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What is your favorite characters backstory?


Chasind.3128

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Just to clarify, the character you play- does he or she have a backstory and if so, what is it?

Mine is a high society Elementalist who studied with the priory in Divinity's Reach. She has a welsh accent. Her name is Sorceress Rinoa (I love FFVIII) but I actually call her Eleanor since Rinoa/ is derived from Eleanor and both mean light.She's not over-exceptional or the hero of her story.Growing up with a silver-spoon only spoiled her with certain amenities but not cloud her judge of character.When she first began her journey, Eleanor and some of her closest companions worked as guides to other champions in the depths of Arah.Eleanor is of course, an overly skilled elementalist thanks to years of brawling the elite ranks in PvP arenas. She has since retired from the PvP scene and often spends time with her Mesmer Cousin, drinking wine and attending masquerades.

I could go into more detail, but it was just a brief example.

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Cragga grew up in the wilds of the Maguuma forest, where her parents and their krewe studied jungle wurms. Cragga was not very interested, and spent her free time exploring the jungle. One day she found a lost Durmand Priory expedition and guided them back to civilization. The sylvari expedition leader complimented her, saying, "You are very woodwise, for an Asura," Cragga then had business cards printed up as "Cragga Woodwise, Jungle Guide," and made good coin guiding hunters and explorers throught the wilderness...until her parents discovered what she was up to and sent her off to learn golemancy in a safer environment.

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My Ranger was an orphan in Divinity's Reach who was always liked by the other street rats because of his way with animals. He didn't care about that he was dedicated to his one good friend who secretly envied and hated him for his popularity, until trying to kill him and was instead killed by him in self defense. From then he ran away to live outside of the city and try to forget his life before then.

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My story is not too detailed but my main Sylvari Celestial Firebrand went through so much kitten and has become so powerful that she's not even a plant anymore, she has transformed into magic and stars and supernatural things - hence my Celestial Blue infusion (skin) and "Ascended Spirit" title. :D So it's more like "story of my fashion wars" haha!

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@Dibdabs.3410 said:

@Dibdabs.3410 said:Not into any of that pointless, made-up backstory stuff, personally. Never have been since I started playing mmorpgs 20 years ago.

That wasn’t the question. Please don’t derail.

"Does he or she have a backstory" is a question. I answered it. Do keep up.

You actually didn't answer it though, we have to guess your answer, since you only said you are not into that stuff. This doesn't mean that you wouldn't have a backstory.

you answered the question: "what is you opinion on personal backstories". Not whether you have one or not.

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The bulk of Golemancer Jonii's academic work focused on the study of different kinds of magical energies and how they can be used to improve modern golems and asura gate efficiency. When the Pact formed, he joined the Priory, wrapping himself up in the grand fight against the Elder Dragons.

After the Bloodstone Fen incident and several run-ins with the mysterious ley anomalies that appeared all over Tyria, he developed some relatively safe applications for bloodstone energy and infused his armor with it, allowing him to glide without the use of a proper glider. Shortly before Balthazar was killed by the Pact Commander, Jonii seemed to disappear into the Crystal Desert.

Pact members who knew him say he's been aiding in the rebuilding of the Sunspears, that he and his golems have been present in most of the major battles of our time, that he holds a pistol that could only have been given to him by Zommoros, and that he even has a shield made from a thorn of the Pale Tree. But, of course, those would be ridiculous things to believe.

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Oh, own character, i assumed of the existing characters from the title.I would've gone with Jadoth.Because his life is a self-confirming tragedy.The Forgotten saw the kind of threat he'd become, so they hunted him and his people to extinction, thus causing him to retaliate which they tried to avoid.I love prophecies that come true when you try to prevent them.

But as for my own characters,I have two mains.A warrior who grew up on the wrong side of the law, but eventually got pulled back into the right side. Pretty much because of the personal story which really fit them.The other, the elementalist, studied Rodgort, and a lot of destructive fire magic, now mimicking his MO, calling himself rodgorts reincarnate

A character a play less is Eibon the Spiteful, (just Eibon was already taken).And his title gives his character away

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As a long-time PNP role-player, I generally create detailed backgrounds for PC's or significant NPC's when I run. For less-significant NPC's (i.e., those that play a role in the current story, and will then fade into the background), I tend to develop a one-sentence background that gives me a framework to role-play from. I used to create GW characters with that one-sentence background -- perhaps out of habit. For instance, "Indigo is a half-Canthan, half-Tyrian from a merchant family, who followed dreams of adventure, by going to Cantha and learning the ways of the Assassin."

I started doing that in GW2, as well. For instance, "Indigo is a descendant of her namesake, who reluctantly accepts the need to live up to the heroic ideals of her extended family, but who would prefer to stay at home and raise exotic animals." However, my desire to make even such a short backstory for subsequent characters has fallen off, perhaps as a symptom of my inability to find the same degree of immersion in GW2 as I did in GW.

