How did you come up with your character?

[Yunas13]

Hello fellow RPers!

 

I'm not sure if a topic has been made of this but I am so curious! I'm wanting to make an RP character who I can level 1-50 and who can help get my writer's side to kick in again. (I'm also working on a FFXIII/FFX crossover fanfiction, taking it slow and not rushing it.) I'm trying to come up with a story but also not sticking with the game's story. I used to be so good at making different stories but I've gotten rusty and need a push!

 

So, my fellow RPers, how did you come up with your characters and their back story? Did you create them before you made them in the game or did they come to you as you created them or played them? I made a topic earlier asking about a back story but I think I was so clueless that I just put the basics and might have confused everyone. lol!

 

Thank you and can't wait to hear from you all! :lol:

[Lizzo]

Since I am currently in a creative writing class this thread caught my attention instantly - especially since I LOVE LOVE LOVE creating characters (have roughly 100+ in my head over multiple IPs and some of my own).

 

Before the game launched I created probably 20 characters, major, secondary, tertiary, playable toons and characters simply to buff the playable's backstories.

 

This is the first character I came up with, sadly he did not make it into the game as I was not impressed with THM in beta:

http://ffxiv-roleplayers.com/wiki/index.php?title=Lizzo_Trange

 

In creating Lizzo I had a generalization of the character in my head for a few years (he's based roughly on a 'faceless' character from FFTA who was a BLM). His actual characterization has changed multiple times to fit whatever I wanted to try to fit him in and thankfully with 14's great lore (and also being a FF game with the option of being a BLM again) I was able to create a backstory that wove several aspects of his multiple versions from my head into one person. It allowed me to make him a minor noble, bring in the death of his father, go further with his family (sister, mother, brother, brother-in-law and nephew were given names and backstories of their own), friends were created based on shadowy figures I had in my head (specifically Crowe - another character who always with him in my head, and again sadly did not make it into the game) who was replaced with his daughter Sigyn, and a magic-based girl friend (Zali'ah).

 

I thoroughly enjoyed fleshing out this character, I loved watching his backstory spill out of my head and onto the screen over a few hours. Being able to make a visualization of him through the character creator also helped (though he didn't come out exactly how I wanted, even with the great amount of options in the CC).

 

Here's to you new character, and the hope that their creation is a fun and exciting time for you!

 

(Sigyn and Zali'ah did in fact make it into the game and have been 50 for a few months.)

[Erik Mynhier]

Erik was at his core sourced from earlier versions from earlier mmos going back to Neverwinter Nights and good old D&D from back in the day (80's). The source is formed and I let it grow organically, sometimes slow, sometimes fast, from back in 1.0 forward to my unwise sub cancel all the way to the 2.0 beta, until now.

[Jeantremont]

I'm inspired by the lore of the game itself. Reading through quests gives you a basis, a setting, from which to build a character. For instance, at level 16ish you run onto a cult... So that led me to wonder what it would be like to play as a member of that cult. Or as a poacher, a pirate, a Garlean, etc.

 

Sometimes I create characters specifically FOR a guild I'd like to join. If I see a guild with a really unique concept, I'll want to create a character that could fit perfectly with that plot! Check out the linkshell hall and see if anything catches your eye.

[Xydane Vale]

Xydane was created to be your typical hero. I wanted to RP the "good guy" and as I learned more of the game's lore, it was then that I used it as a basic layout into creating his back story. There is a reason behind everything he says and why he acts the way he does.

 

I wanted the average hero's story - one of lost, death, love, and hope. Though it took some time to plan and brainstorm, I eventually created what I wanted and from that point was I able to "add more" through via story writing and RPing.

 

Though the magic about RP is creating any type of character you want, I personally am more comfortable with creating a character in the side of justice and righteousness. Just like in World of Warcraft, for example, I created an orc warrior who's sense of honor, wisdom, and many life lessons help forged the definition of hope when the world is covered in darkness.

[Aysun]

I learned to RP in a place called Furcadia (don't judge me ), where the original anthropomorphic Aysun was inspired, visually, by:

 

 

 

 

 

Cute. The rest of her personality I just sorta came up with as I went. Wasn't really based on anything in particular other than what I wanted to play, a spunky shorthaired girl. Anyway, I used the name in XI and didn't RP, but when I started XIV I had to RP! Her basic personality is similar to what she had in Furcadia. That's what I went into XIV with. Barebones personality. Didn't even have a backstory made up yet.

