Character Creation Considerations

## TLDR

1. Make a character like usual
2. Start at level 5
3. Btw you have a second soul
	1. What power / class does it give you
	2. Who's soul is it? Does it get along with your character
	3. Make it up as you go
4. You're starting in Tian Xia City and you've registered as an Awakened
5. Profit

## Our story begins...

The campaign begins in Tian Xia City at The Order Headquarters. Your character is a registered adventurer with The Order but has only been on a handful of commissions at this point. You have been called to headquarters to discuss a large scale commission that will require the majority of the Orders members to complete. It's up to you how you registered with the order, either voluntarily or by force, and what your motivations for joining are. You may also decide that you have worked with some of your party members on previous commissions or know them from outside of work or that you are complete strangers before being brought together for this job.

## Special Considerations

In this campaign you’ll be playing as an Awakened, this means that you are a unique individual that houses not one, but two souls. At some point in your life you Awakened to the second soul and with it a host of new powers and potentially new problems. In a mechanical sense, most of your characters stats, abilities, and class should be coming from the inherited soul. You will also be starting at level 5 to represent that immediate increase in power from awakening. If you would like to multi-class, you could have one class come from your life before awakening, and the other from your inherited soul. Also for spell casters and religious characters, refer to the Major Deities page to find their respective divine domains as we will be using this universe's gods and goddesses. However if there is a god, goddess, or patron that you really want to use we can have them be a demigod in service of one of the other major deities. To help with character creation under these slightly unique settings, simply follow the below prompts to help flesh out your character. There are also two examples at the end to give you a sense of how it all comes together.

### Life Before Awakening

Use this section to help imagine your character before awakening, i.e. who you were originally.

#### Where are you from?

The campaign will be starting in Tian Xia City, so unless your character is older than 50 years old, they will have had to of been born inside the city or the surrounding province. However if you want to have stronger ties to the major cities while still being less than 50, consider that your parents may have been immigrants or traders that were trapped in the city when it closed its borders and have made a new life in the city.

#### Who are you?

The lore is written with the major races from the player handbook in mind however if you want to play a non-standard race we can make it work. While races tend to congregate in the cities of the founders of their patrons, for example elves in Azatlan where Titania is from, you can find all races in any city so don’t feel the need to be tied to anyone city if you want to play a specific race.

When thinking of your personality this will be no different than standard DND character creation, however keep in mind that your character will have to juggle the personality of your inherited soul as well.

### Your Awakened Soul and YOU!

This is the real difference for this campaign. Your inherited soul has its own personality, past life, powers, and alignment that may have as little or as great an affect on your character as you’d like. Feel free to have this be a minor part of your character and simply reap the rewards of inherited power or go ham and play a character constantly teetering on the borders of insanity as the chaotic tendencies of your inherited soul threaten to devour your crumbling psyche.

#### What powers did you get?

The majority of your characters power should come from the inherited soul i.e. if you inherited the powers of a warlock your character will become a warlock. However as stated above if your pre-awakened life was that of a soldier or some other class, you could multi-class with your one class being from your inherited soul and your other being from your life prior to awakening. Alternatively could also simply inherit a multi classed soul. Also remember that you're starting at level 5 now.

#### New Soul, Who Dis?

What kind of soul did your character inherit? What race are they? What time are they from: ancient history? Two days ago? The Future? Is it even from this dimension? The machinations of reincarnation and rebirth are poorly understood, which means you can get real wild and we can figure out someway to make it work in universe.

What kind of personality does it have? Does it mesh with your pre-existing personality or is it in stark contrast? What kind of person was your inherited soul and what accomplishments did they achieve to become powerful enough to be reincarnated in this way? These answers can be as flushed out or bare-bones as you like. You could come into the campaign knowing exactly what your inherited soul is and have your character have that same knowledge or you could have the character slowly learn whose soul they are inheriting. This also allows you to change things about your inherited soul on the go as you work to find your character and you, the player, can undergo the process of discovering the inherited soul together with your character. Alternatively, you could leave it up to your DM to decide what kind of soul and what their personality is that you’ve inherited and how exactly your character will discover these aspects of the inherited soul.

#### Relationship

What is your characters relationship with this new tenant in their body? Are your character and inherited souls personalities aligned or opposites? Does your inherited soul drive your righteous character to commit horrendous acts or does a righteous soul hold your less than scrupulous character back from various acts of skullduggery? Can your character communicate with it's inherited soul or is a silent passenger? Do they welcome these newfound powers or do they curse this unwanted burden? Remember that conventional religious teachings consider being awakened a great honor but your character can choose to disagree with this.

