Tell me about your favorite characters!

[Mr. Daddy]

Probably one of the most obvious threads to go with for tabletop, I know, but a good one to have nonetheless. Tell me about your favorite characters! Something you've run as a player, an NPC you've run as a DM, or something someone has run in a game with you. Bonus points if you have art or some visual representation, but that's far from a requirement.

Some of my own to get things started:
PCs:
1. Krugg: Krugg is my original D&D character, though ironically not even close to the first one I ever played. When I was a kid, I saw Krusk, the half-orc barbarian pictured in the 3.5 PHB, misread the text as Krugg, thought he was the coolest thing ever, and wanted to play that. Krugg has evolved a lot as a character since I was 3 though, and gone from just being an angry, cannibalistic kill-machine into a man who fled from his hometown as a teen because of accidentally murdering a bully in self defense, joining up with (and depending on the level of the campaign, briefly leading) a tribe of barbarians before ultimately having a moment of clarity, going "soft", getting exiled, and wandering to make up for the wrongs he's done. He's one of the few characters I've liked enough to actually run multiple times at different levels and points in his life, and one of the few PCs I've run as an NPC. I'd even go so far as to say that a lot of my interest in high fantasy stemmed from the idea of just making him as a character and developing him from something relatively simple into something more complex.
2. Jarlund Silvermoore: A considerably more recent addition to my ever-growing roster of characters, Jarlund holds a special place in my heart for being the character I ran in a game that introduced some of my current friends to D&D more properly. He's much simpler, a halfling ranger/rogue bounty hunter with a vendetta for every tribal warlord he can get his hands on because he wants to find and kill the one that enslaved his mother. He's a tired man forced to be old before he had a chance to be young, and served as the serious anchor point that could guide and back up a group of newbies if need be.
3. Breakis Bawnes: Breakis is a character that @Nidoking mentioned in his tabletop general thread, but to explain him a bit more I should mention that he comes from a skeleton campaign, where everyone plays as a skeleton. In this world, skeletons are alive, and become sentient after being separated from flesh, or "fleshies" as skeletons often call them in game. The campaign is definitely a sillier one full of genuine humor and a fair mix of dark humor, which is where Breakis comes in. Breakis is from a terminally ill child who was bedridden his whole life, and is convinced that his fleshy was deliberately keeping him prisoner. So, when he finally died, Breakis burst free, "liberated" his whole family, and will impulsively "liberate" any fleshy he sees out of a mix of anger, spite, and passion. The thing is, Breakis is still ultimately a stupid kid. If they don't basically look human, Breakis doesn't register them as a fleshy. He's hyperactive as hell (will literally interrupt you to ask what a word means if he doesn't know what it is), runs off wherever he feels like, can't sit still, talks really fast, gets really confused easily, forms attachments easily, and is just a generally well-meaning but otherwise impulsive and stupid nuisance. He made a skeleton have a heart attack days earlier than it was supposed to happen once!

NPCs:
1. The Masked Shoe Bandit: This is more of a recurring gag NPC than anything else, but exactly what he sounds like. I've frequently added him to various games in random encounter tables, and he is just a guy that goes around in a mask stealing people's shoes. I've never really had anyone pursue him, so I've never actually had to flesh him out more than that, but the idea just tickles me so much I can't help but try to figure out where I can fit him a lot of the time.
2. Dogma: Dogma was a villain from a supers campaign I was running that unfortunately didn't last until he could show up, but I've always loved the idea of him. He's actually a servant of a greater villain, known as The Prophet, who himself is an ancient necromancer trying to facilitate his own return to power. Dogma himself is a lonely man from Florida. He's devout to his religion, but secretly struggles with hallucinogenic drug use that his church condemns. The Prophet would take advantage of this to start warping his mind from beyond the grave. Dogma serves two purposes, those being killing folks to set up their spirits to be absorbed by The Prophet for energy, and to gather followers in a cult known as The Wanderers of the Prophet to get these bodies in larger numbers. The Prophet unfortunately needs energy both for his revival and to sustain the spells needed to prevent Death himself from forcing The Prophet to move on to the next life. In the game I was running that was using him, one of the players was running a ghost character who had taken up the opportunity to be Death's assistant and train him to ultimately replace the current Death, something that happens once every thousand years. They had actually started the questline that was going to lead them in the direction of getting to Dogma, but alas, the game just kinda died out due to scheduling issues.
3. Fandomaw: Much more brief to explain, and one I'm purposefully refraining on specific details for so as to not spoil anything since a couple users here are players in the game where he's relevant, Fandomaw is an Ithorian Jedi Master in an Old Republic game that's unfortunately been on an extensive hiatus. He's the master to the player characters, serving as a bit of a guide and general advice giver for the group when necessary.​

