Interesting Characters You've Envisioned

Cafe Society
1

I’m Really bored.

So, this thread is to be a discussion of characters that you, the poster, or someone you know well, if they’re unpublished, have come up with.

Just try diagramming that sentence, I dare you.

Anyway. This could include characters for stories you’ve written, plays, fanfiction, whatever. I’m personally thinking mostly of non-player characters for role-playing games, but whatever. Heck, someone could even post a character they’ve played.

Try to give us an idea of the environment the character functions in, and what makes him or her or it interesting to you.

I’ll follow up with some of mine shortly.

2

Well I’d leave it up to the Teeming Millions to decide whether or not he’s interesting, but I have concocted my very own superhero alter-ego. (Actually, I’ve thought up a few of them, but this is my personal favorite.)

Anyway, his name is “Hyperion” and he can fly at superspeed, and is (while flying) a living projectile (similar to Cannonball of the New Mutants, but Hyperion can fly into outer space as well) ‘The Hype’ as he’s nicknamed by his supporting cast can also generate pure energy globules that he can toss around rather than simply shooting beams out of his hands (imagine Zeus tossing a lightning-bolt).

In his civilian identity - the Hype is an ordinary Joe named “Lawrence Starkey” or ‘Lucky Starr’ which is ironic 'cuz in his superhero identity, he blazes across the sky like a comet. The Hype isn’t the most polished of crimefighters, and is often a bit inept. He does have amazing luck though, and always triumphs over the bad guys due to some amazing stroke of good fortune at the precise right moment.

Lawrence been given the nickname ‘Lucky’ by his coworker / room-mate Bruno Kirby as a joke. See, there’s this gimmick I’ve imagined that Bruno always seems to ‘luck out’ and stumble into fortuitious situations. Lucky however is clumsy, bumbling, and always seems to disappear at the wrong time (Bruno is unaware that when Lucky ‘disappears’, he’s off fighting the forces of evil as ‘the Hype’). Bruno is constantly ribbing his pal Lucky about his own great luck, and Lucky’s seemingly constant bad luck.

The Hype’s arch-enemy is a bit sketchier. He’s called ‘the Sultan’ and has a harem of super-assassins, a whole squadron of gorgeous babes with deadly fighting skills. The Sultan is bent on dominating Media City (which is an unlikely name for a metropolis I know, but serves as a pun - ‘the Hype’ is the protector & defender of Media City, get it?)

That’s the gist of it. Think it’s interesting?

3

A couple of years back, Kn*ckers started a thread asking the SDMB to create the next crew for the Star Ship Enterprise. I’m going to re-post my contribution to that thread here, just because I’m so fond of the character.

Name- T’Pai

Gender- Female

Race- Technically, Vulcan, but her parents were on an extended assignment on Earth which led to her being born and spending he formative years in Dublin, Ireland. Leads to many jokes about her being a “Green-blooded Irishwoman.”
Occupation- Engineer

Musical Instrument Played- A Klingon insturment with an unpronounceable (to the human tongue, anyway) name that is stringed, very bassy, and, due to the fact that it is made from natural, unsawed wood, impossible to keep perfectly tuned. T’Pai thinks it is worth the effort of keeping it tuned "close enough that an untrained ear wouldn’t notice (or, after a few pints of Guinness, which is hard to get this far from Earth, “close enough that a drunk Vulcan can tolerate it.” because the wood has a resonant quality that, when played, is just…

In love with (seasons 1-3) The ship’s navigotor, also Vulcan, but has never been to Dublin, who spurns T’Pai’s advances because he finds her to be illogical.

In love with (seasons 4-7) Some flaky Romulan dude none of her crewmates have actually met, except for the ship’s doctor, and the Vulcan navigator, who disapproves mightily, because after she gave up on him and then met the Romulan dude, he realized that he is in love with her, but, being a logical thinking Vulcan, won’t admit it, not even to himself.
T’Pai shows little emotion, neither is she ashamed to admit that she does, in fact, feel. She is generally respectful of the emotions of her human crewmates. She will express sympathy for a grieving crewman whose best friend got killed when some part of the engine blew up during a battle with this week’s mortal enemy, and, on occasion, will crack a smile. She is very logical in her thinking, but can twist logic into unrecognizable shapes, while making it all seem reasonable. She divides logic into two catecories, Vulcan and Irish, and uses both types with equal aplomb. Careful observation reveals that she does, in fact have a sense of humor, and a truly warped one at that. Most of her friends outside the crew or personnel of the ship are, for some strange reason, Klingons, and she has no compunctions about greeting an old and dear friend with a hug. T’Pai’s definition of an old an dear friend is someone she has gotten drunk with at least three times.

