A repository of character ideas and worldbuilding warm-ups!

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^{art: Practice by Zhiyang Lin}

Name: Cast

Abstract: A cool-hearted, perfectionist Itkthi with a need for superiority

Detail: Cast grew up in a household that taught her that she was worthless unless she was perfect, that other people only wanted to use her for their own gain, that love, affection and praise were only a means of manipulation. By the time she was fifteen, Cast had become cold, distant and friendless; she harbored a fierce distrust of the world and a hatred of herself. She could not respect herself as long as she was just as human and imperfect as everyone else. She wanted more than anything to be something greater, something unique, something respected and revered.

And then, she heard the stories of the Itk, an ugly brown fish that lived in the nearby lake. Whoever caught this fish, the legend goes, would be presented with a choice: if the fisherman let the Itk go, he would be granted one wish. If the fisherman chose instead to kill the Itk and to swallow the pearl inside its stomach, the fisherman would thereafter have the power to manipulate the world around him -- but after twenty years he would become a fish and would be condemned to be grant wishes to the fishermen who caught him.

Cast caught the Itk in the middle of the night, from a little boat on the moonlit lake. It pleaded for its life, and it offered to grant her any wish she desired -- wealth, power, skill -- but instead she took it back to shore, cut off its head, sliced it open, and swallowed the pearl inside.

The magic developed over the next few years, and so her appearance changed. Her green eyes turned yellow, her brown skin paled, and etched designs appeared on her throat and back. The village called her cursed. Just before they could carry out the threat of opening her up like a fish and taking the pearl, Cast escaped on her own, intent on finding the destiny that she knew awaited her.

^{art: Ragnhild by Even Mehl Amundsen}

Name: Ildbewoor "Ildie"

Abstract: An old woman who is not generous nor kind, but lives according to balance and understanding among all things.

Detail: Ildbewoor was born on the sea; she grew up among the sailors and seawater, gutted fish and hard tack, working songs and gunpowder. She was quick up and down the masts, knew a hundred and eleven knots, and had eyes sharp as an eagle for the pinpoint sails of distant ships. This all ended one stormy night when the ship drifted into kraken territory. The harpooners managed to slay and secure the beast, but too many lives were lost and the ship was too damaged to continue. They weighed anchor alongside an island, hoping to gather wood and supplies to repair the ship -- instead the captain and the remaining sailors fell prey to the horrific swarms of monsters that inhabited it. Ildie only survived by abandoning her fellow shipmates and perching in the treetops to watch them be devoured. To this day she wonders if there was something she could have done.

Eventually she learned the habits of the creatures and was able to walk along the ground without harm. For years she lived here alone, until she built her own small boat out of pieces of the ruined ship and set off to discover new lands. She found civilization, but found that she no longer cared for friendship or empathy with other people, as curious and interesting as they were. She bored easily. Even living alone in the woods wasn't as challenging or rewarding as the constant threat and chaos of the island or the sea -- so she traveled.

For most of her life, Ildie's heart was in exploration and observation. She embraced every technology she encountered, asked too many questions, adopted a plethora of pets and mounts and children along the way, only to leave them at stable homes as she carried on alone. One such child happened to be a lord's daughter who might have been eaten by a toglosnap had Ildie not been present to frighten the mangled beast away. She delivered the child to her home safely, and the lord convinced her to stay awhile.

The widower lord, the child's father, impressed Ildie with his warm heart and fierce devotion to the sea -- and she must have made an impression on him, as well, for he asked her hand in marriage. Together they ruled one of the wildest of realms, with a reputation for being strict yet fair and more than a little eccentric. After a great many years, the lord's mind began to fail him and he saw visions more often than he recognized his own daughter. The daughter, having by then come of age, took the lordship while her father lay dying. The old lord was buried at sea.

The fae of the woods that bordered the realm were angered by the lord's death; they threatened a war that the new ruler was not equipped to face. Ildie went alone to the edge of the woods to act as ambassador and guardian between the two peoples. There she cared for the beasts of the woods as well as for the people of the realm, and to this day acts as an advisor to her daughter-in-law and an anchor of peace between the chaotic wilds and the human civilizations.

But Ildie is getting on in age, and both the fae and the people of the realm have begun to spread whispers of what will happen to the balance of peace when she passes.

