What if a tiefling barbarian raised by a dragon who thinks he’s just a weird small dragon since he has horns/chromatic skin/a tail? And he doesn’t know anything about society because he grew up in a cave with treasure and stuff but no contact with people. And the dragon finally decides he needs to go out into the world because non-dragons age so fast, they just realized he’s actually already an adult and knows nothing about being an adult tiefling, so he gets kicked out of the nest to go adventuring and learn how to be a person in society.
My Pathfinder tiefling barb Umbrolus got engaged last night while celebrating saving the country, before the final dungeon. So here’s the card of him and his now fiancée Kleio~
This week in pathfinder we fought an evil televangelist, befriended an intelligent ooze who I gave a hat to, and had an impromptu prayer session to Desna in hopes of saving one of our long time enemies because we found out her tragic past, but she’s irreversibly mind dominated by a robot god so we have to kill said god to have a chance to save her.
We also met Umbrolus’ step mom (mom? Ex-mom? I’m not sure what to call her exactly…she was his parent’s mate and then left, Umbrolus doesn’t consider her his mom and Aethervox considers her their former mate), a vortex dragon who once murdered an entire planet. She and Umbrolus’ other parent Aethervox had a falling out when she stole their research and bamphed off to Numeria—to work for an evil robot god apparently. Also apparently she was the one who named Umbrolus so that was a surprise since he definitely assumed Becrux just tolerated his presence at best. He was pretty young when she left so he didn’t really remember her or have an emotional attachment to her beyond hearing all bad things about her from Aethervox for years, and then she stole from Aethervox again recently and has been scrying on him for weeks now just for the hell of it. Umbrolus wanted to go in and intimidate her, but got cowed almost immediately when he realized just how little of a leg he had to stand on trying to sound like a threat to an invisible buffed dragon in her own den with very little to back it up. We’ve decided to make a tactical retreat to destroy the Overlord Robot to present its corpse to Becrux as a show of might to intimidate her into letting us pass without a fight.
Now that the party’s met here’s here’s the mini I painted for Becrux. And a family photo of her, Aethervox, and Umbrolus~
I love that now I can have minis of all three of them so once the campaign’s over I can store them all together.
(Also Kleio’s player pointed out to me that Aethervox and Becrux are the LonelyEyes ship of this campaign, if they survive they’ll just keep getting back together and then getting divorced for the most absurd over the top reasons. And I will *absolutely* work this into the canon of my Crystal Hearts dragon campaign somehow.)
What I expected vs how my Pathfinder PCs turned out.
Roland:
What I expected: Angsty redemption arc of a flawed person trying to be a better man
What I got: Angsty redemption arc of a flawed person trying to be a better man while also being the mother hen to a bunch of reckless adventurers. Also he turned out to be undead all along which was a surprise to everyone involved.
Sai:
What I expected: Timid bat witch raised by a hag with questionable morals learning how to people while hiding from said mother.
What I got: Timid bat girl latched onto the most morally dubious party member and adopted him as her surrogate brother. Her morality got a bit dark in the process. She turned someone into a bug.
Kiyo:
What I expected: Being a plague doctor, kicking drug dealers’ butts, trying to cure death, and maybe a little distain for the gods.
What I got: Vigilante justice, panic attacks, existential crisises, falling in love with a cleric of the god of death and having to re-examine everything they stand for. Still a plague doctor who hates drug dealers when they have down time though.
Lucien:
What I expected: Happy fun time adrenaline junkie gambler cleric for a one shot.
What I got: Oh no it was longer than a one shot and that means I started thinking about motivations. Oh no there’s deeper reasons he’s like this. Oh no I made it angsty again.
Haruki:
What I expected: Fallen hero assassin drow, very cool
What I got: Fallen hero drow rogue who is very angry and insecure. Has the temper of Edward Elric being called short.
Kaius:
What I expected: Spend half the campaign telling lies that subtly conflict with each other until the other players start to notice the discrepancies, then let them try to get the truth out of him that he was just working to get money for his sick daughter and lord because he didn’t want any enemies he made coming after her or her mother. I expected him to lie about everything to the party at every turn, and to spend a lot of time trying to keep his stories straight and subtly failing.