 

[Octopus]

This is probably the hardest open question I've been asked on the website, so good job. It was impossible to narrow down an actual numerical list, so I'm just bringing up the ones that come to mind.

Anders, Human Paladin/Ranger (DnD 5E).
He was my first PC in an amazing Curse of Strahd campaign I played, and was accidently perfectly in line with the adventure in ways I had no warning on. He was a simple woodcutting family man, then some undead killed his village so he went on to become a pseudo Punisher 'broken man' type of character dedicated to only killing undead out of brutal revenge. I obviously knew CoS involved undead, but I also had him have a thing for protecting children at all costs (his dead kids and all that) and I had no idea going in about the child eating hag, or even the ghost kids in the intro haunted house trying to fuck with the party. He got thoroughly fucked up over the course of his two lives (more on that in a second) both physically in combat and also mentally through the whole 'Strahd shenanigans' thing. He attempted to attack the hags on sight once he found them in the first town which got him captured of course, then tortured a bit- he did get out eventually, and managed to blind one of them by biting her eyeball. He also was being given constant nightmares every night by a shadow demon which was possessing his daughters rag doll, which was something the GM just threw at me that was fucking sick and threw me for a loop. He managed to cause enough of a ruckus over awhile for Strahd to personally bring him to his castle, sit him down and ask him 'to behave'. I of course said 'no', so Strahd killed him in front of another player to make an example of him (I was totally okay with it, it wasn't a dick DM move or anything).

Anyway, me and the DM worked out that he comes back as an undead revenant (I think the CoS book added them in as a race, or maybe it was an Unearthed Arcana from around that point) for some dramatic irony; cursed to be the one thing he hates in order to kill Strahd, his now nemesis. He was the one who used the Sun Sword (a flaming sword vitally important to the adventure) as a revenant, so every time he used it it was damaging him every turn with it's radiant fire as that's the kind of man he was. He ended up finally dying to Baba Yaga, who crushed him with the walking house. And so finally ended Anders, the Vengeance Paladin/Ranger multiclass man who was too angry to die. He was great to play, fit the campaign, and had more moments with the other characters than I could list here. He also went against my usual type in that he was entirely serious and wasn't comedic.

Blue Spirit, Street Samurai (Shadowrun, I think it was 5E)
This was in a campaign set in the Czech Republic and after we hadn't played Shadowrun for quite awhile, so I wanted to go back to basics in terms of an Octopus character and so made a combat monster pure adept with no 'ware. Blue Spirit (I cannot remember his actual name, it doesn't even matter) was a spoiled trust fund ork kid, who was the son of an actual Renraku Red Samurai. This entirely went to his head, and he was such an embarrassment to his family that they just sent him off to Prague so they wouldn't have to deal with him anymore, where he became an entirely obnoxious runner who LARPed as a samurai (he used only katanas and bows and wore the tabi socks and everything). He was an 'influencer', so I would go out of my way to make social media posts in-character mid-run which is of course a big no-no (it routinely came back to bite us in the ass, but he was far too stupid to learn from his mistakes). He ended up addicted to nova coke after partying with too many Harvesters and elf escorts, and I can't remember where the campaign ended up; I think it was just pre-COVID, so it got essentially cancelled once everything went down. I think we got involved with some ghouls somehow in the city. I miss playing him. He had a brief but bright life, and considering the fact I still remember him given how many Shadowrun characters I've played is an accomplishment.

