Interest Check -- Play-by-Post RPG?

[Adelene]

Having poked at the canonical warforged-creation backstory, I think Lurkerforged was not personally created by Aaren; instead she was one of the first modern-type warforged made by other people in the house, possibly using a stolen and incorrectly-decoded set of Aaren's notes or possibly they made her small and weak on purpose for testing/containment reasons or possibly she's off-model for other reasons entirely. (I'm trying to avoid writing backstory for prominent NPCs if I can help it; JD, if you'd like to brainstorm some detail here that'd be cool, you can PM me for my IM info.) She may or may not be the 12th modern warforged, but even if she is, that's not her name in this case.

[jalapeno_dude]

Just a quick note to say that I'm still alive. Last week was incredibly busy and I need to take this week to get caught up. I will read over people's posts this weekend or sooner and try to give useful feedback on character concepts. In the meantime, feel free to start working out how you all ended up together, etc.

[PlainDealingVillain]

I have determined more details about Indiana Gnomes! His name is Odid Doriel Davandi (the runner-up name was Merud Duddedod Davandi which is Important but was not the right name.) He was born in Trolanport to a very political gnome family, and really hated the politics, so he left for the Library of Korranberg as soon as he could (he attended the history specialty college).

He's currently faculty at Morgrave University in Sharn, studies Xen'Drik (I'm leaning toward making his focus the eastern parts of the Hydra, but that can change for whatever's convenient to the setup) and spends as much time as he can in the field (far from Zilargo politics and, most importantly, his extended family). He plans on staying at Morgrave University, but to his family and anyone from Korranberg he frequently hints at the possibilities of starting a Korranberg subdepartment for Xen'Drik studies if he establishes a strong enough reputation as a Xen'Drik adventuring scholar/pioneer. His family may eventually catch on, but he is not an outcast... yet.

I'm thinking more about StevenChainsaw. I think Mama was Karrnathi, Daddy was from Cyre, and who knows what surname they ended up with since Daddy must have been going by a pseudonym... okay, lemme quote myself

Mama is the somewhat sheltered youngest daughter of a not particularly interesting noble family in Majority Human Country A. Daddy is a totally normal and definitely not dragonmarked artificer who certainly isn't on the run from Cannith or anything. They meet, fall in love, and run away to Majority Human Country B (Eldeen Reaches?), where they build a quiet life together and have a kid or three. Daddy dies early on, under mysterious circumstances that may or may not be related to how on the run from Cannith he isn't; Mama continues raising the kid(s) alone. Disruption occurs, in a way that either kills off the rest of the family, or at minimum separates StevenChainsaw from them in such a way that he is not willing or able to find them again. Now he's wandering the continent trying to stay out of trouble and looking for work doing what he does best: violence.

Let's call Mama... Marla ir'Amalys, I made that up... and Daddy can be Leon somebody-or-other, his birth surname is irrelevant because he's on the run from Cannith. Now I need a fake surname for Daddy, and I need some idea of what people name their children in any of these places. And then I try very hard to come up with a StevenChainsaw name that sounds right.

Since people seem to be unsure of what they want to do or how to move forward making specific plans, I will help narrow the decision space by declaring that I intend to play a halfling of House Ghallanda, who idolized the elves of Phiarlan and grew up dreaming of being a dancer and working hard towards that goal, and then manifested a dragonmark and suddenly had to learn to play hostess and diplomat. (I am kindof expecting we will have a lot of dragonmarked people in our party, given that most of the info we have on the setting is about the marks and their corresponding houses.) Other people with vague character concepts: let's try to figure out how our characters know each other/are connected and what might have got them both traveling in Xen'drik. (At minimum, my character is here because she can manifest food and shelter and has been hired by our patrons to do so for the party, but I'd *prefer* more personal motivation than that.)