T’Pai’s major claim to fame is having started a cataclysmic food fight in the cafeteria at Star Fleet Academy. Her explanattion, given with a completely straight face, is that she was attempting to demonstrate to another Vulcan cadet that he cannot always expect other sentient beings to behave rationally. Every year since her graduation, some frustrated Vulcan cadet has started a food-fight in her honor, always giving the same straight-faced explanation.

Give her a few shots of tequila, and she can come up with a logical reason for just about anything.

oh, and I almost forgot…
Her main hobby is building little wind-up clockwork machines. This talent actually comes in handy more than once when the ship’s generator is failing, and she keeps the lights on and the oxygen flowing by building a flywheel-driven contraption that her Vulcan love interest grudgingly admits is about as efficient as a mechanical device of its type can be, and works remarkably well.

Her hero and inspiration is Rube Goldberg, and her secret goal is to build the ultimate Rube Goldberg Device. Her most recent endeavor in this regard was the creation of a gadget that would butter a slice of toast in forty-seven steps.

When she’s not out doing something incredibly silly, which she always has a logical explanation for, she spends her free time trying to find ways to make life simpler, less complicated. Unfortunately, this involves trying to find ways to decrease the amount of paperwork a person has to do, and she has thus far found the paperwork to be an insurmountable obstacle. Starfleet bureaucracy and all that.

4

A few years ago, when I was recruited to join an email based RPG, I came up with a a Romulan Tal Shiar agent named S’harien

What made him special is that he was one-quarter Betazoid, thus giving him empathic abilities and the usual assortment of Vulcan touch-telepathy skills, and had been assimilated by the Borg for about five years so when he was freed, he was cybernetically enhanced but not to the point that Seven was on Voyager.

Another character was a Vulcan Starfleet commander who was as jovial as any human on the ship. I don’t remember his name.

And then there was the Chaotic Neutral half-elf I created for AD&D that I played completely over the top. A few nights into our first campaign, we were in a bar with a Dwarf waitress who I kept hitting on until she finally hit me over the head with a heavy serving tray, knocking me unconscious, and making me drown in my stew. I’d annoyed the DM and all my party members to the point where they didn’t bother saving me.

I obviously like playing off the wall pointy eared characters.

5

Deron Greyling Rowanoak (AKA, Ash)

NE Tiefling Rogue/Shadowblade (an assassin PrC).

Son of an alu-fiend (half-Succubus, half-human) and a human man.

Grey skin, grey hair, grey eyes (his mother had a bit of a dumb sense of humour, is why she gave him that middle name). Looks like an elf, other than the colouring.

He’s one of the best friends of one of the PCs (a Drow Wizard/Rogue/Shadowblade). He’s a bit of a drunk, and a horndog. He’s also a major prankster. Trapping his friends’ doors with ‘water balloons’ full of blood, greasing tavern floors, that sort of thing.

6

My favourite character I’ve envisioned is probably Daniel, the main character of the novel of been working on steadily for three years, and which is now in its eighth complete version. He’s a teenager in a very religious family who’s just on the verge of coming out as gay.

My second-favourite would probably be his boyfriend, Kelly.

As for the Dungeons and Dragons campaigns I DM, I think I’m most partial to my comic relief characters. Most of these are in the background, like Nickels the pet-seller, who’s constantly trying to unload baby rust monsters and displacer beast kittens onto the PCs.

My favourite NPC, though, is the thief Black Leaf (yup, inspired by the Jack Chick tract), who I first introduced as a teacher for our rogue in disarming traps. The rogue wound up attacking her, and bringing her down in spite of the fact that Black Leaf was a higher level.

Over time, I fleshed out her personality. She’s unstable, though not evil (Chaotic Neutral); extremely foul-mouthed, and addicted to Devilweed. She’s bent on revenge, and keeps popping up for dramatic confrontations.

