Wayward Writer

Here’s an example of a character that I created for one of my various and sundry Role Playing Games. Granted not everything on the character resume was filled out, but here was the process I went through to help bring her to life.

The game I was joining was all about reincarnated deities in human bodies, and at the time that I joined, there weren’t any Celtic deities. So I decided to fill out the application for one of my favorite Celtic deities, Morrigan. The Application was relatively simple.

So I decided right off the bat that I was going to make the character female and also college age. After going through a couple of name sites (babynames.com and also Behind the Name) I decided on the name, Ceara Nerys Whitfield. Ceara means Spear in Gaelic and Nerys is Welsh for Lady, both meaning I thought fit the deity quite well. The last name was something that randomly popped into my head.

Now she had a name. As I started thinking over her character and backstory a little more, I came to the conclusion that she’s a brunette with brown eyes who is more or less average height and on the slim side of things. As I mulled things over more and more, little snippets started to come together.

She was born on October 31, 1985 which is also the date of the Celtic calendar feast, Samhain, which traditionally begins their year. Children born on this day tend to be special in some way. As soon as I got this, I also decided on her family background.

Ceara is an only child born to older parents. Her father was an attaché to the US Consulate in Edinburgh; her mother was a social butterfly inside local circles. After retiring from his government job, Ceara’s father, Dustin now works for a small college, teaching international relations and political science. Grandparents Jake and Misty (paternal side) are cattle ranchers in New Mexico.

From her family background, I was also able to isolate/define some of her major strengths and weaknesses, both as the human self and as the deity.

Weaknesses: Has trouble opening up in relationships, big social settings tend to make her nervous because she got lost at one when she was six. She’s also a bit of a firecracker and doesn’t always think her actions through before doing them.

Strengths: Battle goddess, goddess of nature and sovereignty, highly developed martial skills, gifted with very good strategy skills. Has a certain affinity for ravens and cattle. Also has prophetic foresight, the ability to cast spells, and the powers to transform her self into a bird, fish, or animal, and from a beautiful young girl into a hag. Prefers psychological warfare to actual combat.

This information gave me more of what I needed to get inside this character’s head a little more and from this and the family information, I was able to get more of a “feel” so to speak for her personality.

Ceara’s personality is quirky, she’s sometimes quiet, sometimes bubbly. She got a twisted sense of humor that is sometimes very violent. She hates really deep psychological dramas and Virginia Woolf-esque novels. She also despises people who don’t say what they mean and she tries to stay as far away from her parents’ world as possible. She’s very extroverted.

As soon as I got that far, some other parts started to fall into place. Her hobbies are fencing, riding, and martial arts. With that in mind, I was able to extrapolate the sense that Ceara is very much a tomboy and resented being forced into doing some of the more girly things that her mother insisted she do as a small child.

I went further, bringing events up to more recent times. Presently, Ceara is a college student at University of Maryland, College Park. Her grandparents made her a deal that they would pay for college as long as she chose a US school to attend. This freed her to choose whatever major she wanted to do, not having to rely on her parents’ funding (which would have definitely come with strings) She is studying engineering as a major and military history as a minor. Her particular choice of major and her reluctance to follow in her father’s footsteps as a PoliSci major and potential diplomat and her refusal to attend all of the big social events and secure herself what her mother would call, “a brilliant match” have severely disappointed both parents. Her relationship with them with is cordial at best.

Ceara, however is secure in her grandparents’ good opinions and both of them have expressed a desire to see her doing something she really cares about. For fun she’s rebuilding/restoring an old hot rod she’s gotten from a friend of her father’s as well as working on her fencing and martial arts skills.

Ceara likes to divide her time between the DC/ Metro area (while in school) and her grandparents’ ranch in New Mexico (for holidays and breaks).

The general deity history was easily taken from Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Mythica.

The final step in creating the initial character was deciding if she knew about her deity self (yes, it was revealed to her slowly over time) and who I would use in her icons (not necessary but still fun, I chose Summer Glau).

Then I added my Role-playing Sample and sent off the Application.