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.