Current Backstory ( Forgive me, i'm not a novel writer ) After Shar chooses you, you must learn your first lesson, loss. Prior to reaching young adulthood everyone who would have cared for you is systematically killed. Every possession you have must be taken away from you. It's not enough to be born with nothing, you must have everything and lose it. Left with nothing, wandering in the night, this is how you find Shar's embrace. This is how you join the Order of the Dark Moon. Calling us a religious order may not be entirely correct. Our monastaries hold no religious text, prayer rooms, or public rituals. Our only purpose is to eliminate Shar's enemies without question.
Character
- Wood elf
- Some combo of monk / rogue seems appropriate?
- Lawful Neutral
- Why / how would he be adventurering?
- Ideas for flaws, personality traits, ideals, and / or bonds?
- Uses / throws daggers ( like Shar )
Lawful Neutral is appropriate I believe. He follows the traditions / rules of Shar and the order he belongs to. He doesn't particularly enjoy killing and has a moral compass. However when push comes to shove he does what he needs to do.
The Order of the Dark Moon
- Values self perfection and strength
- Serves as a training ground for assassins
- Not a community service / religious studies type worshipper
- What would be some good tenants / rules of the order or that Shar asks of her followers?
Shar communicates who to kill with each member of the order. This is less of a verbal conversation and more of a supernatural "instinct". The motivation or reason is unknown to followers but she normally does it for poltiical power grabs.
Found this inspirational photo. The mask kind of looks like the god "Mask"
Step 1: Figure out why a wood elf would be interested in joining a cult that trains assassins.
Step 2: Realize that you would not be lawful neutral, you would most likely be chaotic neutral at best, but more likely evil. Everything is taken from you and everyone who cared for you is systematically killed. This means family, extended family, friends, lovers, etc. You woudl also realize that this killing is something you would be tasked with. More likely you are Lawful or Neutral Evil, possibly even Chaotic evil.
Now you have an evil elf who has no issues with killing when ordered to do so. Thus the moral compass is eliminated.
This leads me to believe that you have a beef with your entire family as you allow them to be killed for your personal gain. Perhaps scorned love, being the black sheep, mental illness (read up on antisocial personality disorder for example). he might have recieved his training in any temple, and have been told to go out into the world and practice his art even further in order to promote himself.
Other than that I cant really help you unless you provide more information.
Cantfindaname wrote:
Vestax321 wrote:
A Neutral Assassin will do extra work to avoid collateral damage. Take the Faceless Men from A Song Of Fire And Ice for an example, or even the Assassin's guild from Discworld.
An Evil Assassin will kill anyone between them and their target unless there's an obvious disadvantage in doing so. There are exceptions, of course, often Assassins who feel that killing the target without collateral is more 'professional' or a better display of their skill.
So, more specifically: Killing everyone a person cares about and stealing or destroying everything they own will not reliably produce the same results. Some people will commit suicide from the grief, wasting time and effort. Some people will become bent on revenge, potentially infiltrating your organization and planning to bring it down from within. Some will be awed by your display and remain loyal... but let's be honest, results from such a recruitment method would be hit and miss at best.
I don't know, it seems a fairly dumb way to go about things.
As for this case: Murdering people because an evil god wills it is most definitely evil. There's no getting around that. You are furthering an evil agenda in the world without questioning it or resisting. That's evil. You're killing people who in all likelyhood are fairly decent fellows doing something to thwart or upset said evil agenda, or even the innocent parents of the next poor sod your order is recruiting. That's evil. Being an assassin at the beck and call of an evil god is evil unless you're in some way mind controlled and cannot resist. This character is evil, there's no way around that.
FuelDrop wrote:
I started writing something up as an idea for a backstory, but it all comes back to the fact that the character accepts the dogma of the religion. It is a character that accepts the evil dogma and direct instructions from a deity that furthers its own goals through murder. Lawful Evil for sure.
As for backstory...I dont know.
Cantfindaname wrote:
Fair enough, i will write it up the short synopsis.
What if the whole she-bang of following the God is something that does not sit well with the character, mainly because the cult he was induced into systematically murdered everyone the character was ever cared for. From this point there are two options; one good and one bad and I will write them up separately.
The Good Guy:
He recalls what occurred to his family and is still furiusly angered over having his life so disrupted. Yet he is also smart enough to realize that if he speaks up, he will be killed quickly. So what he does is making sure to covertly plot against Shar. When he recieves a message to kill someone, he will do his absolutely best to make sure that the person dissapears from the public light, but he takes great effort to make sure that the NPC is still alive and knows he has been saved from death. If he is slotted with someone else he will do his best to make sure that the assassination attempt fails and the other assassin gets the blame. The character is simply biding his time and building support (through the saved NPC's) for when the time is right and he can expose the cult and its murderious ways.
His motivation is to publically reveal and humiliate the cult in order for it to lose credibility and members, thereby weakening the entire order, and by extension, Shar as well. This would also allow any alignment.
The Bad Guy:
This fellow also knows that his family was killed off, but it made him go off the rocker a little bit. He is now slightly delusional, but has come to the insight that if the order raised him as a valuable asset, they also cared for him and did not want him to die. Thus, according to their own dogma, they all need to be systematically killed or the character will be derelict in his duties to Shar. Clearly Shar wishes for the character to eventually kill off the entire order and for the character to remain as the ultimate epitome and champion of Shar (told you he was a bit off his rocker).
Why is he adventuring: If he used only his training, other assassins would know what skills he had. He is looking for items and allies that would give him the edge he needs to have an advantage in nearly every encounter with other assassins. Adventuring would also require him to encounter and overcome challenges, forcing him to learn how to further better himself and prepare for inevitable conflict. As such he is likely to often volunteer for difficult situations in order to test himself as well as show his overall value in the hopes that any group member would become a potential ally later on in life.