Hi everyone,
I was jotting down my personality/ideal/bond/flaw/trinket, and all of a sudden it's a few hours later and I have a short story in front of me.
I'm not a real writer and I don't know what else to do with this thing, so I'll just post it here for now. I intentionally left my race/class vague because given the format it would have come off a bit weird, but it isn't rocket science to figure out what I am, or even what background I took.
If anyone actually ends up reading this, please let me know what you think, and please feel free to post your background stories as well!
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Father,
I write this in the unlikely event that we ever meet again. Should that day ever come, I will be prepared.
You knew me as Wikum del Gyldenpalm, but others have instead met Dorian Redscale, or as of late Ruddernump Thistledew. Tomorrow I may be a prince, who knows. Whatever name I may go by now, I doubt you would recognize me. Your face has likewise faded in my memory after all these years. Your voice, however, I could pick out of a crowd. I have your old music box from Lantan-That-Was, the one that plays a recording of you and Mother singing together, and I listen to it still. I shouldn't though; there's no sense in tormenting myself over what could have been.
Our kind values nothing more than staying hidden and apart from the outside world. Unfortunately our community became extreme even by those standards after you left. The elders felt it best that another Outsider like you should never find us again.
Mother was scorned by the elders for her part in your stay with us, but nevertheless she dazzled me with the same fanciful tales of the outside world that you used to woo her. Those stories kindled in me the fire of curiosity, the spark of wanting out of that caged life of isolation. I wished for a life of adventure, and the gods likely took malicious glee in the granting of it.
It happened when the first Outsiders I had ever seen, other than you, passed our community not one league away, oblivious to our existence. With the stories of great human warriors and mages dancing in my head, I eagerly attempted to get a closer look at these emissaries from The Outside. I was reckless and young, and so I was caught. The humans turned out to be less gallant than the heroes of legend that I expected and made no secret about their plans to sell me to slavers interested in “exotic” chattel.
Mother attempted a rescue, but she was merely a desperate seamstress and they hardened warriors. It was a small blessing that she fought wildly enough to prevent her own capture, but it was not a clean death.
After three terrible days I managed to lift a paring knife off of my handler. I left it in his throat later that night and made a mad dash for the perceived safety of home. The humans easily followed my panicked trail and found our hidden community, but they had barely a moment to savor their discovery before the elders’ magic brought them all down.
Sobbing and vulnerable, I left no detail out of my account of the sordid events. The elders responded to my tearful deposition by sentencing me to exile. You see, I had committed an unforgiveable crime; I had exposed the community's location to Outsiders. Also, according to their great wisdom, Mother was stated to have brought her fate upon herself, first by consorting with the likes of you, the result of which produced a most disruptive child in myself, and finally for filling my head with dangerous stories of The Outside after you left.
It turned out that the elders’ had known of my kidnapping from the start, and despite their formidable powers they proclaimed the risk of exposing the community was greater than the need of rescuing one problematic child. Mother, consumed with grief, had mounted her doomed attack alone after hearing their judgment.
And so my grand life of adventure was born out of the death of my innocence. I am no longer a naive child entertained by tales of heroics and chivalry. The best defense is a lie and a shadow, and the best offense an unseen blade. Abiding blindly by laws or edicts is for fools and only an idiot thinks their life has more value than a pocketful of gold.
This world is something to be taken and used, not hidden away from. I will gain wealth, power, and influence, for one day I will come home. On that day the elders will find out what happens to those that show a broken child such cruelty.
By the time you finish reading this I will be gone. A part of me enjoys the thought that my quick disappearance might hurt you, but I won't bet on it. I just want you to know that everything that has happened, everything that I have done, and everything that I will do, it is on your hands. None of this would have happened if you had just stayed at home.
Signed,
Your bastard child
I enjoyed it. For your character sheet, I would distill it down to 2 sentences that describe your ambition and utilitarian alienation.
If I were your DM, I'd insist you create some positive ties to the setting, as you've gone an orphaned yourself as well as going exile. That's too far removed IMO. (But I'm not your DM & I don't know the setting, so whatever!)
It's interesting as a story but I'd agree with Bawylie. It doesn't really connect you to a campaign/adventure/scenario/game session and it doesn't connect you to any of the other PCs in your party. Of course, you can't really do that until you have a DM and a game to focus on, so to begin with you just need a few punchy lines that give your PC a strong reason to adventure anywhere, that can be worked up into the right context.
But as a fine example of the way that the 5e character creation process sparks story-telling, it's something I can certainly relate to. Something I enjoy, between games, is creating random parties of characters and writing about how they might have met, how they would feel about each other, and how they might involve each other in their personal quests. A kind of group backstory. I've uploaded one I wrote last month, if you are interested (you don't have to be 
)
