#oc: rodanus

[morihaus]

one interesting thing abt ocs in that late 3rd era morrowind-oblivion period is that (for humans anyway) they or their parents would've lived in the scary Jagar Tharn Simulacrum years where everything was going wrong and horrible forever. i feel it's something i've never really satisfactorily explored in a character... the only thing that comes to mind is one of my blades agents coming from a military family who lost a lot of faith in uriel septim after his little goof up killed a lot of their relatives

[kaminokeshin]

ROLEPLAYING HISTORY.

The rules are simple! Post ten characters you’d like to roleplay as have roleplayed and might bring back. Then tag ten people to do the same (if you can’t think of ten, just write down however many you can and tag that number of people). Please repost, don’t reblog!

CURRENTLY PLAYING.

Shin Gojira

HAVE PLAYED

Sentinel Knight (An OC of mine back in the good old days back of Miiverse) and several other characters.

The Ghost of Dagon (Through an ask I did with @thekingofmcnsters)

WILL/WOULD PLAY AGAIN

The Ghost of Dagon (Should anyone be interested for me to be him, feel free to comment on that)

WANT TO PLAY

The Demogorgon (Stranger Things)

The Mind Flayer (Stranger Things)

SCP-682 (SCP Foundation|SCP: Containment Breach)

Not sure about who else yet, but I will update this whenever I find someone else I would want to roleplay as. ^^

Tagged by @nuclearshxgun, I never expected to be tagged, but thank you!

Tagging: @thekingofmcnsters, @lairofmxnsters, @madisonxrussell, @bicllante, @thequeenofmcnsters, @tengerverte, @gottakeepahead, @titanus-rodanus, @killycurkings, @kotmuses, and anyone else who wishes to steal this from me.

[morihaus]

14 for Rod and Mort!

14. How well-liked is your oc? What is their reputation, if they’re well-known? Are they simply liked/disliked, or are they respected but feared, or personally liked but not taken seriously, etc? Do major factions consider your oc an important player? 

ok so rod and mort, within the morrowind chapter of the blades, are ACTUALLY a LITTLE well known for having taken down a rogue telvanni wizard. by no means are they at the top of the list when it comes to trustworthy agents (they're the second team sent to kill the nerevarine, the first were defeated) but there's some respect there. this mission is supposed to be the Thing that pushes them over the edge and lets them maneuver a bit more to protect themselves in the coming storm that everyone is aware of (uriel being sick and dying and the legion putting down riots in the imperial city and all that)

so people in the morrowind chapter of the blades know them (probably not a big blip for the greater whole of the organization) as a capable two man strike force. they are a unit who are appraised together for their abilities. they are not lauded for their winning personalities or anything. then in akavir, they are the two foreign spies who got themselves stranded here. okay so honestly, they are not well known. they get found out by a tsaesci blades agent who arrests and interrogates them and perhaps through SOME negotiation mort gets them drafted instead of like, killed. and then they are just two weirdo tamriellics in a troop of other foot soldiers. kind of annoying in the way they just don't Get anything about what's going on and seem baffled by the actions of the tsaesci empire (empires are bad :(?) i don't think they make great friends in their unit before they ditch

[morihaus]

16, 25 and 26 for Rod and Mort!

16. Does your oc take their time as they travel, or are they purposeful? How do they survive in the wilds, especially if they aren’t hunter-types? How dependent is your oc on civilized society?

now ROD, he grew up in colovia, in the sticks, he's a mountain man, he's content to spend hours trudging through a forest or climbing a hill and has an inherent appreciation for the natural world. if he's on the job he'll certainly march and stay focused, but if it's less urgent he'll be inclined to take his time. definitely knows how to hunt and would do pretty good living in the middle of nowhere, at least in a familiar environment (not a huge fan of morrowind for how different it is from his home biome but he's had to get used to it) mortimer on the other hand is NOT formally trained in that sort of thing. he likes to think of himself as an adventurer but the only adventure he's been on is riding along with his dad's merchant ships. he prefers expediency in all things and ideally wherever he's going better have an inn with good food

