What inspired your past/current characters?

[Flyingchair]

I wanted to make an half-orc/orc who was alot like the uruk'hai from lord of the rings, a brutal, merciless, ugly, uncontrollable beast. one who only respects raw strenght and power. I started him off as a follower of one-eye(gruumsh) and i wanted him to be from a harsh environment, so he came from an orc tribe in the north, called the Jawbreakers, he was more keen than his brethren, and could actually speak common fluently when he gained age, and so he was chosen as the one who planned the raids of his tribe.

He sees the mightiest of gruumsh in this area, the bloodmaim, he wants to lead them, if it kills him so be it, and right now the bloodmaim is on a leash, he seeks the ones who controls them.

[Delexos]

I never even knew this thread existed. Kudos for the thread necromancy!

I have thought long and hard about what has inspired my past and present characters, but to be honest I keep coming up blank, the only external sources I have drawn from to my knowledge have been the old pc game "Planescape: Torment" from which I shamelessly stole the first name of my principle character Ignus Pyre. Beyond the first name, however, everything else was based on my personal opinion that the best way to build a character is to take a lump of barely defined matter and drop it into the game world where it could be shaped by the people and events that surround it.

Ignus has had a couple of incarnations on this server, having originally been a monkey-gripping 2-hand sword toting enforcer in the old Ebon coin pact where he was the muscle and right hand man of the charismatic Stephano, after a long break from the server I came back to find there had been a server wipe and I needed to start again. I had never played a Warlock before and when I came back I decided to give it a go.

I retained the base principles that the original character had developed through his life, he would once again be a fire genasi, he would believe himself biologically superior to all other races, his hair would actually be a flame rather than "flame like" as it was described in source books and then I just let him loose and once again let the rp take him and beat him into whatever form he would end up with.

The only other source of inspiration that has helped to guide me has been my love of the works of Terry Pratchet, I took general tones from the character of Corporal Nobby Nobbs and tried to inject them into my Legionnaire Tyrone Jenkins, A man who is capable in a pinch but who, for all of his talents, would much rather put just as much effort into avoiding trouble at all costs than actually using his abilities in a constructive manner.

Most other characters I have rolled has been based entirely upon random crap I pull out of my head, normally prompted by something someone has said or done in game or in tells. Most recently was a conversation with a fellow player in tells who mentioned their surprise that with all the recent influx of players there didn't really seem to be any/many new Helmites popping up.

I have read the comparison many times between Helmites and Space Marines, so I took a little bit of broad, general view on how Space Marines have been portrayed and tried to use that to give me a basis for my Helmite Paladin Ariovistus.

The Paladin mindset has been, and still is, one of the biggest challenges I have had to tackle in my many many years of roleplay, my usual type of character is much more natural, perhaps best described as a river with it's abilities to be shaped by the environment to continue to flow as easily as possible, where as I found Ario to be more like a mountain, the environment having to shape itself around him and his own ideals, thankfully my recent camping trip allowed me a great deal of time to sit down with a pen and a notebook and actually write out some of his pre-sundren history because I found myself needing a clearly defined past from which to draw his character traits from, rather than a shapeless mass that could be defined by the people he would meet in game.

So yeah - Planescape, Pratchet, my own brain and the awesome community of Sundren are my inspiration and I salute each and every one of them for giving me something to keep me entertained.

[sonuvalich]

I picture Sandro as sort of a Littlefinger (Game of Thrones) character but with the bonus of magic. He tries to set in motion all these plans that help him and hurt those who he believes have wronged him, and doesn't care how these plans affect everyone else. He puts on this humble demeanor (as humble as a Thayan can be anyways) and presents himself to the public as a man interested solely in making money, while the reality is he is trying to find every single scrap of power he can and doesn't mind playing the long game. This is a bit of a change from original Sandro who was more frank about his evil, kind of in an LFG Comics Richard the Warlock sort of way.

As for Artemis...I rolled every bright-eyed, ditzy, idealist bimbo stereotype I could into one character. She painfully naive, thinks her god always has her back so nothing bad can happen, doesn't learn from her mistakes...is bubbly and saccharine to the point of causing diabetes....just all sorts of annoying. Which makes her incredibly fun to play, though possibly less fun to be around.

[Shadechild]

Every once in a while I'll get an epiphany in the form of an awesome character concept that just sticks to me, it usually happens when I can't put my foot down and play a character for too long and at the most weirdest of times. (Since I have to actually 'feel' the character in a sense, or it doesn't seem to have a 'Soul'.) When I do, I stick to it and play it out until the end as I find it super easy to produce that characters personality, back story and plans. I've never been one to play multiple characters at once, even if I have 2 in a vault.

[Lotus]

I didn't play Sundren for about two years (server went down, later came back to life). Noticed the place was still around, decided to log in and check it out with a "throwaway" character, just someone I could use to get a feel for the current player landscape and see where I might fit. I made a character that looked like me, acted like me, drew many of his opinions and preferences from my own: RP on easy mode, right? Even his name was a bastardization of mine.

Yep. The auspicious beginning of Dain Tornbrook.

[thaelis]

I made a character that looked like me...

You have Cha 28...?! *bows down*

[Lotus]

You have Cha 28...?! *bows down*

Only when I do what Saulus tells me.

[Vaelek]

Cool thread.


Esmond Aurelianus began as a two-fold idea; we we short on active nobles and I had role-play experience with that noble family. He was designed to be politically inept but persistent. Giving the other nobles that one guy they can trump in arguments and always forwards the more irritable political notion.

