Dancing's not a crime

Player Information

Name: Locke
Age: 28
Contact details: PMs to this account or smashpotato. Discord available on request.
Other characters: n/a

Character Information

Name: Sven
Canon: Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition
Canon Point: After parting ways with his last adventuring party.
OU/AU/CRAU/OC: OC
Age: Mid to late 20s. He stopped keeping track after he was resurrected.

World Information:

Welcome to Dungeons & Dragons, perhaps the most prolific tabletop roleplaying game in the history of the format. The world of DND is your quintessential high-fantasy: Sven’s journey away from the quiet monastery of his youth has lead him through cursed forests loitered by undead, icy peaks where you can hear the howls of monsters carried on the winds, trap-filled caves guarding ancient treasures...and villages of average people just trying to get by in a world where magic proves both a boon and a threat to human and humanoid existence alike.

The architecture and technology of this world are very early-era Renaissance: pre-industrial cities and towns built primarily from stone, with plumbing maybe only in the larger cities. Society still depends on master-tradesmen. Unless you have the money or connections to secure the right kind of magical devices, the only form of long distance communication is sending a letter by carrier-pigeon or by on foot messenger, and with the closest form of public transport being to hire a carriage, it can sometimes take days to reach the next settlement. There are untold dangers beyond the city walls: bandits and monsters lay in wait to jump unprepared travellers and relieve them of their wallet and/or life.

From such an ecosystem has risen a culture of adventuring parties. Bold souls with a destiny, a thirst for the unknown, or simply a bigger greed than that of the average man, seek one another out in dim taverns or on the routes between cities. With their combined powers and expertise, these daring souls might stand a chance of reaching their own destinations. Adventuring parties are frequently welcomed into towns and cities, as adventurers will aid the locals with their problems in return for gold, for a hot meal and a good night’s sleep at the inn, or purely out of the goodness of their heroic little hearts. Cue the laughter of a thousand DMs whose parties are infested by Chaotic Evil murderhobos masquerading under Neutral Good alignments.

Personal History:

An orphan of war, Sven was raised by The Brothers And Sisters of The Sacred Peaks, the monastery nestled in the cliffs high above the remote town of Watchenstort. From childhood he was schooled in the teachings of the church.

When he was old enough, Sven decided to formally join the monastery. He was taught to read and write in several languages, and spent most of his youth sitting in the monastery’s stone studies, translating ancient religious texts and copying tomes by hand in his beautiful brush script. Every page had to be perfect, there was no room for errors in the text or smudged edges.

Dutiful as he was in his work, Sven looked forward to when he could set down his quill and travel down the cliff-face to the town below. Watchenstort was a town that had fared much hardship in the last two decades: its best men and women had been siphoned by the region’s high lord to fight a war with a neighbouring region--the very same war that had robbed Sven of both his own parents--and a wave of disease had further crippled the population. Trade with neighbouring towns was down, and vulnerable households struggled to cope.

Still, the townsfolk persevered in their day to day, and as much pleasure as Sven got out of untwisting a particularly difficult ancient text and wrestling it into a form that anybody could understand, all that scripture stuff felt superfluous compared to being among the people of his gods.

Every day Sven would travel down the cliffs bringing food, prayers and comfort to the sick and struggling, asking the local tradespeople about their day and offering help with small jobs and chores. Donations were never mandatory, but the people gave Sven and his fellows what they could, in appreciation for all the monastery brought to the town.

So when the leaders of the church began to insist that the townsfolk receiving the church’s support donate larger sums, while the care packages Sven delivered to the village each day looked sadder and more austere by the week…Sven and seven of his Brothers and Sisters whom he trusted joined their efforts to investigate as secretly as they could.

They discovered that the leaders of their church had been embezzling both donations and the monastery’s own earnings so the church could make its own play for power over their war-torn region.

Before Sven and his fellow whistle-blowers could unveil the truth, they were taken by the local policing force and strung up to burn on false charges.

As his Brothers and Sisters wept from fear and pain as the flames rose around them, Sven screamed out at the injustice and felt the fire itself reply and tell him, not with words but a feeling deep in his very soul, that if he wished for true justice, swear to abandon everything and follow the flames.

When the fires went out, Sven’s Brothers and Sisters were untied from their stakes unharmed. Following the miracle, church was swiftly investigated and the power and money-hungry conspirators within trialled and killed. Only Sven’s charred body disintegrated and fell to ash when they tried to retrieve it.

Sven awoke in a cavern deep under the earth, his body reforged and a colossal, cross-like scar burned into the flesh of his chest. A minor avatar of fire--known to humanity by many names, the most modern being El’Nil’m or avatar of the fiery passions--had heard his cries and chosen him to be his servant.