I'd like to know what will count my character as sufficiently-created-soas-to-be-playable-in-this-game. I may just build her as a lvl 4 halfling bard in 3.5e, but IIRC the idea was for this to be a bit more free-form roleplaying and not strictly D&D rules?

I still unsure what I want for my character if it should be original or a template. My preliminary concept: a halfling (or human) raised by the Host's church who became a cleric of Boldrei, whom might ot might not have developed a Mark of Syberis for Healing. It would be the Meghan template (healer with some problems of being seen as weak for being a healer). I might complete change the concept

Further bits:

- Lurkerforged's name/designation is Twelve. She answers to it mostly on the basis that she'll answer to anything that's obviously enough someone trying to refer to her.

- She's believed that she's a person since the kobold trip. I don't want to step on JD's toes too much there, but I think it's reasonable for that interaction to have started with 'what kind of person are you' or 'are you a person' or something along those lines, and that's about all it'd take for her to go '...huh', even if they don't get into a deeper discussion with her on the topic like I think they do. (And having read what exists of the Eberron kobold background, I bet they have Opinions about humans playing god like this...)

- I found an answer to the warforged-creation question, I think; the example fighter in the Eberron Campaign Setting is a warforged who has a specific creator, and the creator is more or less just some random gnome artificer. (The warforged also has enough information about his creator to go find him after the war, which is interesting but not super relevant to my situation.) It could still be that the physical crafting part is handled by the forge and they just need artificers to run the magic, but that seems implausible to me given they apparently need enough workers that they're hiring outside the house.

- Therefore, Lurker does pretty definitely know blacksmithing. One implication of this is that she's made her own smithing and thievery tools; they're masterwork, and not just optimized for travel but also optimized for her in particular; they fit into/under/alongside/around her plating, so they're conveniently available and it's not particularly obvious she's carrying them at all.

- Oh that was the other thing: She can write and draw just fine, despite her trouble with speaking. This was a surprise, and the clue that put House Cannith on the path to fixing warforgeds' voices in general; they hadn't enspelled her to be able to write, and weren't expecting her to be able to. (The earlier ones would have been able to too, but weren't given enough opportunity to learn how or show that they could.)

...

Having poked at the canonical warforged-creation backstory, I think Lurkerforged was not personally created by Aaren; instead she was one of the first modern-type warforged made by other people in the house, possibly using a stolen and incorrectly-decoded set of Aaren's notes or possibly they made her small and weak on purpose for testing/containment reasons or possibly she's off-model for other reasons entirely. (I'm trying to avoid writing backstory for prominent NPCs if I can help it; JD, if you'd like to brainstorm some detail here that'd be cool, you can PM me for my IM info.) She may or may not be the 12th modern warforged, but even if she is, that's not her name in this case.

I'm thinking about a warforged (or perhaps a warforged scout). A former soldier who gradually takes on more scouting roles, and picks up a little artificing along the way, maybe running into some of the weird warforged-related stuff in Xen'drik. Bluelantern, you're not going for the warforged concept anymore, right?

Is this everyone so far, or am I missing one or more people?

[Urpriest]

If so, looks like an even half-dozen. How appropriate. ;)

[Eva]

>.>
<.<

I maaaaay desire to join this thing?

[jalapeno_dude]

>.>
<.<

I maaaaay desire to join this thing?

Go for it!

[Bluelantern]

Welcome to Team Smol and Mt. Friend? Unless you want to be another Mt.Friend too? Team Smol and The Peaks of Friendship? Yeah, that name is great and without any downside or problem at all.

[Eva]

I feel like this party needs a shifter or changeling. Or perhaps just an elf/dwarf/human.

Actually, 'token human' amuses me. :3c

[Kappa]

Mt. Friend is a human.

[Eva]

Oh, right! D'oh.

I'm tempted to go with 'half-elf dragonmarked scion of Lyrandar', actually. We could use a 'proper' dragonmarked heir to go along with the people hiding their marks/still getting used to them.