What I got: I happened to choose the city for his family to be from that we’d be visiting session 1, and by the end of the *first* session we’d broken into the museum Kaius’ ex wife was performing at for the opening of an exhibit, stole the center piece of the exhibit which turned out to be a bowl that could turn water into a medicine that could cure any ill, Kaius jumped out of a moving bus in the middle of a car chase with the bowl to get it to his daughter to cure her illness, and the next day he confided his entire backstory to the party’s cleric as thanks since she’d entrusted him with the artifact despite barely knowing him. Then later it turned out she was brainwashed and part of a cult wanting to hand the world over to a god of slavery and forced perfection, so doing so *did* end up putting his ex and daughter in danger. Oops. In between point A and point B though, without the weight of worrying about his daughter’s health and safety, Kaius ended up loosening up and without a goal in the party beyond owing the cleric, he decided to make his own fun and started pranking the other party members and starting harmless amusing rumors wherever they went for the shits and giggles.
Umbrolus:
What I expected: Tiefling who thinks he’s a dragon and struggles with his innate rage from his oni ancestry.
What I got: Tiefling who thinks he’s a dragon and struggles with his innate rage, who met a weird cute smart Lashunta bard in the woods before the campaign even began, and then decided against my will as his player that he was going to fall in love with them and protect them forever. And then he did.
Draven:
What I expected: Emotionally broken child soldier demon slayer who thinks he brings death to those who get close to him happy fun times.
What I got: Emotionally broken child soldier demon slayer who *is convinced* he brings death to those who get close to him…who also happened to be the only Iomedean near the Chosen One when he died prematurely, and said Chosen One was also his friend whose shattered soul vouched for his capabilities, so now he’s the only one who can wield the holy blade that should not have been his in the first place. Said holy blade doesn’t really like him much. Also he’s acting captain of his unit now. He did not ask for this responsibility.
Beautiful tarot card of my barbarian tiefling Umbrolus and his SO, our archivist bard Kleio, from our Iron Gods campaign. Umbrolus likes scooping up Kleio, they’re very scoopable. I adore how they turned out 💜
15, 16, 35, and 46 for the extremely detailed OC ask meme please!
Thank you 😊 I’ll go with my dragon-tiefling Umbrolus since he’s on my mind at the moment.
15: can they sing? Can they dance?
For a given value of sing and dance. Umbrolus does have a nice singing voice, especially in draconic, but he’s had no vocal training or anything so he’s not trained singer levels of good. Just an average guy with a decent voice singing in a foreign tongue so it’s probably harder to catch his mistakes if you don’t speak draconic.
As for dancing...he’s never tried, and if he danced with someone (Kleio) he’d probably be so happy and excited that his tail would be swishing around and smacking everyone else around him.
This would not stop him from trying given the chance.
16: Can they drive?
Nope but I’d love to see someone put him behind the wheel of a spaceship if we ever unearth a working spacecraft. That would end badly. It would be glorious.
Not including technology he doesn’t know how to use, he doesn’t know how to drive a carriage either. He likes the horses though.
35: What are they like as a friend?
Umbrolus is an extremely loyal friend. You know in some video games where you get someone’s friendship up and it says that character will now die for you? That’s Umbrolus for all his friends immediately the moment he decides they’re his friend. Umbrolus’ first instinct is ‘Protecc’. Even if it puts him in danger instead. He is also very loving and generous, he likes making pieces of jewelry for his friends and loved ones, and buying things for them (because he doesn’t see much point in money besides either using it on his friends or making a dragon hoard...and he doesn’t have enough to be worth making a hoard of.) He’s extremely inquisitive, since he doesn’t know a lot about the world at large due to his isolated upbringing. If he asks his friends about something he’ll take whatever answer they give at face value, and trusts implicitly that they’ll be honest with him. Even if they’re a proven habitual liar.
46: if this character were in a musical, what would their motif be?
Umbrolus would have two, one for his usual self and one for his enraged self.
Note I know nothing about music so this is all based on what I feel would work not what might actually make sense 😂
His normal persona would have very light playful instruments. I’m thinking piano and flutes, but anything kind of light and airy would work.
