25 Questions For Your D&D Characters and OCs - Mirezur edition!
1. What is this character’s alignment?
2. What is a notable quote from this character? Alternatively, what is their favourite quote?
Ok look I know I should have thought of a cool quote, and maybe later I will, but at the moment all I can think of is this exchange that happened ages ago—
Another party member: Right, I look around the tavern for someone to try and get information from.
DM: There’s a barmaid standing next to the bar.
Party member: Oooh, nice, I go over and try to flirt—
The men of the party recoil, that party member flounders for a second
Mirezur: *immediately slides over* Hey gurl, what’s up.
3. Summarize your character’s backstory with no more than three sentences.
Mire is a first-generation Half-Orc, and was born to an initially politically-married but eventually loving Human man and Orc woman; they married to help solidify the amalgamation of an Orc tribe and a Human clan, which becomes successful and prosperous, and Mirezur’s early years are very happy. But of course, I wrote this, so then shit hits the fan: a fanatical blood-purist organisation targets the settlement and kills all the adults (including Mire’s parents) and kidnap and enslave the mixed-blood children, and Mire and her friends live like this for several years before they are rescued by a Robin-Hood-esque criminal group known as the Firebird Syndicate. Most of the rescued children are eventually re-homed, but Mirezur stays with the Syndicate and earns herself the Criminal background by working with them as a small-time enforcer and healer; lots of stuff goes down in those years, the most notable of which is that she helps raise a High Elf child, and now she’s part of an adventuring group rooting out dragons around Faerun and wondering where her life went wrong.
Yikes that got dangerously close to four sentences!
4. Describe your character using a song title.
I hope you’ve learned by now that I can’t limit myself to just one song title.
Get Home, Bastille (ok the title isn’t very descriptive, but this song is so the background track to Mire’s life that I had to include it)
Like A Mountain, Timber Timbre
Holding On To Good, Delta Rae
Harmless Monster, CocoRosie
5. Are there any story arcs you would like this character to explore?
What I really want to do with Mire is hash out the specifics of her life with the Syndicate, bc I have noooo idea about what that was like yet, and it’ll be so much fun to work on!! The reason I keep putting it off is bc it’ll mean I need to create a whole bunch more characters, which is time consuming and also I will want to get perfect, since I want the Syndicate to be really synergistic and I do not… have the best track record with making things synergistic…
6. What would your character like (or have liked) to do with their life?
To be honest, she was too young to have concrete life plans when her birth family was killed, so in that respect the criminal life is all she’s really known, and I suppose all she ever expected she’d know. I think she probably assumed she’d spend the rest of her life working with the Syndicate (and later, working with the Syndicate and looking after Samara), and while adventuring is not super removed from that, it lacks that home base that she envisioned herself having, and that honestly she still wants.
7. Who is your character’s best friend?
In the adventuring party, Ikki the Aarakocran monk, without a doubt! She probably has a best friend (or at least close friends) in the Syndicate, but as I confessed earlier I have done no work on those characters (except that there’s at least one Tiefling, and one hijabi woman who may or may not be a Medusa, and someone is named Naro), so I don’t know who they are! Also her adoptive daughter Samara rates a mention here :)
8. Who is your character’s worst enemy?
There’s probably some corrupt lord asshole in Anstyr who is the Sworn NemesisTM of the Syndicate, and if you asked Mire that’s what she’d say, but I don’t think she has a personal worst enemy.
9. Who has, for better or worse, had the most impact on your character’s life?
Every time I answer this question it comes back to “the plot device I used to kill off the character’s loved one/s” which is just making me really sad. So, specifically, that’s the leader of the blood-purist group that raided the Orc-Human settlement where Mire was born.
10. What is the most badass thing this character has done?
I’m like 90% sure that Mire is my oldest living child, and surely someone who’s been around that long has done awesome badass stuff, but I just??? Can’t remember anything?? I’ll ask my party on Monday :/ In the meantime: every single instance of Spiritual Guardians. That shit WRECKS.
UPDATE: A couple weeks ago, one of the other characters (Ikki, Mire’s closest friend) was flying above a giant pool of water and got grabbed and pulled under by some creature I’ve forgotten the name of. We were all panicking and thining they were genuinely going to die, but then I suddenly remembered (sorry Lauren that it took so long) that one of Mire’s domain spells is Control Water! So then the first thing she did in combat was to Moses-and-the-Red-Sea the fuck out of that lake, and then hold it for the entire combat while still taking potshots at the bad guys. That was great!!
11. What crime is this character most likely to be convicted of?
So much murder!! But also aiding and abetting in multiple crimes, both petty and much larger. I think of all my characters Mire would definitely have the longest rap sheet. Probably rivalled by Nettle, since she also does a lot of killing and stealing and is also way older than Mirezur, but Nettle didn’t actively dedicate her life to crime like Mire did.
