Share your avatar story...

Please share your avatar backstories here is as many posts as you like. Every avatar has countless stories to tell about their life and adventures. No single post could ever sum up a fraction of it. Include pictures , poems or whatever you are willing to share.

A post could be as simple as a special day's adventure.

 

I'll try to kick this off...

My story begins as most outlands, in the trials of youth…

My friends call me Tahru; although my birth name was Seras. I don’t know if my parents gave me that name, as I was an orphan. I was teased relentlessly because Seras was a girl's name. Many liked to gang up on me, despite the fact I was smaller than many other boys my age. I got into many losing fights. My clothes were always battered, second hand or at best olden in style. My youth was fraught with troubles as I fought with my teachers and refused to follow the simplest of rules. My teachers would often beat me with switches. One thing I learned firsthand was that negative reinforcement only pushes people farther from desired normality.

Perhaps the most embarrassing memory of my youth was this red-haired tomboy twice my size that would pick on me daily. That was an all-time low. On a particularly more cold and misty day, she trapped me between school buildings threatening me as usual. The sun was hidden by the clouds and there was no escape from going home covered in mud. At that moment, like an epiphany, my eyes were blinded by a dazzling Sapphire blue as she stared at me. Those eyes were just like looking straight down in the endless ocean a mile offshore. I cannot explain why I did not notice them before. As I tried to gaze away from them, the once antagonistic freckle filled smile intent on my pending doom, seemed amazing clean and out of place. As she stood there with her fist clenched, I stood up as defiant and angry as I could and shouted, “you love me don’t you?”

Needless to say, our relationship changed after that. It would be romantic to say it went further, be we were just children. Still, I will never forget that curly red hair, those blue eyes and those freckled cheeks.

I eventually changed my name to Tahru to avoid having to explain it, but I made Seras my last name because it was that name that made me stronger and ultimately become the man I am today.

 

Watching this thread, particularly interested in how you and your character interpret how everyone's characters made it into the lands of Novia? I look forward to one day creating my own back story

 

Thanks, @Tahru, I like these kinds of threads, so I'll help it continue. Hmm, my "avatar" origin story... This is going to be a long post, so I'm going to collapse it into a spoiler:

Spoiler: Spartus avatar origin story

Well, I'm not a role-player, what you see is what you get. It's hard enough just managing one life and personality, let alone more. I bonded with the cyberpunk of the late '80s and '90s and use technology to look for meaning. It was fascinating to hear that Mike Pondsmith and Richard Garriott were at the same conference in Barcelona, by the way. This is one reason I like virtual-worlds, but I also try to find answers in the real world. I've created my own worlds via programming, and I'm also the guy at the goth club that likes to talk about film, anime, computers or philosophy (and the experience helped me write a screenplay). The goths are pretty open-minded and tolerate old cyberpunks like myself, and we have mutual respect, but most are so caught up in their alter-egos, and I crimp their style. Like a chiroscuro painting, a dark background allows one to see shape and dimension. Many of us who grew up in this exaggerated digital world now have trouble seeing gradations; we are grey-scale impaired. It's been out-of-style for some time, but it will cycle around again in a different form, so I enjoy the current desolateness (the same reason I'm not concerned about player-density in MMOs). There's a prohibition speakeasy/flapper bar across the street which is really trendy now. The irony.

These forums are similar, like sitting down at a bar. You can have a conversation with the random stranger next to you. I'm looking for a "knowledge spaceport" where I can talk to an advanced alien culture, so to speak, and uncover the mysteries of life. I just watched the anime Kado: The Right Answer, which was fascinating. SoTA provides a kind of spaceport, I guess.

My father built his own nightclub when I was very young and turned it into a sort of techno-museum and created his own art, fusing it with technology, building radical audio systems and even his own musical instruments. He was on a search for meaning himself, creating art and writing poetry (which I still cannot read today--one day I will learn his language and translate it). He left that business by the time I got older, but I saw him build it. Back in the '80s and '90s, downtown St. Louis was like a bombed-out warzone (that's where much of the filming of Escape from New York took place). Even today, it is a dangerous city at night (Forbes ranked it #2 most dangerous in the US). Unless you are naive, just making your way to a club there at night is like traversing deep, treacherous space, a very scary experience, but once you arrive at the spaceport, you're relatively safe... maybe. But, like these forums, it's worth attending, as I see people in a different context, and context helps me to define meaning. My avatar icon is the birdman tablet, one of the few artifacts found in the ancient history of my area.

I go by the name Spartus on this forum, but my in-game avatar is different, although it does begin and end with an S. I have always been fascinated with one of Stanley Kubrick's first films, Spartacus, a different style of direction from his later films, which are also some of my favorite. Why the S fixation? I had a lisp as a kid and had to attend special speech classes, and it is a mysterious letter, like the words Scientific, Scary, Supernatural, Spacetime... It was curvy and reversed direction, unlike other glyphs in the Roman alphabet, very dualistic and yin-yang. Analog, yet... digital.

However, I decided not to use this name, as there is only ONE Spartacus, and so I chose Spartus, the name of a now defunct clock-making company, my first digital clock with red LED segments that I used to stare at when I was young, hunched over my keyboard waiting for games to load and files to download on my 8-bit computer and 300 baud modem. You think things are bad with the loading times now? Ha! Just the invention of the progress bar was a graphic wonder. It gave us something to stare at other than the drive light or the clock... There was this one 1983 game called The Pharaoh's Curse which my friend loaded from tape on his Atari 400, into which his father, one of the computer engineers for the US space shuttle, soldered new RAM to play the game. That game actually played music while you were waiting for the game to load, and I think it even had an animation, something I had never seen at the time during an actual game load.

