Quote Originally Posted by AlsToyBarn View Post
I always have general ideas with I want my characters to be but I can never get them to any level of satisfying detail
Name: Rouke Enstone
Race: Centaur
Class: Cleric - Twilight Cleric
Background - Sage???
Personality Traits - I wanted him to have child-like innocence to him like a "Kid wanting to be an Astronaut" kind of feel
Ideals - To Rise. To be able to reach for the glittering gold and the giant wheel of cheese in the night sky.
Bonds - Rouke loves the cliffs that hang over his hometown, not because it has an amazing view of the valley below but because of how it shows the great celestial bodies hanging above.
Flaws – Always looking skyward, that he tends to cease watching where he’s going. Doesn’t do well when he can’t see the sky (such as in caves)

Backstory:
Rouke is the adopted child of a pair of small folk (Gnome mother/Dwarf Father) and was taught by his astrologist mother about the great celestial bodies that hand in the night sky. Rouke makes it his mission to cross beyond the sky and leave his mark among the stars.
The only problems I have with the characters is how he got his powers. Now while I understand that the following ideas are more along what warlocks are like, I wanted his patron to either be a dying star (not a literal dying star but a flickering ball of light the size of a fist) to float towards Rouke's corner of the universe or the concept of space giving its blessing to Rouke for some reason or another (not a god but a literal concept of all things space and stars being like "this is guy is ambitious, let’s give him some pizzazz). Go ham on another idea if you want because the longer I think about those previous 2 ideas, the dumber they sound to me.
Thanks again for any help you can give me.
P.S. The only reason the father is a dwarf is to make a reference to a phrase used a lot in the game "Deep Rock Galactic" (Rouke Enstone/ Rock and Stone). Not sure if this help in the creative process but I just like my dumb references.
This one came pretty easy to write to me... and I certainly kept on going.
I enjoyed creating the father and mother figures...
And felt very connected to how much they cared... though most of it focuses on the mother...
The father's side is seen through her...
And I added a flaw (two, but either or both could work) based on this whole idea...
And included the idea of drawing power from a star and how it all ties in.
I'd love to hear ANY feedback you have!
Not only does it help ME as a creative person always striving and enjoying these writing challenges...
But it also helps keep the thread bumped and alive for others to see and hopefully request things...
And thus keep giving me things to write about!
Enjoy!
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“Ye can’t be fillin’ the lad’s head with this nonsense,” the dwarf with the fiery red beard shouted as he threw his arms up in frustration. That’s my father, Rex Amberbeard. The beautiful woman next to him, a gnome with golden locks of hair, in perfectly spun curls, down to her waist is my mother, Anna Amberbeard. My father was a former Mountain Dwarf – I say former, because when he met the woman who would be my mother, Anna, who was a Forest Gnome and she’d captured his heart completely. He lost honor with his clan to be with Anna – but to him, that didn’t even give him a moment to pause. He knew he’d wanted to be with Anna the moment he saw her, no matter the cost.

Now, you might wonder – if my father is a Mountain Dwarf and my mother a Forest Gnome – what kind of person was I? Dwarf? Gnome? A mixture of some kind?

I am neither.

I am actually a Centaur. No, no. Before you ask, a Mountain Dwarf and a Forest Gnome mating is not how Centaurs are brought into this world. Truth be told, I was found, wounded, wandering aimlessly, with no true memory of how I’d come to be there. I have vague memories of human bandits attack my birth parents and I – but even with what I could remember, when Rex and Anna searched the area, they found no evidence of my parents, bandits, or even any kind of battle.

They accepted me as their own, explaining that they would be more than happy to help care for me, until the day my true parents came for me, if they did. That was about sixteen years ago and there’s been no sign of my true birth parents, and so I simply began calling Rex my father and Anna my mother, and they have always embraced me as their son.

My mother, Anna, had been telling me about the Constellations again, when my father had thrown his arms up in the air calling all of this nonsense. But my mother, who was a Forest Gnome, said she’d always kept her eye on the stars – and that some nights, when she was young, she would climb the highest tree she could find just to be as close as she could to the stars, and sleep on a branch and dream what it would be like to be among the stars and hear the voices of the gods.

She’d told me that she knew that Rex and she were fated to be married; she pointed out a small star in the heavens and explained that when she was born, according to her own mother, who also loved the stars as she had, it had been the brightest star in all the heavens – and my mother’s mother had said that it was ‘her star.’ And so night after night, my mother Anna, in her youth watched that star more closely than any star in the heavens. When that star had passed through the Constellation known as ‘The Great Forge’ – another star seemed to follow her star after passing through the ‘Great Forge’ constellation and she took it that a dwarf, whose deity was responsible for the great forge, would come to her… and within one week, Rex who had gone out of his Mountain home for trading with the surface had collided, quite literally, into Anna – and could not take his eyes off of her. This gruff dwarf was stunned into silence, and when he had spoken, he stammered over his words, like someone just beginning to learn how to speak.

My mother, Anna, was showing me how recently a third star had seemingly emerged next to her star, and the star she called Rex’s – and she believed that the third star represented me. It’d appeared several years after I’d come into Rex and Anna’s life, but she was confident that my own star had emerged. She believed that the star had remained hidden until I truly felt safe; and it’s true, while I had always felt loved and protected by Rex and Anna, there was always a doubt that the mysterious bandits might find me… and truly, after so long, I feared that my own birth parents might appear and take me away from Rex and Anna. I’d finally felt safe with them, and it was a week after, that the third star had emerged.

Anna taught me about the gods and how they were in the constellation and stars; and began to show me her priestly rituals to speak to the gods; and I quickly embraced it. One night, while she and I had been observing the stars, Anna pointed, “Do you notice how the third star, these last few weeks has been moving slowly away from the other two?”

I looked up and could see that the third star had indeed moved ever so slightly away, based on the other constellations. I looked at Anna, “What do you suppose that means?”

“We are all a part of the wheel that spins,” my mother explained. “However, sometimes, the vehicle must travel its own path and forge new roads.” She paused and looked at me. “I believe the stars tell us that soon you will be on your own path; away from Rex and I.”

“I don’t want to be away from you and father,” I protested.

Anna smiled, though tears brimmed in her eyes. “I do not want you to leave either. But,” she said as she wiped her tears with the back of her sleeve. “Your past, the bandits, your parents, though you’ve accepted your place with Rex and I, just as we’ve accepted you – there’s something there that needs to be answered. Who were the bandits? Why had they attacked? What happened to your parents? You may bury them in yourself – but just like the earth,” she grabbed a handful of dirt and squeezed, so that the dirt left her hands and when she opened her hands, only small stones remained. “Those questions will always remain inside of you like these stones. You must answer them. Grind the stone down to dust, as Rex would say.”

“I am not ready to travel alone,” I whispered.

“Alone?” Anna laughed and cried at the same time. “You will never be alone, my son. Your father and I are always here,” she said as she placed her tiny hand on my chest, just above my heart. “And,” she looked up, “I believe the star will always be with you – a vigilant eye with whom you will draw your power.”

She swallowed and finally said, “And besides, like the moon and the sun, how they cycle, ever chasing one another; your star will find its way back to the stars that represent your father and I, and on that day, you too, will find your way home back to us, once you have all of the answers your heart truly seeks to know.”

She then nudged me and pointed, “Do you see? Look – see the faint other stars around yours now? They’re barely visible. I believe you will find companions who will travel with you and aid you in your quest, just as you will aid them.”