12. What meme would you use to describe the character?
Do dad jokes count as a meme? Because she’s definitely gleeful, self-aware dad jokes.
13. Does this character swear frequently?
She swears just as much as is needed. So, considering her party is fighting dragons at the moment, a lot.
14. What is this character’s relationship with religion or the church?
On the one hand she’d relatively devout, since she is a cleric after all, but on the other hand… it’s a bit more complicated. Religion hasn’t ever dictated her life the way it has with Jasher’s, despite how important being a healer is to her – I think she regards it as a means to and end (i.e. looking after her friends), and is kind of wary about gods and religion. They’re too enormous and too old to make sense – they look at the big picture, and she’s very much a little-picture kind of person, so she feels like she can’t understand them, and that makes her distrustful.
But also, she needs Njord, her god, to a certain extent, and not just for healing. With him around, it’s easier to ignore the Mark of Gruumsh, the chaotic evil Orc god of destruction, that gnaws away at the back of her brain. She’s quite certain she wants to evade that part of her heritage, and Njord makes doing so easier. Eventually, as she gets older, she’ll get a bit more comfortable with Njord’s presence in her life, and let herself rely on him and almost regard him as an old friend, and know that he won’t feel slighted if she spends her last days in the monastery of a different god.
15. Would this character ever make a deal with a devil or dark spirit?
Not of her own will, but if the right leverage was applied, then yes.
Soup. This is my fourth time doing this meme and I still can’t get over how weirdly specific this question is.
18. What is the character’s favourite Pokémon?
As per, I have no actual knowledge of pokemon and as such am just picking at random from this list. Kangaskhan, Sandslash, Venonat/Venomoth, Aggron, Entei, Teddiursa
19. What Pokémon Go team would they be on?
20. Is your character currently in love? Is there anyone in love with your character?
Nope and nope. Or, actually, not sure on the second one since I haven’t 10000% nailed down her backstory, but probably not :P
21. Do you ship your character with any other characters? (This includes characters from other universes and canons)
I ship her with growing old happily and dying at an old age surrounded by her friends and family.
22. How would this character seduce a lover?
Despite what my answer to question two might suggest, not suavely. In the least. In fact, the process would probably not be called ‘seduction’ at all, being so removed from the destingué that the word suggests. Let that be your answer.
23. If your character could play any part in a drama, stage production, or musical, what part would they play?
Shit, I’m running out of plays that I’m really familiar with, and also out of characters that would be amenable to being in a play at all. She’s not really the sort to want to be in the middle of attention like that? But for the sake of the question, maybe someone from Much Ado About Nothing or the Merchant of Venice bc I can only think of Shakespeare plays at the moment and those are my favourites :P
24. What is your character’s favourite album?
Twenty One Pilots’ Blurryface, and Delta Rae’s Carry the Fire. Though it’s so funny to think of DnD characters listening to modern music, haha
25. What does this character mean to you?
Hoo boy, I’m not gonna try and answer this one in its entirety, because that would get long and personal. None of Mire’s pieces quite fit together tidily, which is something I really relate to, and love being able to play. Well, not love, maybe, because it hits a bit close to home, but – it’s valuable, and I love Mirezur, and it’s nice to just be able to love someone, who is, I guess, like me.
So in case people who don’t know Mire are reading this post, she’s a Tempest Cleric of Njord, and I’m sure there’s a way to play that in a devastating and efficient way, but I don’t know what that way is, so Mire ends up being really torn between healing her friends and whaling on their enemy. It all comes down to protecting the people she loves, and can result in her really beating herself up when bad stuff happens because what if she could have prevented it by healing rather than fighting? Or by fighting rather than healing?
And apart from that she has some anxiety issues going down and feels like she doesn’t really belong in the party and wants to go home and be with her friends and family. The adventuring isn’t really the problem, it’s the lack of a solid home base and support system, which was a big thing growing up since it was one of the few things she unquestionably had. I feel like I accidentally make a lot of my characters wanderers, people who only feel at home on the road (for good reason!! this is like the only way i’ve managed to make characters who are really fine and happy to be ever-moving adventurers), and this is the absolute diametric opposite of me, so I may have accidentally taken out those repressed just-let-me-stay-in-on-place-jesus-christ feelings on poor Mire. Actually, she’s the one I take out my repressed feelings on in general, which has just ended up with me being very emotionally invested in this character in a campaign with a slightly sadistic DM who regularly puts us up against stuff that kills party members. Which was a poor idea, really. I did not think that one through.
Anyway! I have a lot of feelings about Mirezur, my daughter of two worlds, my mixed-race, mixed-up sunshine who just wants to be safe.
