The Oft-Promised OC-Of-The-Moment Profile...
A Few Things About Edrick
{although slightly belated, as the initial period of COMPLETE BRAIN CONSUMPTION has faded. somewhat. well, maybe a little.}
So remember a bit back when I was going on about the second edition necromantic crack involving the Goddess of Murder and quite possibly disturbing the living hell out of half of you? Well, it spawned a character. You might've heard me mention him here and there; he's been possessing me for a week or two by now. And I've been assembling this post in bits and pieces for quite some time, just by way of introducing him. Not that I usually write introductions this lengthy for random OCs, but he's insisting. Siiiigh.
Fiendslist, this is Edrick. Edrick, these are my fiends. I'll even throw some music into the mix.
...but I don't know what his real name is. It's eminently possible it was cast aside when he entered the service of the Goddess, and it's also eminently possible he's got one or more secret spiritual names to boot, and countless aliases, but all I know him as is Edrick, so I'll just have to stick with that.
Edrick: rogue cleric, part-time assassin, aimless wanderer, mischief-maker, lover of women, religious fanatic, would-be necromancer, pretentious fuck. He left the mainstream order of the Stranglers due to ideological differences; the high priests hold that high-ranking rich men can bribe their way out of being assassinated and instead serve as informants. Edrick thinks this is decadent and pointless--after all, they don't spare men who beg with their tongues, so why should they spare men who beg with their purses? There was a spat; he took off, and doesn't talk about it much. And yet he's not been smited--the Goddess is high on brutal smiting after all. So we can assume she still loves him, or at least tolerates him. He certainly loves her, with all his heart and soul, priestly rules be damned, and is of the opinion that he serves her better wandering free, killing at her whim (or sometimes if enough coin is jangled at him), pleasing the mortal women that embody her, and generally doing whatever the fuck he wants. They both are chaotic evil, after all.
He likes playing with magic, a lot, especially gray to black necromancy. He thinks it's shiny. It's honestly unclear how much of it is clerical magic in terms of coming from his deity and how much is magic-user magic in terms of coming from moldy old tomes; he's a greedy little boy and wants to mess with both.
He also likes playing with weapons, but has never loved any nearly as much as the classic Strangler's noose, though a well-sharpened and well-placed dagger certainly has its place if the victim's blood is free to flow, and he scrapes up what poison lore he can.
Yet for all that he's chaotic evil and likes killing people and making the bones dance, he's not too much out for personal power, at least not beyond indulging himself. Ruling kingdoms with an iron fist isn't his forte. He just wants to have fun--and, of course, serve the Goddess in doing so. When you strip away all the bluster and bloodlust, he is--like, I suspect, many of his order--deeply submissive, and living life not for political or material power, but for seeing the profound and spiritual, however twisted, in everyday life. Well, that and sex, as long as the woman comes first, several times.
Being Strangler by training, he is, naturally, a master of disguise, although he doesn't practice said talent unless he absolutely must, as he prefers being himself.
He's medium height, slender, wiry, hair short and scruffy and very white-blond, baby blue eyes. In my mind's eye, he tends to look quite a bit like Paul Bettany, of Chaucerian fame, though shorter:
His religious symbol, or one of them--the one he wears about, at any rate--is a rather graphic yoni with a skull in it, worked in silver, on a red silk cord knotted like a hangman's noose around his neck. He likes wearing his shirt open to show it off, when he can get away with it. Also to show himself off, but that's another issue.
He's a bit of a spoiled brat and likes sleeping in the nice inns, at least when he's got the coin; while he professes a love of adventuring in the great outdoors, it ends at the exact moment that the insects find his bedroll. Because he does not like ants. He also does not like wearing his armor unless adventuring, all shiny and black and leathery and studded though it may be, because he can't do the thing with the shirt. Most of the rest of his clothing is shiny and black with bits of silver too. Yes, I've spawned a metro assassin. So sue me.
As far as coin goes, by the by, he'll take on jobs for pay, but only under duress, because he doesn't like the whole killing people for money thing very much. Not because of the killing people bit, of course, but because of the money bit--never does feel quite right, doing for coin what a man should do for faith. Not that he doesn't do it anyway, but he gets snobbish about it. And, naturally, anyone with the lack of brains to try to hire him to kill a woman is going to find himself dangling by the neck from the nearest dramatically placed tall object.
He somehow breaks the no edged weapons rules--both the general cleric prohibition and the specific no-drawing-the-victim's-blood-until-eighth-level prohibition of his order--with frequency, joy, and impunity. His excuse is that Charging Gnoll #12 isn't a chosen victim of the Goddess, and he can spill his blood any way he damn well wants to. (Whereas a select victim will naturally get the solemn and bloodless strangulation.) I don't know whether that's viable in-game or not, but I do know he wouldn't give a shit.
He has a habit of singing random marching songs and ballads in unintelligible accents, often with savage glee, never particularly well, and usually when he's drunk.
Due to all those Goddess-worshipping temple orgies, he, quite naturally, as greenmouse and I realized simulatenously, gives fantastic oral sex.