Traxis, Lizardman Gladiator (Adventurers, Conquerors, Kings system)
I played Traxis probably for the longest of any other character, probably about a year and a few months straight. He was a lizardman, because I saw that ACKs had lizardmen and it was an immediate 'fuck yeah' moment. I leaned full into the 'eats everything' schtick, and had him carry around 20 pounds of cinnamon at all times for seasoning as he'd never know when he would get a 'free meal' in a manner of speaking (it was usually gnomes). He was born into a gladiator ring in the desert city of Edgegar, the fighter of a pompous scholar type noble. He was promised his freedom if he won enough, so he ate probably a lot of shit on the way up the ranks. A big part of ACKs is the whole domain stuff when you get high enough level, so he set out to make the best gladiator ring in the lands and form 'Lizard Island'; it was probably also going to be the lizard invasion army staging area, but that's unimportant. He was great fun, spoke with an unexplained lisp and it was fun juxtaposition for him to be a meme outside of combat then an actual murder machine in combat. He once singlehandedly took on 40ish pirates with only his natural attack routine (claw, claw, bite) and cleaving, as ACKs got a little wild at higher levels.

I have way more I'll share another time, those are just the first three that came to mind immediately.

 

[Mr. Daddy]

You know, funnily enough I also have a character (who I happen to currently be running but has been a concept for years before I started playing him) who is an orc rich kid. He's a D&D character, and conceptually he's the half-orc bastard son of a noble who decides to send him out to live on his own and "earn his own keep" to make a more proper man of himself. In reality, his father is just trying to get rid of him to protect his own reputation. His name is Helled Kia, and he's definitely a lot of fun to play. He's a little naive, but ultimately a pretty good, stand-out guy that just does what he can to make sure people are treated right, which proves to be a consistently fun challenge given that the world he's being played in is not exactly always good for that, and there's not much a low-level guard can do to affect things on a grand scale.​

 

[Octopus]

Sounds like a fun character. It is kinda funny how similar he was to my spoiled ork kid, but it's a common enough concept. The difference is that the Blue Spirit (I totally stole the name from Avatar: TLAB) was decidedly not a good lad just trying to treat people right. I can't lie and say that playing an unapologetic asshole wasn't fun, I like going against type/my usual nature every once in awhile.

 

[Mr. Daddy]

Yeah, just a funny coincidence. Playing unapologetic assholes also isn't typically my style, but I'd be lying if I said I've never done it myself. It can be tons of fun in the right game.​

 

[Octopus]

I was going to play it all cool like and talk about some other characters some other time, but I can't resist. I have technically played another character longer than Traxis if you count different campaigns and even game systems; Lucian Maephas.

Lucian Maephas, Half Elf Noble Rogue (originally he started in DnD 5E, but I also played him in Anima, Fantasy Craft and Burning Wheel)
Lucian Maephas is probably the most fun I've had RP wise with a character. He is a neurotic mess of a half elf. Originally I was just going to play him pretty standard fare 'scoundrel with a heart of gold' type thing, but just through the hilarity of that campaign and my own neurosis slowly coming out, he turned into this sad, manic man. I think he kinda became like a George Constanza eventually, just always convinced everything was out to get him yet somehow managing to barely hold things together (also somehow managing to seduce a good number of people, I was trying to make him out as scoundrel type at first after all). He was the son of a hugely dickish nobleman (who ended up becoming a full villain in the Burning Wheel campaign) who produced a son with a moon elf noble lady purely for political posturing reasons, and so essentially just wrote Lucian off as soon as he was born, content to never really actually interact with him or parent him. He ended up rebelling of course, became a pickpocket and burglar, then an adventurer rogue as is the usual progression.