25. If your oc is part of one of the more morally questionable or outright evil factions, how do they justify it to themselves? Do they still consider themselves as morally good? How well known is their affiliation to these groups? Do they have separate personas (e.g. Dragonborn to some people, Listener to others)? Do their family/friends know? If they have separate personas, how do they keep their less than righteous activities secret?

rod and mort are of course part of the most outright evil faction: the blades. for rodanus, he comes from a military family who had been a little bit burned by that recent simulacrum meaning they were aiding and abetting an impostor; rod wanted to join the emperor's honor guard, an exclusive chapter of the very best and brightest blades, but instead was shipped off to morrowind. he totally believes the empire is a force of good and sees absolutely nothing wrong with any of the orders he carries out. mortimer is a wannabe rogue who was disinherited from his father's business so becoming a blade is like, a way to occupy a higher sociopolitical standing and LARP as an important person. i douuuuubt that the families of blades know they're blades??? i cannot remember anything about this, but they have codenames, Bullhead and Quill respectively. mort basically never interacts with his family anymore (while leering enviously at his brother every so often) and as far as rod's family knows he IS serving the empire, but probably in a less noteworthy position. hell maybe they assume he got into the honor guard after all and he's just not allowed to tell them.

god okay and THEN they get drafted into ANOTHER morally questionable organization, the army of the tsaesci empire, which they justify to themselves with "well, it beats dying!" for how disturbingly similar they find this empire to be with the last one they worked for, there's no similar respect or dignity that comes with the job. they don't care to justify it beyond self preservation and their whole plan is to escape somehow eventually. and THEN there's the ka po tun empire which they reeeeeally hope are the "good guys" in this but are disappointed to see similar trends of apathy towards the fate of the common person and singleminded hunger for power present in this new line of work...

26.How helpful is your oc, and why? Are they helpful or kind even during difficult situations? Are they pragmatic, or do they have a hero syndrome?

in terms of being "kind" i think rodanus is the one with a moral compass (you know, as moral as it gets with bootlickers) he will stop to help someone in trouble on the road or pursue something if he thinks it's right. mortimer is more pragmatic and only plays that kind of game to win something in the end. in a situation like being stranded in akavir, despite everything, rodanus tries to cling to his principles while mortimer sees that as more of a burden in their current crisis.

[morihaus]

all prime numbers in 'background' for rod and mort pls

long answers time

2. Where did they grow up? A city? A village? Isolated, in the wilderness? What was it like to leave?

Rodanus is from Colovia and could perhaps be described as kind of growing up in the sticks? if i remember correctly he wasn't from any of the big cities, he comes from a legion background, maybe did some rangering on the imperial reserve, that sorta thing. might've almost been a militaryish town with a lot of colo-nordic types who hang their hats on their families' loyal service and the esteemed military deeds of their ancestors. but the point is it was pretty isolated in a mountainous forested region and leaving for morrowind... rod HATES morrowind so much. he hates how hot and swampy it is or otherwise cold and ashy (he might've been stationed in vvardenfell specifically? or the telvanni peninsula) he really misses the familiar flora and fauna and when he got to become a blade this was NOT the glamorous lifestyle of serving the emperor that he expected. he thought he was gonna get to be an honor guard or something but instead he's doing stupid little fetch quests and bodyguard missions in this outlying territory.

mortimer however is a "native" of morrowind, his father moved his business there as part of his work for the east empire company. i forget where i said he'd grow up, maybe ebonheart?? as soon as he was old enough he insisted on accompanying his father on his journeys across morrowind, to skyrim, the padomaic islands, etc. he only became a blade bc his father chose his brother to take charge of the family's mercantile exploits instead of him, at this point i feel he would've left home but he'd still be in morrowind. i imagine he has a misplaced feeling of belonging to morrowind that is gross and stupid.

mort never really leaves his home when he's assigned there (his knowledge of morrowind and its culture makes him an important operative) but they DO both leave for akavir. neither thought it'd be all that long a journey until they got stranded by the ENSO event and accused of being foreign spies (which they were.) both of them were only thinking of capturing the nerevarine and using their new clout to avoid the fallout of ol urie septim kicking the bucket and leaving the empire on wobbly knees, something they felt they were above as members of the secret club.

