Fifteen - The Characters of Christmas Past

We have been:

The Raiders of the Lost Knark

Todd, the Bored Druid

Arthad, the Black Knight

Kråkmåns Höghatt, the Faithful Dwarf

Aust Galanodel, the Visionary

Vackeria, the Wild Woman

The Sleepless Fellowship

Beo, the Absurd Hero

Ling / Ree / Arepo, the God of Paradoxes

Naseef, the Man Who Should Be Dead

Freddy the Cat, the King of Tigers

Aust Skywalker, the Last of Ban Lam

The Wizards of Jalan City

Vincent Mario Giovanni Winthrop, the Entrepreneur

Luke, the Child of Misfortune

Pervoslav, the Russian Scientist

The French Thief

The Mathematician

The Vampires of Berlin

Athela, the Beautiful Beast

Dragomir Zhukov, the Rogue

Zetha, the Doll

Ulrich, the Patriot

Plus Eddie, Mr. Crane, and many others

The Rune Pilgrims

Vesper Kite, the Hero of the Empire

Wade, the Champion of Death

Sojiro Naraku, the Lovestruck Sorcerer

Ulf, the Northerner

The Fandango Four

The Ultimate Fighter

The Hybrid

The Littlest Vampire

The Fat Ninja

The Exalted of the East

Vincent Cale, the Bronze Falcon

Zaraki Kensei, the Sword Saint

Lily, the Drug Queen

Sharif, the Monster

The Guardians of Shinwa Taizen

Song Hui, the Mistress of the Mindscape

Hyun Wook, the Hopping Vampire

David Blaze, the American Samurai

The Scions of Japan

Shinichi Kurode, the Aquacop

Magnus Magnusson, Thorboy

...and Brian.

The Blood-Bearers of Quetzalcouatl

James Fleming, the Monkey Man of Mystery

Rederick von Steinberg XIII, the Faceless Rogue

Setsuna, the Ojou-sama, and Setsu, the Godchild

The Ragnarök Renegades

Simo Pohjonen, the Finnish Sniper

Yvain the Dangerous, alias Åke Björk, the Fake

The Iron Librarian

The Protectors of Ptolus

Gell, the Paladin

Lupi, the Honourable Psycho

Storm, the Wild Druid, and Logan, the Sun's Chosen

The Agents of PSI

Assistant Director Jack Hudson, the Werewolf

Special Agent Karen Lennox, the Mage

The Hope of House Tepet

Tepet Kalyna, the Princess of Creation

Tepet Taran, her Bodyguard

The Military History Club

Lloyd Wilder, the Prince of Britannia

Cecil Darashia, the Psychic Prodigy

The Kingslayers

Gabrian De Veers, the Cold Killer

Garrus, the Iron Man

The New Kardus

Gehenna, the God of Judgement

Gwendolen, the Human

…and many, many others.

May their stories live forever, and may there be still more heroes in our future.

Merry Christmas, everybody!

Fourteen - BFFs

Here are some characters whose friendships were a huge part of their greatness.

Lloyd Wilder and Cecil Darashia - The Storm 'Verse, home of these two characters, revolves around two great principles: Passion and friendship. Despite their many differences, they exemplified both. Lloyd was a kind, friendly Prince, and Cecil a fierce, dangerous pauper – but they covered each others' weaknesses, both in combat and in social situations. Though they frequently misunderstood each other and caused unintentional trouble for themselves and their friends, they always had each others' backs – because that was the very first lesson they learned on their arrival to Eisenkrone Academy.

Gabrian and Garrus - This pair of Iron Heroes complemented each other very well, despite being mechanically rather similar. Both of them were damage-sponges, capable of enduring brutal beatings – and perhaps that was the cornerstone of their friendship in a sense, because they withstood terrifying punishments for each other. Garrus carried Gabrian out of a crumbling castle after a fight against the Demon King, and Gabrian delivered the death-blow to the dragon that nearly slew his friend. Theirs was a friendship worthy of Iron Heroes – a friendship forged in iron, and tempered in blood.

The Norlanders - Hoo boy, I doubt anyone has heard of these guys before. They were a Northern team of a berserker and a warrior-poet, appearing halfway through the Fairy Tale Game I ran in D&D a million years ago. Something about these two characters just clicked with each other. They were created to be friends, and they lived up to it – right up until the bitter end, surrounded by enemies in a pitch-black cave.

Thirteen - Freaks and Monsters

Today we take a look at some seriously scary characters.

