I made my first bard- Viryo Moonveil, goth swamp banjo rockstar!! I'm playing him in a game called "Afterward" that cuts back and forth between two time periods- 10 years in the past when our party first vanquished a formidable foe and the present day where we explore who we have become since or victory and whether or not the adventure is truly over for us... Viryo started as a walock with an undead patron, forced to scribe Death's claims over mortal lives and help their spirits pass over. At first, he was terrified of the spirits that would manifest at the foot of his bed or over his shoulder (very Sixth Sense), but time revealed most of these spirits to be nothing more than lost...and mostly friendly. Soon enough, it was easier to talk to the dead than the living and Viryo became happy to help them pass on. His relationship to those beyond the veil became a lot more symbiotic.
Eventually, Viryo began to tell the stories of the dead through song after learning to play the banjo from a fellow party member. Ten years later, he's turned all his trauma into an entertainment empire as one of the most famed bards across the land. He regales the stories of the many ghosts that haunt him- stories of their lives, their deaths, and his own triumphs and failures as an adventurer. But, with time, with fame, and with money, his melodic tales have become quite tall. Viryo embellishes and outright lies in his lyrical descriptions of events to "give the people what they want" and entertain rather than giving an honest account of the lives of those who have passed- or even his own adventures. It's helped him climb the ladders towards success, but it's isolated him from his party and his former patron- Death. Putting storytelling above truth has compromised his relationship with Death, which will be further tested by his party members reaching out again for the first time in a decade with the alarming claim that their enemy is not as defeated as previously believed. (Which is really gonna clash with the rollout of his new theme-park endeavor.)
So, Viryo's gonna have to find some adventure-appropriate shoes and abandon his diva lifestyle to become the hero he used to be and help his friends save the world- again!