^{art: Memento Mori by kos1604}

Name: Een

Abstract: A raven who knows the way

Detail: Een hatched as a simple raven, but was thereafter bound to a magician as her familiar, thus the raven gained the benefit of a shared intelligence and conscious thought. The magician was a lazy sort, who used her magic mostly to impress others and to make her own life easier. Een, in turn, adopted an apathetic lifestyle. He enjoyed visiting comfortable inns, helping in magic performances, watching children squeal with delight as he flipped and spun and snatched cherries from their outstretched hands, but in the end he wanted nothing more than to sleep by a cozy fire.

And then, while performing during their stay in a new town, guardians snatched up the magician and locked her into a stoneblock cell without explanation. Een escaped alone. He later found that after the witch had arrived in town, children had begun going missing. While the magician was being interrogated regarding their whereabouts, Een began his own investigation.

He found that the children were being lured into the marsh by a shining fox. It would take the children along hidden paths and narrow stones between sinkholes and mud lakes, sleeping monsters and shifting trees, over ground that would disintegrate under the weight of an adult but allowed the children easy passage, and the path would move and change behind them. He followed the shining fox to a cave, and within the cave was a gigantic beast with four rows of eyes and ten rows of teeth and a hunger for human flesh.

Upon first finding the fate of the children, Een distracted the beast with a flurry of wings and claws while the child ran away. He accompanied the child, but it took two days to find their way back, the path shifted and turned so frequently. When he returned with the child, the town was grateful to him -- but they did not release the magician.

Another child was taken, and Een followed, this time stacking stones as he went to mark the return passage. The beast made this rescue a bit harder than the last, but he returned soon enough with the child, who told stories to confirm what had happened. But still the witch was not released.

The adults marched into the forest with the intent of killing the beast, but could never find it. One died in the search, and others were trapped for hours in the mud. The only proof that there was a monster at all was in the children's stories, and there was no proof at all that this was not an illusion by the magician. Even if the magician were innocent, her raven was the only thing that could bring the children back -- and if the magician were released, she would leave, taking her raven with her.

So it is, and so it has been: the shining fox lures the children into the marsh, and the raven follows, almost every night. The marsh is now filled with stacked stones of varying intricacy and balance, marking the different paths to the cave and back, understandable only by the raven that built them.

^{art: Miss Summer by Suke}

Name: Aleordyn

Abstract: A priestess on a mission to summon the Daemon of Winter Silence

Detail: Aleordyn does not remember her birth name. She remembers a farm with horses, and mountains in the distance. She remembers riding alongside her father past the tall grasses and into the hard shadows of the ice-bright cliffs.

She remembered her first sight of the temple: the hollow windows and towering statues carved into the cold gray stone. She remembered standing alone before the entrance while her father's horse kicked snow in the distance.

That night, the Sisters of Soondark Pass named her Aleordyn: Moon Eyes. This was the night her life began.

Aleordyn lived and worked silently within the temple for sixteen years. No one spoke; her voice unused, she forgot that she could. She was happy.

Then came the night of the red sky. The moon and stars lined up perfectly with the slatted windows in the prayer room, and everything was bathed in a gentle red light. The crone declared, with a flourish of hands, that this was the Daemon's message to take the Book of Mir to the Tower of the Sun before the red sky dawns. With this, they could summon the Daemon of Winter Silence to the mortal plane once again.

Aleordyn was pleased to accept the task, with two other Sisters to accompany her. They set off in high spirits, dancing the songs of their temple, their hands in a flurry of conversation about what might happen when the Daemon finally returned.

But the road was unforgiving, and though the Sisters were well trained in combat they were no match for the sickness and the monsters and the cruel human beings that tore them apart. A month after they had set out, only Aleordyn was left alone with the book, determined to find a tower that no one had heard of in an expanse of desert that no one dared cross. The more she saw of the world, the more it frightened her -- and the more she wanted so desperately to find the tower in time, and to blanket the world in soft snowy peace.

^{art: Hollow by Matt Dixon}

Name: Gus

Abstract: Not a robot.