 

I chose the history I did for her because of my own ignorance about the lore of Eorzea. I wanted her to have a reason not to know many things about it, but not be foreign. So she was raise on a tradeship! I made up her "traditional" name and reason for not using it shortly after I started playing and realized that all Seeker of the Sun Miqo'te had the apostrophe thing going on. Personality-wise, everything just sort of comes together. Like ^they said about their character, there's a reason behind everything Aysun does as well. Even if it's the fact that she sometimes acts irrationally and does things without reason.

 

She's changed quite a bit through RP over the last few years, needless to say, and I love that.

[FreelanceWizard]

I actually took pretty much up to phase 4 beta to come up with my character. I started from the mechanics I liked the best -- the Disciples of Magic -- and the lore I found most interesting, which was that of the miqo'te. From there, I came up with a character that could be influenced by, and have an opinion on, that particular culture but yet would also be a fairly free and open adventurer (albeit one with some pretty major personality flaws). The most important thing for me was to play in the boundaries of the lore while making a character that I found interesting and had room to grow.

 

After I had the concept roughed out, I did several of the prompts (100 Questions About Your Character, Your Boss Drop Table, What do you like to eat, etc.) to flesh her out in more detail. Of course, she's changed as she's been played and RPed. She retains some of her naivety, but she's also become a bit more hard-edged and violent. She's sort of drifting from "neutral good" to "chaotic good" in D&D terms, or from Scrupulous to Unprincipled in Palladium terms.

 

My recommendation is to start with a rough concept -- something you can summarize in a sentence or two -- and either flesh it out through RP, writing it up in the wiki, or going through some of those character prompts. The 100 Questions is especially useful, I think.

[Dat Oni]

Edgar came about early on during the beta for A Realm Reborn. At the time, I wasn't a member of the RPC community, and contrary to his official 2.0 toon, he began his existence as a Lancer.

 

He had nothing really special about him, at that time.

 

Then I joined a linkshell/FC called Aetherblade and began fleshing him out. I realized that I wanted Edgar to be a lot like myself, which included my flaws. He's talkative, he's very physical, he speaks in a dialect filled to the brim with words right out of the thesaurus and manages to impress and bewilder with this form of speech.

 

Like most of my "Personas", he inherited the fucked up right eye, which in real life is my colourblind eye. Many of my characters feature some sort of nod to this trait; One's eye rolls in its socket like googly eyes, another is an undead maid who has had the entire thing eye rot out into a gaping hole, another is a demon who's mouth stretches across where his right eye should be. And if the others are due to lose an eye at some point in my many writings, you can guess which one will be lost.

 

When he's not walking around acting like a more sophisticated me, Edgar is basically being most people's worst nightmare: a cat-like Miqo'te.

 

He refers to Miqo'te children as kittens, compares his species to Couerls, purrs, and has been reported hissing at someone who tugged his ear too hard.

 

 

To put it simply, Edgar is a fucking cat. You have a problem with this? Don't RP with me. I will laugh off your complaints and proceed to do nothing but purr until you accept Edgar for who he is as a character.

 

 

You have been warned. :tonberry:

 

 

Finally, like myself, Edgar is effeminate. That is to say, he is bisexual, and possibly a bit of a transvestite. If this game allowed cross-dressing I swear to god I'd have Ed show up in the female version of Coliseum subligar.

 

To put it simply, Ed is fabulous-

 

 

-He just doesn't get many opportunities to express himself. Not quite unlike myself. I live in Oklahoma, the belt-buckle of the Bible Belt, Christian Conservative central, and showing off your non-heterosexuality here is often followed by a horde of angry fundamentalists trying to preserve the sanctity of marriage that you are apparently trampling on by existing. 

 

 

But I digress. Edgar rarely speaks about his sexuality, but come the opportunity, he'd probably take it by the horns and ride it for miles. Interpret that as you will.

[Rythulian]

I RP a lot over on dreamwidth so I spend a lot of my time writing as a specific canon character. It gets a little tiring after a couple of years so it's nice to come up with a 'free' character to explore certain character aspects with.

 

I'd been in a bit of an OC rut for a while, having trouble with the visual lead to trouble with the narrative. I took a step back and put off OC building for awhile. Recently I was introduced to FFXIV, I want to say two months ago but I could be wrong, started going through the game on a different server and started to get inspired.

 

Eventually I decided to just take the plunge, set up a new character on balmung, work around the actual in-game lore and go from there. I've mostly got the personality down by this point, I can be indecisive on that at times, but i'm still working on the background part.

