Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Lyinginbedmon 03-02-07, 07:50 AM	I'm working on a backstory for my Warforged Aristocrat, working as a detective, for an upcoming oneshot which will put me infront of the screen for the first time in 2 years (Usually I'm behind it, as DM) I've managed to get this story together, as it's fairly tricky to put a Warforged in any position to become an Aristocrat I've had to finangle some plot threads into it: History of W40-12, aka “John Smadar” Created (A): 18th July 1568 Created (B): 18/07/1568 Height: 6‘ 3“ Weight: 303 lb History – W40-12 was produced near the end of the Great War, less than 2 months, in fact. The first 11 of the 40th Warforged battalion were sent into combat and hastily destroyed. He was the last off of the production line to be allocated for the battalion. As such, he remains as the last surviving W40 ever created (The “W” designation being switched to “F” to avoid confusion, as was quickly becoming the case elsewhere), making him a considerable collectors item. However, he was never put into service, and didn’t even complete full training before the war ended and he was stuffed away in an old military storage bunker and forgotten about. Years passed, 380 years to be precise, and all trace of the 40th battalion was lost to history. The bunker itself was built over, becoming part of the grounds of a sizeable estate held by the Smadar family, a successive group of regents originating from Cairo until they fled to Beldor during the War. W40-12 remained in the bunker for a few months after they arrived on the estate, during which Alan Smadar, the present regent, finally died of ailing health, and his title and possessions were passed down to his daughter, Emily. Emily loved to explore, it was her life’s dream to go to undiscovered places and be the first person ever to see something. On one of her trips around the expansive grounds, she found an old well. Peering in, she noticed that the water didn’t rise above a fairly low level, despite the intensely heavy rainfall of spring showers. She decided to investigate, and clambered down the well into the sooty water that sat at the bottom. She found a small grate, and opened it up, revealing the bunker’s interior. The room was dark; almost pitch black save for the light filtering in through the furnace she had clambered in from. She fumbled about and eventually found a small torch. Despite being several centuries old it still lit properly, and the face of W40 leering at her from the shadows immediately struck her. She quickly took him above ground and revived him, making certain that he was not damaged and repairing the wear and tear of 38 decades alone in an old bunker. W40 eventually came to after a week passed, Emily never leaving his bedside once in the time. The two quickly became inseparable, and at the time the social elite found it quite displeasing that the last member of the Smadar family should be finding love with a slave machine. Emily didn’t care, an unusual characteristic for the Smadar family, and she saw to it that W40 was officially adopted into the family as her husband, taking the name of John Smadar (Though she still called him 40 out of habit) The two were married privately in a ceremony that drew much outrage, many citing that Warforged had no rights and were property, thus making her marriage truly an intricate act of Pygmalionism. Again she didn’t care what others thought, and the two lived blissfully for a number of years. However, one fateful summer outing on a picnic, Emily contracted an illness. Whilst it would have been fairly simple to cure, Emily’s marriage had turned most of civilised society against her, and none would help her. John sat by her bedside every day ensuring she was comfortable, but she eventually died as the first snowflakes of winter began falling. John has never liked snow since. Emily’s body was thought to be unclean, but John made sure himself that she was buried in her family’s mausoleum. As her husband, the regency and all of her possessions fell to John, but he didn’t much care for it and it now lies idle for much of the year, save the 12th of November each year when he returns to the mausoleum to pay his respects to Emily. He also returns to drink a single glass of wine at the root of the oak tree each 18th of September, their anniversary. Shunned by the other members of the high society, John’s acts as regent made little difference, and he quickly saw that all the high powers he had gained by Emily’s will were useless in his present state as “a dead madwoman’s mechanical husband”. He shoe boxed his ties with the Smadar family away for a spell, and set up his own detective business, spending a few months under an existing detective to get the feel of the profession as well as some experience. He wanted to help people, regardless of how they saw him or what they thought of him. He has run Emily Investigations since then. Things got slightly better for John once Warforged won their rights in the Little Machine War, but he still faces a lot of prejudice, and has taken on a lot of new cases involving other Warforged. His ties with Emily and the Smadar family, as well as his regency, have recently fallen into obscurity, many simply seeing him as the “windup detective” in their racist eyes. Just like Emily, he doesn’t care what they call him, as long as they don’t interfere with his investigations. Whilst John is considered, albeit often in jest, the last member of the Smadar regent family, he has a few adopted relatives, such as 2 nephews and nieces (2 girls and 2 boys), from Emily’s two brothers, as well as a senile great-grandfather-in-law. He himself hopes to someday give up his immortality to continue Emily’s legacy. In other words, he thinks that someday in the future, he would like to give up being a Warforged if it meant he could start a family, ideally with Emily should he be able to have her revived. John is a Male personality Warforged, and a hard-working detective. He enjoys finely brewed tea and touches of quality in his life, seeing them as memorable touches of his life with Emily, rather than his regency. When he works on a case, he doesn’t stop until the case is solved, never resting or eating (Which is thankfully allowable, given his anatomy), and his polite, gentlemanly business demeanour only falters during interrogations. He frowns upon people that interfere with his investigations, and sometimes makes note that, of the people that interfere with his investigations, 68% of them end up dead or otherwise mortally wounded, he never states how however. He upholds the law to an extent, but takes the situation of the peasant in higher regard to that of the guard, and will often make exceptions to laws for those who would benefit in a harsher situation. For example, in one case he was hired to find the murderer of a father in Hecaten. When he learned that it was the man’s son, defending his mother from the abusive husband, he ‘neglected’ to inform the bloodthirsty guards and confusedly mentioned that he must have fallen on his own sword in a common episode of drunken slobbery. However, simply because he makes allowances does not mean that he disrespects the law, on the contrary he respects the Guards highly because they put their lives on the line with every day that passes, whilst he is most often called in to investigate what happened to end a life. However, his respect has its limits, and considering that the Guards have never apprehended all 32 vandals that have laid siege to his office, he wouldn’t put a crime past them. As an example of his psyche, the quote used on his character sheet reads: “Every crime has a silver lining. Sometimes it’s stained in blood by the daily death of the sun, but usually the answer to a crime is who’s standing on that silver part”
oneiromorph 03-02-07, 02:47 PM	That sounds really cool. My first thought when I click on this thread wasn't very nice I admit, but this is a really inspired and interesting character idea. If I could make a suggestion, though. Don't kill off the love interest. Leave her wasting away and give yourself a goal of discovering the cause of the mysterious illness. Maybe its something that a cult infected her with, and 40 has risen to become an Inquisitive to find a cure, as well as the cads who would strike down his beloved. More pathos. Just make sure you get the GM's word not to kill or cure her without your permission.
Lyinginbedmon 03-02-07, 04:47 PM	Well, she's not really out of play. He knows exactly where the body is, and one of his goals is to earn enough to have her resurrected (Since, as far as Rules As Implied go, death by disease followed by resurrection doesn't result in a diseased living person). After that, he wants to go through a Ritual of Transfiguration (See Savage Species) to become human, so that he and Emily can have a family. Alongside this, he's fighting prejudice and racism against Warforged, by doing the work that the other detectives and guards won't take on, and doing the right thing even when the law says otherwise (Albeit quietly and without attracting attention). If anyone tries to get in his way of doing this, he gets extremely annoyed and agitated, and whilst he personally hasn't caused any of the harm to the 68% of those that did so, he certainly would consider the possibility. Either way, this is a oneshot adventure, lasting up to 3 hours, maybe a little longer, so the long-term goals of a character are unlikely to be achieved without direct in-game intervention.