Second and last part (at least among the ancient recoveries) about my "twisted fey knight", Carwyn.
This one was the single blog post I was the happiest to have recovered because, although I remembered the main plot of the character's story, there were some details I knew I had forgotten, and they didn't disappoint me: they turned out as cheesy as I was expecting them..!
Cheesy because, although Carwyn does have some (perhaps a lot) of traits that are not my own (or not anymore), this was one of the most blatantly autobiographic characters I had ever made, especially in his family's background, which is basically a fantasy allegory of my own.
Related to this, a big part of my happiness in recovering this piece was due to the pictures.
Not the still from the movie Excalibur (1981) of course, but the two related to Carwyn's parents.
The mother Thindreve is basically a fantasy version of my mom, even in looks, and the one I wanted to see again even more is that heraldic stylized capricorn at the end.
I know: all this fuss for a drawing? Well, first of all I never found the same or a better one, ever (you can verify there's no other online by reverse image search), and secondly it was about the choice of that symbol for Carwyn: even if you will see it makes perfect sense that the capricorn would be his heraldic animal, it was also a reference to the zodiac sign of my father. Silly, I know, but at that time it felt like a spark of genius, and now it just makes me look very nostalgically at the whole thing, just like Carwyn would...
Yep, the penchant for melodrama is another autobiographic trait!
P.S.: My father is alive and well, I made it sound as if he's long gone! Actually, today it's his birthday: happy birthday (grand)Pops! :)
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PLAYING A *TWISTED* FEY KNIGHT! - II
Monday, December 12, 2011, 9:19 AM
Categories: Dungeons & Dragons
Something I really wanted for Carwyn was a strong, nearly "heavy" background, and a peculiar personality.
I didn't tell my fellow players and DM, but I nearly always had an inspiration behind Carwyn's idea, one that came from a very famous movie, Excalibur. And it is the character of Mordred.
Not his story mind you, Carwyn is very far from a bastard child and neither him or either of his parents are evil, but I did want him to have a very close bond with his mother, and I wanted him to be a "spoiled child" of the likes of Mordred. I pictured a very protective, and magic-using mother (Eladrin), a noble of the Court of Eternal Autumn, giving him a lot of magical training and instilling in him a lot of self-confidence. After adolescence or during it, he would have eventually started having some contrasts with his mother. Feeling a bit overwhelmed by her protectiveness, he would have travelled a lot alone or with friends and eventually lived some years of adventures, even if not very heroic sometimes...!
A spoiled child?
So this is the concept: a bit of a spoiled child, grown up accustomed to dominating others (Blackguard: Vice of Domination), and with a very close bond to his warlock mother, which both gives him strength and dignity and at the same time makes him feel a bit oppressed, and paranoid, often thinking of his mother like a schemer wanting to dominate his life. This is an important aspect: he likes to dominate, and is fearful of others dominating him. His rebel part kicks in at this point, with him adventuring far from home to avoid his mother (who was a strict teacher besides being protective), and I imagine him searching for the company of nymphs and other comely fey beings, and getting involved in stormy fey romances from a young age...
After all he's very handsome and charismatic. But his fear of being dominated also makes him fly away from relationships very soon, sometimes provoking all manners of ill reactions from dangerous beings such as nymphs..! Anyway, he eventually survived to his twenties or we wouldn't be telling his story! 
Son of a great love story ended in sadness
Before devising all these last details, I had already decided the story of his father and how he would have become more attached to his mother. To tell the truth, the love story between his mother and father came to me even before deciding the whole character concept, and influenced it quite a bit!
The story goes on briefly like this.