The personality itself is mostly built up around certain traits i've gotten used to over my many years of RPing. The background is going to be centred more around ideas that i've liked but never gotten around to playing.

 

Long story short. The game in general combined with the need for a little RP freedom ended up creating my character in a way.

[Synn]

Well creating Synn first started when i saw my brother playing phase three of the FFXIV beta. At first i thought "Cool a new MMO to try out." But thanks to a reddit post about the RPC and rp within the game I decided that I would like to try it out for that aspect of the game instead of just something to take up time doing nothing.

Before any serious decisions on who Synn would be I took a look at the setting of the game and started thinking "What would Synn do in this world?" , "How does he feel about X or Y?" , "Is he a good or bad guy?" Stuff like that. From there I decided that he would be a dark or anti-hero largely influenced by my most favored job in the Final fantasy series, the Dark knight. But alas Dark knights have yet to be implemented in the game yet so after a bit more research into the story of FFXIV I tweaked his back story so that it would fit.

At this point I had Synn's base, but he was still incomplete. Continuing to write out his back story I established his likes and dislikes, past and present, along with a goal that drives him forward. And the end result was a character much like myself irl but within a world very different with its own problems, problems that Synn would solve how I would solve them.

[Sophia_Grave]

No idea, honestly. Sophia is so far from the characters I usually RP as, but ironically she's shaping up to be one of my favorites. If I had to compare her to someone, I suppose she'd pass as a more feminine, lawful evil version of Riza Hawkeye from Full Metal Alchemist. As to what actually spurred me to create her, I guess boredom played a part. I wanted to do something different, so here she is.

[ArmachiA]

I mostly just adapted characters I already had from previous games. So I'll just talk about that.

 

Armi was born in FFXI. I didn't have a name for her, and was going to use Armachia - which is the name of my Lasombra vampire from Vampire: THe Masquerade. I didn't really like the name for her though, since I felt it was too harsh for the kind of character I wanted and just shortened it to Armi.

 

Back then, the only kind of characters I ever played were sarcastic, mean, witty, femme fatale types and I wanted a change - so I rolled Armi to be nice and sweet and kind of shy. That's been carried throughout all the games I play with her - though her backstory and such always changes.

 

In FFXIV I took the 10 years of experience I had playing her in various games and wittled down what I liked about her and what I didn't. My plan with Armi and Loki was to compare and contrast the "Virgin and the Whore" trope of the bible. I thought it would be interesting to play two vastly different characters and explore those two things. Thus, Armi became the "Virgin"

 

Armi existed in 1.0 and back then I decided she was a Priestess of Nymeia who believed her own will was not her own, that her whole life belonged to fate. I did this because I thought the 12 God thing was interesting, but in 2.0 - after the Calamity - I wanted her to be angry at the Gods she once was so devout too and try to distance herself from them to find her own place. Because she entered the Priesthood so young - 12 - I made her awkward and shy; she just does not understand social queues and desperately wants friends. BUT to make her interesting and not a wallflower (Because I'm not really and I didn't want to get bored) I also made her eager, curious, (Unintentionally) funny, talkative - though with a tendency to ramble.

 

Loki, on the other side of the coin, became the "Whore." Loki is from a homebrew Table Top game from many many years ago and I always liked the character so I always bring her in when pirates can be a thing. Loki in the table top, is a space pirate only really because I like the fantasy of pirates (The reality... not so much) and built her around that. In FFXIV - she's an ex-pirate; her ship and crew were destroyed in the Calamity. I didn't this because I wanted to see her start from nothing, since I always give her an established pirating career. I gave her a fake leg and a scar over her eye in order to show the consequences of her lifestyle. I made her promiscuous and flirty, but sarcastic and snide. I have her entire romantic past mapped out. I also decided to make her an eventual Summoner, having come out of the five year skip with some weird Aether problems.

 

Neither character are really anything like me. I don't like playing me, I am me. It's no fun to me so I tend to make characters that are all over the map. I find I can slip into any character - evil, good, shy, outgoing, male, female - rather easily and like to challenge myself.

[Elyscia]

I have never RP'ed before (ever. This game is my very first exposure to RP), so starting up Elyscia was a toughie. 

 

Before Elyscia.. she was Punch Cat. Punch Cat. More alternatively named she was Shizei Ko, or 'Pun Chkat'. 

