|
I have two I played in our "Das schwarze Auge" campaigns. It's basically a low fantasy medieval setting and rather noblebright with few exceptions.
1. Leomar Boronian von Mersingen-Berg
To understand this character a bit better: He hails from a nation that is culturally a mix of (late) medieval central and western europe and overall "the good guys (TM)". But when we build our new characters I realized that due to his age and region of origin the knight I wanted to build had basically been at constant war for most of his youth, since two extremely big demonic invasions had happened (one when he was twelve, the second when he was 18). Both times his nation had lost a majority of their army and barely survived and had since then tried (more or less efficiently) to fight back. His home province was completely in ruins and contested by various warlords (the campaign focussed around trying to stabilize and restore it).
Therefore his theme was a knight that tried all he could to be "the good guy" and live up to the ideals he was taught in his childhood - even though he was quite traumatized from all the fighting and was not without fault himself. He was well aware that a war-thorn province was likely not the place for fairy tale knightly ideals, but afraid of what would become of him if he stopped holding on to them. On more than one occasion we were confronted with others who had dealed with the whole issue differently - fleeing, going mad, fatalistic or sarcastic - and it was always interesting. The great thing about playing him was that he was much deeper in character than my characters before him and even though he was not the best fighter he had quite an influence on the campaign as with time the people around him started to believe too, that there was hope.
2. Francesco Bonareth:
A kind of cleric from a slaver nation in the south that is sometimes depicted as antagonists and you could rightly say "the bad boys" of the non-deamonic-worshipping team. As his homecity was a real snake nest he was a cunning politician and really good at reading people, also filthy rich and with "friends in high places" including the pope of his own church. The interesting twist he had was that his church was heavily involved in all kinds of drugs, to some degree to control the masses but also because they quite literally use them to be close to their god and perform miracles. While they do possess a variety of miracles that help them to redruce it, the risk to get addicted remains for the clerics and a lot of them suffer from it. He on the other hand is immune to all drugs in a way that he can not get addicted but also needs stupid amounts to even barely scratch the plain of enlightenment and godly inspiration that is normal for his peers - much to his own frustration. Even though he is often doubted if he is any use as priest, he became quite useful for his "pope" as he is fiercely loyal, always clear in his mind and does barely have any principles he would not throw over bord, if his god or his worldy representative asks that of him.
During the course of the campaign he even discovered his own conciousness and by now is really a rather nice guy. Non the less we often have a good laugh because the adventurer group often does "the right thing, out of the completely false reasons".
- not enslaving the defeated enemy crew - because we had limited storage room on our ship and the silk the enemy had is worth more, does not stink or eat our food
- treating their slaves very good - because a happy slave does not kill his master in his sleep
- helping the beggars and poorest of the city - because hunger breeds revolt and when s*** happens, they want to be standing on the right side of history
etc.
|
