#Razira Fein

[lankira]

you, lanki

tell me about your ocs

I HAVE SO MANY. And they're from D&D and other RPGs, so here goes... (Note: some of the other characters that come up are played by some of my mutuals, who I'll let self-identify only if they want to. So, expect to see reference to numbered mutuals. Also, ongoing games are marked with a + at the beginning of the paragraph.)

From Star Wars (the Fantasy Flight RPG), we have T'lara Kest, a stronk purple twi'lek who fled Ryloth to avoid being sold. She took various jobs, from working security at clubs and bars to full-on mercenary work until she wound up with the crew she adventured with (she may have also done some, uh, "adult modeling" to help make ends meet before meeting the crew). During their adventures, she lost her legs to cybernetically enhanced nexu, joined the Rebellion, saved her special agent boyfriend from a zombie-infested Imperial ship he'd infiltrated, and survived a lightsaber to the gut. She also had a hella crush on one of our party members (Kidan, played by Mutual 1), but the leg loss led her to actually get together with her will-they-won't-they guy of something like 5 years. ALSO, she discovered at one point that she has a connection to the Force thanks to accidentally opening a Sith Holocron with fuckin' Darth Nihilus' consciousness in it.

+From Call of Cthulhu, we have Lori Jones, former TV personality turned occultist (and also straight-up cultist). She started off as somewhere between Jean Gray, John Constantine, and a daytime TV host. She then (accidentally) married Hastur, joined an occult investigative group, helped thwart some of Nyarlathotep's plans (some of which included her best friend of many years and the best friend's family), killed someone with a mind control spell, got sent back in time from 1991 to 1921 with the rest of the party, converted from Catholic to Jewish in order to marry another party member (Aldous, played by Mutual 2), and is currently heading up part of Hastur's cult in London while going through more investigative stuff and helping the party figure out how to get back to the 1990s. Oh, and she's plotting an assassination of a member of MI5.

From Pathfinder, I have two major OCs, with a third who is considering the leap to D&D.

Morana is a human Inquisitor of Pharasma whose teacher/father figure was possessed by the BBEG. She was going through A Lot, including adopting a 16 year old werewolf girl who became her squire. You know, I actually forget a lot of the plot of that game, but absolutely loved playing Morana because her personality was fun and Mutual 1 and I had a shitton of AUs to talk about her in. Because there's something to be said about a Pharasmin having a Thing for a dhampir. (I have reused Morana and her squire as NPCs because I love them so much.)

Jacinth Haf aka Jace is a half-elf and former sex worker who was raised in a brothel, then became a cleric of Sarenrae. Because it's a popular module that I don't want to spoil for anyone, I'll just say that, plot wise, she ran through Rise of the Runelords with a rather interesting party, including another of Mutual 2's characters. Jace is a firm believer that everyone is created equal and that equity is needed in order to give everyone the chance to succeed. While the party made some choices she didn't agree with, personal choice and free will are important to her, so she didn't physically fight them on any issues even when they released a pair of demons into the world rather than sending them back to the circle of Hell they belonged in.

Slaine Caellach is an elf ranger who, together with their black panther Straif, was on the run from their homeland to avoid being sentenced to death. Why would they be sentenced to death? They killed a human noble who'd trespassed into their territory and killed some animals Slaine was protecting. Then they escaped prison, avoiding being turned over to the human authorities who planned to kill them. Slaine also made the mistake of making deals with an eldritch being and wound up with something like Hermaeus Mora as a passenger in their brainpan. Until a TPK happened.

Aaaaaand now for the list of D&D OCs...

+Most recently played is Mara Lantos, who's a member of Team Ponderance (obligatory plug for our official artist, @thedovahcat, who did some great art of Mara and the rest of Team Ponderance and is an absolute delight to work with!). The Ponderance crew is currently working on thwarting what appear to be world domination plans being enacted by someone who should be long dead. Before adventuring, Mara was a member of a traveling performance group, The Wandering Oddities, who took her in when her family home was destroyed, killing her parents and (she believed) her elder brother. Within the Oddities, Mara was adopted by Pa, a Drow male follower of Eilistraee, and Da, a male wood elf, both of whom are skilled tumblers. With her birth family (heavily based on the Belmonts...), she had trained to be a monster hunter from a young age. So, she's the first fully multi-classed character on this list as a Bard/Fighter. The rest of Team Ponderance includes characters from Mutuals 1, 2, and 3! (Added note: 10/10 highly recommend Bard College of Lore paired with almost any Fighter subclass. Especially Battle Master or Echo Knight.)

While she was only played briefly, Razira Fein is one of my favorite characters to date. She is a female drow who came to the surface after losing her girlfriend, who'd been trying to leave the Underdark to join a conclave dedicated to Eilistraee. After joining the conclave and feeling her training with them was near-complete, Razira traveled as an entertainer. She still used some of her prior (read: drow raider) skills to take security jobs guarding merchant wagons and the like until she (and the rest of the party) were informed that they were destined to save the world. The thing that was most enjoyable about Razira was that she was a character who was entering the last phase of her arc as the game was starting. There wasn't much character growth she would have seen, but there was a lot of character growth in the party that she could have aided in. Hers, she felt, was a story of redemption and finding peace, and she believed others could do the same. She felt guilt when Nym, a male half-drow party member played by Mutual 3, left after she refused to let him start a fight with the Evil Army (not their real name) in a town square. She blamed herself, but also had felt that her action was the best choice rather than letting him get killed. Also, she was a Fighter (Echo Knight) with the Entertainer background, which made for a lot of fun for RP.