It's actually unclear, though, just where he stands with regard to women, obligations, morals, and alignment. In relation to men he's all freewheeling chaotic evil, willing to kill at the drop of any hat and cooperate only if he gets something out of it--though he will give respect, if it's earned, and well. But with women it gets complicated. Obviously he can't hurt a woman, even if she pisses him off (unless she pisses the Goddess off), but how far is he obligated to go to save her? Or, conversely, if a woman he's fond of (doubtless there will be many, if they let him) is in danger, how far can he go to save her without breaking alignment and getting the Goddess pissed at him instead? How far would he go to obey a woman he was fond of if the orders ran counter to his wishes? Should make gameplay interesting, at any rate.
All the time, really, he's aware of the constant possibility that the Goddess could decide she doesn't like him anymore. He's living a dangerous life and playing a dangerous game, and he knows it. He's pushing and breaking the rules of the Order, but part of the reason he's doing so is that he and the Goddess both love chaos, and the rules were getting in the way of it. But there are lines he can't see that he is always at risk of crossing--how long can one abandon a deity's priesthood without pissing off the deity herself? Yet he still loves her, madly, still does her will, without hesitation. A Goddess-fearing, Goddess-adoring man, even as he's also testing every rule of her service--because he'd never want to be lawful, now would he?
All the mundane rules, at least. He's not going to harm a woman without her permission--he believes in their divinity in all his heart and soul. He's not going to break his core vows because he loves them. But the everyday institution of the priesthood? Out the window, along with any chance he had of a stable and safe life. If you could call a Strangler's life stable--but compared to an adventurer's it is.
So those are the things I do know. What I don't know is what class I could possibly play him as under various editions--though cleric/assassin, assuming that'd be legal for a human in any given campaign, is the prime choice--and this is complicated by the fact that I'm still such a D&D novice, that while he's an assassin he's not really a thief, and that he can never quite decide whether he wants to use magic like a cleric or a necromancy-specialist mage, and clerics don't have specializations anyway, and WTF, mate? Or, in other words, he basically doesn't fit into the D&D system at all, but he wants to be there anyway, 'cause he's a STUBBORN BRAT.
Merf.
Plus with my luck if I ever do find a game to play him in, he'll promptly retreat to the Valhalla of Bored or Dead Characters in the back of my brain and I'll suck at playing him. But in the meantime, he entertains me. Oh does he entertain me. Drunken songs and all.
And speaking of drunken songs, here, have some music. I wouldn't exactly call it his theme song in terms of content--far from it--but it was the song he was conceived to, and it's definitely the sort of thing he'll sing after a few ales.
{although slightly belated, as the initial period of COMPLETE BRAIN CONSUMPTION has faded. somewhat. well, maybe a little.}
So remember a bit back when I was going on about the second edition necromantic crack involving the Goddess of Murder and quite possibly disturbing the living hell out of half of you? Well, it spawned a character. You might've heard me mention him here and there; he's been possessing me for a week or two by now. And I've been assembling this post in bits and pieces for quite some time, just by way of introducing him. Not that I usually write introductions this lengthy for random OCs, but he's insisting. Siiiigh.
Fiendslist, this is Edrick. Edrick, these are my fiends. I'll even throw some music into the mix.
...but I don't know what his real name is. It's eminently possible it was cast aside when he entered the service of the Goddess, and it's also eminently possible he's got one or more secret spiritual names to boot, and countless aliases, but all I know him as is Edrick, so I'll just have to stick with that.
Edrick: rogue cleric, part-time assassin, aimless wanderer, mischief-maker, lover of women, religious fanatic, would-be necromancer, pretentious fuck. He left the mainstream order of the Stranglers due to ideological differences; the high priests hold that high-ranking rich men can bribe their way out of being assassinated and instead serve as informants. Edrick thinks this is decadent and pointless--after all, they don't spare men who beg with their tongues, so why should they spare men who beg with their purses? There was a spat; he took off, and doesn't talk about it much. And yet he's not been smited--the Goddess is high on brutal smiting after all. So we can assume she still loves him, or at least tolerates him. He certainly loves her, with all his heart and soul, priestly rules be damned, and is of the opinion that he serves her better wandering free, killing at her whim (or sometimes if enough coin is jangled at him), pleasing the mortal women that embody her, and generally doing whatever the fuck he wants. They both are chaotic evil, after all.
He likes playing with magic, a lot, especially gray to black necromancy. He thinks it's shiny. It's honestly unclear how much of it is clerical magic in terms of coming from his deity and how much is magic-user magic in terms of coming from moldy old tomes; he's a greedy little boy and wants to mess with both.
He also likes playing with weapons, but has never loved any nearly as much as the classic Strangler's noose, though a well-sharpened and well-placed dagger certainly has its place if the victim's blood is free to flow, and he scrapes up what poison lore he can.
Yet for all that he's chaotic evil and likes killing people and making the bones dance, he's not too much out for personal power, at least not beyond indulging himself. Ruling kingdoms with an iron fist isn't his forte. He just wants to have fun--and, of course, serve the Goddess in doing so. When you strip away all the bluster and bloodlust, he is--like, I suspect, many of his order--deeply submissive, and living life not for political or material power, but for seeing the profound and spiritual, however twisted, in everyday life. Well, that and sex, as long as the woman comes first, several times.
