HAPPY BIRTHDAY BESTIEEEEE I HOPE YOURE HAVING A WONDERFUL DAY
Which iteration of Brad (AUs/pf character/etc) have you put the most time and effort (*coughs* and commission money) into do u think... bigs my eyes at you...
Also you should share some of your favourite art/stories of him while youre at it :)
Definitely the one that was from a Pathfinder Living World server called Aera! That one has essentially become my 'default' Brad that I base and develop a lot of ideas from. Its the one that's also Logi, has the Ymeri connection, is a fire elemental etc.
At the time when I brought Brad in as a character, he was still a solely joke character--I was enjoying using him in a few settings to mess around with, but he was very one dimensional and I didn't take him very seriously. His backstory at the time was even just like "he didn't vibe with the folks at home so decided to take a vacation".
Due to the nature of living world servers like these focused character development is often not a huge thing so I didnt really care, that's why I put Brad in because it wasn't a character I cared to develop. But one particular GM had a random NPC in a fight throw an insult at Brad, I decided to lean into it and have Brad get upset over it, and the GM enjoyed that I did and started picking and prodding at Brad and unraveling his jokey bits with me and started actually developing him out with multiple sessions and arcs around him.
While I unfortunately had a falling out with that GM for some external reasons and I haven't been in touch since, he had been an enormous influence and driver in making me really enjoy Brad as an actual character and developing him to be something more. Some of my favourite stories are from that set of games as well. Some things from that server is....
This is the Brad that was from the Plane of Fire and got drunk off of Alchemist's Fires.
Logi/Evil!Brad also originated from this game, and his connections with Ymeri. He was kidnapped by Ymeri for several in game months when his friends threw him a surprise by giving him a vacation back home to the plane of fire lol. The GM gave Brad an actual reason why he was "on vacation".
I commissioned @cynicalstith for this piece when that happened to design and see what Brad would look like at that point and thus the evil!AU was born.
He worked in a library, funnily enough. Though "worked" is a strong word considering he wouldn't show up half the time. But he could point you to exactly where literally any book was in the huge place.
He was a character that would reliably write a mission report after every single session for the guilds, though he had a tendency to ramble and go on multiple tangents they were surprisingly detailed. A small connection to him being used to reporting in when he was Logi.
Sentient rats started worshipping him after he made a huge show during a session where rat swarms were invading. Brad kept on getting titles from his antics that my nickname in that server became absurdly long as I added all of it to my display name, I wish I still had a screenshot.
He got turned into a potted plant from pissing off a witch.
He got turned into a kid in a session too, while still having all the same abilities as an adult, it was EXTREMELY chaotic.
He developed an unreciprocated crush on a wizard (another PC) after said wizard helped him multiple times. The player turned out to be a dick and got banned though lmao.
His fire abilities grew so potent that he literally became too hot to touch which as a very physically affectionate guy did not help with the depression he got from the next point.
He got cursed with depression for a year by a fey in exchange for a cool bracelet.
He puked into his friend's shoe. It ruined the shoe because he was drinking alchemist's fires and yeah he basically just vomitted up fire lmao.
He was STILL depressed after the curse ended because he never tried to cope with it properly and just tried pretending it wasn't an issue which made him develop non-magical depression. It pissed him off.
He got a restraining order against fey, signed by devils. THAT court case would've been interesting.
The cool bracelet turned out to be the gem that the good fire lord Atreia was sealed in.
Though there were a lot of loose ends left hanging when we fell out and I quit, I still develop how I imagine the story could go further on my own, such as how the situation with freeing Atreia might have gone.
Crazy gorgeous piece from @neunian
My friend's character, Jax, Brad's boyfriend, didn't exist at the time either but now I slot him into the story as well and go over it with him. That's how Evil!Jax got developed too, leading to this piece which I love very much by Jakkuyn. Turns out me trying to push tragic doomed yaoi onto Kjel didnt work because Jax just became evil too lol.
Plus toying around with other ideas like without the restrictions of game mechanics doing stuff like well what if he instead of running on blood ran on an elemental core, and how fun that'd be to toy with as a torture method to get cut off from his flame HAHHA. I LOVE this art I got from @hueyoart on that.
I could be here forever if i started just sharing some fav art though because I'll keep putting more and more and more and more in.