 

I was supposed to RP with my Canadian friend and we were both to be antagonists - flirtatious thieves, and she was going to be Roegadyn and call herself Punch Fish/Pun Chfish. It sounded pretty fun, but because of the full sever shenanigans I ended-up in Shiva (until free server transfers started). 

When I joined Balmung I decided to keep Shizei Ko who was boisterous, flirty, rude, but then I re-made her because I messed-up her tail and during it I thought "I love red hair and green eyes."

 

And made Elyscia Rose. I had trouble thinking up her surname though.... 

 

Re-rolled her personality at least three times. The more I thought about her background, the more I thought about how it'd affect her as a person.. so if X happened to her I don't think she'd show Y personality or moods: she was a lot more defiant and curious, then she turned child-like, exciteable, now she's all cautious and bitter.

[E'lario]

When I make characters I usually like to start out with the very basics of their personality and history and then build around that with actual RP interactions. In other games I've RPed in I usually play the villain, so with FFXIV I wanted a more good/neutrally aligned character.

 

E'lario's basic personality started out as friendly, helpful and kind. He gets easily embarrassed, and often times will try to hide his true emotions under jokes. Through roleplaying he's become slightly more serious but still likes to make terrible puns, is a little bit of a klutz and gets overly excited about his research and will talk someone's ear off about crystals for hours.

 

Sometimes I miss the more villainous role, but I really like how E'lario has turned out. He's blast to play and most people I meet seem to find him adorably endearing.

[Roen]

Roen was my favorite and most beloved character from the longest D&D campaign I've ever played in.  She was my first paladin, and what they say about your first D&D character being most like the player is completely true.  Roen was fifth and my last character I rolled, nothing like my first who was a flirtatious gypsy. 

 

Playing a paladin was completely out of my comfort zone for me.  Stepping into a shoes of a selfless do-gooder is not my thing.  Especially in D&D where you don't get to decide your character's fate!  You CAN DIE.  Lose everything.  So playing a character who will likely risk everything for a good cause, that was hard to swallow. My preference has always been flirtatious selfish characters with a vague moral compass.  That was my thing. Until Roen.

 

The D&D story that spanned over 5 years with the campaign, her growth, the loves, the hopes, the losses she experienced, and the sacrifice made at the end... I fell in love with the character.

 

So when the story and the campaign was finished, I did not want to let her go. So I created an alternate reality version of her in FFXIV, complete with her own unique FFXIV history.  At the heart, she is the same person.  I know her inside and out.  But the circumstances of her upbringing being completely different, I am having fun playing this "What if" scenario out in the game.

[Rosekitten]

I made my character back during the beta for 2.0. My sole purpose was to make a character I would use as my main and to rp with. I had a Free Company in mind (that didn't work out but maybe for the better) and read all the lore I could on 1.0 game and the current changed after the calamity.

 

More or less it seemed that there were going to be very few Duskweghs and given I am a huge fan of out cast lore I ran with it. I did make quite a few adjustments and tweaks before the game was live. Help of people reading over my back story and 100 questions and then some friends helping out with making my background story a little less boring then it was. 

 

I had a look in mind but that changed over time as well as I adjusted my character to be a female instead of a male while keeping everything true to her background story and easily explaining why the change or why some would have seen her as one or the other (though she stopped dressing as the other gender now).

 

The over all character was based off of a very old OC of mine. I reversed a lot of the things between them though, this character having a laxed temper and it's nearly impossible to get on her bad side or tick her off. Also I tried to pull from what I seemed to find a common theme for her Clan .. I didn't want her to be broody. She is a bit but presently she has a lot on her plate. Though once someone gets to know her or manages to get her into a conversation her real mood normally opens up fairly easily. 

 

Not quite to the chatter box stand point but she is willing to talk to new folk. Tries to avoid Lalafell due to her past history with them, but aside from that she has no quarrel with any of the other races or clans. I tried to make her a mix of a crafter but still able to defend herself, something that has proven harder to do then I thought. It is very difficult it seems to get a crafter into rp stories.. you would think it would be easy seeing as armor and weapons need repairs. 

 

I also threw myself a extra curve ball a little after the game launched and I fell in love with the Ishgard lore... Though IC she avoids that area for various reasons now..

[Clover]

Clover is based on Miyazaki's world. Since I think that FFXIV is adorable, I wanted her to be a normal girl who would pay attention to the small details from everyday life. Someone who, despite her lack of special skills and her overall weakness, could still have a strong spirit.

 

K'mih is also based on FFXIV's adorable and innocent atmosphere. I found female miqo'tes' smile very youthful and cutely naive, so I wanted my miqo'te to have those traits.

