My PC: Carter Shannon

Who's This?

Carter Shannon is the first PC I ever played in a campaign that finished, straight from level 1 to 20. We started this campaign in March of 2020 and finished it in July of 2020. This campaign was special, and I think you'll be able to tell why from the character descriptions. This campaign was run by a close personal friend of mine, and done entirely online. There were three players.

Our PCs:

1. Carter Shannon: Human, Fiend Warlock, Pact of the Tome - He was from a world similar to ours, but with some fantasy races and some present magic, though it was limited. He died in 1977, in his college dorm room during his last semester of art school, due to complications with the fact that he was possessed by a demon.

2. Antoinette "Annie" Johanna: Protector Aasimar of the Catholic God, Light Domain Cleric - She was from France, and actually a French princess. Her family ruled during the 18th century, with the one exception that the French Revolution had never happened. She died due to an illness she'd been suffering from her whole life.

3. Lumiset "Lumi" Love: Tiefling, Monster Hunter Ranger - He was from a typical D&D fantasy era world, filled with adventure and fantastic monsters. He had been an adventurer until he died when he'd accidentally stumbled into a dragon's lair.

The game was a "world-hopping" campaign, so our characters didn't necessarily have to be from "medieval fantasy D&D era." As you can see, our worlds of origin were really different. It's also special because our characters started this campaign dead. The whole campaign took place after our characters had died, and this was about their adventures in a particularly strange afterlife called "The Beyond." 

The Beyond was filled with people like us, from all different kinds of world with one common denominator: we had died tragic deaths. We were known as "Players" because The Beyond was based around this economy of "playing through quests" to gain points, which were essentially currency. Originally, our goal was to go back and prevent our own deaths (which wasn't what it sounds like, as we learned.) As we played, our goals changed, and all that we really wanted was a comfortable afterlife, surrounded by a found family.

We were also not the only inhabitants of The Beyond. Some "Quest-Worlders" also lived in The Beyond. These were people who were from these quests that Players played though. These quests were "re-playable" and essentially created multiple timelines within that quest. If you took someone out of a quest, which cost points depending on the "difficulty" of the quest, it didn't matter because a different "them" would appear in the new timeline whenever you or someone else "played" it again. At least, this was the usual case; we did have one instance where that wasn't true and the removal of certain characters actually broke the cycle. Because of this, quest-worlders could actually live alongside different versions of themselves in The Beyond. For example, we met five very different iterations of one quest-worlder, Orion Saintimore. One was the Orion that we had actually taken out of his quest when we played it, three were other older Orions who had lived in The Beyond for a few years, and the last was actually one of the final bosses of the campaign. All of them were the same person, technically, but they were also remarkably different people and some had even changed their names.

The campaign took place over the course of nine years. Carter died when he was 22, and remained 22 for the duration of the campaign because... he was dead and couldn't age. He was built like a string bean, had red hair, and blue eyes. Additionally, all Players had "death marks" which indicated how they died. Carter's was a series of purple cracks surrounding his eyes.

Backstory

Carter's backstory has a lot to do with the acquisition of his Warlock abilities, which were tied to a demon by the name of Abraxas.

Carter met Abraxas at his local library, in a rural Kansas town, when he was 13. He didn't do anything except pick up a book. Abraxas happened to be trapped inside, and when Carter picked it up, Abraxas possessed him and effectively trapped Carter inside his own body for about two weeks. Carter's parents noticed the change in their son's behavior and brought him to their local church, where they asked the priest to perform an exorcism.

The exorcism took an additional two weeks, during which Carter was kept in the basement of the church and his parents were told not to worry and not to ask to see him. Doing that would only make the possession worse. Carter was starved, beaten, drowned, and had crosses carved into his back and chest. Abraxas gave up control of the body, pushing Carter forward, during the worst of this torture. One of the rituals the priests performed actually "worked." It didn't expel Abraxas, like the priests had thought, but it sealed him in the back of Carter's mind. Finally, the church let Carter go, believing that they'd "cured" him.

Even before the exorcism, Carter didn't have many friends. He was a nerdy bookworm who liked to paint, skinny, and had no confidence in himself (which he always attributed to general "awkwardness.") The exorcism only made it worse, and in a small town, the gossip was hard to get away from. Carter's parents also insisted on bringing him to church every Sunday, which only served as a constant reminder that he, being demon-possessed, was evil and had to atone for his sins.