3. What was their childhood like? Who raised them? Do they have siblings?

rodanus almost definitely has siblings, at least two, and mortimer absolutely has an older brother under whom's shadow he burns with jealousy. mortimer had a rather adventurous childhood where he was educated as something of an upper middle/merchant class wannabe nobleman and got to immerse himself in the intellectual culture of morrowind. it was work, he had to help his father do business and act as sort of an assistant on long journeys away from home, but he thinks it was foundational for becoming the intelligent cultured man he is today. rod had probably a more rough upbringing, lot of expectations on him to serve the empire in some way so the family can keep bragging to their neighbors- he was probably a pretty precocious child who wanted to hit the other kids with sticks and play soldiers tbh. ive not thought a lot about his parents. might not have a dad and instead his mother and grandpa care for him, along with any other relatives who haven't given their lives to the empire (iirc the Troubles were going on during his childhood so a military family was probably running pretty thin)

5. Do they worship any gods? Who? How do they feel about the gods in general?

i feel like they'd both worship the nine, basically. well rodanus would be hardcore faithful with maybe some more nordic warlike elements in there- or just yknow, talos worship (which does have its dangerous connotations but his family is, allegedly, normal about it) very faithful to akatosh as well, basically the Big Two. he feels as he was taught that the gods watch over the empire and protect it from evildoers and that serving the empire is serving the gods. mortimer... he'd have some bretic flair in his upbringing i think, some more aldmeri stuff in his spiritual diet. zenithar is of course a popular one for his association with commerce, whether or not you consider him the capitalism god or the workers rights god, mort's dad definitely considered him the former, so that's that. phynaster has some association with traveling i feel like???? maybe some hodgepodge bretic interpretation of kyne that grants her esteem for being the sailor's god, what iwth how important maritime trade is in high rock. he has never once considered morrowind's own faith as anything more than a passing anthropological curiosity (asshole) his family would mostly associate with the most diehard colonial types anyway. for himself, he's much more material in his views than rod, giving more importance to the actions of men and mortals than the wills or desires of the gods. he pays lip service, but the things he does are for his own benefit.

7. What's their relationship with their family like? Do they have one?

went over this a BIT in the other question but. mort admires + cares about his dear old dad and WAS looking forward to taking up the family business, but his older brother got that hire instead of him (you can't just nepotism hire BOTH your sons that'd be outrageous.) although technically, i think mort more wanted to be this worldly, educated kind of guy who'd hang out in salons for a living talking about bullshit with other wealthy noblemen, so his heart wasn't entirely in the work he kind of just wanted to reap the benefits of being a wealthy merchant, but now his no-good brother gets it... perhaps this brother is just more committed to commerce. perhaps mort's desire to look intelligent leads him to do stupid shit and get into trouble, something his dad and brother see as kind of too risky to trust with ferrying important goods around. THIS GUY COULD GET SCAMMED alert. that kind of thing. rod cares about his family a lot and wants to make em proud, which his mother really super is and his grandfather is aloof. he was really really really hoping to get into the cyrodiil chapter of the blades so he could really show how great he is to his grandpa but instead he got carted off to an outlying territory . he definitely writes them though. hthe one admirable trait i've had in my head about him is the care he has for his family and his hometown and how he thinks by rising in the ranks of the blades he could take action to protect them from whatever's coming next.... i should think on his siblings more.

[morihaus]

i want rod and mort to find the remains of uriel septim v in akavir and he becomes like a comedic necromantically animated talking skull who hangs out with them and by comedic i mean he's so annoying they start to question the government

[morihaus]

D16 for rod and/or mort

D16: What does your character's dating app profile look like?

if i knew more about dating app profiles i could make this funnier. rod's would be the tes equivalent of some conservative putting a bunch of patriotic shit in there like a "The Empire is Law, the Law is Sacred" or something. if he's doing this in morrowind (i doubt a blade would be allowed to) he'd probably make some remark about looking for a silver lining while stationed there. puts "no house politics" on there too. relies on his conventionally good looks by colovian standards more than anything. might call himself a mercenary to seem adventurous

mortimer would probably try and be kind of a smart ass in one way or another like more of a joking bio but you can still kind of tell that this is a dime a dozen guy putting some funny normal person thing on his profile. idk exactly what it'd be it'd be something like "well here we are, using an app to try and make connections" kind of like a vaguely self-deprecating what have we come to might as well date me since we're desperate thing. would refer to himself as an "intellectual".