[Aldotsk]

Creation of Anelia Sadowyn

Anelia Sadowyn is originally based upon the similar paladin character that I've created from World of Warcraft known as Elslie Sturmwaldt. Elslie's background was a war orphan who lost her parents from the Burning Legion and Scourge during Third War, and hoped to vow to avenge her family as she grew up to be full fledged paladin. While Anelia is Chaotic Good aligned character, believing that everyone should love one another, even if the opposite side may be Horde. Anelia has similar war orphan background story, but instead she starts extremely aggressive as a child, then grew up to be the most kindest paladin at the end. However, Anelia's character is a very shaky character in emotions and is an example of most Lawful Good character who try to do what is justified, but starts asking question to herself if she is really fighting for the right thing. Anelia's title "the Blood Hunter" or even "Azure Wing/Blade" is a small title adapted from series such as Mobile Suit Gundam franchise.

 

Creation of Ellaria Althene

I wanted to make a Lalafell character, a bit more wise yet non-mischievous person who looks at everything in a widened perspective. Ellaria's original name Elororo Eloro was altered and given the name Ellaria Althene by the credits of Anelia and Fiore Sadowyn. In an actual concept, Ellaria's last name Althene is an "ALternative" ideal of "Athene/Athena" as the Goddess of Wisdom and the female Goddes of War unofficially. Ellaria seems to wear white robe and seems to carry small hand note, just like Zhuge Liang from Romance of Three Kingdoms, where Zhuge Liang the greatest strategist was wearing white robes and carry a feathered fan with him all the time. Ellaria's nick name is Sleeping Phoenix, combined from Zhuge Liang's "Sleeping Dragon" and Pang Tong's "Young Phoenix". Last, Ellaria seems to wear red a lot, so she carries her name as Crimson Skillet, given by Bismarck's Culinary Guild. The Crimson Skillet is adapted from "Crimson Lightning" and "Red Comet", named by Johnny Raiden and Char Aznable - infamous anti-heroes/antagonists in Mobile Suit Gundam

 

Creation of Mizuho Mitarashi

Mizuho is still work in progress, and her background is still unknown. But her background's basic information is that she comes from a far east tribe, trying to regain her family's Mitarashi clan. Mizuho's appearance is very interesting, to a fact that she carries blue eyes. The blue eyes of Mizuho is adapted from "Memoirs of Geisha", where Chiyo/Sayuri carried the blue eyes of the "ocean", considered as amount of "good luck and fortune". In this case, Mizuho's eyes are more of eyes of "Leviathan" - Not really saying that she is primal, but is as fierce as the tsunami/maelstrom of Leviathan in her eyes.

[TheLastCandle]

I'm a bit late on this, but what I generally do is come up with the general concept of the character I want to play first. For Yvelont, I decided that I wanted to play a knightly, martial type of character with little grasp of magick. From there, I decided a suitable place for him to have lived, in this case Ishgard. Then I chose his race and named him based on Elezen naming conventions. With that done, I began to think about what might cause him to leave Ishgard to begin adventuring out in the world, and the rest of his story's details were filled in as they came to me.

 

Fun fact: the character's personality takes a tiny bit of inspiration from the character Etienne Navarre from the movie Ladyhawke, which is why I chose it as his surname.

 

Edit: Another thing I feel that's important to keep in mind is that your character's history, while still important, doesn't necessarily have to dictate the present. I find that it's far more fun to allow RP with others to shape and mold your character, rather than keeping a narrative that boils down to, "Well, his backstory is -this- and so he pretty much has to end up like -this." Goals are good to have, but I've seen a lot of players end up abandoning characters because they feel they've written themselves into a corner. I've certainly done it myself, so I tend to go with the flow these days, viewing RP as a collaborative exercise in writing. But your mileage may very, and so on.

[Maril]

I had a lot of indecisiveness with Sastra. First of all, she started out as a miqote. For the first time ever, I'd actually -forgotten- to check with the naming convention, and it bugged me so much when I found out that I opted to change her to a Highlander. As it would turn out, I like the highlander lore a lot more. I created her personality and story through RP, simply by narrowing down some possible choices in my head and deciding in RP whenever someone asked, for example, "So where do you come from". 

Likes & dislikes over everything from food to the various races have been decided through her first encounters with them. So, one of her things is that she isn't too fond of lalafells because her first few encounters with them were negative. 

