elf. While she slept as an infant, a creepy little hunchback shuffled into her nursery to sprinkle her with holy water. It was none other than Terrance Gilliam, the goblin cabin boy from my group's many-years-ago pirate campaign. He'd been part of the crew that found the fountain of youth all those years ago, and the now-immortal goblin makes it a point to anoint his many descendants with fountain of youth water for good luck.

You'd never know that Anne Gilliam was part goblin... At least until she gets mad. Then the prim and proper paladin/rogue swears like a proper goblin pirate.

[King of Nowhere]

It's got to be the dude seeking eternal life, but decides, "Hey, I'm gonna kill myself." Why cut your life short when your actual goal is to live a long time?

Maybe he just realize after a while that eternal life was boring?

[noob]

Maybe he just realize after a while that eternal life was boring?

If you get bored try silly impossible tasks such as getting multiverse peace and universal good.

[Yogibear41]

It's got to be the dude seeking eternal life, but decides, "Hey, I'm gonna kill myself." Why cut your life short when your actual goal is to live a long time?

Isn't this like every lich ever?

[Zanos]

That shared dragon backstory is pretty awesome.


I created a wizard character similar to "groundhog mage" build (from the old Weekly Optimization Showcase series of posts from the old WOTC forums). Basically, using a combination of the collegiate wizard feat, uncanny forethought feat, and MotAO to be able to spontaneously swap out wizard spell slots for any spell from his very large spellbook. I designed the build and named him, and then I realized something: his name was almost exactly the same as a much older wizard character I had made who lived during the age of Netheril in FR.

So, my new character actually BECAME my old character! He became one of the powerful epic archwizards of Netheril, who set up a contingency in case he got killed, whereby his soul would be transferred to a clone body that was kept in a secret sanctum. Unfortunately, he died during the fall of Karsus, along with a lot of the other Netherese wizards, and the disruption of the weave caused his contingency to go slightly awry. Instead of growing a new body and being completely ready to reenter society within a few days, his body took 1700 years to regenerate. His "collegiate wizard" feat was actually him relearning all of the magic that he commanded in his previous life, and his versatility with his spell slots was actually him combining the traditions and teaching from his Netheril days and the modern Realms. The 17 centuries of clone regeneration fueled itself by draining his personal power (XP) away, until none was left, so he was starting the new campaign as a 1st level character .
The backstory for my longest running Wizard is that he was an Netherese Arcanist during the Fall, and the inconsistency of magic during the failure of the Weave caused his contingencies to work incorrectly. He was kept in physical stasis but mental awareness buried under the rubble of one of the fallen enclaves and went insane and then eventually fell into a mental coma until some archaeologists pulled his insensate body from the rubble during a dig, and he slowly began to remember who he was. Leveling up was just remembering what he already knew. I thought it was kind of dangerous to tell people who I actually was, but it isn't that uncommon for wizards to be interest in Netheril so I was able to pass it off as mostly academic, and the party didn't really question the 70-something looking guy being a history nerd. The DM let me fluff "adding" spells to my spellbook as adapting old remembered formulae to the new nature of the weave.

He was kind of mad he couldn't cast 11th level spells anymore.

[enderlord99]

Isn't this like every lich ever?

That's what my brain jumped to, too.

[XionUnborn01]

I wish I could remember more detail but we had a character that was an extremely high level sorcerer that lost a bunch of memories because he got dementia and decided he was a barbarian. So he played with the chassis of a sorcerer and was always a few levels higher than everyone but his spells were his attacks. So he always cast rage on himself, stoneskin, that kind of stuff. And he thought he was attacking with a weapon but they were touch attack rolls. It was pretty fun for the few months it lasted.

[LordBlade]

I played a Lizardman gourmet once. He grew up learning to be a master chef (of monstrous nature, so he'd be eating elves and humans and other humanoids mostly). His teacher sent him out in the world to get hands on experience with the culinary arts of different regions. So I would find orcs and trolls and lizardfolk and drow and learn all their different culinary styles and signature dishes.

I would take bits of enemies we beat and turn them into fancy meals for the party. :p

[Andor13]

I was reading through Bloodforge and noticing it has a lot of half-elf/half something else races, elf/centaur, elf/oni, elf/naga, elf/eagle, elf/unicorn, etc, and it occurred to me you could have an entire (large) party with everyone a different race, but all half siblings, children of a legendary elven skank devotee of free love.

I haven't tried talking a group into playing that game yet.

http://www.naorhy.com/art/freddy/elfwood/other_color/family_gathering_colored.jpg

[Yogibear41]

That's what my brain jumped to, too.