El’Nil’m had watched over humanity for millennia, watching them through the flames as humanity’s use of fire for the growth of their society granted them more and more windows into their world. But as the sea cannot put out a single bushfire without flooding the coast, El’Nil’m’s power (in spite of being a “minor” part of a whole) was too great to interact with the lives of humans directly.

That’s where Sven comes in. Sven is sworn to protect humankind, using the burning powers granted him by El’Nil’m to play a small part in shaping humanity’s destiny.

One person, or one good deed at a time.

Sven never went back to the monastery. His former life ended, he set out on a nomadic journey to retrieve the Petals of Nil--an artefact wieldable only by servants of El’Nil’m, that in their hands becomes a shape-changing weapon of fire--from its slumbering place at the bottom of an icy lagoon.

On his journey, Sven has tagged along with multiple adventuring parties, forging friendships and even finding love before his calling required they part ways.

Personality:

An aggressively good guy. Sven shines with a confidence that comes not from pride or conceit, but from being whole in himself.

Before he was remade by the hands of his patron, Sven had felt a nagging wrongness every day of his life. He had tried to bury it in his studies, but no matter how hard he prayed a dark shadow always loomed in his peripheral. In his past life Sven was still honest and smart, but never looked quite as though he fit…in his body, in his role.

Life always felt a little dull, yet for reasons he couldn’t quite explain, Sven always feared it was slipping by too fast. He lived his slow life of a scholar and religious servant feeling like he was rushing towards an invisible brick wall.

Since his rebirth, he’s a changed person. The impression Sven gives off is…solid. Physically he’s well built from combat and from travelling the world on foot, but what makes him feel so present, so corporeal is how fully he inhabits his body. When he sits, walks, or gestures, he only ever looks completely natural in his surroundings. It doesn’t matter if he’s squeezing through an unfamiliar tavern on the wrong side of town, or facing down an army, he makes no pretences about himself.

He doesn’t fidget, he makes steady eye contact, and when he speaks, he addresses everybody with the same sense of warmth and familiarity. He has an easy way with people, because he talks to everybody as though they’re his equal. He says what he means first time, with no games or ulterior motives behind his words, and no insecurities tying his hands. People feel relaxed around him for it--usually.

People who consider themselves more important than this soot-covered ruffian may baulk at his casual addresses, but all of Sven’s reverence is spared for the gods themselves. He doesn’t best trust people who wield too much authority over others. His own bitter experiences with the church are one reason, but the longer Sven has been travelling the more he’s seen the disparities that plague human society. He doesn’t defer to religion, nor to the law and relies on his own moral compass to decide who truly deserves punishment: rarely, in Sven’s eyes, is it the poor man who steals to feed himself, and not the lords who expanded their empires so far that hundreds of honest people lost their jobs or homes.

Sven’s moral code is the one thing he’s stubborn about. To say that bonding his patron went to his head is a bit of an oversight: he was raised from death explicitly to serve his patron, and as such some of the god’s self-assuredness about the ways of the world was bound to transfer over to Sven, who takes his relationship with his patron as assurance that his cause is holy and right. He’s fought with former travelling partners over their differences in opinion when their journeys lead them to a moral fork in the road. Sven is set in his convictions and arguing him on them is like trying to convince a boulder back up a hill.

He cares fully, intensely, about humans. Despite being human himself (or at least, the vague shape of something that was in the past), he’s picked up some of El’Nil’m’s fascination with humanity and sometimes tends to talk about humans and human society as though he’s a curious observer looking in. This is furthered by the fact that it’s been years since Sven was part of any one society. He’s always moving and spends as much, if not more time in the wilderness communing with nature and with other minor gods or their servants, that he is an outsider to the places he visits along his journey.

Sven strives to defend, and to be just, but he isn’t a pacifist. He has killed man and beast and will do so when confronted by any force who he deems a source of evil unto the world. But he hates needless death and will always prioritise saving as many innocent lives as possible, even if it means somebody truly terrible will escape justice. That’s not always an easy call to make, knowing when to let somebody go even if they might go on to harm others.

He doesn’t like those ambiguities. They’re too messy, too…human. And there lies the issue that Sven is a human dancing with powers he can’t fully comprehend. Sven tries not to mention that he’s--technically, at least--a warlock. Warlocks carry an ugly reputation: they’re dangerous wizards who stray too close to the gods in their pursuit of knowledge and power, and eventually lose themselves. Sven seeks to defend but sometimes catches glimpses of horror in people’s eyes when they see the full destruction his power can cause. Sven thinks their fear silly. He should know better from his studies at the monastery, but like an unhealthy relationship his bond with his patron prevents him from seeing how wrong things could go in the future if he doesn’t tread lightly.

