Wednesday, September 21, 2022

Backstory

 

There is a lot of truth in that cartoon. I love creating backstories for my characters, but so far the back story doesn’t fit into the campaign’s storyline. 

My dwarf character is a thief. He has multiple aliases to hide his true identity. I’ve been playing fairly straightforward, just being your basic thief (who tends to roll badly when using his thief skills). 

Then something happened. I love it when a PC takes on a life of his own. Ulfgard had a traumatic experience last week. The party had taken on the task of ridding the sewers below Virconium of the rat men that inhabited it and were stealing from the town. 

As all adventurers know well, all sorts of vermin reside in sewers. Rats, giant rats, and rat men are just the tip of the iceberg. Our party had a random encounter with a giant catfish. It randomly chose to bite Ulfgard. He suffered a horrible wound and nearly was swallowed whole by the great beast. The party survived the encounter and the fish swam away, but Ulfgard’s mind was torn. 

Now in Joe’s (our GM) world, the Shattered Kingdom of Valenor, dwarves are not born of women like humans, elves, and other humanoid races. They are carved out of a rare stone and brought to life by their parent in The Sacred Ritual of the Forge God Klanggeddin. When Ulfgard was created there were flaws in his stone. He was created with a tendency to having multiple personalities. That may help explain him becoming a thief and being banished from his clan for stealing a rare family jewel. I.e he is not right in the head. 

Ulfgard’s personality fractured and his saw himself as an “Ahab” to the great white catfish’s “Moby Dick”. In this week’s session he hired a crew of dwarf pirates with guns and harpoons. Along with the rest of the party, they enter the sewer to hunt the great white beast. It was a glorious battle with Ulfgard jumping on the monster’s back and providing the killing stroke with his axe. 

That wasn’t the end of the story. His team of dwarves carried the fish from the sewers and Ulfgard invited the entire town to a gigantic fish fry.