Came up with a character concept that's just so good that I wanna play this person in DnD at some point or read a story about this concept.
The party comes across an abandoned town. There are monsters everywhere, and as they're fighting, they meet a knight in full armor—no face or skin showing. The knight asks them if they too are here to pillage the town, and once the party confirms they're not bad people, promise, the knight greets them cordially, and introductions are made. As the party learns, this knight goes by the name of Crim, and Crim is VERY interested in helping the party clean out this town and VERY disinterested in leaving, claiming that "It's my duty to protect this place." However, the party members get Crim to leave by appealing to that universal experience of "this place is already a dump, and other people's homes are in danger." Thus, after a burial and ceremony, Crim goes with the party.
Crim is a paladin/knight type, through and through. Defending the weak, being knowledgable about armor and clothes, generally good-natured, tight-lipped about the past. Awkward around children, yet kind to them, eager to help and doesn't seem to sleep, slurp, or shit, which all makes sense once it becomes known that Crim here is actually dead, and is possessing a suit of armor—the one that instead of upgrading, Crim has been taking other pieces of armor and incorporating them into this very suit to make it stronger and sturdier. Well, no wonder Crim's so strongly "attached" to it. Hahaha.
The quest continues, and each time you're about to leave the county, country, or continent, Crim has these same worries about all of those poor people you couldn't save and couldn't help, wondering if it's really the right thing to leave them all behind. Each time, you have to remind Crim that of course it's all worth it; you ARE saving people, even if it's on a much bigger scale than "the bandits in the countryside."
All this time, you have gotten no real sense of who Crim is or was, beyond the semi-expected affection for armor maintenance (difficult, what with actually BEING the armor) and care when it comes to doing the laundry. However, you finally obtain Crim's ultimate weapon, and... it's not a sword. It's not an axe, or a glaive, or any other kind of "knightly" weapon. It's a hammer, and yet for all of its power, it's unadorned and plain. For some reason, it's known as the Forge God's hammer, and as Crim holds it, there's a somber satisfaction in the words that follow.
"...I was married to a blacksmith. He chose me from all others because my hands were colored with dye, and thus he knew they were the hands of one who would not hesitate to help him. He was a good man, one of the best. I tested his blades, and I wiped his brow. I assisted with his work, and he made mine bearable. I comforted him and cooked for him, wove his shirts and dyed them, and he took it upon his back to make me happy when even my own mother said such was too much to ask for. I bore him three children, and cried when they died before five summers passed. I did not shy away from my work even when my nails and skin cracked, for I've long known well the hue of human blood. But I did as I'd promised, and will always do: keep and defend the house while he is away."
And now, it makes sense. Crim is, and has always been, a person—not just a knight or a paladin or a revenant or kinda hot, ngl. Crim is devoted in a way that the ambitous will never understand. And holding that hammer, that simple-looking hammer, it's clear that what Crim intends to do with it is exactly the same as what's driven Crim from the time you met until now: keep and defend the house while the blacksmith is away.
Crim's not the princess, nor the hero, nor the almighty wizard, but Crim is the one most worth helping—those other party people are all unique, but there are a tragic number of people just like Crim with just as much richness and depth, who simply didn't get a second chance at "life."