Sharif - Sharif is the first character that springs to mind on this theme. An unkillable man-eating shapeshifter with a severely disturbed mind, Sharif reads like some horror movie monster but was, in fact, a Lunar Exalt from the Chronicles of the Bronze Falcon. He Exalted due to his tenacity and perseverance in surviving a famine, but he also killed and ate his brother in the process, something which... well, pretty much broke his mind. Only very barely human in any sense of the word, Sharif remained playable because of his strong loyalty to the Solar Exalted, who perhaps, perhaps, might one day fix him. Or, you know, just unleash him upon their unsuspecting enemies. And occasionally friends.

Wade, the Champion of Death - Wade was actually a quite benevolent character, but that didn't stop him from being scary and weird. Wade had fallen in love with Death itself, and devoted his life (or weird pseudo-life, as it were) to her service, harvesting souls and bringing euthanasia to those who needed it. An Arcana Evolved Champion of Death, Wade was very, very, very good at killing stuff, but only ever did it when appropriate – a death-dealer in moderation, inhuman yet with a strong moral code. As he found out near the end of his life, his predecessor Hamadathurian had not been thus restricted.

The Littlest Vampire - I have sadly forgotten his/her name, but this character – from Trigonometry Fandango, a freeform anime-themed game – was the creepy kid-trope incarnate. A soulless female vampire, forced to reside in the body of a little boy, the Littlest Vampire was a murderous little child who specialized in slashing tendons, so that people fell over and could be properly disposed of. Although his/her team also contained no less than two super-powerful killing machines, neither of them could really match him/her in terms of cold-bloodedness.

Athela - seductive, manipulative, psychotic. Likes: Crushing peoples' will, necrophilic threesomes, stalkers. Dislikes: Water, especially in Berlin. 'Nuff said.

Twelve - The Opposite of Optimized

You are really terrible at your job.

Tepet Taran - Sure, Taran did protect his princess and did eventually deliver her to the Blessed Isle – but that didn't stop him from being terrible at his job. A Dragon-Blooded socialite whose only real reason for existing was being married off to some other important House, Taran was chosen for a super-important world-spanning covert mission solely because nobody would really miss him. He did have a few redeeming skills, sure – he knew how to parry attacks (because “Not the face! Not my pretty face!”) and he could... Hm. I guess he could also jump kind of far? Either way, he wasn't exactly the best guy to drag along on a trek through the wilderness.

Todd Ark - Todd, a member of the Raiders of the Lost Knark, was admittedly pretty okay at being a druid – but kind of awful at being an adventurer. A half-fey druid with butterfly wings and antennae, he grew up in a home with a talking stump, fairies coming to visit, unicorns grazing in the garden and all kinds of weird phenomena – yet in spite of this he had the personality of a particularly bored desk clerk. What made him bad at his job was that, being a D&D character, he was supposed to kill monsters and take their stuff – but he was far more interested in relaxing hobbies like gardening or taking a leisure trip with his yacht.

Jack Hudson and Karen Lennox - basically the worst police duo ever. They got better after they turned into a werewolf and a wizard, admittedly, but for being an FBI agent and a highly trained NYPD officer, they were remarkably bad at actually solving crimes. It's a good thing they soon moved on from crime-solving and into the more esoteric realm of... um... whatever you call all the weird stuff they did.

Almost every character by VMGW's player - I tried really hard to pick just one, but I couldn't. The defining feature of his characters seem to be “really good at lots of things, none of them applicable or relevant to the adventure”. I suppose the best exception I can think of is Vesper Kite, who actually was pretty decent at serving the Empire and the Church by being a swordsman. He, uh... ended up murdering the Pope. There were reasons.

Eleven - Powerhouses of Powerful Power

Like the fist of an angry god.

Timothy Luvenhay - Tim takes the cake when it comes to being a powerhouse of powerful power. A four foot tall speedster, Tim had pretty much every power source you could stack onto a single character in the Arcana Evolved system. He could run so fast that battlefield composition didn't matter to him at all, he could turn into lightning, he could keep fighting even while dead, and this is all on top of his swordfighting skills which were his actual signature power. Tim single-handedly defeated a Rakshasa Mage King and his unbeatable undead bodyguard in the span of three rounds of combat, something I will never forgive him for.

Mr. Smith - Mister Smith was pretty much just a straight-up attempt at playing the system in the NWoD rules if I don't misremember, but he accomplished the feat quite admirably. A super-duper-secret agent, Smith featured only for around two sessions but packed enough firepower to take out even supernatural enemies without being noticed – which is quite a feat in a system where mortals are designed to be extremely squishy, even if he didn't get many chances to shine.