The party always manage to defeat her in some humiliating way. Once they cut the tightrope she was standing on. Most recently, she was taking down in single combat by our rogue. Since there are no clerics in the area who can ressurect right now, her rescuers brought her to the local druid for reincarnation. She was transformed into a badger, so there’s now a badger hellbent on revenge againt the party :smiley:

7

I spent about three months developing a character in my head. He was an abusive alcoholic guardian angel, who in my mind, was growing more and more spitefull of a simpleton he was supposed to protect. I had every aspect of him in my head, his looks, voice, attitude, and the kind of things he’d say in response to anything that crossed my own path. And then one day I woke up and couln’t remember anything about him other than the concept. Pity.

I still plan on including him in something somewhere. I love the idea, and if done right, the character could go real far. I just have to build him up from the ground again.

8

Some interesting stuff, so far.

My favorite characters that I’ve crafted in recent months were invented for a superhero RPG that I’m running. The main thing I find interesting about them are their powers, which I think are atypical.

First is Charles Randall, AKA “Reach”. A car accident in his youth claimed the lives of his parents, and his left arm. While recovering in the hospital, he discovered that he could still feel the appendage. The trauma of the accident had triggered latent psychic abilities - he could focus his will and ‘create’ a ‘phantom limb’, composed of psychically-stabilized ectoplasm. The limb was stronger than it should have been, and he had the capacity to stretch it to several meters in length. As a side effect of the channeling of ectoplasm, he receives psychometric impressions from any object the limb touches - flashes of sight, sound, or psychic events that have happened in the object’s past.

He’s pretty well-adjusted these days - he functions as the leader of the Third Eye Investigations team.

9

Roger Roundley – Spy.

Roy G. Biv – A gay character. (I envision him as a detective.)

10

Continuing the Third Eye team -

Next, we have Christopher Argent, AKA “Damper” - Chris’s powers manifested when he was only a few years old, much to his detriment. He happens to be an emotional vampire of sorts - passively draining the emotions of those around him. As a consequence, his parents were just unable to care about what he was doing or where he was. He grew more and more emotionless himself, as time wore on.

He learned how to focus the ability, however; he is capable of draining a specific individual with extra effort, in some cases reducing them to a conscious but almost catatonic state for short periods. His aura of emotional drain is also helpful to his comrades, as it can act as a buffer against psychic attacks that inspire emotions like fear.

As a side note, my players have referred to him as the perfect NPC, because of his ‘apathetic stealth’. They’ll be discussing something in his presence, he’ll pipe in with a comment, and as is often the case with NPCs, they will have forgotten he was there. The difference being that with him, they’re supposed to.

11

The third core member of the Third Eye team is Arthur - just Arthur. He was discovered as an amnesiac living on the streets, in his late teens. His ability is unique amongst the metahuman population of his Earth - he has a link to the collective unconscious of humanity. His emotional state tends to mirror that of the majority of the population - Damper helps even this out, and Arthur appreciates his presence. He can also call upon the skills of those around him - in a city like New York, his effective range is one mile, before the psychic “noise” is too great, but the range expands in more sparsely populated areas. Because of his low-level link to all of humanity, Arthur also possesses a broad-reaching ‘danger sense’ - it is believed that part of his brain processes all the sensory information of all the humans around him and “speaks up” when there is danger. As a side-effect of his abilities, he can conclusively identify entities with human intellects.

Arthur’s codename is “Meme”.

12

Myself and a friend of mine devised a character, inspired by random street signs, named Cumpston Killion. He was to be the main character in a movie in which we see him, at the outset, preparing for a blind date. He spritzes himself with cologne, then takes a shower, during which he spritzes himself with more cologne. After the shower, more cologne. As he’s getting dressed, even more cologne. As he’s leaving the house, we see him dump the contents of seven or eight cologne bottles into an empty Windex bottle, and while driving over to his date’s house, we see him spraying himself almost constantly. On the way up to the front door, he stops, opens the girl’s mailbox, pulls out a magazine, and flips to an add that has one of those cologne-scented ads, and rubs that all over himself.

Throughout the wackiness of the movie, characters are constantly sniffing questioningly at the air and muttering, “What’s with all the cologne?”

At the end of the movie, during a showdown between the cops and an artificial weapons dealer named the Fooz, where Cumpston is present, we see the Fooz trying to break his way through the police blockade, and he stops and sniffs the air just before getting shot.

I thought it was funny.