The 18th day of #30DaysofDarkSun is here and the question is "What is your favorite personal player character or non-player character you've created?"
Perhaps the Balican templar, Praetor Verzonious, in Ashes of Athas. Players had opportunities to kill him (twice, maybe even three opportunities), meet his brother, and suffer his wrath or “favor” in various ways. One of the manifestations of his wrath was putting the PCs names on a list to be fed to the Dragon. Good times!
I have several characters that I have really enjoyed creating and developing, but Agiea, an elder human Athasian bard, is the one I enjoy playing the most. Here is the short bio:
Born and raised in the Athasian City-State of Raam, Agiea has always had an affinity for entertaining. Accompanying various entertainers and storytellers throughout the Tablelands during his youth, Agiea has traveled to all seven of the City-States as well as countless villages, oasis, and outposts. He now plies his trade professionally, often traveling with trade caravans, continuing to learn the tales and stories of Athas and its inhabitants along the way.
Agiea is a master of oral tradition; he refers to himself as a lore-keeper, and aside from retaining the stories and knowledge of Athasian society, he is also a master of poisons. Depending on his mood, motivations, affiliations, and the ability to support himself, he will put his talents to either benevolent use by brokering information, diagnosing poisonings, and selling the proper antidotes and antitoxins, or otherwise putting it to malevolent use by applying his poisons, arranging double-dealings, and even smuggling illegal wares. He is a man of opportunity with few scruples of right, wrong, justice, or injury. He does what he needs to in order to survive and offers as little as is required to do so.
One of his most “trustworthy” associates is a young, beautiful half-elf named Lorelei. She is a psiducer - one who uses her psionic abilities to manipulate both men and women for wealth, pleasure and power. The charming and elegant half-elf entices, entertains, exploits, robs, and often disposes of unwary patrons. Together, Agiea and Lorelei acquire enough wealth to continue their eccentric lifestyles. When it is time to move on, their earnings are divided and each go their own way. This plutonic relationship proves beneficial for both; each a few ceramics richer for their trouble. It is a lucrative business and one that Agiea utilizes often at the more prosperous locales found within Artists’ and Freemans’ Quarters, but he is ever weary and watchful for Templars and other powerful mind-binders.
LORELEI -
Megacles, son of Abalach-Re and a dark titan of Acheron, plane of eternal war. Larger than a half-giant, he was an indominatable warrior wielding a massive war scythe, the Omen Saw. From his mother, he was also skilled in defiling magic and a potent psionicist. He reveled in slaughter and commanded the teeming combined hordes of Draj and Raam in a two pronged assault against Tyr and Urik. He single-handedly destroyed all but the Standard Bearers of the elite Templar Centurions of Tyr but was later driven off by the party though at great cost. He imprisoned the soul of the party wizard in his obsidian shield. Leading the remaining forces of Tyr, the party soundly defeated his slave-soldiers at the Battle of the Bridge at the Canyon of Guthay and again at the Battle of the Smoking Crown. Enraged, he captured the party Wind Cleric but was out-witted and annihilated in a screaming vortex of air magic deep in a dungeon below Raam. The wizard was released and the artifacts of Megacles plundered or destroyed.
He fathered seven sons of his own in a ghastly mother-son union. These were later destroyed by the party wizard and his unspeakable line was ended.
His mother was most displeased at the outcome…