I don't even know where to start with the events of that original 5E campaign. His last name became a recurring joke, where everyone thought it was 'Maephast' with a T and kept calling me that until I eventually started correcting people. In-character, it became his first major neurosis where he would become immediately angry if anyone would call him Maephast, so of course my good friend who was running it would have every NPC go out of their way to put a T on the end. We still quote me saying "THERE'S NO T!" to this day. He wanted to make a mercenary company, so I was saving up all the gold I could and looking for any opportunity to make some. One thing led to another, and eventually a communal group decision was made to become the owners of what became essentially a mini-put pizza parlour. He once made out with a night hag in order to get a magic ring, who then teleported him back to the party after slipping him the tongue. He was at like 2 HP at this point, and so my DM rolled randomly to determine where he would come out of the dimension door in relation to the ground (never trust a night hag, even when she's making out with you). I ended up coming out of the spell like 30 feet above the ground, meaning he took fall damage which immediately knocked him out. (Again, I was entirely on board with this and it wasn't 'that DM' or anything). The party was mid fight with a chain demon, so my friend ran over and healed him with a potion. The literal next turn the chain demon randomly rolled to see who was getting the whip that turn, and of course it was so me, and so he went down again. Poor guy.

I could keep going on, but that's the general gist of Lucian Maephas, a man who lived under constant self-induced duress.

 

[Mr. Daddy]

The sheer concept of medieval George Costanza is beautiful, even if he didn't start out that way. I think that's one of my favorite things about tabletop though, is how sometimes a character changes over the course of a campaign to become something entirely different than how they began. That actually happened a little bit not too long ago for me with a character that I have yet to fully play named Skiz. He's in another game of @Nidoking's. He had the idea to run a game where everyone plays a single 5e player class, and the only real rules to character building are that all the players pick different subclasses and that we start out as whatever the current game's class is. So far we've only done the cleric game, and that game actually ended with two of the three of us dying in a very tragic yet thrilling cliffhanger. We did one final epilogue session to set up a potential sequel game for later, and my character we introduced for that was a scrawny lizardfolk life domain cleric named Skiz. His go-to greeting is "Hey there, [adjective here]skin." Initially I was thinking of making him more of a squirrely, rambunctious lad, but when I started playing him he quickly shifted into being more of a weird little fella that just has an absolutely horrible time socializing. There's a test that's meant to determine what domain you're supposed to go in, and when Skiz was asked about it, he just said "Oh yeah, I remember my test." We did a flashback to roleplay it out briefly, but the thing is, Skiz never actually said anything after that in-game. He just kinda kept walking with who he was talking to and stared awkwardly as he remembered it. He's also prone to oversharing, and had previously talked at length about how his parents abandoned him when he was young, but he clearly didn't realize that that's what happened. He thinks that they just kinda left and he got lost.​

 

[Octopus]

That sounds sick, hats off to @Nidoking on that one. The unpredictability of RP is one of my favourite things about the hobby too, you never know what you're going to get once you get down and rollin'.

Love Skizz by the way, I'm a sucker for weird characters like that who are trying their best with their limited social tools.

 

[Nidoking's iconNidoking]

I'm generally pretty attached to most playable characters I make, and if I'm not I do what I can to shape them over time into a character I will get attached to. My first tabletop character I got to play ever, as example, was made for Savage Worlds' "Weird War" setting pretty much on the spot; I told the GM I was mostly there to hang out and watch the session so I can get an idea of what to expect and brainstorm, but he basically pushed me into just making one and jumping in... so I made Kemo.

KEMO is a victim of radiation experimentation at the hands of the big bad tyrannical government of that world. He's so irradiated that just being near his exposed body causes things to melt, so he is permanently fit with a special reversed radiation suit made to keep it in rather than out. The suit has specialized vents, though, that he can open to 'expel' radiation in a controlled manner when he wants to. So he's a walking nuke with atomic blast powers that ended up getting pretty high scale, like that time he essentially atomic kamehameha'd an ancient Egyptian lich-god up the ass and vaporized him, or when he literally melted an entire camp of enemy soldiers in an instant... Yeah, even for the setting, this game got weird. I do love the idea of Kemo, and I have sentimental attachment, but he left me little room to really grow as a person. Towards the end before that campaign got destroyed by real life issues, I had started to show signs of him becoming more and more mentally unstable the stronger his powers got, as every time he used them he was basically destroying and rebuilding himself. The end goal was to shape him into a villain, and I still plan to use him in my own superhero universe eventually with that same idea.