Detail: Gus was born into a charming family that lived comfortably on a lesser-known sky island. The family commanded a few respectable courier airships that delivered mail and messages at a price fit for kings, but their strongest asset was their dovecote. The largest and best-trained population of carrier doves and pigeons was bred and selected by Gus' proud family, world-famous for providing the pigeons that delivered the most important messages throughout history: the burning of Garn, the approach of the Pale Claw by sea to the Port of Ent, the marriage of Princess Soesslye to Yn the Ogre King. No one was prouder of the pigeons than Gus.

Little Gus loved the birds. He volunteered to clean the dovecote daily, learned each bird's food preference, and claimed to speak and understand their warbling language. He was often caught perched on the dovecote roof or high in a tree, wearing makeshift wings made of patchwork and pigeon feathers, determined to take flight. He fell from a branch once and broke his arm; but the minute the cast was off he was out again, running with the flock and flapping his arms, an excited warble in his throat. Visitors asked politely about the child's peculiarities and were told, happily, that it was just a phase.

Gus was eleven years old the night the moon rose huge and bright in a cloudless sky. The pigeons were restless, flapping and fluttering in a frenzy of feathers, and refused to be quieted. Afraid that the birds would hurt themselves, Gus opened the dovecote and watched them swarm into the starry sky, toward the moon and the mountains and a light flickering in the distance, as if they were possessed of a soul-deep need to chase it. Gus felt it, too. Something was happening out there without him.

He stole the key from his mother's coat pocket, rushed across the island to the barn, and rolled out the smallest courier kite -- precisely the thing he was forbidden to do. Gus had never been taught to fly it, but he'd watched his brother a thousand times. It wasn't hard. Soon the engine rumbled and clanked, and Gus put on his gloves and goggles -- and with a shift and a push and a turn of a knob, the little flying machine rolled and knocked fast down the grassy hill, then lifted, then soared over the edge of the sky island, with stars above and a glimmer of trees and rivers below. The pigeons flocked all around him, and it was the most amazing moment of Gus' young life.

The kite sputtered and creaked and went silent. For a moment, Gus glided quietly among the soft flap of the pigeons' wings, and then the trees and the ground rose up toward him. Frozen out of fear, Gus clung to the controls while the trees slammed into him.

When he woke up, he was made of copper.

He didn't know that a passing magician had imbued his dying consciousness into a discarded machina. He didn't know that the magician had waited four days before declaring the experiment a failure, and had left him there in the woods. He didn't know that the wreckage of the kite had since been cleaned up, a funeral had been held, and tears were still being shed for him.

All Gus knew was that he couldn't see the island in the sky -- just the trees, and the grass, and the rocks.

He wanders still, traversing the wild and curious landscape with slow and rusty limbs. Each morning he stops, and he warbles in a hollow, echoing voice. The pigeons come to him and perch on his outstretched arms.

^{art: Unknown by Sung Choi}

Name: Tonhon

Abstract: A curious ferryman.

Detail: Tonhon grew up at the top of a mountain, in an ancient white temple to the Daemon of Autumn Wind, surrounded by his extended family. It was a busy, loud, playful existence; the mountains rang with the sound of children's laughter. Little Tonhon was perhaps the most troublesome of them all: he was incapable of sitting still for the briefest moment, he was a showoff and a trickster, quick to anger and quick with remorse. He led the other children into very much trouble indeed -- but somehow it was impossible for the adults to stay mad at him, he was so sincerely apologetic every time. He was simply incapable of behaving himself.

In an attempt to quell his exuberance, it was decided that Tonhon would study to become a magus. It was a respectable position -- the magi lived a nomadic existence, acting as healers and wisemen to any village that summoned them -- and Tonhon took his tasks seriously. He studied until his eyes crossed, he forced himself to sit still, he stopped playing with the other children, and he was miserable.

He was fourteen and had already earned his green robes when a midnight storm destroyed the gryphon platforms at the far east roost. A call for assistance was issued, and Tonhon went with a team of his fellow students to rebuild the platforms and bring supplies to the taskers' village. While he was there, he had decided, he would finally meet a gryphon face-to-face.

The taskers were the only people who were allowed near the gryphons; these people had been trained from a very young age to understand and make pacts with the wild gryphons. In the hierarchy of the temple, the taskers ranked at the very bottom: they were essentially ferrymen, responsible for transporting more important people from mountaintop to mountaintop, or in some cases, island to island. Theirs was the fastest and most convenient way of travel for a great many remote civilizations. But without the taskers, the gryphons were dangerous beasts incapable of being tamed or domesticated.

