Need help with character background.

[Troile]

So my new campaign is starting this Thursday.

There are 3 characters. Each of them is interested in death/undeath in some way. (Its taking place in Mordent)

The necromancer and the cleric of ezra are taken care of.

Now the rogue. His concept revolves around his "Dead man walking" feat. He has accepted that he is living on borrowed time and has developed a facination with death and the afterlife since he believes he should be dead.

He is both scared and intrigued by it but not scared of death.

The player wants to be from a wealthy or fairly wealthy family and his idea is that they were attacked when he was 15 and for some reason he should've died but didn't.

I'm having writer's block trying to come up with the details of it and how to better fit it into my theme.

This character's theme is fate, the afterlife and the eternal question, why are we here.

He isn't a thief he is a survivalist.

He won't have access to his family...After that night he had to leave everything behind (if there is anything left).

Any ideas?

[Ultramyth]

Perhaps think about tying his past into one of the old noble houses of mordent? Lots of potential ideas are presented in Gazetteer III regarding the different families, estates, etc. Mostly dealing with history and rumours of their demise. There's got to be one of them in there that could fit under the banner of the past you described.

[Jasper]

*puts on his thinking fez*

Ok to start with we have the following-
Wealthy family
Rouge but not a thief
Has "died" once

*Cracks fingers*
I shall call the character R1 for simplisity

R1 was a third generation memeber of one of the newer houses to take hold in Modent. Hier to a large shipping fortune his Grandfather left the chaotic life in Dementlu and settled his family in the quiet moors of Mordent. For many years he lived in piece with his nieghbors and even let his sons marry thier daughters.
His family thrived and his eldest son bore him three fine grandchildren, the youngest being R1. R1 grew up strong and fast in the woods behind his grandfathers estate and like all boys of that age had his eye caught by the lovely vision of a girl.
Her name was Rebecca and her golden tresses and emerald eyes made his heart skip more than once. For many months they courted and were never long out of each others sight.
But as if offen the case her beauty cught the eyes of others, these beiung the eyes of the brothers Gatlin. The large and equaily stupid Malichi and Abraham lead by there slightly more inteligant brother Samuel were the scourge of the moors. What they wanted, they took and no man was strong enough to stand in their way.
On one hot summer night they wanted Rebecca.

When R1 returned to Recbecca's home her found her in the arms of Malichi and Abraham, her life ebbing slowly out of thousands of cuts and bruises while the fendish Samuel looked on and laughed.

The last thing R1 remebered seeing before the constable shook him awake as he knelt over Rebeccas cold body was the flash of his blade in his hand. The room was painted in Gatlin blood and what was left could not rightly be called men.

The trial lasted three days and on the fourth R1 was led to the gallows. As the rope was lifted around his neck and the hood placed over his eyes he could have sworn he saw a young woman in the distance with golden hair and emerald eyes...

...and the rope staped taunt and all was darkness.

He awoke hours later on the cold under the moonlight, the dew forming on the cut rope that still hung from his neck. Not a soul was around him and to this day he knows not why or how he servived. All of Mordent thinks of him now as a dead man and as such he is cut off from both friends and family.

*Takes off thinking fez*

Does that fit everthing?

[Troile]

Perhaps think about tying his past into one of the old noble houses of mordent? Lots of potential ideas are presented in Gazetteer III regarding the different families, estates, etc. Mostly dealing with history and rumours of their demise. There's got to be one of them in there that could fit under the banner of the past you described.

Hmmm...maybe I'll make up a new one. The campaign is actually going to investigate the majority of those families so this could tie everything in together. He might be on a quest to find out why all the famillies die off in horrible ways.

Of course that just begs the question...why do they? b/c its Ravenloft of course...heh.

Thanks for that long idea Jasper.

I think I'm definately going to use parts of it. I think I'm going to have a large part of the character's memory fuzzy maybe. I like the idea of the character being a monster.

The part where he's being hanged is extremely cheesey Braveheart styles but I get the point...hmmm...

Hey I know!

How about his brothers are awful and his father being the wealthy fop he is is okay with their actions. When he catches them in the act he brutally murders his brothers and his father. Before he can kill his mother something *unexplanable* happens. He blacks out and awakes to being charged with the crimes. Before he can be killed his mother is somehow responsible for freeing him and we go back to him waking up alone. (Of course he thinks his mother is dead)

Now he is convinced that some malign force killed his entire family and that he should've died too. He must find out why all the major families of Mordent come to an end and must find out what living is all about. And hopefully find the cause of his own family's demise.

The twist of course is that he killed them though he doesn't know that.

Maybe his brothers could have done something not as bad...perhaps sleeping with her or something and when he finds out he's furious and kills all of them. Hmmmm....

[Rotipher of the FoS]

I'm not sure if the player would be all right with having his PC turn out to be a brutal murderer. Perhaps you should check with the player -- don't give away details, just ask if it's OK if this PC be repressing the memory of something very, VERY dark -- before you go that far. If the player is leery of the idea, change the PC's history so that he's not got quiiite so much blood on his hands: it's one thing to give a PC a secret past, and quite another to decide (without the player's knowledge) that their PC is guilty of such an extreme act of violence.

[Troile]

I think it'll be alright.

He gets to choose what becomes of his character now. Its not going to haunt him. It sets the stage for a hopelessly tragic character who's own enemy is himself.

The path he chooses now will be the real deciding factor in his character's life.

Besides he won't find out until the end anyway and his character will have grown a lot.

And one good turn deserves another. I've already got a similar thing in store for the cleric of ezra.

And the 3rd character is a necromancer. Will make for an interesting game.

[Manofevil]

I liked Jaspers take. I wonder if Rebecca could be made into some kind of sympathetic ghost like the one in 'The Enemy Within'. Can that even be done in RavenLoft: Where the ghost in question is sticking around because they wish to express their love for someone? I remeber an old episode of the cartoon 'The Real Ghostbusters' where an old man's ghost wanders an old mansion because he died before he could tell his daughter how much he loved her. At the end he dissipated peacefully rather than needing to be caught. Do the mists allow such peaceful hauntings or must all ghosts be like Godefroy?

[Troile]

There are many things like that.

Unfortunately there is already another character with a story similar to that.

He has the 'haunted' feat...