Were I to RP in online games, I would probably go for a detailed backstory, but as there are limits to player agency in such games, I have no desire to do so.

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Given over 6 years of RP, I have to say my main RP guy has a whole novel of backstory which I will not inflict on you all. Thinking back to the set up before launch, though, I took some elements of the PS as a springboard (we could play through level 10 PS in beta). Human noble Thief who never knew his parents, so: Discovered when 8 years old that he was adopted. Took it very poorly, decided if he wasn't "of the blood" he could be anything he wanted. Snuck out a lot, fell in with riff-raff, learned all sorts of larcenous skills. Also had natural good looks and charming manner and scads of ego, so when he met a traveling entertainer kid slightly younger than himself, he basically joined the circus and learned performance skills. He and the other kid grew up together, getting into a ton of scrapes and hijinks and adventures, and founded a troupe called the Jesters (my main guild all these years, the other kid was the character of the GM). Always wondering about his real parents, he had a "broken token" he found with the adoption papers as his only clue to their identity. Unknown to him, this good friend of his was his half brother, his adoptive father was his real father who'd had an affair with a circus woman and then taken custody under the guise of adoption so his wife wouldn't know. This all came out in-character about a year after launch.

And there's so much more, but that was the kernel.

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I made backstories for my 6 toons, 2 asuras, 2 charrs, 1 human and 1 norn.

The only one I've really developed is my female asura Ezrielia, here is her sad story:Her father used to work at an inquest thaumanova-like reactor and a tragic accident happened. She survived thanks to a colleague of her father who took her away through the emergency asuran gate. He raises her like his own daughter, offering all the knowledge he can. After earning her diplomas, the time has come for Ezri. to see her mother again, she trained her to use the natural elements like fire or earth.Ezri. decided to explore the world now, learning as much as she can about elder dragons. She also try to create her lab swearing it will be the safier lab ever made.

Now, about Helena ravenclaw my deadeye charr: She came from an very technologically charr warband, which have a kind of technology between asuran and charr ones. One day they developped a teleporter, but instead of tping her somewhere else within the village, she woke up in diessa plateau, lost, not recognizing anything. After some times of adaptation, shr decided to learn more about those unfamiliar charrs.

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I make up extra back story for all my characters, usually starting even before I create them but it's a constant work in progress (and thankfully therefore usually only exists in my head). Here's a couple of the more developed ones, which I'll try to keep brief.

Danielle Aurorel, human ranger

Danielle and her twin sister Deborah are from a noble family, but more importantly a family of fighters - descended from soldiers, mercenaries and adventurers who came together during the time of the Searing and Kormir's ascension. Some of them were even with Kormir when she defeated the fallen god Abaddon. (Or to hear Dani's grandfather tell it they defeated Abaddon while Kormir practically just stood there.)

Like most of their family Dani and Debs have been learning to fight almost since they could stand, practicing with a variety of weapons and magic. They mainly trained together but sometimes their neighbour Faren was allowed to join their "games"...as long as the girls weren't too rough and no one got dirty. (It would be years before Dani really appreciated how much he hated being left out, as a kid she just didn't think about it - her family was different to her peers, but isn't everyone's family weird in some way?)

There were some benefits from her families wealth and contacts, but they never let it make things easy. For example when Dani's master declared she was ready to tame her first pet she asked for a jungle stalker - an extravagant gift for a city girl - and she got it...sort of. Her parents hired a sylvari tracker to take her to the Grove and then out into the jungle...dropping her into a stalker den and leaving her to tame a cub and escape before the parents returned, or fight her way out. It was worth it though, Kyr has been her closest companion ever since.

Debs took the sensible route and joined the Seraph but Dani was always restless and never wanted to stay in one place for long, it's why she became a ranger. She'd never admit it, even to herself (and isn't happy about it being shared with the whole world), but in a way she's glad that the dragons awakened, giving her so many opportunities to travel to new and strange places and one day she hopes to see all of Tyria.

Ilex Hedera, norn engineer

Her parents are hunters, and good hunters too, managing to support not only their own family but most of their small homestead. But they never got to do much more than subsistence hunting and so never had a chance to forge their legend. They always hoped for more for their children and Ilex seemed promising; tall even for a norn and strong. But somehow she never had the aptitude for swords or axes or even a bow. So reluctantly her parents sent her to Hoelbrak to make her name as a crafter.

She put her attention to detail and knack for experimentation to good use crafting magical jewellery and artefacts, but she always wanted to travel too so when a friend invited her on a trip to the Black Citadel she leapt at the chance, and it proved to be life changing. The charr introduced her to a whole range of ways her inventions could be used in combat and she returned to Hoelbrak keen to prove her new skills in the Great Hunt.