OK, OK, I'm gonna lump two D&D characters together here back-to-back because they're all followers of the Raven Queen. As a note, my DMs and I have tended to play the Raven Queen as a hybrid of her 4e and 5e versions.

Oswin Blair was a Paladin of the Raven Queen who formed an entire knightly order, the Order of the Raven's Crest at the end of her adventuring life. She had at one time led a group of soldiers to their doom, all of whom were raised as undead, their names emblazoned into her skin until she laid them each to rest. When she died, two names remained. She'd had to make a choice at the end of the adventure: let the BBEG go, or fight him nearly alone, which would have killed her and the child she had just discovered she was pregnant with. Her husband, Dane, was a healer and leader among a Druid Circle, so he split his time between her home and his enclave. In her time adventuring, Oswin and friends got up to some crazy shenanigans, though her biggest mistake was making a deal with a fae that inadvertently led to a few hundred years' worth of dead followers of the Raven Queen being resurrected. Oops.

+Mithvari Dresia is the character on this list with the most titles and the most to learn. A shadar-kai of only about 150 years, she was raised in a clerical school run by her father, Zunas, who is the younger of two sons the Raven Queen had before she ascended. He was harsh with her and still holds her to exacting standards she's unsure she will ever meet. She's only been on the Prime Material Plane for the last three years, with most of that time spent either being coddled by a temple that knew of her origins OR wandering as much as possible and discovering, essentially, a love of sex, drugs, and Rock & Roll (or Bardcore, I guess?). While she was being coddled by that temple, though, she did meet a paladin of Pelor , Randall, who she had a brief relationship with. Here we are two and a half years later, and Mithvari and Randall have been reunited by circumstance. She refuses to commit to a serious relationship unless he asks for one because she's spent so much of her life being told what she wants, she doesn't know what she actually wants. And also because she wouldn't mind the excuse to sleep around some more. She's basically one of those overly sheltered kids with really strict parents who lets a little too loose their freshman year of college.

[lankira]

Was just talking about this character's BG3 version in @dee-the-red-witch's replies when I remembered that I've not talked about her on the blog much. WHICH IS A CRIME.

This is Razira Fein, my funky lil lesbian drow follower of Eilistraee (art by @canine-king-art )

When it comes time to talk about her backstory, I will admit that I kind of fridged her girlfriend. So cws for religious trauma and character death below the cut.

So, first up: Razira is practical, but not necessarily high femme or butch in her preferred presentation. This is heavily informed by her time as house guard and surface raider for one of the Houses of her universe's equivalent of Menzoberranzan. Like...being alive trumps looking good (far right armored look), and being comfortable on the road now that she's on the surface trumps style (all black hatted look).

The other two looks? The one that's very peacocky with the feather in the hat is her stage look. Gotta grab attention there, and she's spent so much of her life in full armor that exposed skin feels incorrect. She's fine with nudity in places like full moon rituals and the bedroom. Just not her thing on stage. She'd totally be down for watching a burlesque show though. Her other (vaguely-Japanese-inspired) look is what she wears when busking on city streets. Since not a lot of places on the surface are kind to drow and she doesn't want to risk damaging the embroidery and beadwork on that performance jacket, she picked something unique but simple.

Wait. Busking? Armor? This is either the most armored bard or something else is going on here! That's correct, something else is going on here.

See, Razira left her home after her girlfriend, Llostin, was murdered for trying to leave and join a enclave of followers of Eilistraee on the surface. Drow society does NOT like when its members turn their back on Lolth. The only thing left of the girlfriend's that Razira had was a holy text. As she read more of it, she understood why Llostin wanted to leave, and did so, succeeding where her late love had failed.

After spending decades with the enclave, learning about Eilistraee, learning song and dance and art and poetry, and unlearning a lot of the typical drow society bullshit, the leaders of the enclave suggested that Razira was ready to see the world. And so, she set out to do so, making money sometimes as an entertainer, sometimes as hired muscle to secure safe travel between cities. (This is why she started as a Fighter withe the Entertainer background)

Through all this travel, she learned a lot more about the world and found her own little place in it. Until the start of the campaign had her thrust into a series of world-shattering events.

While the campaign she was in ran very short for a number of reasons, she's one of the characters I'm most fond of. I usually play someone young, at the start of their journey. But Razira...not so much. She was about 250 years old and had been mourning her lost love for about a century of that time. She thought she was nearing the end of her character arc. She had discovered a lot about herself in that time and had believed that she would never find love again, in part because of the crippling survivor's guilt, in part because she didn't think that she would want to love again.

Until she met Aurellon, one of our party's sidekicks who was described as an androgynous Milo Thatch with the fashion sense of Billy Porter. The pair talked a lot about a lot of things and there was a queer little romance starting when the campaign was tragically cut short.

So, yeah... That's the short version of explaining Razira. Oh! Also! Her fighter subclass is Echo Knight, which we flavored as pulling echoes that were past or future incarnations of her soul instead of alternate world versions. So that was neat.