His father came to the Lands of Eternal Autumn from the sea of the Feywild, aboard a large and unusual vessel, along with his Tuatha thanes. Think a bit Beowulf-like but instead of rude Norse warriors, these were chivalrous and fey-blessed Celtic-like Tuatha. The Court of Gloom welcomed the visitors very well, eager as it was to hear their incredible stories and sagas, and eventually, the Tuatha fell under the spell of those lands, reaching some sort of "nirvana" and staying there long years. It didn't take long years anyway for Carwyn's father Cadfael (meaning "Battle Prince") to fall in love with soon-to-be-mother Thindreve (the name should evoke "reve", French for dream, "thin" and also the name Guinevere). Thindreve was good with the sword, the only one to be able to duel with Cadfael, and both were noble, passionate, and art-lovers. In particular, they loved to hear to each other's stories and songs.
Their marriage was a grand event and is recorded as one of the greatest parties and good times of those lands, but their happy love story did not attract only admiration, but envy. Carwyn was already 7 or 8 years old and passed all his days playing and training with both his father and mother when tragedy struck: Cadfael was poisoned with magic, in a way that left him physically and mentally crippled. Two long years of sadness passed in which the other Tuatha suspected more and more of Thindreve. Then one night, their suspects and indignation managed to even break the spell of the land. They took Cadfael and every painting and personal object of him, and they left on their vessel just as they had arrived more than 10 years before. Thindreve probably had cried all her tears already when that happened, since she didn't fall in to sadness as everyone expected, but found a lot of strength from that event. She became less dreamy and more severe, but her attentions towards young Carwyn grew even more, and the rest is history... That's also the reason of the name Carwyn, which means "Blessed Love".
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| Here is a young Thindreve, when she was still far from knowing the happiness of love, and she enjoyed solitude in the mystical forests of Eternal Autumn. |
Carwyn never forgot his father and his teachings. He being a blackguard (although more of a paladin actually) is the fruit of those teachings. I decided that the Tuatha were all a group of paladins/blackguards, whose power derived from the Seldarine (Corellon, Sehanine and Lolth) but not directly... Since the Tuathan theme stated that they were a people blessed by ancient fey, I thought of a time when maybe even the Seldarine walked the Feywild and the Natural World, and they could have instilled the Tuatha with enough power as to access divine classes without actually revering any god. And in fact, both Carwyn and his father know of the gods only through songs and poems as they were just mythical figures, but don't actually revere them, and the very concept of veneration is alien tot hem. They feel the divine powers coming from their own blood, an instrument to exalt the best and worst of their capabilities and use them in battle.
Carwyn misses his father a lot, especially recently, when he started to despise his mother a bit. He sees his father nearly as a mythical figure, and he even created his personal heraldic symbol as an allegory of his father: the Capricorn, a mystical and mysterious creature coming from the sea, but also with a strong elemental-earth component, maybe also a symbol of the union of sea and land that brought him to life.
What else?
I talked a lot of Carwyn's background, general story and a bit of his personality.
I might add some more traits. For example, he inherited the parents love for art, and in particular songs, music, poems, and stories. He enjoys creating ones of his own, and as I already told in the first blog, he views himself and his friends always as heroes, always right in their deeds. He also is generally very cheerful on the outside, contrary to what you may have thought reading about his more angst-y side. He laughs a lot, he enjoys drinking and sometimes behaves like a satyr, a creature that he esteems, probably another reason behind the Capricorn symbol he chose to represent him and his heritage. He's also a romantic, of the decadent type: he views many unimportant things in an excessively poetic manner, as driven by the need of making everything beautiful, and this same drive also makes him treat important things like life and death in a romantic way that ends up stripping those concepts of their importance. To him, life must be a beautiful song, with all the good and the bad that this means..! Apathy and selfishness end up being strong inside him... And this, as I stated before, is at the center of what I call "the fey theme", an alien morality that is both fascinating and scary.
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Should I write more about Carwyn?? It doesn't make much sense anymore: I never got to play him more than once, never developed the setting, and I don't even remember who his adventurer companions were supposed to be anymore, so I would have to think all these details, at a time when I barely find time for this blog or anything else.
For some reason I think he should be part of a comedic story, which I never wrote. Some sort of He-Man in fairyland, but with some dark humor, and possibly satirical (in all senses)... We will see!
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