The best day of his life was when he finally got to go to school in New England for art. He escaped the small town life that had brought him so much pain, but Abraxas came with him. Throughout his life, but even during college, Carter never drank or did drugs, knowing that the impairment of his mind may allow Abraxas to take over again. That was, by far, his worst fear. He didn't make very many friends either. He didn't want to be close to people because he didn't want Abraxas to hurt them, in case he ever came back.

Carter died, but he wouldn't really know how until the very last session: Abraxas had done something he'd done a hundred times - poke the barrier that separated his consciousness from Carter's - and this particular time, it had killed them both.

Carter and Abraxas were both Players in The Beyond, trapped in Carter's body. The only difference was that Abraxas couldn't speak, or rather, Carter could no longer hear him.

Character Development

In my mind, there were two major facets in Carter's development over the course of the campaign. The first was his relationship with Abraxas and the second was his own self-loathing.

The self-loathing was the hardest, in my opinion. Carter had grown up in an environment where he had been told that the fact that he had been demon-possessed made him a bad person. If he were good, it never would have happened. Abraxas, too, enforced this idea while Carter was alive; that he was pathetic, weak, stupid, boring, etc. He always considered himself awkward, but he learned that he wasn't; he just lacked confidence. Working on himself really helped him build that up.

There was a moment when the party was hosting a dinner for everyone in their lives that they had come to know as family. Addison, an elven woman who Carter really liked, was attending. Annie pushed Carter to talk to her more, to try and ask her out. Carter had insisted that no, she couldn't possibly like him and even if she did, that was a poor choice because he was a bad person. Eventually, Annie told him to repeat this phrase until he believed it: "Addison likes me, and I'm a good person."

And he did. And he continued to every time he needed that reassurance - variations on the "I'm a good person" mantra. That and continued love from friends and going to therapy (yes, our characters had therapy in D&D) really helped him come into his own by the end of the campaign.

Carter had the option to have Abraxas removed from his head and still keep his Warlock powers. It would cost him points, but that was irrelevant to him. He wanted nothing more than that, even when he didn't know what that meant. He was so afraid of being possessed again, and losing the people who loved him and who were helping him. Now, he had so much to lose. Luckily, when he had played through enough quests to get the points he needed, he had met people who could tell him what that meant. This afterlife was Abraxas's too. He'd appear in The Beyond, in his own body. They would just be... separate people. While that thought definitely scared Carter at the time, he had a very large support system at that point. His friends rallied around him, and assured him that Abraxas would never be able to hurt him again.

Abraxas was removed about three years into the nine years of the campaign. When Carter finally saw him, the only thing he said was: "I have people who love me, and I am a good fucking person."

Carter never saw Abraxas again until the final session, after six years of being without him, where they had a conversation about their death. And that is what it was: a conversation. A very professional, adult conversation without any fighting or malice or even terror. There was some nervousness on Carter's part, but he was no longer afraid after six years of healing and working on how he viewed himself. They even laughed together, for a moment. They left that conversation with the sentiment that although they probably would never be friends, that they could tolerate each other.

Post-Campaign

The campaign ended with the "quests" being effectively destroyed as The Beyond knew them. They were no longer "quests." They were worlds of their own with timelines that could be visited and revisited by anyone, even quest-worlders.

During the campaign, the party had created an "adopted family" of fifteen young boys from quests who had nowhere else to go. All of them grew up, and all of them led their own lives and they visited Carter, Annie, and Lumi frequently (some more frequently than others, but still.) The three of them had also been formally adopted (with paperwork and everything) by their manager who sent them on quests, Ki, and his husband, Kor. That whole, huge family has dinner every Saturday night.

Carter dated Addison for a very long time during the campaign, and I think that after a while, he would have married her.

Carter never goes on another quest again. The quests that we did go on, although fun, also had some great emotional impact and I don't think he would ever do one again. Instead, he stays in The Beyond and studies every humanities subject he ever could at the university there. He also teaches some of the art classes. The Beyond mostly knows Carter as one of their most prolific painters, and much of his work is displayed in The Beyond's museum. The rest of it resides in his and Addison's home, or in various demiplanes.