Had a 20 something year old human male character become a Lich once, after the fact DM told me he should have made me roll will saves to see if my character would have actually gone through with it, especially knowing he would never get laid again. It was a rather amusing point.

[Zanos]

If you're one of those rare liches that doesn't eschew human contact, there's always polymorph. Or more scandalously, Lichloved.

[Spore]

Our Pathfinder Fey sorcerer was a barkeep, a pacifist and a member of the Fey forest mafia. His "uncle" was the boss of a major crime ring which somehow entailed more than half of his family. He was CG and just ignorant enough to never question why other inns and taverns quickly closed down near him. Oh yes, his appearance was loosely based on Link, too.

(Or maybe he was secretly CE and just fooled us all with his powerful enchantments!)

[Thurbane]

Well, still only in development stages at this point (the NPC hasn't appeared in the game yet):


The character used to be a Human, but undergoes the rites to become an Elan. He retains basic memories of his previous life, but loses class levels etc.

At some point in his career, he becomes Lawful Evil before dying. At this point, he undergoes The Scourging, and returns to the mortal plane as a Hellbred. He some vague memories of his previous life, and also any languages he spoke during his life. Again, he loses class levels etc.

Wanting to escape his condemnation to the Nine Hells, he decides to undergo the ritual to become a Dragonborn of Bahamut.

All is going well, until one day he is slain unexpectedly in combat. His party, having only a Druid, cannot Raise him, so instead they cast Reincarnate. He comes back as a Goblin.

Unhappy with his new form, he eventually decides to undergo the Rite of Spellscale Assumption, so as to be a better spellcaster.

Human > Elan > Hellbred > Dragonborn > Goblin > Spellscale.

[Seto]

It was on a Naruto freeform rp forum. I was like 15, and someone who was probably a younger kid (11 or so) came to the chatbox to ask for ideas for a backstory. I started ironically spouting stupid, parodic backstory ideas, and he naively took them at face value and started writing it. His thread then got shot down and he was asked to write another, of course, because the backstory was beyond stupid. Not my proudest moment.

Anyway, his unwittingly parodic backstory was as follows: his character was a young ninja apprentice from Konoha, the village of the Leaf. He was average and didn't have much power, which made him furious because he desperately wanted to be a Uchiha, seeing as they're so cool, powerful and edgy. So he had an idea: he would paint his own eyes red and black, imitating the Uchiha's famous eyes, so that he seemed like he had Sharingans. Then came the tragic day: as he tried to go to school with his eyes painted, he found that the paint hurt him and made him unable to see anything. He bumped against the wall of his room, then the bathroom's wall etc. In humiliation and pain, he cried out, convinced that he was being attacked. When his parents came to help him, he mistook them for enemies and killed them by wildly flailing his kunai everywhere. He thus became a self-made orphan. He proceeded to go to school, but couldn't make it because of the paint. Effectively blind and still furious, he went on a rampage that was easily stopped by the police force. Thus he went to ninja prison.
In his cold and lonely cell, he learned that he killed his own parents. In self-loathing and anger, he cried so much that the paint washed away from his eyes. But in his desperation, he developed his true power: the Eyes of Shame. Everytime he became angry or angsty (which was often), his eyes had the power to turn his emotions into visual accuracy, which he sorely needed due to the damage that the chemical paint had done.
He finally got out of jail, and became a genin. He was ready to unleash his hatred on the world.

[DRD1812]

Not my proudest moment.

We've all been 15. I'm sure you're a better ambassador to the hobby these days.

That said, GOOD LORD THAT STUPID BACKSTORY!

[Segev]

The Beholder Mage
(I have yet to really play this one, though if a DM is ever brave/crazy enough to let me, I'll be delighted to.)

A human wizard adventurer had a party of boon companions, and they had quite the successful career. Sometime during it, they encountered a beholder, and the human wizard became fascinated by the creatures. At his urging, the party would seek out quests involving them, and they became minorly known for being experts at dealing with this particular aberration. He, himself, made numerous magic items from the parts he harvested, and eventually, the party encountered a Beholder Mage. This threw all of his conceptions about the creatures out the window, until he realized it was a unique combination of the race and particular methods of studying magic that gave them such power.

Jealous, he went from fascinated to truly obsessed. He eventually managed to discover how they created themselves, including the ritual sacrifice of the central eye and the techniques for transforming eye stalks into spell stalks.

But no matter what he tried, he could not emulate them properly. And though powerful by now, he knew he was never going to reach the pinnacle that a Beholder Mage could. Not as he was. And nothing he could do would directly transform him, properly, into the Beholder base he would need.

But then, he discovered the Elan and their nature. Such psychic aberrations would be much closer, metaphysically, to his end goal. With tremendous donations and much cajoling and politicking, he received acceptance for his application, and became an Elan.