[morihaus]

the core info i have on these two is that rodanus is colovian and his family lives there, but he was assigned to morrowind as a blade. mort is actually from morrowind bc his father moved there to do east empire company stuff. neither was ORDERED to follow the nerevarine to akavir, just to "find the nerevarine", and some random guy in sheogorad told them that the nerevarine had acquisitioned a ship and headed east, and rod's like "mort, you know about those padomaic isles, they're probably just out there somewhere" and mortimer is just like "sure" but then they get some other false lead that says they're probably in akavir and proceed to become stranded there as the tumutluous padomaic sea enters a years-long season of storms and dramatic weather that greatly impedes any ships attempting to sail west

[morihaus]

the funniest part of rodanus and mortimer's akaviri adventure is that they leave around the time of morrowind, 3E 427, and are unable to return to tamriel for seven years. by the time they get back, it's the first year of the 4th era, the oblivion crisis has happened, the emperor is dead and the empire is crumbling everywhere around them.

[morihaus]

this is an idea that will only come to fruition much later but new ocs inspired by ayem being really funny: Rodanus Benzelius and Mortimer Germaine, blades agents sent to assassinate the nerevarine and close the book on that whole morrowind thing who hear a rumor about them going to akavir and decide to follow that lead. they end up stranded in akavir for several years and learn hard taught lessons about the world they live in through misadventures in akavir showing them what it's like to be a normal person caught up in the game of imperial espionage and war and suffering

[morihaus]

rod and mort really deserve a lengthy comedy of errors with symbolism and allegory and the talking skull of a dead emperor represents the inhumane institutions of imperialism. etc etc, there will be a sparknotes on this

[morihaus]

there's some loose parallel to be made of the septim empire teetering on the brink of collapse, bloated with corruption and opportunism, the government built around the ailing absolute monarch desperately trying to persist and justify its own existence with all these covert operations, and then akavir having this similar ""calm"" before the storm where everyone is kind of aware of the fact that tosh raka is this huge imposing threat with aims to annihilate the tsaesci empire and usher akavir into a new age of dragon dominance and you have tsaesci governors and generals and whoever else all preparing to put themselves into the best possible position. idk it's especially a thing with rod and mort being aware that the empire is about to get a little Rocky and thinking "if we assassinate the nerevarine, we'll be honored with higher standing and then we can leverage this to put ourselves and our loved ones in a safer position if/when it all goes to shit" i think the lesson is that empires are bad

[morihaus]

rod wears a militaristic caesar bowl cut with just a bit of stubble running along his jawline bc if a colovian has a bare face they're a heartlander coward, meanwhile mort has that long wavy medieval french cut with the center part and a handlebar mustache. design chemistry

[morihaus]

68 69 82 and 83 for our amazing akaviri adventurers (the blades agents)

roddy and morty time >:)

68. How did their environment growing up affect their personality?

ROD: rodanus was brought up in colovia in an imperial-colovian family and raised on good old highland values, very might makes right as a person, likes to throw his weight around and get his way, which means being part of an untouchable order of imperial servants suits him just fine. i think he's headstrong and a bit stubborn as well- i think he has a dumb blades codename that is "bullhead" which he wears with pride

MORT: mortimer grew up SOMEWHERE in morrowind, likely the mainland, potentially somewhere along the inner sea, as his father (and potentially forefathers) worked with the east empire company, and so moved his family to better aid in imperial exploitation of morrowind's resources. he got a little bit of dunmer culture inlaid in him as a result, but being well-off it was mostly like, noble asshole dunmer culture, he's well spoken and a bit haughty when dealing with people "below his station" and sees himself as an underappreciated civil servant instead of an imperial tool whose job mainly consists of silencing dissentors.

69. How did the people in their environment growing up affect their personality?

feel like i kind of stepped on this ask with the other ones up there. suffice it to say the people in rodanus's family are mainly legion-types who ingrained in him a loyalty to the emperor and ideas of courage and valor in battle, mortimer's family were rich schmoozers who enjoyed pretending nobility as de facto merchant lords of the east empire company who gave him an ego.