This was a campaign about death and coping with death and (I think our DM will agree with me when I say this) we turned into a romantic / family sitcom. But if we hadn't, I don't think that the story would have been as impactful as it was. I'm really happy with the direction it took. It started with three traumatized characters looking at a young Orion Saintimore, alone beside the burning ruins of his home. It ended with a found family who, despite all they'd been through, loved each other so much that they would do pretty much anything for each other. This is a game that's going to stick with me forever, and so will Carter.

My PC: Conah Dullane

Who's This?

Conah Dullane holds a very special place in my heart. He was the third character I ever created and played in a D&D campaign, and this campaign was also the second (and longest running) campaign I'd ever finished. This game was run by a close personal friend of mine. We started in October of 2019 and finished the game in August of 2020. There were (consistently) four players, with a fifth joining whenever he could.

Our PCs 

1. Conah Dullane: Scourge Aasimar of Aphrodite, Way of the Four Elements Monk 

1.5. *Xanword Fallone: Half-Elf, Brute Fighter

 *Xanword was another PC of mine that I switched Conah out with for a short time for the purposes of character development. He's still wonderful though, and definitely worth talking about in another post.

2. Lyre: Half Drow, Light Domain Cleric of Aphrodite 

2.5. **Echo: Vampire, College of Whispers Bard

**Echo is Lyre's husband, also played by the same player. He and Lyre frequently switched in and out of the party to take turns taking care of their adopted daughter. 

3. Kaz: Water Genasi, Life Domain Cleric of Apollo 

4. Ike: Changeling, Path of the Ancestral Guardian Barbarian 

5. Kayne: Half-Elf, Hexblade Warlock, Pact of the Blade

The campaign took place in a medieval / Ancient Greece spliced fantasy setting, hence the reference to gods like Aphrodite and Apollo. Conah served Aphrodite, the goddess of love, beauty, and sex. As a result, he had bright pink skin and eyes that were blue like the sea. For most of the campaign, his hair was short and tightly curled. Before that, it had been set in locks. 

Conah was also a particularly unique character for me because he was deaf. He'd been born that way, and his deafness was incurable by magical means. He communicated with the party by signing (to those that knew sign language), writing, or by trying his best to speak orally (which, to be fair, he got better and better at as the campaign went on.)

When the campaign began, Conah was 18 years old.

Backstory

This backstory was one of the most involved that I had (and have) ever written. I'm going to give the short version here.

Conah is the oldest of three siblings, all of whom are aasimar of Aphrodite. At the start of the campaign, when Conah was 18, his brother Gadriel was 14 and his sister Coretha was 9. Their father, Aedimus, was also an aasimar of Aphrodite who served Aphrodite by helping sad and lonely women feel loved. Aedimus fell in love with one woman in particular: Mara Dullane. Conah and his siblings were the result, and Conah was the only one born deaf.

At age 5, Conah received a strange dream of the Monastic Temple of the Elements outside of his hometown of Redwater. His father was sure the dream had come from Aphrodite, and that this was how Conah was meant to serve her. So, Aedimus took him there, and he began training as a monk.

When Conah was 11, Aedimus left his three children in the care of their mother and never returned. He had to move on to the next woman; his goddess ordered it, and he had to comply. Mara went completely off the deep end after that, having lost the man she loved and listening to the small town gossip surrounding her and her three children had out of wedlock. She turned violent very quickly. Conah did his best to protect and take care of his younger siblings.

After two years of living this way, it seemed as though Mara had finally snapped. She sold her three aasimar children into slavery to make quick coin. Conah fought, but he wasn't strong enough. All three of them ended up in the city of Dis, in the second layer of the Nine Hells. Somehow, despite being transferred from devil to devil in three auctions, the three of them managed to stay together. Conah received awful, ugly scars on his back from his time in the Hells.

Five years of living in misery ticked by, until Conah and his siblings were rescued by a group of high-level adventurers. They were brought back to the material plane, outside the capital city, Theanus, on their home continent of Eushora. Conah brought his siblings to the Aphrodite temple, hoping to find shelter, warmth, food, and the first real safety they'd had since their enslavement.

That was where the campaign began.

Character Development

I decided that I wanted Conah's character arc to be centered around him moving past his trauma from being enslaved, abused, and abandoned by both of his parents thus forcing him to basically become the parent to his younger siblings.

Conah told his adventuring party about what happened to him fairly early on. It wasn't a secret and the basic story wasn't difficult for him to tell. The details were always the hardest, so he didn't go into them. 