David Blaze - David, from the Japanese Mutant game, wasn't intentionally designed to break the game system or anything – far from it – but over the course of his career, he became pretty much synonymous with “unstoppable in combat”. Of course, since the game wasn't heavily combat-focused, this made him more of a specialist character than anything else; he still needed his friends in a multitude of situations – but when it came to plain fighting, David was pretty much the best. Only two things ever really posed a threat to him: the symbiote super-soldier Aku-Shin Kage, and the insane vampire that lived inside his closest friends' head.

Zaraki, again - Zaraki may have been a pretty silly character, but man that guy could kill stuff. When you make a character whose highest passion in life is “swords”, and that guy also happens to be a Solar Exalt... things die. A lot.

Ten - ...instead of these comedians

Today, we take a good look at hilarity.

Mr. White - Mister White makes the list again. A rotund, fat little man whose love of money was only exceeded by his love of chicken, Mister White was a banker in a freeform Wild West game whose special talent was being able to run ridiculously fast. That was it, really. He sucked at everything from gun-slinging to surviving in the desert, and the combination of being absolutely useless and completely obsessed with chicken makes him one of the funniest characters I have ever seen.

Zaraki - Zaraki was the poster child for “one-track mind”. He cared for exactly two things – swords and womanizing – and he cared about them to ludicrous degrees. He was a Solar Exalt in the Chronicles of the Bronze Falcon, and though he had his moments in the limelight, he was primarily a comedic character. To be precise, he was an idiot. Rarely have I seen any player commit so much to a funny concept, to the degree that he actually memorized a children's book because it seemed like something his character would do. Zaraki read it to his daughter, who was a genius prodigy. She wasn't amused.

Brian Ansiell - Scion of Anansi, Brian's special power was being able to convince anyone of anything – well, that, and causing mayhem. A character with no real motivation, Brian just stumbled through life and did whatever amused him, which put him in a multitude of wacky situations. He owned a pet jaguar for a while, he became a member of the Yakuza, and he almost kidnapped a celebrity chef. I doubt he ever really knew why he did... well, any of the things he did. I guess he didn't need a reason.

Ling Tem'Enneth - Ling “died” pretty early in the Arcana Evolved game, to be reborn as Ree Kaspathodex – which was perhaps for the best, because the original Ling was batshit crazy. He makes this list because I have rarely seen a character commit so hard to always having his hit points be in the single digits. Ling fell off roofs, fell out of trees, fell into thorny bushes... I don't remember any enemies actually hitting him in combat, but then again, there was rarely any reason to target him in the first place.

Nine - A Toast To Absent Friends...

These are the characters of some of the people I haven't played with for a good long while.

Vincent Mario Giovanni Winthrop, from Mage: The Ascension. An iconic character in every way, Mr. Winthrop was a stockbroker who could manipulate time. Constantly armed with his pocket watch (except for that one time it turned into raspberry ice cream as a Paradox backlash), Mr. Winthrop was a wealthy man and linguistic genius with no real applicable skills for the adventure – trademark of his player, who seemed to make a sport out of giving his characters powers that were entirely irrelevant to the task at hand.

Naseef, from Arcana Evolved: Breath of the Ancestors. Naseef was, on the face of it, a simple humble woodsman – and though his eventual career took a very different turn, it's his initial plain nature that makes him iconic. No frills, no bells and whistles, just a straightforward everyman trying to survive in a dangerous world. He was eventually corrupted by Requiem, a sword possessed by a powerful Spirit of Death, and turned into an avatar of death itself – before being redeemed at the Tree of Life, and swearing an oath to defend humanity.

Freddy the Cat, also from Breath of the Ancestors. Freddy was a happy-go-lucky thief and master of disguises, who – perhaps unlike the other characters in the story – remained more or less himself even as he grew and changed. It is precisely this happy-go-lucky nature that I think makes him iconic to his player; even in the face of dire tragedy, he kept on smiling. While he ultimately learned a lesson about responsibility, he never ceased to be an optimist.

Aust Galanodel, from Raiders of the Lost Knark. While Aust would reprise in Breath of the Ancestors, I think I liked the original Aust just a little bit better. Aust was an idealist, a visionary, and a mad scientist. He entered the story as an elf seeking to rescue his wife, but as his need for power constantly increased, so did his addiction to it. Aust was a futurist and transhumanist – or I suppose, trans-elf-ist – and his quest for greatness is something that rings through in all characters from his player. The first Aust, with his prosthetic ruby hand and mind-rewriting powers, stands out as the best example.