ODALRIC IRONBEAR is my first official D&D character, and I wanted to start with a 'simpler' character concept to get use to the system. He didn't have a ton of thought behind him, but he was the father of a character I had come up with a LOT earlier that I was very passionate about, so he had a solid basis to work with. Basically, think a gruff and wreckless human fighter with a mug of ale stuck to one hand and a big black mastiff named "Bear" at his side. He descends from a clan of mountainmen who literally become strong by wrestling bears since childhood, and he's no different; even his daughter has learned to wrestle smaller ones, and has become very independent as a result. Despite his rude and rough exterior, he's a pretty relaxed and friendly guy who'd love to share a drink (or ten) with just about anyone. He doesn't really get why people read books, he's used a goblin as a meat shield to test for traps in a dungeon because it pissed him off, and he secretly has a bit of a death wish since his wife died of illness. He's loyal though, and as long as his daughter is taken care of he doesn't really need anything else.

BOOT was an experiment to see if I could make a character with absurd AC, and the result is a goblin DEX barbarian who wields a sling and a rapier. Here's the thing... he's beyond hideous and absolutely revolting, even for a goblin, to the point where even other goblins find him disgusting and despise him. I use to make a buddy gag at least once EVERY session Boot was involved in just by describing his appearance or something he did. The catch? He's practically a saint. Boot's own mother tried to kill him, he was banished from his tribe, and regularly he is accused of commiting crimes he blatantly did not do. Guards have actually seen him pay for something and accused him of not only stealing that thing but trying to steal the merchant's money, and sometimes people are just so put off by him they convince themselves the accusations just HAVE to be true because he cannot possibly be anything other than the worst, most vile creature alive, and they need any excuse to kill him immediately. He's a very, very good boy, though. He's stupid, he's awkward, and incredibly oblivious, but he would lay his life down for just about anyone, he always does everything he can to be the best person he can be, and he'd never even consider breaking the law or commiting a selfish act. He does ooze substances from his skin pocket nobody has ever seen before though, many of which are also brand new colors and smells... but that's the worst I can post here without being concerned it'd be too much.

NUGGET is an adorable little Jawa who dreams of being a Jedi one day, even often pretending to be one in his spare time. One day he's fortunate enough to discover he actually is force sensitive, and he's given the chance to start training as a Jedi. He's oblivious and overly optimistic, with an unwaveringly glowing praise of the Jedi Order that is virtually unbreakable; to him, the Jedi are a universal good that are saviors of the galaxy exclusively, and nobody can ever be a better or more noble person... all he wants is to become one and prove he lives up to such a tall task. He's also a bit childish and overly excited by even the smallest hint of his own force sensitivity, often stopping in amazement at the smallest of things to quietly let out a tiny "...Jedi..." He's often the moral compass of his group, keeping people together and help them sort things out, but that comes at a price... sometimes fellow Jedi push the limits of his high expectations and leave him shaken, and on one occasion one of his fellow students did something so blatantly wrong he, very begrudgingly, asked to see that Jedi's lightsaber only to attempt to throw it out the airlock of their ship. This moment actually broke him a little bit and forced his entire perception of the Jedi to become rattled, but he hasn't given up... he'll never give up on them... even if he has to convince himself that those things only happen because some darkside user twisted their mind to make them do those awful things.