During the campaign, there was an 11 year period (for our characters, anyway) during which we were trapped in a demiplane of darkness created by Nyx, the goddess of night and the BBEG of the campaign. Conah's siblings had "blipped" too, but only for 9 years. The Dullane Siblings' age gaps also changed: Conah was still 18, but Gadriel was 16 and Coretha was 11 now. Conah's father Aedimus made a reappearance, found, and took care of Gadriel and Coretha while Conah was in the demiplane and later while he was adventuring. Aedimus was the first person Conah went really into detail with, and later, Kaz would also get the same story.

Why Kaz? He was something of a substitute father-figure for Conah; a dad before Aedimus was around, and a dad when Aedimus couldn't be there. Conah and Kaz's relationship was really rewarding for me. They were very close, but I think that if there's one regret I have from this game, it's that we weren't closer. I feel like there could have been more, but I'm not sure what. Regardless, what was there was very strong, so of course, he would have been the first party member to get that full story.

As I mentioned, I swapped Conah out of the campaign for a short time for character development. That decision occurred after the party went to a city that was overrun by cultists who worshiped Nyx and who were also enslaving the children of the town. Obviously, this struck a huge well of trauma for Conah and he left the party very suddenly and very mentally unwell. The only person who went with him was Lex, a Drow NPC who was travelling with us. She was also a Draconic Bloodline Sorceress, Lyre's half sister, and (at this point in the campaign) Conah's significant other. She was the third person to receive Conah's full story after those events. The DM and I worked out what happened with Conah while he was gone: the support he'd received, the time he spent with his family, etc. I think that time was just really good for him, and when he came back, he was met with a very warm welcome.

Getting over what happened to him, I think, came when, at the end of the campaign, he killed the man who'd first enslaved him and his siblings - someone who'd caused him a lot of pain. Additionally, the party traveled through the Nine Hells very late in the game. Much of that arc was spent with Conah reassuring himself and being reassured by his party that no one would come to hurt him again. They wouldn't let them. Much of it was also plagued by dreams of futures that could be, and nightmares that Conah wasn't sure were real or fake due to Hypnos, the god of sleep, messing with his mind. He had to rely on other people to help him through all of it. He learned that he didn't have to take care of his party right now; they needed to take care of him, and that was okay. He made it through.

His parental abandonment was an interesting point. Conah came around to Aedimus fairly quickly, but part of the reason why was because Conah understood why he left, and Gadriel and Coretha had already made their peace with him. Mara was harder. Aedimus killed Mara after Gadriel and Coretha told him the bare bones of what happened to them. Conah met her again in the Underworld, in the Fields of Punishment (where she belonged.) She confessed that she married, that Conah had a half-brother, and that his stepfather was... not so kind. The party accompanied Conah as he went back to his childhood home and rescued Ronan: a four-year-old, blind tiefling boy. A deaf angel and a blind devil. What a pair, am I right?

The last piece of Conah's development came when Lex found out that she was pregnant with Conah's child while they were travelling in the Underworld. Lex left the Underworld so that she'd be safe. Once the party left the Underworld, Conah had to become a father - a real father, of his own child and not his siblings. He struggled but realized that... he already had the basics down, really. Gadriel and Coretha assured him of that and insisted that he'd been an excellent brother. Aedimus had done the same. It was a really touching moment, and although it didn't make Conah not-nervous, it made him less nervous. Lex gave birth to a healthy half-elven girl: Avarielle. They nicknamed her "Ava."

Post-Campaign:

When Nyx was defeated, Conah had the opportunity to cure his deafness, which he did along with Ronan's blindness.

Conah married Lex just after Ava was born. They'd have three more kids together: Roseia and Meira (twin half-elven girls), and Callan (a deaf aasimar boy.) They lived peacefully for the rest of their days. Conah frequently visits the rest of his party, and they remain great friends.

Aphrodite gave Conah the opportunity to ascend to godhood and become Eros, the god of love and sex. He agreed, but only as long as it occurred after his mortal life ended.

So, in the end, everything turned out wonderfully, I think! Honestly, I don't think I could've asked for a better ending. I loved this game, and I think that a huge reason why was because I loved this character. I loved his relationship with his family and the others that he loved. I enjoyed the emotional turmoil that came with playing him, and the interactions he had with the other party members. All in all, I think his arc wrapped up very nicely.