One thing lead to another, she joined the Durmand Priory and before she knew it they were going after some really big targets. Her parents never really understood her approach to combat...is anyone going to be impressed if you're just pushing buttons? But they couldn't argue with the results and when she took down an elder dragon...well, even they had to admit that was worthy of legend.

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I do this for all my characters and the origin of this for me is City of Heroes, of course, where all my characters have origins, motivations, connections to my other characters, etc. With GW2, a lot of the added lore for my characters either goes into their origins or their connections with my other characters. One that I often like to describe:

Dexx was basically an aspiring youngster who was fascinated by the studies going on in the Thaumanova reactor and would have likely ended up becoming a researcher in the Inquest had not for the whole disaster incident and being nearly killed by being bombarded by chaos magic. He fully recovered and later joined the College of Statics after being rejected from Synergetics due to his frank demeanor, presence (he grew abnormally tall with dark skin) and the dozens of catastrophic lab accidents he'd been the center of. Shifting his expertise to formulas and calculations, he made his notoriety on his study of chaos magic and how he was a living experiment of it, noting his abnormal height and unproportional physical abilities and his ability to absorb chaos magic. He became the target of the group he once considered joining, was captured and experimented on. Through some brash and brutish tactics along with the help of an adventuring Norn, he managed to escape the Inquest in one piece as well as find a new appreciation for the physicality of the Norn, which his shorter form rivaled. He appreciated it so much, he trained in the ways of the Warrior under a Norn fighter. During his training, either because of the Inquest experiment or maybe it was innate from the first exposure to the chaos magic, Dexx learned of the limits of his strength: that all his Norn-like strength vanishes for a time if he ever tells a lie. Apparently it's just too chaotic to have an Asura flinging around Charr single-handed who just happens to tell a half-truth.

The last part is another aspect of my kind of personality creation...I tend to give some kind of quirk to a character for RP purposes.

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Saddly..i cant post my favorite characters story, its super dark(and mature) :(

So ill post a simple version: Amana Wildshard(formerly Firehide) is an escaped flame legion female, currently detached from her new warband while being investigated.

if anyones curious, i can give them a full version via whispers or whatever, but it is very dark.

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For my Reaper, Prince of Angels; I originally went with the idea that he and his twin brother were descendants of the Ascalonian Hero from GW1. Their parents were Shining Blades who served Jennah's father and retired when he passed on. Yeah, much of the twins' story is loosely based off of the "Lost Parents" human backstory option. Both twins don't recall who rescued them when the White Mantle attacked their home and killed their parents, but they do remember when they were adopted and had lived relatively normal lives up until Angel's twin got it in his thick skull that he wanted to be an adventurer and dragged him along for the ride.

My Weaver, Marshall Ford; has a somewhat cliche story. A former Seraph field medic who became disillusioned by everything in no small part to the endless fighting with centaurs and by either incompetence or corruption in the ranks. He got a bad case of Compassion Fatigue being a field medic on the lines in Haranti Hinterlands. Normally, he's a well-behaved, gentle, caring and compassionate man; but for him to stay sane; he had to close it all off. But his biggest problem is that he cares too much. It's a wonder he hadn't started drinking yet.

My Asura Berserker, Warmaster Vexx; is an outcast among the Asura for one reason: he couldn't give a toss about his place in the Eternal Alchemy, Asuran society or climbing the Asuran social ladder by inventing the biggest, shiniest thing ever. He's more devoted to the art of war, military strategies, tactics, history. That sort of thing. But he's not interested in just the Asuran military: he wants to learn about the Charr Legions, the humans' Seraph, all of it. The battles, the victories, the defeats, he wants to learn it all. Vexx also has a short temper, but a high jump and a long reach.

I have a whole host of other alts that I don't devote nearly as much time on though.

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@Jimbru.6014 said:

@Ben K.6238 said:Owing to railroading and human-centric writing, I've skipped the idea of having a sensible backstory for any of my characters.

It's pretty much impossible to not have human-centric writing since being human is our only perspective.

Not sure I follow how this could be the case. Supposing there is an RPG where humans don't exist, this would require the dialogue and choices of all characters to be more consistent with a storyline that didn't exist than any of the storylines that did.

What I think you're trying to say is that the behaviour of all races is going to be anthropomorphised, which makes sense, but it's not related to my concerns with the storyline. The problem I'm seeing is exemplified by the Shining Blade arc in LS3 ep 6, where norn, charr, asura and sylvari are required to swear fealty to an alien nation in order to progress the plot. That decision would likely be questionable to sylvari, distasteful to norn and asura, and treasonous to charr. It only makes sense if the player's character is human.

And we see that issue repeatedly in the current GW2 storyline, albeit seldom with that degree of absurdity. That's the reason why I've given up on RP backstory to any of my characters; it would ruin the only part of GW2 I still enjoy in its other facets.

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