The 1st level Elan Telepath that woke up from the procedure knew he had much to do. He kept in touch, vaguely, with his old adventuring buddies, but his memories of specifics were fuzzy, and he had more important things to focus on. So he made new friends, and engaged in new quests, saving his gold for a service he knew he would need when he'd prepared his body psychically.

Around level 5, he pays for the casting of polymorph any object necessary to become a Beholder. And then he begins his apotheosis.

The Dual-History Paladin
(Actually played this one)
Mitchel was a college student on Earth who, one day, while driving through the empty highway at night to get home for the weekend, found himself in an alien landscape. Through luck and fiestyness, he lost much of his material possessions, but gained others and survived the Outer Planes and the Outlands, stumbling from portal to portal and not really understanding what was going on. He eventually learned more as he found adventurers who needed a fighter-type. Mitchel, being a good-hearted young man, found that some divine presence was pleased with him, and he began developing paladinal powers.

He was, however, a little embarrassed to admit to his state as a clueless berk, so he would play at being mysterious rather than merely lost, and, when pressed, "confessed" to being a prince of a far-off land, out adventuring to prove himself a true and noble knight.

Imagine his surprise when the party ventured through a portal to a Prime world that was high in magic, only for the people of the capitol city to cheer his return home, and his sisters - the princesses - to tell him his mother, the Queen, was eager to see him.

The Lost Boy
Like Mitchel, this one found himself outside of his normal reality. He learned much in his wanderings, trying to get his bearings (and largely failing) in order to find his way home. But he came upon, at long last, a plane that was more like his own than the strange realms he'd been traversing. One where the rules are nostalgically similar to his home's. But he couldn't quite figure out how to get into it. The ways he was detecting it weren't the ways he'd used before he learned how to navigate these far places, and much of how he knew how to move didn't work with the ways of his home - or this place. He...sort of metaphysically doesn't FIT.

But he finally figured out a trick to sort of shoulder in, a little. Poke his metaphysical fingers in. Peer in with his original senses, even something like his original shape, before he started taking on the necessary talents and features to swim through the far realms. His ability to use what he'd learned out there is limited, as is his ability to push his will onto his pseudohumanoid extension with which he can manipulate this reality. (Actually a 5e concept, but still.) He's sort of his own extraplanar patron, as he learns how to pull more and more of his power and knowledge into this world.

A Broken Prodigy
(Never got to play this, as balancing it was too hard)
An elven orphan adopted by humans struggled to not be left behind as his adopted younger brother outgrew him and became a man in a few short years. Desperate to prove he wasn't "just a kid," the elf studied magic while his brother trained as a warrior, and they eventually joined an adventuring party. Through long series of quests, they grew in power and renown and developed friends...and enemies. One of their high-level quests involved an old enemy, an evil mage, who had obtained a powerful artifact he was using to bring about the doom of the world. In desperation, as the enemy was about to win, the elf-boy used disjunction on the artifact! It worked, and the day was saved! ...but he'd lost his spellcasting powers, forever.

He felt himself a burden on his brother and their friends, unable to contribute what they needed. At first, he stayed home while they adventured, trying to organize their keep and such. But knowledge of his weakness spread, and he had to flee some old enemies seeking him out. He would not let himself weigh down his friends with the need to protect him, so he went into hiding.

Eventually, he'd sold so many of his items for cash to keep on the run that he was much poorer than he'd once been. He also started pretending to be a very tall Halfling, so people would not see "elf child" and either treat him like a kid or let slip to those who sought him rumors of his presence. Finally, he stumbled on a new group of mid-level adventurers, and found his extremely potent knowledge to be of use to them. He trained enough to fake being a rogue, and now, as an epic-level character (technically), he's hanging out with level 10-12 adventurers, because he lacks class features to let him keep up with anything higher.

[manyslayer]

In a Star Wars game (D20) one player wasn't as familiar with the Star Wars universe (particularly the Expanded Universe stuff) so he decided to throw a character idea at the GM he knew would be rejected and figured that he would get some other ideas back that he could work with. The GM instead said, "Sure, I can work with the bastard son of the Emperor."

[Zanos]

I'm sure the Emperor had half a dozen bastard sons/lost clones in the old EU(RIP). Give the new stuff a few years, it will catch up on terrible ideas if it hasn't already.

[Bohandas]

It's got to be the dude seeking eternal life, but decides, "Hey, I'm gonna kill myself." Why cut your life short when your actual goal is to live a long time?

Vampirism.

[Bohandas]

Weirdest origin story I've heard? This one (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZCIh_3b5K8) from the Puffin Forest RPG gaming channel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZCIh_3b5K8