Spartus... clocks... time... The clock is the epitome of the analog/digital divide. I have had a lifelong fascination with time and also devices that represent the passing of time. Every hour on the hour, my robotic personal assistant speaks the time over all speakers in my residence. I built my first talking robot in the 1980's (it talked, it moved, and it listened--early voice recognition). A few years earlier, my shop teacher, who had an accent like Hank Hill on King of the Hill, used to say "Jarvis! Come over here!" (My name is not Jarvis, but he just liked to call me that, for some reason...) He would have never realized that I built my own J.A.R.V.I.S. years later, but I gave it a different name.

This is the only place I use Spartus--if you see this name on any other site or forum, it is not me. The name lives and dies on this forum.

In history, the real Spartacus is shrouded in mystery, but to me, he represents the ideas of freedom and equality. My father was not of the same country as myself. In his home country, he was wealthy and had respect, but in my country, he was poor and discriminated against. I see how race, culture, age, religion, and class needlessly divide people.

So how did I get here? I stared at that clock waiting for the scene to load, and in-between the planck-seconds I slipped through to a new reality and ended up at the spaceport called Novia.

I'm Spartus. No, I'm Spartus... No, I'm Spartus!

Anyone can be Spartus.

 

I was born a poor Kobold child. I had facial reconstruction surgery and learned how to make my grunting sound human. Traveled to the big cities and made a living as a court jester and, often, a prostitute to royalty who prefer human faces and Kobold musculature. Kinky, I know. But you gotta shake that money maker, feel me?

Met a nice girl. And after her, met many who were not so nice. Sugar and Spice, I call them when we get together for epic and days-long naked parties in my dungeon.

After receiving my seventh ONBE, for saving Lord and Lady British from a horde of zombie squirrels, I opened the world-famous night club, Avatarts.

Now I spend my days crafting fur houses with bejeweled hot tubs, teaching the Oracle a thing or two about life, fighting decay and returning to my ancestral Kobold village to play gustball with the heads of my vanquished enemies.

 

It's time to wake up @Budner ~TL~

 

Dont really know.

In Novia- I imagine my Avatar encountering truly bizarre and indescribable creatures/Avatars who came from other worlds. Some are hostile. Some intelligent and helpful. (Similar to the wierdos in jaba the huts bar in Star Wars). I don't see them all as 'human-like'. I think some on the sacred quest would appear frightening, physically, and alien, perhaps grotesque, but hold virtue in their hearts. Few would carry unusual tech from their own worlds, maybe weapons.
It is from one such creature I imagine my Avatar learning some descriptions of other worlds/history/dimensions.
One of whom came from an utopian civilization of love, where wickedness ceased to exist eons ago. And hence is looking for an artifact of love.
One whose world has been destroyed. Etc.
I imagine Novians as far less technologically advanced than depicted in game, too.
As for my back story: its either Ultima 5ish, through a moongate. Or, with the help of mysterious beings, I achieved a state of meditation/consciousness allowing me to manifest in another world. Or I am killed on earth, and remanifest etc.

 

The truth behind my character must be earned, but what he presents forward to others is that he flaunts a sense of theatrical lies. He talks with his hands and body gestures often and doesn't seem to be speaking the full truth of the matter, always concealing his face behind a plague doctors mask. He says he's a native of Novia, but sees Avatars for what they "truly are". He always seems in good spirits, though he will not shy from a challenge. He's always with his cane which he oft prefers the use of in combat or to wield other unconventional weaponry, such as a stick, silverware or even his bare hands against an armed opponent. His form of combat is non-lethal, yet there is a sense of malice and greed as he faces an opponent, urging them to not hold back and seemingly delighted when he's pushed into a corner. He tends to put himself at a disadvantage purposely and would rather taunt his opponent than to physically harm them.

He is a contradiction, playing a dangerous game to which only he knows the rules. What is the end-game? Only time will tell...

 

To understand Fionwyn one must understand wild horses. They cannot be hobbled or tamed. They must be given their head and allowed to run free. If they take a rider, it is on their terms. Trust must be earned. Her name is not just a name, her crest is not just a symbol - "wild mane" is who she is, right to her marrow.

There is much to tell about Fionwyn. But for now, this glimpse must suffice:

(Sung to the tune "The Rose of Tralee". Lyrics by F. Wyldemane)



To Be Wild and Free

♪ When I was a girl my pa told me to marry,
♪ But my heart was too wild and I had to be free.
♪ So I left my home and I trained as a rider,
♪ And I lived many years on the vast grassland sea.

♪ I moved swiftly as a Mearas,
♪ ‘Cross that wide open, boundless track
♪ With the wind in my face and
♪ The sun on my back.

♪ The thunder of horses with flowing manes long,
♪ A fire in my blood sang a fierce, untamed song.

♪ I roamed far from home and hard roads did I travel,
♪ There is always a price if you need to be free.
♪ But I’ve no regrets for my soul is unfettered,
♪ I’m a wind in the meadow, no hobble for me.

♪ Please don’t cry when I must leave you,
♪ And no tears shed if I should fall.
♪ For my heart ever answers,
♪ The Rohirrim call.

♪ The whicker of horses with flowing manes long,
♪ A fire in my blood sings a fierce, untamed song.

♪ I now have a new home with friends that I cherish,
♪ I follow Sequanna and her love touches me,
♪ But no one can e’er tame my unruly passion,
♪ I still dream of moonlight, my steed beneath me.

♪ Diamond dust skies, starry glitter,
♪ I hear soft music of the night and
♪ As one we speed higher,
♪ Twin sparks taking flight.

♪ The rumble of horses their flowing manes long,
♪ A fire in my blood sings a fierce, untamed song.

((More to come *eventually* at RPOTA.com ))