I think that this character is near
ready. I’ve spoken with the DM and now
he approves of the character concept, a half elf ranger with racial
substitution levels (in Races of Destiny).
He now desires more work be done on the character’s backstory, and
indeed that time has come to address this point.
Benefits of the Character
As any ranger, he still has the
ability to fight (I need to decide his preference, melee or ranged), cast
divine spells (level 1 spells until 8th level as ranger), and a
handful of arcane spells (as per half-elf ranger). He has the potential to serve as the party
healer in a pinch, but it will be 8th level when he can cast Cure
Light Wounds; he can at least cast it from a scroll, suggesting at the on-going
battles he may soon find common with the rest of the group.
His main focus was always to be
an investigator, chasing the cause of the Day of Mourning in Cyre. I’ve considered pursuing this as an
outlander, but decided that it would be substantially more meaningful as a Cyran,
and a built in reason for him to be out of the country as a part of the war.
Service in the Army
I’ve decided a while ago that
this Ranger was going to be a witchhunter, that this would be a part of his
employ, a Ranger in the army entrusted to sneak around enemy lines and take out
company mages from battle formations.
This suggested the Arcane hunter, which required Knowledge (Arcane) 1 rank
at 1st, and granted Favored Enemy (Arcanist). The DM has ruled against this, however, as it
would cause friction within the party, indeed possibly too much friction, so
arcane hunter is left off of the build lists.
Knowledge (arcane) and spellcraft seem logical skills to build
regardless.
To obtain knowledge (Arcane), the
character needs the feat (Education).
This role also requires stealth, survival, and tracking, core abilities
of the Ranger. Why is he fighting? I have in my mind a hint that he is tired of
Kings and crowns, and has no further interest in the conflict. I suggested before that he had a life before
serving in the war and that life was lost to conflict. Maybe he never fought for the right to
Thronehold, only to avenge his losses.
And now all of Cyre is gone. His
losses are now so much worse.
What is he fighting for?
Vengeance. To bring consequence to murderers.
As a half-elf, he could have
lived a whole human life time. He could
have had a family. Whatever he lost, he
doesn’t want to talk about it. With Cyre
in ruins, and now the Mournland, he has no home to defend. But the character was not just about simple
vengeance. He was built to focus on the
recovery of the Mournland, to survive its challenges and find its causes.
What is the childhood like?
Does it matter? Cyre is gone.
Perhaps he lost a childhood friend, maybe a parent. Youth also means weakness, though, and so
rather than focus on vengeance, perhaps he wishes to overcome a shameful
memory, a time when he ran and left someone to die. Maybe he has made a promise to never stop hunting
the one responsible for something; the focus on arcanists would tend to suggest
it was a mage that caused such pain.
I have to nail this down, so let’s
come to this understanding. He was born
into a tiny one-horse village that exists no more. Such villages would have been routinely
uprooted by the conflict; credit to resettle the village would have been scarce
while the war was ongoing. As a youth,
he knew refugee camps and poor labour conditions in the highly productive slums
of Cyre from a young age. He would have
hated it, but it would have taught him a thing or two how to survive in urban
settings.
He may have made a promise to a
dear friend, or his dying family members, that he would live to resettle that
little village. And then he went off to
join the war to earn the money he needed to support this family. He wouldn’t have left full human siblings,
but he might have left nieces and nephews.
Then there’s the Mage.
This was his day job, but it
makes sense that he would have volunteered for a job he had an inclination
towards anyway. Others moan and cry
about the hardships of hunting mages, of Mage Duty as it could be; he threw
himself into it. Why? Of all of the schools of magic, Enchantment
is the most odious. Picture it – You are
hiding in a field full of dead bodies, and in walks the Necromancer – that is
scary! The abjurer or the diviner looks
at a distance near identical to clerics, you can always pick out the Alteration
mage because his specialty looks like so much fun. Illusion mages seem the most cheap – we won
the battle, dispel illusion, no you didn’t!
But the consequences of Enchantment, of permanent confusion, allies
fighting each other, of people reacting to emotions not their own, and using that
as an excuse to say it didn’t happen.
Enchantment is more than scary; it is odious, and more than powerful enough
to lead to a lost village or two. With a
ring side view of a battle where an enemy Enchanter kills the soldiers
defending his village, this character may have developed an awareness for the
harm Enchanters can wrought, and interest in what other mages can do, and a
desire to learn to unmake their efforts.
Who are his parents?
He has some anger against the
Valenar Elves, who turned on and butchered Cyran refugees after the day of Mourning. It would be a terrible twist if his father
was Valenar, an errant Elf who had a romantic tryst with his human mother one
night many years ago. The father would
outlive him, so he might exist to meet, or fight, again.
What is his name?
Easiest and hardest question. Using the random name generator, for a long period of time, I come up with: Gairn Faelan
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