Introducing emo Elora... D&D talk and fantasy fiction
Although it is traditionally bad luck to become too emotionally attached to your new role-playing character early on in the campaign, I have to admit I'm enamored with my new half-elf warlock, Elora - well, as much as a straight woman can be in love with a fictional female creation.
Last week our Dungeons & Dragons role-playing group started our first 4th Edition campaign. And we're certainly a very odd party. Not a single human among us, there's instead a massively built 15 year old dragonborn fighter called Celix, a 24 year old dwarven invoker called Firskaren (Norwegian for "Stumpy") and 18 year old Elora. The character interactions are very different from our last campaign, with business-minded Celix despising rich bitch (and cocktease) Elora, Firskaren mostly consumed with thoughts about beer, and Elora disdainful of everyone in her party while she laments the "misery" of her life... and maybe sometimes even cuts herself.
Emo Elora exists as something of a cross between Greek Mythology's Medea, the film version of the X-Men's Rogue, Ged in the first book of the Earthsea quartet, and hundreds of thousands of 21st Century teenage girls who love to wallow in self-pity despite their comfortable middle class existence. I kind of enjoy putting a contemporary spin on traditional fantasy characters like that.
I must say it's been marvelous fun actually concocting a backstory for Elora. My last D&D character Herkon was a paladin, and while his personality and motivations changed over time (he ended up a partly divine champion of the Empire, and proprietor of the Lay on Hands chain of massage parlours), he didn't exactly leap out the starting gate as a fully formed character. He didn't need to be. He was just a highly charismatic oaf whose entire purpose in life was to smite Evil in its many forms and bring dutiful worshipers to the Faith. Think of him as an exceptionally handsome half-elf George W. Bush.
Anyway, so much have I been enjoying developing Elora's backstory that I've actually written it down as a piece of fantasy fiction. This is the first time I have done extensive fiction writing in, gosh, probably a decade. So now you can read the first 2 parts of Elora's backstory - with the third and final part still to be uploaded on this blog once it's completed. Let me know what you think in the Blog Comments below. *Braces self for the "You only wrote this so you could get off by writing borderline erotica" comments*
Elora's backstory: Part 1
Elora's backstory: Part 2 (AKA Sweet Valley Silverpass)
Anyway, the pics included with this post, although lifted from the Warhammer MMORPG, and of a "clothie" dark elf sorceress, are actually pretty close to the way I envision Elora. Not so much (or, ahem, little) in terms of her dress, but rather in terms of colouring, complexion and beauty. For the record, as a half-elf, Elora would have much smaller, but still pointed ears, and as a D&D warlock, she would be armoured in a cloth-and-leather combo.
Of course, looking at these concept images as well as this one, I did find myself pondering the much-discussed impracticality of fantasy heroines rushing into battle wearing nothing but a chainmail bikini. The more I thought about it, the more it began to make sense that the women who would perhaps adopt such a minimalist approach to combat fashion still wouldn't be the melee fighters. Rather, they would be the physically weaker, ranged magic casters. These ladies, guys take note, would be the ones in chainmail bikinis... as long as it wasn't too cold.
Last week our Dungeons & Dragons role-playing group started our first 4th Edition campaign. And we're certainly a very odd party. Not a single human among us, there's instead a massively built 15 year old dragonborn fighter called Celix, a 24 year old dwarven invoker called Firskaren (Norwegian for "Stumpy") and 18 year old Elora. The character interactions are very different from our last campaign, with business-minded Celix despising rich bitch (and cocktease) Elora, Firskaren mostly consumed with thoughts about beer, and Elora disdainful of everyone in her party while she laments the "misery" of her life... and maybe sometimes even cuts herself.
Emo Elora exists as something of a cross between Greek Mythology's Medea, the film version of the X-Men's Rogue, Ged in the first book of the Earthsea quartet, and hundreds of thousands of 21st Century teenage girls who love to wallow in self-pity despite their comfortable middle class existence. I kind of enjoy putting a contemporary spin on traditional fantasy characters like that.
I must say it's been marvelous fun actually concocting a backstory for Elora. My last D&D character Herkon was a paladin, and while his personality and motivations changed over time (he ended up a partly divine champion of the Empire, and proprietor of the Lay on Hands chain of massage parlours), he didn't exactly leap out the starting gate as a fully formed character. He didn't need to be. He was just a highly charismatic oaf whose entire purpose in life was to smite Evil in its many forms and bring dutiful worshipers to the Faith. Think of him as an exceptionally handsome half-elf George W. Bush.
Anyway, so much have I been enjoying developing Elora's backstory that I've actually written it down as a piece of fantasy fiction. This is the first time I have done extensive fiction writing in, gosh, probably a decade. So now you can read the first 2 parts of Elora's backstory - with the third and final part still to be uploaded on this blog once it's completed. Let me know what you think in the Blog Comments below. *Braces self for the "You only wrote this so you could get off by writing borderline erotica" comments*
Elora's backstory: Part 1
Elora's backstory: Part 2 (AKA Sweet Valley Silverpass)
Anyway, the pics included with this post, although lifted from the Warhammer MMORPG, and of a "clothie" dark elf sorceress, are actually pretty close to the way I envision Elora. Not so much (or, ahem, little) in terms of her dress, but rather in terms of colouring, complexion and beauty. For the record, as a half-elf, Elora would have much smaller, but still pointed ears, and as a D&D warlock, she would be armoured in a cloth-and-leather combo.
Of course, looking at these concept images as well as this one, I did find myself pondering the much-discussed impracticality of fantasy heroines rushing into battle wearing nothing but a chainmail bikini. The more I thought about it, the more it began to make sense that the women who would perhaps adopt such a minimalist approach to combat fashion still wouldn't be the melee fighters. Rather, they would be the physically weaker, ranged magic casters. These ladies, guys take note, would be the ones in chainmail bikinis... as long as it wasn't too cold.
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