Wednesday, July 2, 2014

D&D Character Creation: Altia Pendra Denerian

(To be custom painted!)


So, during my designated "off time" or "break time", I do things like blogging and hanging out with friends, clearly. One thing today is a trip back in the direction of D&D and the like--namely, a WoW-based campaign that will be DM'd by Johnny (as usual). At a later point, I plan to try my hand at DM'ing and by Johnny's suggestion, the world will be Hyrule! (or Termina, something LoZ-related anyhow). We are doing this with Allen, and hopefully we will find more people to join in with us!

Based on what sort of miniatures I have access to through Johnny's collection or a cheap mail order, I have decided to go with a very righteous and holy kind of princess-y character. I imagine someone like Lacus--kind, loving, inspirational, motivating, poetic, and just--or someone like Arwen from Lord of the Rings. My character, the first female character of this gaming realm to be created by me so far, will fit into a polar archetype of holiness, healing, compassion, righteousness, shining benevolence, and princess-y-ness.



But there's a catch! Unfortunately, I won't be revealing that just yet. But there's more to her than what I've sad so far. So far for D&D/PF I've made a cursed, evil fish-man who was once a legitimate prince and is now out to seek vengeance and sow the seeds of despair, I've made a noble desert guy named Gohdann Wei'duk or something like that, and I've made a character named Xino, whose story I like a lot. I plan to write up a lot more about these characters when I can...

Here is our location:



Am I going to make up an overly deep, long and convoluted back-story for her like I have all my other characters? Hopefully not. But certainly, there will be more to her than meets the eye!

Here are some details about her:


  • First of all, I brainstormed a few words to draw from for her name. At this point I already know what she will look like, and that she will be a Cleric Healer. In the end, naming her did not take long, but her naming was nonetheless sophisticated as usual;
    • I brainstormed the words gold, light, marble (maybe this gives away my secret I have in store for her, along with some more words in this list...), penumbra (wink...), umbra (double-wink!), God, church, glimmer, shine, love, wand, and yandere.
    • I also thought of some inspirational sources such as Lacus Clyne, Fate's Saber (Arturia Pendragon, aka. King Arthur), the name of a whole world we created before for Pathfinder, that was itself based on four gods that we had already come up with--the world being called Tires ("tee-ress") Lunaltia ("Loon-alt-i-a"), and of course the "yandere" aspect, which really I just mean as an aspect of her aforementioned personality/archetype coupled with an espect of inner evil from trauma and horrible misfortune that could one day surface. This is also inspired by Sakura from Fate/StayNight and Fate Zero, who eventually becomes a dark variant of herself and becomes an incredibly major character in the Heaven's Feel (3rd) Fate route (which, as I've mentioned before in other posts, is being produced by Fate Zero's Ufotable and is coming out this October!!). Sakura happens to be the character for my customized "The Mimeoplasm" in Magic the Gathering EDH (Check out some of my cards here! Including my Sakura commander).
    • I came up with the first name Altia because it comes from "Lunaltia", part of our custom world's name (Tires Lunaltia), and because it sounds queenly and graceful in a way. By coincidence, it sounds like Arturia's (Saber; female King Arthur) name, which, in some English translations, is romanized as Altria. Furthermore, the name that comes next, Pendra, reminds of her (King Arthur's) last name of Pendragon. The difference is that Altia sounding like Saber's first name was a pure coincidence since it was taken from something entirely un-fate-related, whereas Pendra was deliberately taken from Pendragon. Pendra came to mind when I was thinking of how to make use of the word Penumbra in name construction, and the "dra" could just symbolize that she has a dragon (an evilness, though I guess she could very well have a dragon) inside of her. Lastly, Denerian was Denerya but I didn't want all three of her names ending in "a". In fact, my first name idea was either Luna-Tiresia Pendra Denerya, or Tiresia-Luna Pendra Denerya--either of which if used would have people call her just "Luna" in more casual situations, or something short like that, like just Tiresia. But Johnny and Allen both thought this name sounded bad, whereas they changed their minds when I tried her out as just Altia Pendra Denerya. I then changed Denerya to Denerian.
    • I DID NOT base the name off of Daenerys from A Game of Thrones; this naming similarity was just yet another coincidence, though now that I think about it, I don't mind at all that it sounds like her name, since the characters might share at least one or two major similarities and Daenerys is popular for a reason. But I have really good proof of not basing that name off of this character: I came up with Denerya by scrambling the word yandere (which, as described in the link where it is first mentioned, means a personality that is very positive and affectionate but has an extremely twisted side or tint to it, sometimes at the crossroads of sadistic and murderous. This also explains my double usage of the letter 'e'.
  • As for HER APPEARANCE:
    • Blond or white-ish hair--this may be changed completely if I go for pink!
    • Pretty pink eyes
    • Pale complexion
    • White, pinkish-white, blueish white, or greenish-white dress (any or all)
    • Many of the details you see in the picture at the top of this post (model)
    • Pink/Red lips/lipstick
  • So there you have it! Altia Pendra Denerian is born! I am not being too finicky or thoughtful this time about her skills and things, so I've started off choosing for her from the 4th ed. book skills such as Priest's Shield, Lance of Faith, Healing Strike, and Cascade of Light.
Here are her tentative parameters:

We rolled D6's (6-sided die) for our stats, giving us 6 different numbers to assign to whichever parameters we feel best represents our intended character. For each final number to be assigned to a parameter, we rolled four D6's and discarded the lowest number. Allen and I got really strong rolls for some reason, and as a result of this, my princess-y girl is even going to have high strength... Oh well! I actually rolled against Allen to decide whether we do point-buy (assign a set number as we like amongst our parameters) or random rolls, and Allen won so we did random rolls. Although I was opposed to the unfair risks of rolling for parameters, it turned out fine. All's well that ends well I guess...

STR-- 13
CON-- 13
DEX-- 13
INT-- 14
WIS-- 14
CHA-- 16

I prefer to do things flavourfully than to min/max, which isn't fun or interesting for me. Otherwise, I would put the 16 onto Wisdom and probably think harder about my skill selections. I plan to assign most of my points to Wisdom, Charisma, and basically anywhere but STR as she levels up! I guess for now I can just say... Holy power gives me strength, haha.



That's it...for NOW!






~Yukigami

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