I like this! My turn!
I originally had some basic ideas for a male Miqo'te because I wanted to play a male Mithra in FFXI and I figured this could be fun. I started modeling him after Captain Nemo from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, but decided I didn't enjoy being a Miqo'te and Captain Nemo was extremely anti-social so that wouldn't work well for RP. Next I tried my hand at lalafell in an attempt to make them more serious and break some stereotypes. I found that I can't do magic and canned that character too. While I was sitting around waiting for beta, I picked up the book The Once and Future King. I've always been a fan of the King Arthur legend and I've used Arthurian names for a lot of past games. I decided to take a knightly character approach. After doing some lore research I found the knightliest place in the game was Ishgard, so I went Dragoon. With Dragoon in mind, I chose the last name Skystrider as it sounded cool and was the name of a lance in FFXI. The name Uther came later. I then created Uther's entire family tree out of a mix of Midlanders with Arthurian names and Highlanders with Nordic names. It fit in my head because knights and vikings are the most commonly pit against dragons in Western fiction. I needed a reason for Uther to be in Gridania instead of Ishgard, so I went scrounging for inspiration in books again. That's when I remembered the story of Ivanhoe, the disinherited knight. I threw that in and added in some details about rejecting the zealous nature of Ishgard's devotion to Halone and a dislike for the city's isolationist policy and voila! Uther Skystrider!
After mastering that character, I didn't want to ruin him by over-thinking him. So I moved on to my alt, Wart Totonji, who started off as just the name Wart, also from The Once and Future King. With Wart I wanted to go back to the idea I had earlier for breaking lalafell stereotypes. I wanted him to be strong and noble while keeping the lalafell intelligence. That's when I got the idea for making a dirtied up, sideburns-wearing engineer/paladin. Wart was born Wowonji Totonji and joined the Brass Blades at a young age, where he got the nickname Wart. I figured since he's smaller than most fighters, he probably took a lot of beatings early on. So how would he solve this problem? I decided to add in an engineering edge, bringing in the use of chemicals and simple machines to help him fight foes bigger than he is. Almost like a medieval lalafell Batman. With that idea in mind, I started building his back story around it.Â
How would he fund these inventions? Maybe he comes from a Dunesfolk family from Ul'dah that has some money.
Where did he learn to fight? Maybe he was a member of the Brass Blades before he took to adventuring.
Why did he start adventuring? He probably had a patriotic flare in his youth but decided it wasn't worth the bloodshed as he got wiser and left the Blades.
Why wasn't he at the battle of Carteneu? He's a rough-and-tumble sort of guy, maybe he broke his leg and was in the infirmary at the time.
How old is he? I imagine he joined the Brass Blades when he was in his late teens, but what inspired him? Maybe the invasion of Ala Mhigo. Lalafell age slower anyway. We'll make him about 36.
I find that once you have a central idea, everything else kind of falls into place.
EDIT: I, too, project myself onto my characters. Uther, like myself is the youngest sibling, and since he left home (I moved halfway across the country IRL) he's been kind of looking for an older-brother-figure, despite being perfectly capable of taking on problems by himself. Wart is obviously very short (I'm a 5'3 male IRL) and because of that, he feels he needs to prove himself. Deep down he's a kind-hearted man, but he often lets bravado get in the way of showing it.
I originally had some basic ideas for a male Miqo'te because I wanted to play a male Mithra in FFXI and I figured this could be fun. I started modeling him after Captain Nemo from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, but decided I didn't enjoy being a Miqo'te and Captain Nemo was extremely anti-social so that wouldn't work well for RP. Next I tried my hand at lalafell in an attempt to make them more serious and break some stereotypes. I found that I can't do magic and canned that character too. While I was sitting around waiting for beta, I picked up the book The Once and Future King. I've always been a fan of the King Arthur legend and I've used Arthurian names for a lot of past games. I decided to take a knightly character approach. After doing some lore research I found the knightliest place in the game was Ishgard, so I went Dragoon. With Dragoon in mind, I chose the last name Skystrider as it sounded cool and was the name of a lance in FFXI. The name Uther came later. I then created Uther's entire family tree out of a mix of Midlanders with Arthurian names and Highlanders with Nordic names. It fit in my head because knights and vikings are the most commonly pit against dragons in Western fiction. I needed a reason for Uther to be in Gridania instead of Ishgard, so I went scrounging for inspiration in books again. That's when I remembered the story of Ivanhoe, the disinherited knight. I threw that in and added in some details about rejecting the zealous nature of Ishgard's devotion to Halone and a dislike for the city's isolationist policy and voila! Uther Skystrider!
After mastering that character, I didn't want to ruin him by over-thinking him. So I moved on to my alt, Wart Totonji, who started off as just the name Wart, also from The Once and Future King. With Wart I wanted to go back to the idea I had earlier for breaking lalafell stereotypes. I wanted him to be strong and noble while keeping the lalafell intelligence. That's when I got the idea for making a dirtied up, sideburns-wearing engineer/paladin. Wart was born Wowonji Totonji and joined the Brass Blades at a young age, where he got the nickname Wart. I figured since he's smaller than most fighters, he probably took a lot of beatings early on. So how would he solve this problem? I decided to add in an engineering edge, bringing in the use of chemicals and simple machines to help him fight foes bigger than he is. Almost like a medieval lalafell Batman. With that idea in mind, I started building his back story around it.Â
How would he fund these inventions? Maybe he comes from a Dunesfolk family from Ul'dah that has some money.
Where did he learn to fight? Maybe he was a member of the Brass Blades before he took to adventuring.
Why did he start adventuring? He probably had a patriotic flare in his youth but decided it wasn't worth the bloodshed as he got wiser and left the Blades.
Why wasn't he at the battle of Carteneu? He's a rough-and-tumble sort of guy, maybe he broke his leg and was in the infirmary at the time.
How old is he? I imagine he joined the Brass Blades when he was in his late teens, but what inspired him? Maybe the invasion of Ala Mhigo. Lalafell age slower anyway. We'll make him about 36.
I find that once you have a central idea, everything else kind of falls into place.
EDIT: I, too, project myself onto my characters. Uther, like myself is the youngest sibling, and since he left home (I moved halfway across the country IRL) he's been kind of looking for an older-brother-figure, despite being perfectly capable of taking on problems by himself. Wart is obviously very short (I'm a 5'3 male IRL) and because of that, he feels he needs to prove himself. Deep down he's a kind-hearted man, but he often lets bravado get in the way of showing it.