82. What is their handwriting like?

both of them have received training to disguise their handwriting and know how to write in a variety of languages and codes, but rodanus's natural handwriting is pretty militant and plain, whereas mortimer is very flowery or. perhaps messy, like a lazy legalese signature at times.

83. Can they swim? How well? Do they like to swim?

both can swim, but mortimer is better at it and enjoys it more due to growing up on a subtropical coast as opposed to in the highlands.

[morihaus]

10 14 18 20 for rod and mort :)

10. if they were in a modern high school clique (jocks, goths, hipsters, geeks, etc.), what would it be? why?

they're both definitely from well off families so they'd be part of the evil factions. rod is a jock and mort... well he'd be popular for having a large house and throwing parties there and schmoozing with people but he's kind of a nerd. business major. horrible.

14. what do they do in their free time? do they have any hobbies?

rod is from a proud colovian family with strong ties to the legion so i think it's natural i throw him some weird incidental hobby like gardening or amateur writing. he's a very workminded individual due to his upbringing so free time is a bit of a rare time for him. maybe he takes walks and gets lost and has to find his way back to the road and run from bears

mort considers himself worldly and intellectual, enjoys high culture in morrowind (where his family lives due to his father's east empire association) and honestly. might go bargain hunting?? or to lore friendly antique shows. living a fake identity as some merchant gives him an excuse to travel and practice working people over with his words and whatnot

18. do they have any insecurities about themselves?

rodanus feels kind of burned that he wasn't let into the Exclusive cyrodiilic chapter of the blades and wonders if it's because of some apparent lacking in him, or if maybe he would have been better off becoming a legionnaire. he's very eager to prove himself and doesn't take failure well

mort also thinks he could be doing more than he is, he has a lot of niche skills (like knowing his way around the padomaic ocean) that never really come into play in his job, and he's not the most daring or outstanding agent. would be funny if "becoming an agent of the empire's secret police" was like, his fallback plan when his sibling inherited the family business or something

20. what would their dream vacation look like?

rod wants to be nowhere more than cyrodiil, in the highlands, spending a winter with a good old hearty village with his kinsmen. he misses his home and honestly just longs for the simple pleasures. before being shipped off to morrowind he might have said the imperial city

mort faintly remembers traveling to various padomaic isles as a lad tagging along with his father and thinks a vacation on esroniet would be quite lovely, despite not knowing the land or its culture on anything deeper than a surface level.

[morihaus]

21, 42, and b for ROD and MORT('s excellent adventure)

21. How does jealousy manifest itself in them (they become possessive, they become aloof, etc)?

rodanus is probably the jealous type who like, scorns people he envies- for instance, he might have much rather preferred being a blades agent in cyrodiil or hammerfell, somewhere closer to home than morrowind, but instead of voicing this he just calls the cyrodiil branch weak and pampered. the secret police are fightingggg mort internalizes things, as is the tradition his bureaucratic family line. very self serving behind a veneer of being in control

i understand that this probably refers to jealousy in a romantic sense but i havent reached the point that im imagining these two as a couple, or in any romantic relationship with anyone whatsoever for that matter. they are jesters to me

42. How badly do they want to reach their end goal?

their goal is initially "find and assassinate the nerevarine on behalf of the emperor", and they're really deadset on doing that bc it'd be a feather in their caps for sure. rodanus is the one who goes "hey mort you know the padomaic ocean trade, you could probably lead us to akavir how bad could it be?" and mort having an ego is like "well- yea, well sure!" and they're set on that for awhile, even after realizing they're somewhat stuck on akavir. until the goal shifts to "return to tamriel and dont die in a foreign land where everyone hates you because youre an instrument of an imperialist government" which they would like VERY badly.

B) What inspired you to create them?

@ayem came up with them while talking about the "nerevarine got assassinated" theory and the concept was so hilarious that i couldnt help but imagine this heartwarming tale of two government assassins getting put through the ringer and accidentally going on a life changing adventure that completely turns their worldviews upside down. it's peak comedy. AND im getting fun worldbuilding out of it