#I had to build her whole backstory retroactively once the DM was like 'okay who wants to keep this rolling'

[blujayonthewing]

❤️,🧠,🍀 for the ask meme! Take your pick of whomth, I’m curious about everyone :3

❤️ - What is one of your OC’s best memories?

One of Elyss's best memories was getting to meet and hold her newborn niece for the first time! Elyss has been incredibly isolated for her entire life, with (some of) her family being her strongest (and, until very recently, her only) connections in the world, and her brother Max is her best friend and most beloved person. His wife had their daughter, Emily, when Elyss was out living alone in the woods, but she knew roughly when the baby was due and came home pretty shortly after she was born. Holding her was the most pure distilled moment of joy and love Elyss has ever experienced to date. Em is about five now, and Elyss would do absolutely anything in the world for her.

🧠 - What do you like most about the OC?

Elyss is very intense, bad with people, and sometimes ruthlessly true neutral, but at the core of almost everything about her is overwhelming love, and a largely unfulfilled desire to be loved. It makes her incredibly compelling to me, and is the source of a lot of her conflict both within herself and with the rest of the world. She prefers to think things through very carefully and act logically and rationally, but she's fundamentally ruled by her emotions and they often get the better of her decision-making in ways that confuse and frustrate her. She craves connection with others, but doesn't know how to forge or maintain relationships, and is so used to social rejection that she has a hard time even recognizing affection when it is there. Like... she's probably my most straightforwardly violent OC but JUST under the surface SO much of her story has been about love and acceptance, or lack thereof, and what she's willing to do out of love for others (almost anything) and I'm so incredibly soft about it

🍀 - What originally inspired the OC?

Elyss was my first 5e character; she was only supposed to be a one-shot character at a weekend get-together with friends, and we built our characters that weekend with free resources and without a lot of prep ahead of time. This is relevant for two reasons: one, I always wanted to play a ranger, and I'd envisioned having an animal companion, but I ended up being sick for most of one of those days and didn't have enough time to wanna have to mess with looking up animal stats and mechanics on top of everything else; and two, the app we were using to quickly build characters listed genasi as a race, and when I found out that was the elementally-aligned race I instantly got the mental image of a character whose skin naturally looked like it was underwater with light rippling though and went OH YEP I'M DOING THAT. Otherwise, a lot of her initial characterization was inspired by me being interested in nature and in wilderness survival, and imagining a person who had spent most of their life alone in the woods building their entire personality and philosophy on life by watching the way the natural world works (and, consequently, not having any social skills because they were never around people).

Ask about my OCs?

#parad0xymoron #I had to build her whole backstory retroactively once the DM was like 'okay who wants to keep this rolling' #figure out how 'lived alone in the woods' happened in the first place and why she came out to be in an adventuring party #(the answer was love! it turns out! although I wouldn't have phrased it like that at the time) #GOOD Qs THANK YOU!! I had to limit myself to just one because I was getting overwhelmed trying to think of All Of Them lol #AND ANYWAY I don't talk about Elyss enough anymore... my OG Girl..... I love her so much 🥺💕 #there is a quote from frankenstein that's gone around recently about love and rage. that's her #and that campaign just keeps being like. a nightmare slog of bad things happening arbitrarily with little payoff lol so #I just want good things for her... killing a lot to protect those she cares about is fun to play but she deserves to be soft and safe tbh #my OCs #Elyss #ask thing