On the other part, the Helmites were just getting interesting. There was only one other active member of the faction but server plots were beginning to invest back into the city and the faction. I originally wanted a Paladin, but veered away from it and onto Rogue/Fighter when an alternative idea of a Helmite was suggested by someone. A less perfect, more realistic variant of what a lifestyle like the lower tier Helmites might experience patrolling pre-Sundering Sundren. So Esmond began as a "city cop", chasing down Eboncoin, facing brick walls in the pursuit of crime. Sometimes as necessary siding with corruption in order to circumvent it's grander schemes and getting dirty for the sake of those higher on the totem pole.

Come Sundering and the new focus between the Hands of Mundus and Church of Helm, he somehow morphed into the church wet-works with the same penchant for personal corruption to achieve governmental good.

[greypawn]

Started Varsick thinking religious assassin fanatical, evil carnie, and creepy circus ringmaster with one great mustache. So he pretty much started as my own creation. Later as he became more intense, and more of a support character, I picked up influences from characters like Grima Wormtongue (LotR), Peter Pettigrew (harry potter), and Jack Nicholson's performance in The Shining. Probably the most evil character I've ever played.

Lemi is pretty much my envision of stereotypical dwarf shield warrior influenced by LotR and d&d games. I'm pretty sure I've made him say 'As easy as goblin pie' a few times.

Elliot is still in the works, as really all my characters are. He is a bit of a playboy smartass who has an old soul, heart of gold, and generally playful in nature. Not sure what influences I'll pick up for him later as I get into him. Maybe Ironman?

[cmosier]

Caelryth was originally supposed to be kind of mellow, like Vincent from Final Fantasy 7, and his story had a lot of expirments and such in it. When I played him the first time I was in a "screw it" type mood so I stuck with a character who's "Don't say that" and "Don't do that" switches were broke.

Sehron was simply a guy who was fed up with the ineffectiveness of law and order.


My newest character is a soldier / swordsman similar to Cyan in Final Fantasy 6 (3 for those of us with a few gray hairs). His sudden and drastic mood swings from pleasant to "I'll eat a baby with a side of kittens" is done on purpose and meant to be a flaw. When he's been drinking, he'll loosen up but can be a mean spirited wise ass.

[Torgar]

Most of my characters on the server, at least the one's I roleplay, are based on characters I've played in table top campaigns. Torgar was based on a dwarven cleric of Obad-hai I played in a game, and he was the super buff/healer cleric of the team. Tigen's personality was actually based on an archer I played in a long running dragonlance campaign, but that elf was an archer, where as Tigen was a caster. With Tigen, I hadn't really planned on making him such a serious character, just meant to do that year's team elf with him and move on, and he lasted like three years. I think mostly so I could prove how good spirit shaman really was.

Lagnar was similar, in that I wanted to prove pure barbarian could be viable, so I made this dwarven barbarian who likes to get into friendly fights. He loves to bare-knuckle brawl, and loves to drink. Tarkanik is actually the second Tarkanik I've played on the server, the first being a wizard/arcane scholar. However, he actually died after the vitality system went in, due to me not paying attention to his vitality and the veritas chest blowing him up for good. So, I remade him as this older sorcerer, someone who still studied magic, and specialized in necromancy. I think of him more as a grey-necromancer, in that although he will summon the undead, he doesn't actually care for them and is very vocal about his views that all undead should be used only as tools and then put back in the ground or destroyed. He's also slightly crazy. Not like "Most hand's of mundus" Crazy, just a cooky old man who sometimes babbles.

Quintin is my first real RP character not based on a previous character I've played. He's much closer in line to my own personality. Helps people just to help them, doesn't ever really ask for anything in return, stands up to horrible people. Wields a giant gold hammer. Wait, I don't have one of those, just him. He's very much an RP build as a pure fighter, taking feats that don't really help him in any way, just to be able to roleplay. He's actually been my most challenging person to play, as I do enjoy the PVP our server has and he's not really that good as a fighter. Also, I'm more used to casters then melee people for pvp, so there's that too.

So yea, that's pretty much all my major RP folk in a nutshell.

[Urbancat]

I usually don't take much inspiration from outside sources, generally I have an idea and develop that, often ideas came from real life experiences, seeing for example I like to read the tarot on another server I got an idea like "What if this one is a fortune teller with a tarot deck?"

So Dalcha as the other ones came also from real life experiences, and put into a fantasy world, her current emphasis is on the "Hyu-man intolerance" that might be mitigated or made worse with time depending on her experiences.

Sometime is a class to inspire an idea, and sometime is a piece of equipment, a mask, a weapon that have a certain look, a dress. So I develop the character around that on "Why have this mask? Why dress like this? Why use this weapon instead of another?" and answering those questions usually the character past came to life.

At that point, I play a character for a bit, and if I feel is shaping up and getting a "Soul" then I continue.

[Bloodriki]

Duncan is the charismatic good natured funny guy Paladin I always imagined would actually be roaming around the realms moving from place to place and thwarting evil wherever he's needed. He's stupid good in the sense that he never gives up, but his heart is in the right place and he lives by his vows and dogma. I've seen other paladins and noticed a bunch of rigid guidelines they always seemed to stick by. I didn't want another brooding protagonist that was a buzzkill to be around. Duncan is the kind of Tormtar you'd find enjoying himself in a tavern drinking and dancing with the ladies to the tune of a bard one moment, and sobering himself up real quick the next when demons assault the place. He has a commanding aura about him that switches on or off depending on the gravity of the situation, and you can expect when the shit hits the fan he's going to be the first one getting his ass bit by evil stuff - as he has many times before. Don't expect him to retreat without a serious internal struggle either.