#### Papers Please

Finally, as an awakened individual, you are subjected to state sponsored surveillance and employment programs. For the sake of the campaign, all your characters will be registered and active members of The Order of Awakened individuals. However, how you came to part of the Order is up to you. Did you voluntarily register or were caught hiding your status and were compelled to join under threat of persecution? Do you believe in the Order's mission or are you in it just to be able to use your powers without going to jail?

### Example 1

Example one is a fairly straightforward example with the character in there inherited soul being in line with each other and the player knowing exactly where he wants us to go.

The player, Tam, is playing an elf named Hctim Noslen. Hctim is 200 years old, so he was born in Azatlan and was raised to be a healer and a devout follower of Quetzalcoatl despite being an elf. 50 years ago he was in Tian Xia City on pilgrimage when the city closed its borders and he has been living there since. He created a peaceful life for himself living out in the countryside and providing blessings and healing to the local populace. However one year ago he awoke to the inherited soul of the Elven assassin Erilader. His awakening happened all at once and Hctim became instantly aware of Erilader's entire bloodstained life. Part of an elite commando unit, Erilader was well-versed in all manners of infiltration, sabotage and especially assassination. Hctim is initially repulsed by his bloody awakening however he soon realizes that Erilader is actually quite similar to Hctim. They were both pragmatic and seek to use their powers for the greater good and follow their own strict codes of morality though their view on killing are initially quite different. Leaving his small countryside congregation, Hctim registers with the Church of Time and becomes in an awakened warrior healing the meek and snuffing out the wicked. Hctim is able to directly communicate with Erilader who coaches him through the finer arts of infiltration and assassination and often has respectful debates on morality and the politics of the time.

Mechanically, Hctim is a multi-classed paladin rogue, with his paladin class coming from his life before awakening and his rogue class coming from Erilader. Tam is in full control of his character's growth arc as Hctim is slowly influenced by Erilader through their frequent conversations and is progressively more willing to commit increasingly violent acts to protect the greater good as the campaign progresses.

### Example 2

Example 2 is of a little bit more of a complicated situation in which the player, Adam, doesn’t really know what he wants his inherited soul to be. All he knows is that he wants it to be messy AF

The Player, Adam, is playing an orc named Burran who was born and raised on the streets of Tian Xia City. His parents were traders that were visiting the city from New Imaskar who were than trapped when the city closed its borders. His parents barely managed to scrape by living in the gray zones of the law within the slums of the Grand Baazar. In Burran's younger years he was no stranger to a violence and thievery but eventually went clean after finding faith in Tyr. Tyr is a demigod of Asmodeus and seen as a protector of the law which Burran attempted to emulate by joining The Jade Army. However on his 25th birthday he awoke in a pool of blood. To his horror, he had murdered his parents and his closest friends in a state of dissociative fugue. He was immediately imprisoned and taken to the Church of Time where he was given the option to join under strict supervision or undergo the ritual of serenity. He willingly join the order in hopes that they would prevent him from committing any further tragedy and resolving himself to hunt down more dangerous awakened. However, every night he is plagued by maddening dreams of bloodstained murder and pure unadulterated rage. In his dreams he is a nameless human barbarian without peer and a scourge upon the land. He doesn’t know the soul's name, what their story is, or why he’s so fucking angry. All he knows is that he needs skulls for the skull throne and blood for the Blood God. In his dreams, he often sees images of a demon named Khorne but in all the religious text he has read he has never seen any mention of the this Blood God. This causes Burran great distress but at the same time has afforded him incredible strength and fortitude which he uses to serve the law. Burran obviously has a conflicted relationship with his power as he uses it to protect those he cares about while trying to hold back his killer instincts.

At the start of the campaign, Adam, much like Burran, doesn't really know who this inherited soul is or where this relationship will take his character. Over the course of the campaign Adam works with his DM to flesh out this inherited soul as they decide together what would be the most fun and chaotic. Perhaps Burran learns that this soul was a cannibal and now he hungers for manflesh. Burran mostly has these revelations through his dreams and is generally able to keep his rampaging soul in check. However when Burran's health drops to zero and he activates the Relentless Endurance Trait, his berserker soul takes hold and Adam loses control of his character for a progessively longer periods of time as he goes on a murderous rampage while also maxing out his strength, endurance and dexterity stats for that period of time. Overtime Adam has more time to think about who this soul is and decides that he is a human chieftain named Wulfric in a demon worshipping cult from a different dimension. Through Adam's character choices and working with the DM it is clear that Burran will eventually be able to conquer his madness and use his powers for good but his DM will still occasionally force Burran to make saving throws to resist the influence of Wulfric.