His rage persona would be the same tune, but with darker sounding more bass-y instruments, either a faster more chaotic pace or a slower more ominous pace, and beating drums.
I’m working on coloring this while watching Exandria Unlimited tonight but in the meantime here’s the sketch of Umbrolus fighting Kevoth-Kul, the Black Sovereign of Numeria.
Hello, dear! You've been visited by the random character question fairy! :D ~☆
What does happiness mean to your character? (To be content, to have won, to have something to be proud of, etc.?) Why? Does their definition of happiness change with time?
Thanks for the ask ☺️ My number of OCs I decided to answer for started to get long so answers under the cut.
Roland: Happiness is the time spent with his found family, the satisfaction of hard work paying off, and finally getting to rest at the end of it all knowing he did well and left the world better many centuries after his time should have been up.
Kiyo: Happiness is the joy of discovery, both scientific and in nature. It is the feeling they get after helping someone who was in need, be it with a doctor’s medicine or a vigilante’s blade. Happiness is Lalaith’s sense of humor bringing a smile to their face no matter how terrible the joke may be.
Sai: Happiness is seeing Luka flying through the night sky. It is the smell of freshly planted flowers in a community garden for everyone to enjoy. It’s spending time with Hayden and Gaeron and Icarus, and it’s her found family together and getting along despite their differences. It’s being free of her past and forging a future free of nightmares and darkness, or if it’s shrouded in darkness it’s a darkness of her choosing.
Lucien: Lucien has a hard time imagining future happiness. He puts on a good face but he is severely depressed. All he sees in his future is more of the same cycle of finding temporary joy and growing bored of it, of everything he likes becoming dull and grey. He sincerely believes he is going to die in one final glorious fight against a great rainbow dragon, and that this will be the final great joy in his life, one final burst of color and meaning. Lucien…despite coming off as one of my most carefree characters on the surface because of how he acts, is actually one of the ones really severely hurting the most.
Haruki: Haruki thought becoming human and going back to a sense of normalcy is what would bring him happiness, but he’s beginning to realize there’s no returning to normal. Even if he ever finds a way to get his human form back, things won’t just go back to normal, he won’t just forget how people turned on him when he was turned into a drow, nor will he be able to turn a blind eye to his father’s atrocities in the world below Naraku. Not to mention the fact his people’s god condemned him for sins of his bloodline he didn’t have anything to do with, and the only chance at redemption he was offered was giving up his free will entirely and being transformed again, this time into an angel, which he refused, despite knowing he probably doomed himself to be rejected by his people and slowly die to magnetite poisoning. At this point, what will probably bring him true happiness is embracing his new circumstances, which he’s only really rejected due to how his society conditioned him not due to anything he dislikes about the transformation. He just needs to get to a point where he can accept that realization himself. And also curing his magnetite poisoning. Not dying from being turned into a big crystal statue is a really good first step to being happy. Also punching god. Because he’s from a Shin Megami Tensei RP so punching god is going to happen and it’ll just be really cathartic for him I think.
Kaius: He’s achieved his happiness. His daughter’s illness was cured, he’s retired from adventuring and living with his family, he helped to begin redeeming the fallen member of their party he felt like he’d failed, he’s honestly extremely content with where things have ended up in his life. Did Volstat and Hiyi swear revenge for them choosing Gabby over them? Maybe a little. That’s okay. Kaius is at his core a selfish creature, and if he’s chosen a favorite that’s who he’s sticking with. His wife might disagree since she liked Hiyi.
Umbrolus: Being with Kleio makes him happy. Having friends for the first time makes him happy. Traveling the world makes him happy. The fact he’s going to go to the moon someday makes him happy. Umbrolus is very simple in what makes him happy. Friends, love, adventure, new experiences.
Draven: He honestly doesn’t know what would make him happy anymore. He puts on a smile and cracks jokes, but it’s all superficial, actual real happiness isn’t something he’s had in a while. The closest to happiness he currently has is his best friend, Leto, but that’s a bit bittersweet. I can think of one thing that would bring him sincere happiness, but since he’s a D&D character and I haven’t played his story yet there’s something about his story I don’t want to post where my friends might see it and spoil it. I may come back and reblog this answer later to add to it when I can actually talk about it in more detail later, because I do know the answer.