AEVAR is a black dragonborn and tiefling hybrid, born to one of @King Koopa's characters alongside several siblings. From a very early age he was conflicted emotionally, coming off as very aggressive and distant due to a misplaced sense of insecurity and fear of the world. When he was a little older (still very much a child) he got in a fight with one of his siblings and spit acid at them, only to miss and hit the runt of the litter (a very sweet and shy child) and badly injury him. Disgusted and terrified by what he did, he ran away from home and never looked back. As he grew he was forced to live a life of crime, stealing what he had to and eventually hurting those who couldn't fight back. Gradually he became bolder with his actions and, most of all, far more cowardly and underhanded, using any methods necessary to keep him as safe as possible. Ranged weapons, extra long pikes, sneak attacks and devious traps, blackmail... anything and everything that minimized his own risks. He got so good at this that he began to earn a reputation, eventually joining a pirate crew and proving quite promising... leading to a mutiny that allowed him to steal the crew for himself. In time, Aevar became known as the Black Devil of the Seas, the most feared pirate of his age, and devoted his life to truly horrible and unforgivable acts... all because he is so terrified of people and the world that he needs them to be even more afraid of him. Even now, though... far into his infamy... he never goes a day without dreaming above his mother and missing her desperately, but knowing he can never go back. He even eats his eggs in the same way she always use to make them for him.

These are just some of the major highlights of my own player characters I've become attached to, but there's several characters made by other players and many NPC's I've grown just as fond of that I'll need to post later.

 

[Mr. Daddy]

Bumping for pat 2 of Nidoking's post​

 

[Nidoking's iconNidoking]

Characters made by @King Koopa
NEMSIN: Aevar's mother, a tiefling druid more at home in a swamp than a city, trying her best to live amongst society and fit into a group. One of the first things we saw her do was eat out of the garbage behind a tavern... not because she had to, she just didn't understand why that's "trash." She's awkward, oblivious, often confused, and one of the most lovable and memorable characters I've ever known. She's fiercely loyal and passionate about her stick mother as well as her friends, and though she's more like an animal than a person with her litter she's quite the imposing mother. Despite her adorable and often silly personality, she has a savage side, and it's not something you'd want to be on the wrong side of.

CORT: A fallen angel whose forgotten his past, now a cleric devoted to the Tree of Life. Wielding holy fire and sinister looking dark armor, he invokes the classic image of a traditional black knight while bringing an entirely new spin on it. What makes him memorable is his personality, though. He too is a tad oblivious at times and a bit aloof, and he's got some fun quirks like really enjoying sweets and meat together, but he's fiercely devoted to his faith and the eradication of those who would threaten the Tree of Life and, though he doesn't know it, redeeming his failures from the past. In his former life... he was an angelic guardian who discovered one of the legion commanders was actually a demonic imposter corrupting fellow angels, and he led the revolt against this secretly ancient evil. Though Cort and his fellow angels were nearly all felled in the battle, the dark god-like being was defeated and banished. Due to such complete devastation on both sides it was clear that one of the two sides had betrayed the other, but which was in the wrong was unknown... and so Cort was reborn a moral, free of his memories, to test his true morality and determine if he is worthy of reclaiming his divine status.

ERWIN: A fun "Australian" crocodile lizardman bounty hunter, or "crocodile hunter." He never got as much time to grow and develop, but he's very fun.

Characters made by @Mr. Daddy
BREAKIS: A tiny skeleton who liberated himself from the horribly oppressive 'fleshy' who imprisoned him, who now lives to cause havok everywhere he goes and liberate as many of his brethren as he possibly can. He's incredibly stupid and often has absolutely no idea what's going on, but he genuinely means well... even if he did give a skeleton a heartattack with his obnoxiousness, or completely obliterate an innocent skeleton merchant (and a huge part of a riverbank) out of sheer carelessness while abusing mysterious elixirs. He also freed an ancient evil in the form of a colossal skeletal owl that wrought untold catastrophe over all of Skeleton City following its liberation, but he totally didn't mean to do that. Still, everything wrong in the world is probably his fault, and he should feel bad.

MELNOS: A cleric centaur diviner with a heart of gold and a bit of an awkward charm to him. He does what he can to be the best person he can for the world and those around him. There's less I can actually say about him here, but it's more of an 'experiencing' thing. He was a very memorable character that brought a lot to the game and the party.

