#because i've been instilled with the idea that every one needs to be a thousand words at least or no one will read it

[thereareeyesinsidethetrees]

hyperfixation is compiling a long list of individual animal species for identification purposes and this is being done because you're bored and not because you're required to

anyway the tags turned into something weird so maybe ignore those. i'm keeping them there so i don't personally forget

[fhylie]

Now that I've posted a little bit about the campaign world, at least as much as the PCs knew at level one, I think I'll post a bit about the player characters in my game. I'm a stream of thought guy, so that'll open me up to what I want to post about next.

First character up is Morgan Ioztor - I don't think I really want to list who the players are as I haven't really checked with them about that. So, here we go.

This first image is what we used as a base for Morgan's character art. I've never been able to find a source for it, and I suspect it's part of a bigger image. If anyone who sees this knows where it's from, I'd love to know!

Morgan is a half-elf hexblade warlock multiclassed with swashbuckler rogue. He grew up poor in Sanctuary, in a favela (slum, ghetto, poor working class neighbourhood) called Hautsez-Tatu, where his father Konon is a labourer who has desperately tried to instill a sense of hard work and responsibility in his son, and his mother Morwenna works as a waitress and cares for Morgan's siblings and cousins, all younger than him, named Danel, Agurne, Alazne, Pau, and Josep.

As far as being half-elven goes, Morgan is basically the same as the humans in Sanctuary. His elven part comes from a nation of elves called the Fanno, who are very strongly tree-worshipping and have particular ideas about magic and who is legally allowed to raise a child. However, Morgan and his family don't have much connection with that; they've lived in Sanctuary since the time of an ancestor dynasty of the current Fanno that were more focused on exploration and sailing, over a thousand years ago. In other words, he's just half-elven because both of his parents are, and doesn't have much connection with nature or songs or the joy of crafstmanship.

The Ioztors themselves have had a crowded, stressful life living in a dangerous part of town. Gang activity is overlooked by the city guard, since no one in Hautsez-Tatu is wealthy enough to command their attention or influence city officials, and most parents are split between worry that their children will get pulled into a life of crime or that said life of crime might be the only opportunity they have.

Things worked a little differently for Morgan, though. At the age of 12, Morgan was kidnapped and taken to an altar beneath the city to be used by a bunch of grey-robed figures in a sacrificial ritual. As in, he definitely died. That didn't stop him from being found injured a few days later, to the relief of his parents and the confusion of the young boy.

While recovering from his injuries, Morgan found over time that he was able to bring into his hand an odd knife, made from mottled grey stone with red flecks, with a dull chunk of ruby in the hilt, and taking a slightly different appearance every time. When he showed his parents they were confused by it, but since there wasn't any other adverse effect, it didn't seem like he was cursed.

His friends, however, simply thought it was cool, and spread the idea to him that getting his hands on something magic meant he was supposed to do something with it. Since he didn't have the connections or funds to get the knife looked at by a magister or even a hedge-wizard, it just became a part of his life, with his friends occasionally being wowed if the knife saw fit to give him some new trick. As he grew up, Morgan's distaste for the criminal element in Hautsez-Tatu led him to "patrol" the area, ideally helping friendly citizens where the city guard would not.

At 19 years old, Morgan is dissatisfied and listless with trying to deal with the problems of his home district. His father berates him for not seeking out real work, his mother continually needs him to take care of his younger siblings, his friends and hangers-on are lost to the novelty of his very limited magic powers, and he's had absolutely no luck at all trying to figure out even the most basic properties of the knife other than it's sharp, he can summon it from somewhere, and it lets him cast spells sometimes.

Just before game start, though, one thing of note has occurred: by complete chance while ranging outside of his normal haunts in a nearby wealthier area of town called Magialdean, Morgan ran into a very familiar-feeling man in a grey robe. At the same time, the knife pulled him towards the man, an odd internal call and direction which drew him into an alleyway the man was using as a shortcut as he skulked around, attempting to remain out of sight. Following the grey-robed man in half a trance, Morgan was almost along for the ride in a way as the grey-robed man noticed him approaching, recognized both Morgan and the knife in his hand, and collapsed instantly in death from what should have been a non-lethal slice.

Regaining control of himself in an alleyway with a corpse, in a nicer part of town where the city guard actually cares, still with no explanation of his situation, Morgan starts our game in a rising level of panic.

Behind the scenes a little here, I asked each player to have something else about their character that wasn't "in the rules", as it were, to better define their character. Morgan's player wanted there to be a lot he didn't know, a mystery to solve about the origins of the knife (a fun little device called the Shard of Ruin, which he learns later), he wanted to have some missing memories to track down, and he wanted it to tie into what I had said would be a main adversary of the campaign, which is aberrations, body-snatchers, and mind control. I, of course, was only too happy to oblige.

Unknown to the players at the start, though I shared this with them later, I also decided on themes to throw at them. Morgan's was "choices", both the possibility of choice and the pressure of being made to make hard choices.

I also drew a number of major arcana tarot cards (hello, Rider-Waite deck) for each player and picked themes based on what fit best. Morgan's drawn cards were the Devil, the Chariot, Strength, and the Wheel of Fortune. I picked out the Devil as what I would focus on for themes, both because it's great thematically for a warlock even if he doesn't deal directly with fiends (yet, ho ho), but we've also got the base card meanings of "Ravage, violence, vehemence, extraordinary efforts, force, fatality; that which is predestined but is not for this reason evil" and "Reversed: Evil fatality, weakness, pettiness, blindness." These paired pretty nicely with some stuff I had planned down the road as well as the whole thing with choices.

I think this is a pretty good picture of the character at the start of the game - he doesn't have those rogue levels or specialization yet, and he hasn't run into the other party members yet, who are certainly not going to get him into any less trouble.

Let's close out the post with some extra pictures of Morgan, as well as some others, drawn or created by @aaeds. I swear I'm not going to tag you in every post. She does a ton of extra art for the game and it's sick as hell. You don't have to ask about the furby one.