Key themes: Wanting to always do the "right" thing in a world that doesn't like to keep clear boundaries between good and evil. Good and righteous people receiving untold power from the beyond and going batshit.

Main Motivation: To protect and help other people.

Skills:

Reading, writing and language proficiencies: Sven spent his mortal life translating religious texts, skills that will carry over should he need to learn a new language or delve into research.

Create fire: Sven can make fire spring from his own body. He can light up his entire body with flames if he so wishes, but that's terribly inefficient in terms of both magic-use and not burning through yout entire wardrobe. Enchantments to fireproof clothes are expensive. Most of the time he casts fire from his hands or blows it from his lips.

Heal: Himself, or other beings or people. How often or how well Sven is able to heal depends on how much of his power he’s recently exerted, and the extent of the injury, but Sven could regrow a severed limb (or meld the original limb back on) if he had the resources. In the absence of being able to heal fully, temporarily cauterising his wounds with his own flame will do until he can rest and regain his power.

There's a catch to healing other people. Yes, Sven's healing will make it seem as though you were never hurt at all, but...you'll suffer more before you feel better. Sven's magic cauterises wounds, and with it brings the pain of actually being cauterised. As in...having glowing hot metal rammed into your open wounds. You'll start to feel better after only a couple of moments, and the scars will fade soon after, leaving behind clear, unblemished skin. But it's still unpleasant. Broken bones, when healed by Sven's touch, will feel like they're being melted back together like snapped steel, while letting him heal your sickness or poisoning will make you burn a fever so high that you'll know what it feels like to stand on the edge of hell itself.

Sven doesn't know if he's doing something wrong or if this is just a "quirk" of bonding a fire patron, but he doesn't heal people often, not unless it seems they might die without his aid, or if the injuries would hold them back too long if left to heal naturally.

Smoke form: Sven can straight-up dissolve his physical body (alongside anything he’s wearing or carrying…so long as it can remain close to his body hands-free) into a thick black smoke, that can slip through the tiniest of cracks or be carried on the wind. It’s a useful power to be sure, but it takes a lot out of him as it’s difficult for his mind to remain alert and present without a whole, physical body. Spending too long in this form will send his consciousness to sleep and he’ll be stuck as smoke particles until the spell uses up all of his power and his form returns to normal.

Spellcasting: Sven can assemble ingredients and channel holy energies to create various spells and enchantments. Getting the materials is the difficult bit, there. But he can also weave his own magic into smaller, less potent spells and charms that do things like making his clothing and other nearby objects less flammable, or casting a small good luck charm over an ally.

Detect magic: Sven's bond with El'Nil'm lets him sense magical power from people, places and items. It's not flawless and it can be blocked or misled (or might not work at all, say, for characters or objects from worlds where magic functions differently to Sven's world...I'll leave it to players to decide if Sven can sense their character's magic or not). But Sven can "smell" (not literally) when a person or thing has been touched by magic. The more recent or powerful the magical presence, the stronger the sense, which back home let Sven track minor gods or their servants by following their trail. He can tell if objects or creatures carry an enchantment, along with a vague sense of how long ago the enchantment was placed and how much power it still holds.

Item: The Petals of Nil: an ornament that looks like a charred tree branch with a single orange glass flower blooming from it. The flower glows as though lit by flames at all times. It can be destroyed only by the power of a god. Sven uses it to keep his hair up when it isn't needed, but in his hands--and his alone--the Petals of Nil is a powerful weapon. Sven can change the artefact into the shape of almost any weapon that can be wielded in one or both hands. His go-to is a quarterstaff, but it can also become a flaming sword, a bow, or a shield. If taken by somebody with malice in their heart, its touch burns skin as though the thief grabbed a hot poker. To everybody else it feels warm and unexpectedly heavy, like stone. But it appears to behave like a normal branch in Sven's hands, appearing light and flexible when he gestures with it or fixes his hair.

Sample:
TDM / PSL

Notes: Sven is a trans dude. It's an important part of his character, but not something that he finds affects his daily life, besides maybe making dating a little more complicated than his duties to his patron do already. Sven wasn't cognisant of it himself before his patron revived him in a masculinised version of his body. He rarely ever speaks about it, considering it private to himself and not wanting other people to change the way they treat him. He has an extremely violent and twisted-looking scar across his torso (as well as a complete absence of nips), but he's never met a person who wasn't satisfied with his answer about it being the symbol of his bond to his patron. Well, it's not a lie.