Anariel of the House of Finarfin
Keeper of the Lore of the Elves
(played in the movie by Sophie Marceau)
Influences: Tolkien, especially The Silmarillion; The Fionavar Tapestry.
Best moments: Winning the office of Keeper of the Lore; summoning the Light; outsmarting the shaman of Smoking Mirror.
Quote: Mock not the fury of the Noldor!
Daughter of a great elven house and determined to reverse the decline into which her kindred had fallen, Anariel's tragedy was that she was simply born a few millennia too late. Had she lived in the ages when the elves ruled the world, she would have been a queen; in the time of their decline, she is merely one of the last of the scattered elven heroes, staving off the inevitable fading by sheer force of will.
Anariel taught me that you could be second string and still be powerful and valuable. She taught me that brains can get you things that muscle simply can't. She didn't have to change dramatically to grow, either--the years simply made her more what she was, burning away the inessential and leaving her polished to perfection. Her story was simply in being who she was.
Anariel originally inspired the Elfquest campaign seed, and will appear in that campaign as an NPC when and if I ever run it.
Azrael of the Daresh
Paladin of the Ancient Powers of the Land
Phoenix Knight of the Beren Kel
Champion of the High King (ret.)
(played in the movie by Sigourney Weaver)
Influences: Jennifer Roberson's Del and Tiger novels; The Deed of Paksenarrion; Dune. Xena would have been an influence if she'd been around early enough.
Best moments: Weeping over the grave of her dead mentor, whom she had loved silently and unrequitedly for decades (much to the shock of some of her companions, who were convinced she was a lesbian); dueling the champion of the Bone Lord to the death and winning honorably; being the first to defend Talesin from the ghost, even if Talesin turned out to be a doppelganger; standing up to a dragon and getting away with it; telling the party they were going to have to do it on their own and realizing they were all depending on Azrael.
Quote: Among the Daresh, we have a saying ...
Quote (2): May God forgive me for the sinful pleasure I'm about to take in kicking your sorry ass.
Azrael was raised in a desert convent, disguised herself as a boy to learn the sword, avenged herself on her father's killer, and was exiled for the crime. That, in a fine example of my tendency towards baroque character background, was all before she started play. In play, she was by turns arrogant, humble, aggressive, devout, sarcastic, and honorable. She became a paladin, then earned the title. She earned the title of Beren Kel before she got that one. She led a band of adventurers in placing the High King back on the throne and repairing the damage done to the world and the gods. Along the way she fought dragons and witches and death knights and mercury golems. She found friendship and even love in unexpected places.
I did play her again after it was all over for the sheer joy of it, but it wasn't really necessary. Azrael taught me you could tell a story and it could end, without tragedy. She also taught me that there's no such thing a simple fighter unless you want to be simple, that you don't have to be treacly to be a paladin, and that sometimes the best answer to a bad guy is to knock him into next week.
The name, by the way, was offered as a gag to my high-school GM, who didn't get the joke. It stuck.
Elena del Castillo y Ximines
(played in the movie by Catherine Zeta Jones)
Influences: Several prior characters who've shared the outrageous accent.
Best moments: Bargaining with Mraxis; unveiling to Don Diego and Rodrigo.
Elena is my character in the Burning Carnivale campaign. She's a fortune-teller with a noble's sense of her own prerogatives and a magician's sense of when not to trifle with power— even if her temper sometimes gets the better of her.
A spectacular failure in magic (in the first play session) has left her marked forever. It may also have caused the snake cultists who revere her for her tainted ancestry to implement their plan to change the world. Now Elena must decide whether to help them or foil them.
Florimel, High Priestess of the Lady of Roses
(played in the movie by Marina Sirtis)
Influences: Deanna Troi (unintentionally, but there it is!).
Best moments: Making friends with Baby (her pseudodragon); beholding her doom, and walking away from it, if not unchanged; grokking that Love was in fact the Destroying Fire, and being at one with it, and herself; failing again and again--at the gate of the City of Dreams, at the Gaming Fields, at I'kar--but never quite giving up; the subtle nuances of her friendship with Kyris.
Quote: Follow your heart!
Florimel's background was another one of those masterpieces of the baroque of which I am so fond. In her case it was because I wanted to have her start as a mature character, and there was so much room that I couldn't just leave it blank. She started as a non-violent healer, but eventually became convinced of the error of her ways and renounced pacifism. She was the first of my characters to marry, and later the first (and only one) to leave her husband when he did something that she and the goddess she served could not forgive.
Florimel convinced me that a character didn't have to be successful for me to get attached to her. She was by almost any measure of progress other than sheer experience-over-time a failure--she floundered, changed directions, never quite got it right. Much of my distaste for slavish following of dice and rules comes from my experiences playing her; she simply couldn't get an even break on any random event, no matter how she tilted the odds in her favor.
Florimel was named after the Zelazny character, in a pun on her faith (it was a religious name). She was also a tiny, dark-haired angst magnet, and thus a true foremother to Orinda.
Lianna
The Witch of Moon and Lake
(played in the movie by Winona Ryder)
Influences: Raven, the silent priestess in The Mists of Avalon.
Best moments: Tossing her powerful dragon bracelet into the Well of the Unicorn and seeing Galmir Sundragon get back out; not taking the Chalice of the Moon from the treasury of the Beren Kel because it would be greedy and receiving it afterwards as a gift; sneaking into a lich's tower via his escape tunnel and looting his treasury without ever having to fight him.
Quote: (in very high pitched voice, cocking head) Oooo! I wonder what that means!
Lianna was a druid seer whose advanced magical capabilities were hidden behind a childlike demeanor. She was sweet and kind and everyone loved her, even if she did cast fortunes with human knucklebones. Eventually she was called from the path of the priesthood to become a witch, a woman completely at one with the primal force of magic she commanded. She was never much use in a straight-out fight, but that never mattered much; Lianna found ways to avoid stupid fights and was willing and more than able to fool or find her way around enemies she couldn't defeat.
Lianna taught me that you can accomplish your goals without ever having to fight and that the best defense can be planning ahead. She taught me that the character who's the heart of the party can be more crucial than any of the strategic and tactical niche-holders. As the game I played her in changed over time, though, the party found itself in need of a leader, and I retired her with some regret in favor of Azrael, who had been waiting to come back for some long time.
Talise, the Black Rose
(played in the movie by Jamie Lee Curtis)
Influences: The Vlad Taltos novels, especially Jhereg and Yendi; the Black Company trilogy.
Best moments: Running a con on Corby's cousin and the mark begging Corby not to hurt her afterwards because she was innocent.
Quote: I suppose I'm just going to have to kill you now.
Talise was a half-elf whose father had abandoned her mother, touching off a chain of background events in her horrible family that eventually led to killing them all and becoming an assassin. She was obsessed with finding her father and making him pay, and didn't care about the cost. At the end of the campaign, after the party had restored the King and fixed the world, she finally met her father, who was the head of the elven secret service. The King had said he'd give her any boon, and she planned to ask for her father's head, knowing it would cause a war and quite likely undo all the good she'd just done ...
The really scary part was that Talise was saner and nicer than the rest of the PCs in that campaign. No, really. She was functional.
Talise taught me that I really didn't have it in me to play a completely heartless character, and that I didn't like it when the rest of the group was that bad either. But she taught me that I did like playing a conniving, manipulative bitch with a minimal, if iron-clad, code of ethics just fine. I'd love to bring Talise back as an Amber character, because that's where I think she really belongs.