And somehow, with ample amount of time to develop, that has become Sastra as she is today. But, she constantly develops further, so who knows if she'll be the same another six months down the road.

[Crisiet]

I was levelling my then-main (Moon-keeper MNK) through Coerthas and I realised I loved the setting. Then from there I started thinking about making a character native to that area. I hadn't gotten into FFXIV's RP scene at that point and Ishgardian lore really caught my attention. By the time I'd finished questing there I had thought up an entire concept. Then Crisiet was born!

 

I had intended him to be a side alt for me to switch to when I wanted to wind down, but I got so into both his class (DRG) and the ideas I had for his personality and backstory that he quickly became my main. Funnily he shares a surname with an Ishgardian NPC in Whitebrim, which was a complete accident.

 

His personality is similar to that of a character from writing I've done in the past. Means well, kind of a snarky jerk sometimes. Crisiet is a little bit friendlier than this other character though. Just a little.

[111]

I had never RPed before playing FFXIV, so Natalie was something of a spur of the moment creation. As you can tell from the name, I didn't intend to RP when I made her, and have had to jump through some hoops to justify it.

 

I started off by just talking to RPers around Ul'dah, and as they asked me things I would just make up the answers on the spot. After a while, and enough questions, a character started to develop. Fortunately I managed to start off in a transitive period for my character, (she was finally back in Ul'dah after years of war) so she's been able to grow and change quite a bit since I made her. She started off a bit puritanical and rulebound, but as she kept interacting with people the moral greyness of Ul'dah started to rub off on her.

 

For the moment her character has kind of crystalized for me, and I really enjoy playing her, but I doubt I ever could have come up with it on purpose. I view her as a roll of the improvisation dice that turned out particularly well.

[Kage]

This is the worst thing in the world of RP and for myself... but honestly Kage came out of my wanting to try something new. I obviously didn't think I'd RP because I probably would have been named Kakageru Yuyugeru but no...

 

He's still very much a work in progress but I'm basing how he acts mostly around how I would react. He isn't -me- but it gives me the easiest basis to work with, without having had to actually build a character before wanting to RP him. Upcoming arcs will most likely be his most defining character builds... but he certainly had time to develop while his friends were in trouble. ><

[Eva]

Eva is basically the grown-up daughter of a character I RPed in FF11. Adaptations in the lore were made as needed (e.g. her father the Ishgardian knight instead of San d'Orian knight). She and her upbringing are derivative of experiences from FF11 RP events without things being completely identical.

 

She's a pretty stark contrast to him and started as an experiment in playing a totally different sort of character. She's grown and evolved over the years on her own in ways we could not have predicted through her interactions with others and experiences along the way, and we love RPing her.

[Pip]

Most of my characters start from what few bare facts have to be true about them. For Pip it's the fact that he is Duskwight (with the lore or lack thereof inherent in that choice), must interact with others in and out of cities (in order to actually RP him), and must somehow learn or know magic. From there it's just a game of recursive 'Why?' and following through with logical consequences for the answers.

 

The biggest boosts along the way came from reading the forever-long Duskwight Discussion thread a few pages back from here and talking a couple things through with one of the mentors in the welcome forum ((Edit: The poster above me, actually! Hi, Eva!)). That got me thinking about his clan as a living entity instead of shady background fluff, which in turn made the rest more or less fall into place like so:

 

Coincidence plays a huge role. I chose his last name, Dalaine, from a baby name site that said 'Alaine' meant 'little rock' - so I thought his name was a watered down 'from the little rock' in reference to his Dusky-ness. A couple weeks later, after reading that amazing thread, I went to google translate to name his clan and found out that 'alaine' apparently means 'wool'. He already had Weaving started up and I'd chosen Nymeria for a deity at character creation, so I went with it. Suddenly he came from a family of weavers who showed high regard for The Weaver for that reason. And maybe he lived in a clan where each family more or less served a function in the community (clothing, construction, etc)? For a clan name, I figured I'd bastardize some French version of 'manage' or 'coordinate' to be the surname of the leading family who managed the rest. The only one I could smash around into something that sounded good was 'se debrouiller', an apparent idiom for the 'make do/get by' meaning of 'manage'. When I checked the literal meaning of each word it came out to something like 'unravel themselves' - BAM! Nymeria reverence is suddenly very instrumental in the clan and therefore in Pip's life up to now. He even gained a personal curse: "Nymeria's Warp!"

 

That's a rambling way of saying happy accidents happen, and I try to go with them when I can and play it off like it's all planned.