Being Strangler by training, he is, naturally, a master of disguise, although he doesn't practice said talent unless he absolutely must, as he prefers being himself.
He's medium height, slender, wiry, hair short and scruffy and very white-blond, baby blue eyes. In my mind's eye, he tends to look quite a bit like Paul Bettany, of Chaucerian fame, though shorter:
His religious symbol, or one of them--the one he wears about, at any rate--is a rather graphic yoni with a skull in it, worked in silver, on a red silk cord knotted like a hangman's noose around his neck. He likes wearing his shirt open to show it off, when he can get away with it. Also to show himself off, but that's another issue.
He's a bit of a spoiled brat and likes sleeping in the nice inns, at least when he's got the coin; while he professes a love of adventuring in the great outdoors, it ends at the exact moment that the insects find his bedroll. Because he does not like ants. He also does not like wearing his armor unless adventuring, all shiny and black and leathery and studded though it may be, because he can't do the thing with the shirt. Most of the rest of his clothing is shiny and black with bits of silver too. Yes, I've spawned a metro assassin. So sue me.
As far as coin goes, by the by, he'll take on jobs for pay, but only under duress, because he doesn't like the whole killing people for money thing very much. Not because of the killing people bit, of course, but because of the money bit--never does feel quite right, doing for coin what a man should do for faith. Not that he doesn't do it anyway, but he gets snobbish about it. And, naturally, anyone with the lack of brains to try to hire him to kill a woman is going to find himself dangling by the neck from the nearest dramatically placed tall object.
He somehow breaks the no edged weapons rules--both the general cleric prohibition and the specific no-drawing-the-victim's-blood-until-eighth-level prohibition of his order--with frequency, joy, and impunity. His excuse is that Charging Gnoll #12 isn't a chosen victim of the Goddess, and he can spill his blood any way he damn well wants to. (Whereas a select victim will naturally get the solemn and bloodless strangulation.) I don't know whether that's viable in-game or not, but I do know he wouldn't give a shit.
He has a habit of singing random marching songs and ballads in unintelligible accents, often with savage glee, never particularly well, and usually when he's drunk.
Due to all those Goddess-worshipping temple orgies, he, quite naturally, as greenmouse and I realized simulatenously, gives fantastic oral sex.
It's actually unclear, though, just where he stands with regard to women, obligations, morals, and alignment. In relation to men he's all freewheeling chaotic evil, willing to kill at the drop of any hat and cooperate only if he gets something out of it--though he will give respect, if it's earned, and well. But with women it gets complicated. Obviously he can't hurt a woman, even if she pisses him off (unless she pisses the Goddess off), but how far is he obligated to go to save her? Or, conversely, if a woman he's fond of (doubtless there will be many, if they let him) is in danger, how far can he go to save her without breaking alignment and getting the Goddess pissed at him instead? How far would he go to obey a woman he was fond of if the orders ran counter to his wishes? Should make gameplay interesting, at any rate.
All the time, really, he's aware of the constant possibility that the Goddess could decide she doesn't like him anymore. He's living a dangerous life and playing a dangerous game, and he knows it. He's pushing and breaking the rules of the Order, but part of the reason he's doing so is that he and the Goddess both love chaos, and the rules were getting in the way of it. But there are lines he can't see that he is always at risk of crossing--how long can one abandon a deity's priesthood without pissing off the deity herself? Yet he still loves her, madly, still does her will, without hesitation. A Goddess-fearing, Goddess-adoring man, even as he's also testing every rule of her service--because he'd never want to be lawful, now would he?
All the mundane rules, at least. He's not going to harm a woman without her permission--he believes in their divinity in all his heart and soul. He's not going to break his core vows because he loves them. But the everyday institution of the priesthood? Out the window, along with any chance he had of a stable and safe life. If you could call a Strangler's life stable--but compared to an adventurer's it is.
So those are the things I do know. What I don't know is what class I could possibly play him as under various editions--though cleric/assassin, assuming that'd be legal for a human in any given campaign, is the prime choice--and this is complicated by the fact that I'm still such a D&D novice, that while he's an assassin he's not really a thief, and that he can never quite decide whether he wants to use magic like a cleric or a necromancy-specialist mage, and clerics don't have specializations anyway, and WTF, mate? Or, in other words, he basically doesn't fit into the D&D system at all, but he wants to be there anyway, 'cause he's a STUBBORN BRAT.
Merf.
Plus with my luck if I ever do find a game to play him in, he'll promptly retreat to the Valhalla of Bored or Dead Characters in the back of my brain and I'll suck at playing him. But in the meantime, he entertains me. Oh does he entertain me. Drunken songs and all.
And speaking of drunken songs, here, have some music. I wouldn't exactly call it his theme song in terms of content--far from it--but it was the song he was conceived to, and it's definitely the sort of thing he'll sing after a few ales.