"We have to get back... We have to warn them! We can't be too late! ...Please. Please tell us that this was not how it ends!"
Malachite
(He/Him)
Warforged Warlock, Great Old One Patron, Pact of the Talisman
Neutral
Courtier Background (Emissary)
Prior to the Backstory Event that Led to Making a Warlock Pact:
Cuprite
"On behalf of the esteemed City-State of Hells'-Haven, I thank you for your hospitality in receiving this envoy and express our most sincere wishes that we can together forge an enthusiastic, efficacious, and enduring partnership."
Dice Set #74 - Oxi-Copper
----------------------------------------------------
What can I say? Inspiration is a fickle thing. I'll take it when I can get it, but I've definitely been slacking on making characters or minis. Definitely fell deep into a jigsaw puzzle vortex.
But, anyway, a post on bluesky inspired me to go back and remake a character's mini into a nice, proper one with all of the new features at my disposal.
Malachite's a character who in some form or another has been rattling around in my head for, like, something like 15 years now. I originally made the Warforged Warlock for 4th Edition - He was actually a counterpart of sorts to Morana.
For my 4th Edition characters, I was putting together the vague idea of them all being on the same team of mercenaries - If I were to ever DM a campaign, they'd be available for the PCs' party to hire/bring along for missions to shore up any weaknesses they had, to act as quest-givers (especially side-quest-type stuff), and in-general to give them NPC friends to care about (the plot hook I had in-mind would begin with the party being recruited into this merc group).
Actually, if I ever do run a campaign instead of just writing a story, I think I might still approach things with that whole setup in-mind.
Anyway, a trope I'd noticed in many media is that groups/teams/parties only ever seemed to have one member of each type/class - Maybe a beefy-type-fighter and agile-type-fighter, but that was the most overlap that seemed to exist, and usually that'd be more like a fighter and a ranger, or a fighter and a barbarian.
So what I wanted to do was have two Warlocks both as part of the core crew - Because the mercenary group liked each other and wanted to work with their friends, rather than shrewdly looking at their roster and rejecting someone because "they already had one of those".
While HeroForge still doesn't have the very niche ideas I have in-mind for the ultimate vision I have for Mal, the new options are certainly a step up from my first attempt at making a mini for him back in 2020.
In my vision, he doesn't have normal-looking horns, per se - He's got two metal slats attached to his faceplate, in place of horns - The Tieflings that made him did make him to resemble them, but still more stylized. Also, the green "hair" on his head is meant to be an accumulation of Old Man's Beard lichen, which started growing on his immobilized body while he was stuck in involuntary stasis, caught halfway in a time-bubble (hence the patina on his right side)
The reason for his making a pact, and the reason for his persona change is that he spent over 20 years stuck with his body and mind half-in-half-out of magical fallout, basically. And the source of the eldritch magic eventually reached out to his literally-fractured mind, and that aspect of his personality - An embodiment of his utter desperation and outrage, was the one to form the pact.
Finally freeing himself from the stasis effect stabilized his mind for the most part, but in terms of which facets of himself that are driving the actions now, there was a shift from his normal self to the part of him that made the pact. It's not a clear distinct-personas Dissociative Identity Disorder thing - There's no different-alters-taking-control-at-different-times switching - Malachite and Cuprite are the same person, just two of many voices that would debate ideas back and forth in his head, same as pretty much anyone else does. Malachite ultimately isn't any less reasonable than Cuprite - More guarded and paranoid, more affected by trauma, certainly. But still essentially Cuprite.
Nevertheless, learning that he was framed for causing the explosion of the strange magic that trapped him and destroyed a fortress, and that this incident was used by the other nation as a justification to invade and destroy his home City-State will definitely not sit well with him. His people - Both in the sense of the other residents of Hells'-Haven in-general, and his Warforged kin - Those who survived the invasion have once again been scattered to the winds. Hells'-Haven was a center of invention and research, and they had found ancient Warforged in tombs and revived them from their dormant states, which led to the development of techniques for creating new ones. So, the Warforged had their new home amongst the exiled Tieflings (and others) of the Haven.
He wishes to return to his service as an emissary of his people, which means finding whatever surviving leadership he can, if there's indeed anyone left to find. All the while his new "friend" whispers promises of vengeance justice in his mind.
Oh, also - The colour palette of the Hells'-Haven garb he's wearing as Cuprite - Black, red, orange, and yellow - Is meant to lean into imagery of fire and forge as means of creation and protection - Hence, the warm-coloured glow instead of "pure" white light imagery (while probably wouldn't play 100% well with a bunch of Tieflings exiled due to religious bigotry in the Empire they were originally from before Hells'-Haven was founded by the refugees as they congregated outside the borders of the Empire)
Cuprite/Malachite himself is a Havenmade Warforged, as opposed to a Recovered Warforged. He was created by the Artificers of Hells'-Haven, using the techniques they developed through studying and reawakening the dormant Recovered Warforged, who are found in the scattered ruins of the ancient Precursor Civilization who originally created them.
Recovered Warforged tend to be overall sturdier, but have some difficulty in approaching the notion that they have freedom to choose their own paths. Havenmade Warforged were not created with the mindset of being tools as their Recovered kin were, so tend to have more-independent personalities and more easily find their own paths in life. The Haven's work is very skilled, but lacks certain ineffable elements of the Precursor's mysterious magic, so the younger Warforged might be more susceptible to breakdown than the original models as they age, but as the oldest Havenmade Warforged are just over 35-years-old (the oldest Recovered Warforged were only revived not-quite-45 years ago), it's not yet clear how the two will compare in the long-term.
[In terms of lore for individual races in the shared-world I'm writing for all my characters, Aasimar, Tieflings, and Warforged have the most for sure Aasimar and Warforged are linked together through the mysterious Precursor Empire, while Tieflings and Warforged are linked together through the work of Hells'-Haven. Aasimar are extremely rare and all surviving ones had their memories tampered with - So, they don't really have a broad/general characterized relationship with other races - Just interactions of individuals. I do have some non-Human-origin Aasimar written up - They're meant to have been rather rare and somewhat minimalized by the Human-centric Precursor Empire. And as far as Tieflings and Aasimar interactions are concerned, there's the first confirmed newly-Exalted Aasimar since Precursor times - Novelty, and everything going on in her backstory.]