JOHN DOE: Something of an old-school Captain America type, he was one of our party in the Weird War game I mentioned above. Here's the thing... he was pretty much just a normal guy... the only normal guy amongst radioactive monsters, self-demolishing rabbits, Russian spy tigers, and a straight-up magical elven archer. We fought dragons, monsters, giant insects, superpowered villains, ghost vikings, and even the previously mentioned Egyptian mummy lich-god, and while John Doe wasn't there for all those encounters... he was there right alongside us when he could be... bein' just a totally normal dude. Despite this, remarkably helpful and reliable.

I feel the need to mention a couple characters from one of our friends who doesn't use this site.

This friend, who is the other of our little quartet, has a long history of making uninspired characters. Either they're based on a gimmick, just a carbon copy of a pre-existing character (he literally just made Brook from One Piece once), or he just doesn't think them out much... the main problem? He rarely puts much effort into roleplaying them and he always gets bored of them.

But there are two exceptions to this. First, the Russian spy tiger I mentioned above, Piotr. I can't say there was a TON of depth to him, but he was always very into playing the character and showed a lot of enthusiasm and energy. He was a blast to play with. The second, though... is one of my favorite fictional characters ever; D'uuma.

D'UUMA: A loxodon Forge cleric who doesn't even know what a cleric is, he comes from a tribe out in the wilds on a pilgrimage to a greater cause. D'uuma is a very oblivious and somewhat childish character for a deep love of pie (it's... it's obsession, but they make him happy... so much so I gave him a bottomless pie bag) and his companions. He loves challenging everyone he can to "HAND WAR!" (arm wrestling) and is fascinated when somebody wins. He always enthusiastically leads the charge whenever he's needed with a mighty trumpeting of his trunk (which our friend would always make the sound for) and would fight to the death any threat if it meant protecting his brethren. He fell head-over-heels in love with a minotaur girl named Elspeth when she beat him in Hand War (she's one of my favorite NPC's I've made, and a favorite of my players) and she started developing feelings for him. She tragically died while the party was away to a particularly nasty goblin attack, and D'uuma was devastated. He put her body to rest and cremated her, and when he learned of a rare practice exclusive to those of the Forge Domain he infused her ashes (not knowing it would also infuse her soul) to a mace he created himself that he named after her. Unfortunately... he and Melnos (mentioned above) would not survive to see the end of the campaign, and only Cort remained on a very bleak finale of the Clerics chapter of that campaign.

I'll probably make a post later about NPC's, and maybe some other PC's while I'm at it, but this post is already... not exactly short.

 

[Mr. Daddy]

I'd like to add too that John Doe was very heavily inspired by the Soldier from TF2. He was actually serving in WWII, having gone to Europe on his own to murder Nazis, but happened to stumble upon a time machine that sent him back to WWI. He had no idea that he had been sent back in time, and refers to all the Germans they ran into as Nazis. Nobody ever had any idea what he was talking about, and he was an absolute blast to play.​

 

[Varyag]

Oh, I have a few, but I also have many many more character that I just never got the chance to run. A few notable ones, I still have pictures for.

Korrina Heartspire, rogue. Orphan adopted by the local leader of the Thieves Guild, eventually joined an adventuring group under a fake name, to investigate the nobles of the town they were traveling to. I had a lot of fun playing this shy girl who suddenly knew how to solve almost any problem, while struggling with trust issues with her own party.

Alara Carter, Bard. Super talented daughter of a merchant, who secretly (and unknowingly to her) owes her talent to a dark pact made by her father. Was supposed to be a very social/caster focused bard, for Curse of Strahd. Unfortunately I never got to play her much, that campaign kinda fell apart. But I got very attached to the fun personality I made for her, and I kept hoping I could use her in another game.

Gertrude, Forge Cleric. Grew up as a refugee and blacksmith apprentice in a Dwarven stronghold, eventually learning enough about their culture and showing enough talent that they allowed her to become a Cleric of the Forge. Ended up only using her in a one-shot, but it was a great fun one-shot. She was great at fighting, healing, buffing, and even off combat and diplomacy with some of our dwarven enemies, since she knew their language and customs.
I have a few others, including at least one more that have some emotional attachment, but I couldn't find pictures of them for now, and this post is already too big!