#so if i dont get to play lyle i at least got to tell yall about him

[metamagic-adept]

I want to ask you about the DND blorbo so badly it makes me look stupid. But who cares about me looking stupid please exposit at great lengths

Thank you anon!! 💖 I dont think you look stupid at all

prefacing this by saying anyone playing in this campaign with me (an impending Strixhaven one) should read no further

so. there's truly so much potential for interesting character/story hooks with the Strixhaven academic setting it makes me go feral. my current favorite one is someone's experiement/science project who got up off the table ala frankenstein. I'm looking at a mutant bloodhunter in terms of class because there's a funky blood magic professor (maybe dean?) in the Witherbloom college. the Witherbloom campus includes some very nice swamp terrain so i'm pulling crocodile/alligator-like features in to this character's design. may or may not be considering a path of the beast barbarian multiclass down the road.

and then i said to myself, "this character needs a name." and THEN i remembered the children's book "lyle, lyle, crocodile" which is a very satisfying phrase to say so i decided Lyle is a great name for this character (Lyle uses he/they/it pronouns for rn)

and then i said to myself, "but is it sad enough?" and the answer was "nope!" like many queer ppl i can't resist the appeal of playing a monstrous character who feels isolated and unlovable. i also like to joke that my favorite pcs are all fundamentally lonely in some way. however, i could also make Lyle's backstory more tragic and complicated.

so i decided that his story started with two grad students in Witherbloom trying to experiment with resurrection via alchemy instead of straight up divine magic (or even lesser necromancy). Not only were they partners in research, the two academics were also partners in life (romantic, platonic, or somewhere in-between i havent decided yet). It was promising research, too! Unfortunately it was cut short by one of them dying unexpectedly :( the other, desperate to hang onto the man they loved, used their research to try to resurrect him. It failed in returning his soul to his body. But it did put something back into his body, and that something was Lyle.

Lyle, as such, has a very complicated relationship with it's parents. Both the living one and the dead one whose body they are piloting around. The living parent loves him, but its hard when your child's face is also literally the face your dead best friend. And when that's your fault. Lyle knows that their parent wishes the procedure had brought their partner back instead of them. Lyle sometimes wishes the same; that the circumstances of his existence were entirely different. He doesn't want to die though, in fact, there is a part of them that fiercely, fiercly wants to live. And he thinks that maybe, that part is tha last remnant of their dad, urging them to keep going.

I think Lyle was also feral when it first woke up. Like, "sprinting into the swamp and unable to be found" kind of feral, or "attacking the occasional student collecting herbs" feral. "Only responds after a druid casts Awaken on it" feral. And I think at times Lyle misses the simplicity of it, of following insticts and eating when hungry and not worrying about parents or friends or wearing someone else's face (its their face too, they dont have another one.)

Lyle rhymes with crocodile, but it also comes from the old french "L'isle" meaning island or someone from an island. Talk about feeling isolated...