My first character, and a PC that I will always love, was Phillipe Moraeu, Wizard. this was back in the 2nd ed days and I was introduced to the Nightmare Lands for the very first time.
Phillip had always been fascinated by dreams and all the urban legends associated with them (I was also very young and liked the Elm Street series).
One of the best characters I ever played =)
The party for my upcoming game looks really cool, though. I like everyone's concept and backstory a lot. So far, we have:
-A young priestess of Ezra on her first assignment for the church.
-Her bodyguard, a disreputable Gundarakite freedom fighter who has spent the last three years hiding out in a monastery, and now seeks to repay his debt to the church.
-A monster hunter, the daughter of a companion of Rudolph van Richten's, seeking to avenge her father's murder.
-A psychic bounty hunter, guided to her targets through precognitive visions.
-A farmboy from Tepest, fleeing the Inquisition after his latent sorcerous powers activated during the murder of his family by goblins.
-And a bard trained in Kartakass, recently released from his position as a teacher at a girls' boarding school (the school attended by the priestess and the monster hunter) for reasons undisclosed.
I really hope this works out - it'll be so cool if it all hangs together.
As far as NPCs in the setting go, I've always liked Harkon Lukas and Azalin. If I had to choose heroes... they're all dull.
Hida Jiremi
(Jeremy Puckett)
For the NPCs, I like Professor Arcanus for humor (which could probably be worked up into some pathos if done right) and Toben the Many for sheer unpleasantness.
As for NPC's... I do like using Alanik Ray from time to time, though he's become different in several ways to the one on the page... Other than that... I actually and I whisper it, did like using Soth when I did, but I again made him slightly different and removed bits I didn't like from his story, and added other parts that I felt should have been there.
Schizophrenic Cleric who swears he is entrusted as a young girls caretaker and holds on entire conversations with her when no one is around or says a few words to her when people are around that come out mumbled and incoherent to the people around him. Ironically he has never realized that no one else has ever acknowledged her. He comes off as more of an eccentric fanatic at times than an actual Priest.
He was the character who would take meals alone by himself. He always took a second dish of food, which either he ate or was left cold/half eaten never really mentioning what it was for. In his mind it was for the girl of course, even when he himself would be the one who actually ate it, if at all.
Ultimately, in a more heated moment of adventure he called out for her to hide or run, can't really remember which, which lead to the confirmation of the group that something wasn't right with him.
Eventually he was confronted by it out of the groups paranoia, it got out of control due to his own intense arguing and the groups response which lead to him going off alone. I think I still have him wandering around alone, not in his mind anyway, somewhere.
imagine a vistani- half orc. ;)
A "creation" of mine while I was "under the influence"..
He was about 6' 6" and built like a sterotypical half orc barbarian and was a bit slow in the head. His skin was black. But he also had "visions" to make up for his lack of intelligence. He was handy in a fight and could drink his weight in mead.
He had a flippin great big sword and was kind of comic relief for the group. I introduced him at first as a "village idiot's " bodyguard. the idiot was a an old dude called "Ernie" who turned out to be a really powerful mage in hiding.
But to this day i still get commenst from pc's, even though i first used him nearly 10 years ago in 2nd ed AD&D. everynow and then the group will be in a fight thats not going there way and one of them will say "we could kind of use a 'nev' right about now"
luvly character that. may just have to dig out his sheet later.