Tonhon escaped the rest of the group and found a wild gryphon on a ledge as it was stripping a deer carcass of meat. It spotted him, it rushed him, and suddenly Tonhon was gripped in its claws and soaring over the mountains. Others in this position had met the fate of the deer -- but in this one moment, Tonhon was able to remain calm and patient for perhaps the first time in his life. He spent a day and a night on a remote mountain in the company of the gryphon.

He rode the gryphon back to the temple, having made a pact with it though he had never been taught how. The gryphon left him on the temple's doorstep, and Tonhon was given punishment for breaking the rules and endangering everyone by bringing a gryphon to the temple -- but behind his back a discussion took place among the elders. Eventually they decided to strip him of his robes and send him to the taskers as a mockery of his transgressions. Tonhon hid his delight.

Under the tutelage of the taskers, Tonhon proved to be very capable with the gryphons as well as with the passengers. His exuberant personality broke through again, and though he got in just as much trouble with the taskers as he had with the priests, he could always run away on the wings of a gryphon. He's grown up since then, and his ferry post has been tasked farther and farther away from his homeland, but Tonhon is still brimming with energy, quick with a laugh and eager to see what's on the next horizon.

^{art: Azure Blue Psychic by Han Yuan Yu}

Name: Soey

Abstract: The best and most renowned Traveler, holder of every world Traveling record

Name: Oyunguri

Abstract: The Storyteller

Detail: Under the bright stars and planets of the night desert sky, the young ones huddled round the campfire to hear the stories of titans and dragons.

"The dragons swarmed like wasps over the clouds," Oyunguri whispered, her hands curled like claws over her head. "They opened their fangy jaws and howled with a howl like thunder, their breath like the flares of the sun, or the rage of the ocean, or the crack of a mountain. The earth itself shook with fear to behold them, because they were hungry. Do you know what they craved?"

A child squealed: "Sourcestone!"

"They smelled the sourcestone!" Oyungui agreed with a hiss. "The sourcestone which is Telara itself, which is in every Eth and Mathosian, every Kelari and Bahmi, in you and in me. They would taste it, they would bite down with their great jaws, they would devour every last drop for their own bottomless savage greed!"

The children had heard the story a thousand times before, but still they clutched their blankets and dolls with excitable fright.

Since the beginning of Oyunguri's life, she had been earning the name of Storyteller. As a child she made up quick epics of sweeping fiery birds and heroes from afar, conquests and sprites and deep purpose behind the beetle eyes of woodland creatures. Once she had convinced the other children so confidently that the desert foxes were fairies in disguise that it took the village elder to put a stop to the secret smuggling of milk to their dens.

As she grew older, her skills took a shape altered from that of mischief. Oyunguri's sefir tell her own story of wandering alone in the desert for ten days, the last of the search party for a missing child; she had found the little girl buried in the sand against the beat of the sun, and had carried her home. They tell of the bloody attack of dragon-cult raiders, and how she had woven stories to keep the small and the helpless hopeful while swords clashed outside. They tell the story of the cold iced rain of a strange winter, and the fires and shelters that she had dreamed out of the broken totems of the ruins.

The tribe enjoyed a great bounty due to Oyunguri's limitless imagination and her quick use of the shining artifacts they found buried along their nomadic trails. The children declared that she took the artifacts to her dreams, and returned with new toys and warm blankets when supplies were thin. This very campfire had been forged in Oyunguri's dreams, and it flashed with flames of blue and white.

"The dragons circled overhead; their great leather wings boomed with each flap." She flapped her arms, bright with gold trinkets. "And then, the biggest of them all -- the dragon of death and extinction -- rose up dark and empty, and stole the breath from the world. He blotted out the sun, he shrouded the stars in death, and he said --"

KZZZKKKBOOOOOM

The sky cracked, and a colossal force ripped into the campsite. All she experienced was cold and darkness, and she felt her soul being ripped from her body before everything was shrouded in nothingness.

She awoke with a headache, in a cave, surrounded by machines and strangers, with the thunder of a lost battle crashing all around them. The children were long and far gone.