Four - Karen Lennox

Ah, Karen. She was all over the place – I think that's the best way to describe her. Impulsive, rash, ridiculously brave, sometimes oddly brilliant, sometimes criminally insane. It goes without saying that she illustrates her player's style quite nicely.

Karen Lennox was a police officer, who first became an investigator of the supernatural and thereafter a Willworker - a spellcaster extraordinaire. She specialized in mind-magic and warping space, and many of her greatest moments revolved around Thinking With Portals. Her adventures were strange, to the point of becoming outright comic-book bizarre. She fought her own evil clone created by the Mothman, she was almost possessed by a former college professor, and she killed some random woman by dropping scuba gear from a paraglider. I don't think anything will top the sheer weirdness of that last decision.

Karen existed in a world where supernatural creatures frequently rubbed elbows, and she seemed to live by the maxim that whatever doesn't kill you, simply makes you stranger. She was arguably crazy – but on the other hand, she lived in a crazy world. Her lateral thinking often backfired, but it can't be denied that some of her plans were surprisingly successful.

Her most triumphant moment may have been using the Supernal Tarot to ascend to the Mindscape, narrowly avoiding her death even when her body was ripped to pieces, and thereafter being reborn from her friend's right rib. It's a great example of the sort of mad-scientist thinking she usually deployed.

Three - Tepet Kalyna

Kalyna was iconic to her player for many reasons, but I think the chief reason is that she started as a blank slate. Kalyna was pre-generated, an ordinary, rather dull princess-type character whose only ambition in life was to marry a prince and live happily ever after. Then, the world of Exalted brutally caught up with her.

Kalyna was cast into the wilderness in the company of a total stranger, developed elemental superpowers, travelled to the ends of the earth, fought against tyrants and monsters, had a baby, and lived with a primitive tribe for three years. It's hard to imagine a more adventurous and eventful life, even for a roleplaying character, and the way she handled it was amazing and impressive. More than any other character I've seen, Kalyna grew organically. All roleplaying characters, of course, are shaped to some degree by their circumstances – but she may be the most triumphant example of such a development, and therefore, perhaps the most triumphant example of her players' style.

One of Kalyna's coolest moments, I think, was taming the Sky-Dragon in the Indicara Valley. She caught, tamed, and learned to ride on a giant pteranodon, and then used it to paradrop into a Fair Folk-infested ruined temple. The plan went off without a hitch, but even for a Dragon-Blooded hero it was pretty insane.

Two - Dragomir Zhukov

Dragomir is another case of a first character who really holds up. Even as a player grows, learns, and tries out different things, sometimes you just click right away. Dragomir emerged in the long and complex Berlin chronicle, stepping onto the stage almost by accident but remaining in the spotlight for the remainder of the chronicle. Which was ironic, because Dragomir mostly dwelled in darkness.

A Russian street-kid turned vampire, Dragomir stumbled into the machinations of the Sangiovanni family mostly because he was too clueless to fear them. After that, his unlife became one of strange irony. He tipped the scales of city-wide politics without being interested in them, and had fortune falling in his lap without knowing why. What was ultimately the strangest about Dragomir, however, was how well he always did in spite of being intentionally sabotaged by his player.

Dragomir was the first example of “helping” I've seen, a character whose player almost seemed to have it out for him – he became saddled with phobias, addictions, and obsessions, and yet in spite of his rapidly declining mental health he somehow managed to keep going. He was a great example of a character who creates conflict sometimes merely by existing – the scorpion to Berlin's toad, someone who's destructive not because he wants to, but simply because it is in his nature.

I don't think Dragomir ever reflected on his actions. His player certainly did, and that definitely makes him an iconic character.

The most memorable moments with Dragomir tend to be his failures, for some reason. I think the time he stole a sacrificial dagger out of sheer kleptomania, only to realize he'd just robbed a group of werewolves, may qualify as one of the funniest. Did I mention he had a crippling phobia of dogs?

One - Beo

We start here, at the beginning. I had already played for five years when I began running Arcana Unearthed, but Breath of the Ancestors turned out to be a very different sort of game – one that had the lofty goal of exploring the human condition. It did so partly through the story, but primarily through the characters. Beo was an interesting case.
An orphan and runethane apprentice, Beo had been forcefully transformed into a mojh, a genderless reptilian – and also carried the dormant mind of Xethar Ar'Nuade, the Sleepwalker, bound with an unbreakable rune inside him. Beo's struggle was one of freedom – freedom from Xethar, freedom from his reptilian form, and ultimately, freedom from destiny itself. A very tragic hero, Beo destroyed everything he held dear yet kept on fighting out of a sense of responsibility. Beo was, basically, the first roleplaying character I'd seen with a rich and complex inner life, one whose dulled emotions were gradually replaced with oaths and responsibilities, yet whose very fundamental struggle was one of liberation. He was a revolutionary, both in the story and in terms of how I've come to view roleplaying games.
Beo is an iconic character. He is the epitome of his creator's style, a conflicted and tragic hero whose weaknesses are far more interesting than his strengths.
Beo had many cool moments, but I think my favourite may yet be his final confrontation with the Council of Dragons, in which he denied them dominion over the world out of sheer spite. They offered him everything he wanted, but he turned them down simply because he really, really, really hated those guys – and in doing so, saved the world. Or possibly doomed it; we never actually found out.

Roleplaying Memories

So, I've been writing a little list of RPG characters that I've grown fond of over the years. Originally I was going to email them to everyone, but then I figured hey, why not post them here instead? I could space them out a little between now and Christmas, and make sort of "traditional" advent calendar - one with no story, but rather a bunch of pictures.

I'm not sure if I can think of 23 characters, so for now I'll just be doing one per day. Maybe there'll be more if I can think of them. The first entry will be posted... presently.

The Definition of Music Fan

When can you call yourself a fan of a certain band or artist? How much of their music need you have heard before it crosses from "I like these songs" to "I like this band", you think?

An Argument For Eugenics

I woke up this morning to a little informational video about introversion and extroversion. It had a few things to say about these two ends of a rather complex spectrum, but the bottom line - the idea behind the video - was that modern society is being pretty mean to introverts. Our society values traits like aggression, risk-taking, boldness, and social interaction very highly over traits like contemplation, focus and a careful nature.
I have personally found this to be true. I am far more proud of the outgoing aspects of my nature than the more abundant introspective traits. It isn't strange that it should be so. Modern society is highly based on social interaction and communication - the ability to form casual contacts is very important, and high social mobility means we must constantly adapt to new kinds of society. It is no accident that the hero of our times is the con-man, the pick up artist, the audacious social explorer.
The video I saw said that, as extroversion or introversion are part of our genes, to discriminate based on these traits it is equal to racism and sexism, and here is where I found myself disagreeing. There is a fallacious logic in racism or sexism that does not seem to apply here; race or sex is not inherently tied to behaviour. Introversion is, by its very definition. And so, perhaps, it may be argued that introversion is doomed to go the way of the dinosaurs; it is an outlived phase of human evolution. At best, it is a disability to be cured.
Should we "cure" people of contemplation, focus, and a quiet nature? Why not? The traits are far less useful than the ability to interact openly. This applies, seemingly, in all strata of society.
So here it is, then, an argument for eugenics. Introverts, including myself, are rapidly becoming fossils, remarkably out of place in the Facebook age. Evolution has a way of handling things on its own, of course - so there is no need to actually remove people from the gene pool - but when a behaviour is harmful, we also have no reason to interfere when it naturally diminishes or dies out.
Then this is the argument, distilled to its cold, Darwinian core:
Introverted people are disappearing. Let them.