Thursday, January 9, 2014

All the other backstories and where to find them

So, because I see that I'm just adding one story at a time, I thought it would be easier to just upload all of the stories at once onto my Scribd profile.
The ones that are NOT featured on this site include:
 1. Faelian and Greyskull (A continuation of Greyskull's story after he and his friends conquered Shadowfell Keep and Faelian who was a new villain I meant to introduce into our sessions)

2. Nathaniel (First introduced in Faelian and Greyskull and is a direct continuation of Greyskull's story. He was meant to show that heroes such as LaForge or Greyskull were few and far between. That the majority of people in the world were distinctly average)

3. Cassandra (A new "villain" that I wanted to paint as a sympathetic, young woman. It could be said that based on this story alone, that at worst she'd be an anti-hero, but I was planning on making more editions of her story if I didn't get to continue her story in the D&D sessions. This took a LONG time to write, but I felt that it turned out fairly nice in the end)

And for now, that's all the stories that I have written so far. I am planning on making at least 2 more (perhaps in this next month, depends how much free time I have as I have USMLE prep work to be doing). I've got the basics outlined in my head already though, and the first one (Flynt Ryder) is already partway completed. So to whoever actually reads these posts (and dare I say, enjoys the stories), look forward to that (I guess). Well I'm gonna cut this post short, as I'm sitting in an airport typing this out and I can see my plane has just started to board. This time tomorrow, I'll be in the USA Take care everyone and have a great day!

Thursday, December 12, 2013

Next Backstory

This next backstory is about the character known as Gharash Vren. For the people who have played D&D before, you may remember him as a relatively minor sub-boss character from the Pyramid of Shadows campaign setting. What made him worthy of an entire story was that I was chosen to become the next DM for our group. It was only my second campaign and I was worrying over what to choose for our latest adventure. The former DM gave me a few choices of different campaigns to choose from and the Pyramid of Shadows was the one that appealed to me the most.

 I realized later that it wasn't the most entertaining of campaigns to choose. It was essentially battle after battle and this REALLY got tiring quickly. So I decided to start changing some of the settings and make one the people in the group the so-called "star of the show".  That guy's character, LaForge, had a fairly lazy backstory in that he was found wandering around the forest with amnesia.  I decided to expand on his past for him.

The Pyramid of Shadows was a prison held in another dimension for the sole purpose of containing an evil wizard known as Karavakos.  I decided to make LaForge his former lieutenant.  I kept on dropping hints throughout the entire campaign that everyone in the Pyramid seemed to recognize LaForge.  One of the criminals trapped in the Pyramid, Gharash Vren, even regarded LaForge as a close friend and trusted confidant.  My other friends in the group even started to distrust LaForge's character and came fairly close to fighting each other.

I won't ramble on too much about this, but the conclusion of the story was fairly exciting when I gave LaForge the choice to once again join Karavakos by killing his companions.  Beyond my expectations, he rejected the offer in a very suitable hero-like manner and defeated Karavakos once and for all.

Gharash' story was meant to expand on one of the sillier moves I made him use in the Pyramid and on LaForge's backstory.  Although it was mainly meant to be comedic in nature.   The idea mainly came from this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6zqHKd265E

Anyhoo, here's Gharash' story:

Gharash Vren

Monday, December 9, 2013

First set of Backstories!

Well, first of all, lets get backstory on these backstories.  About 2 years ago, a friend of mine introduced me to D&D (Dungeons and Dragons).  I'm sure many people have heard about this game and all the many negative connotations associated with it.  Many people would cite D&D as the epitome of so-called nerd culture. 

They might be right.

But, as the saying goes, "Don't knock it, 'till you try it."  Holy. Crap.  This game is amazing.  Most people tend to focus on the fantasy aspect of the game and write it off as pure drivel (although that mindset may be changing with how the box office is looking nowadays, *wink* Hobbit *wink*).  No one ever mentions how the experience is with a group of friends.  D&D is an incredible amount of fun.  There are no invisible walls, no strict set of rules that we need to adhere to (there are rules of course, but frequently these rules are just inconsequential and have no impact on the amount of enjoyment to be had), no limits.


I think that's a good word to describe D&D: Unlimited.  Hell, the MMO they released even has the word as part of the title:
http://www.ddo.com/en

The MMO only offers the briefest of tastes though, it has limits unfortunately.  The version where you sit down with a good couple of friends as you venture into unknowns? That, has no limit my friends.

Still, I'm getting a bit off topic.

It took a while to finally get our little group going and as of today, we currently boast a member count of 6 (Not much, I know, but it's really more than enough).  Before we had started our first session, the DM (Dungeon Master, also the guy who first started this group) wanted us to make backstories of our characters.

So, being the moron I am, I instead wrote a full-on story for my character instead of making a quick 1 page summary of who my character was.  Interestingly enough, another guy did the same, he'd later become my roommate, but I believe that's a story for another time.

Anyhoo, that one story sparked an imagination for a whole series of stories that had been filling my head ever since I was a child and as a result, I continued to make more stories all based on the D&D campaign setting.  I'll post them all on this blog eventually, but first I'll put up the two backstories that I mentioned:

My character: Greyskull/Bowjangles/Maelaeran
(I'll mention why there's so many names later :P)

Other guy's character: Dorian (Also known as DJ, short for Double Jesus)
(Another story I'll get into later)



Dorian by Yeserta

Greyskull Backstory by Yeserta

Sunday, December 8, 2013

First Post!

As I sit here in my apartment typing up this post, I find myself wondering what exactly will I be posting about.  Mainly? I think I'll be posting the various stories I wrote for my D&D group and other times maybe I'll be posting about random stories that I found interesting.

Who knows? Hopefully I'll have something better to say in the future!