My D&D Player Characters, to Date

I've mostly been a Dungeon Master when playing D&D over the past three years, by preference as a creative outlet mostly, but also out of necessity since more people like playing than refereeing. But I've still had my share of chances to play in some games, and I thought it'd be fun to showcase these characters and their stories here. The only character I'm not showcasing is my very, very first character I made, who I never got to play, Mungo the Gnome Bard. He has no story, and thus no place in this post.

Radhemar

My first time playing a roleplaying game was actually not with Dungeons & Dragons, but with GURPS. My character was a lion-man wizard prince named Radhemar. In his attempts to save the king from the evil Tim Nantooth, he constantly rolled double 6s (the equivalent of rolling a natural 1 in D&D, except it's much rarer), when casting his spells, which caused horrendous damage to the kingdom. For example, attempting a very basic defensive wind spell caused a tornado to rip apart the kingdom's keep. His damage tab for the kingdom ended up costing him more than his reward for rescuing the king.

I soon realized I had no interest in a game as open-ended and limitless as GURPS, so Radhemar's playing arc was somewhat short-lived, but memorable.

Xilmar Dawnheart

My first real D&D character I got to play began in a Warcraft setting. He was a blood elf phoenix sorcerer whose idol was Prince Kael'thas Sunstrider. When the rest of my group wanted to back out of the Warcraft setting for something more accessible and homebrew, he instead became simply a high elf.

Xilmar was a charlatan. His nickname in the criminal underground was "Xil the Quill," since he was adept at forging documents. He used the magic he gained from a phoenix-related injury as a youth to constantly to impersonate other people and twist people's minds, and the two things he loved most in the world were fire (and admiring its beauty and power) and swindling. Eventually, Xilmar and his adventuring group, the Heroes of Silvermoon, made their way to an overly-lawful town called Port of Kings, where Xilmar could find no chance to ever be his swindling self. He eventually left the group in a huff and pursued his interests elsewhere. He may just show up in one of my future campaigns as a benefactor seeking to craft the legendary phoenix feather robe...

Artaldus the Devout

The next chance I had to play was in a homebrew campaign with my friend Dustin. My character was a human zealot barbarian named Artaldus the Devout. He had a fervent, zealous "every-knee-shall-bow" belief in the god Zenith, and his primary goal was to build a shrine to him in the settlement of XXXX.

His feats of valor included wielding the pillar of a temple as a weapon, climbing up a massive hill giant, and singlehandedly taunting and felling a shadow dragon. He was the embodiment of lawful evil religious hypocrisy, bedding a tiefling and paying the pennance for it because he believed all tieflings were damned to the Nine Hells anyway and attempting to convert all those who didn't know about Zenith whether they liked it or not.

Unfortunately, we stopped that campaign rather abruptly, so who knows whether Artaldus will continue his brutal crusade?

Quintilla

My favorite character of all time to play was Quintilla. She was a Shadar-kai elf from the Shadowfell, a cold, emotionless shadow sorceress with a pet hound of ill omen named Umbra and an unhealthy fascination with death. Everything except killing or watching people die was boring to Quintilla, but she was not evil. Rather, she was just stripped of emotion and callous to the process of dying.

Perhaps my crowning moment in my history of playing D&D was the time she killed a band of goblins using only the darkness spell and a few deceptive minor illusions to frighten them into killing each other in the dark. She also developed a crush on a revenant named Halleth and was sad to see him go when he completed his purpose and moved on into the true afterlife. She was a professional dungeoneer and it was implied that she had once dated a vampire in the Shadowfell, so in short, she was the most interesting character I ever played. She didn't really have an end to her story as she delved deeper and deeper into the Dungeon of the Mad Mage seeking a magical heirloom that had been stolen from her, but I really hope to play her again someday.

Paavu "Steadyhand" Katho-Olavi

Paavu was my interrim player character in my current campaign I'm DMing, so regretfully, he had to start at an already high level and I didn't get to play him consistently from start to finish. I still really enjoyed his story though. As a young goliath, Paavu was picked on for being scrawny and weak. Eventually he was banished from the Katho-Olavi tribe by its leader, Chief Keothi "Stormcaller," and left to wander and die in the mountain wilderness.

Eventually, he encountered a monastery that took him in. He learned how to be powerful not through physical strength, but through agility and mind over matter, and he also became an accomplished alchemist. His travels eventually led him to seek out a legendary wise man named Toldan with some adventurers. Being a goliath, he enjoyed daily "trials of leadership" to determine each day who would lead the party. Ultimately, though, he was deceived by a necromancer named Vaurarath, who had tricked Paavu and wished to sacrifice him to become a lich. Though he killed Paavu with a finger of death spell, Paavu was revived in time, but he bore a black scar on his solar plexis ever afterward.

After personally killing the necromancer and after passing some time in the Feywild, Paavu returned to the mountains to meditate. Eventually, he was ready to face Keothi once and for all and show her the strength he had found in being a monk. The holmgang was set in front of the entire goliath clan, and he was set up against Keothi, who raged as a barbarian of storms against him. Paavu's tranquil calmness dispelled her mindless rage, leaving her open to his flurrying attacks, and after a furious fight, Paavu won by crushing Keothi's heart.

Paavu became the new leader of the Katho-Olavi goliath tribe, and he now strives to teach them how to find strength of their own within, rather than through mindless rage. Definitely my favorite story of closure (especially with how close the fight was... one more brutal critical from Keothi would have killed him), though I know it would have been more fulfilling if I had played Paavu all the way from 1st level.

Dakren of Swanbow

I don't know what the future holds for my current character, Dakren Kilner of Swanbow, but I'm excited to find out. Dakren was born the son of a peasant woman and a wandering elf out to sample the wonders of the world. Dakren worked hard to support his single mother and tried to make the best of his life growing up in the town of Swanbow as a half-elf. But it was hard when all of his friends grew up and aged faster than he did.

He fell in love with a woman named Collette and grew very close to her daughter, Stephana. When the Third Hobgoblin War began, Dakren was drafted into the Vardale Army. Though he was reluctant to leave what appeared to be his only chance at a family (since half-elves are sterile), Dakren was also anxious to earn enough money as a soldier to build a life with his girlfriend and adopted daughter.

Despite his natural skills in warfare and his climbing to the rank of officer over his platoon, the Basilisk Regiment, war was hard on Dakren. He injured his left shoulder and was unable to wear anything heavier than leather or wield a shield. One day, the Basilisk Regiment was ambushed by hobgoblins and Dakren was the only survivor. Feeling responsible for the slaughter since he had planned their tactics that day, Dakren called out to the cosmos for anyone to help rectify his mistake.

A fiendish voice answered, agreeing to bring his platoon back to life in exchange for a lifetime of dark servitude, or his own soul. Dakren agreed, and his war comrades were miraculously revived. Unfortunately, through spontaneous disease and a series of accidents on the way back, the members of his platoon died again less than a week later.

The war soon ended in victory for Vardale, and Dakren returned to find that Collette had died in his absence. Stephana blamed him for not being there to help her and her mother, and wanted nothing to do with him afterward. Dakren wants nothing more than to provide for Stephana, even if it means sending her money in secret and pulling strings from afar. Meanwhile, now he has a long half-elven life ahead of him in service to a mysterious devil. Dakren tries with all his heart to follow the fiend's demands in letter of law only and to twist its goals to good in any way that he can, in hopes that his soul may remain pure and intact when he finally reaches the end of his life.