for the 175 Questions: 5, 16, 60, 82, and 154 for the Armsmaster; 24, 40, 70, 86, and 174 for Greignar; 30, 64, 71, 102, and 134 for Gabriev, 66, 103, 122, 135, and 151 for Housin; annnd... 44, 55, 62, 107, and 171 for General Questions
Like a century later, here we go!
5. Can your character cook?
Cooking is the application of heat to organic materials to make them easier to consume, right? Sure, she can cook! Are you going to enjoy her cooking? Well... that depends a lot on how easy to ruin the food in question is. Keep in mind that anything other than roasting or boiling sans spices is an unknown to her (she doesn't entirely believe in the meatform concept of "taste." Surely if it was an important sense, it would have been added into the warforged sensory suite).
16. How does the way your character present themselves in public differ from how they are in private?
Not a whole ton? She's not good at, like, faking a persona. Sometimes she'll exaggerate things about herself, like her bombastic way of speaking, to confuse or irritate or bewilder people, though. In private she can almost be low-key, sometimes, if she's distracted enough by a project, but in crowds she figures the best way to get her concerns heard is to dominate the dialogue. And, if necessary, the volume. Getting her alone is the best way to make her actually listen.
60. If faced with certain death, would your character continue to speak out against injustice?
What injustice? The injustice of not being allowed to test her perfectly good inventions in occupied areas?
More seriously--if the Armsmaster actually decides to invest herself in a fight against injustice, which does sometimes happen (mostly because the party she's with gets worked up about it), nothing's going to make her back down. Threaten her all you want. She's outlasted meatforms before, she'll do it again, and if she doesn't, well, there's enough copies of her work out there that someone will make that one lightning cannon design work right eventually.
82. Describe your characterās handwriting.
It's big, to start with. Not just because she's big--she could design writing implements that would give her more precision, if she wanted--but that is part of it, because why bother put in effort to make it smaller just because they make standard sheets of paper so small? She's more of a diagrammer than a note-taker, but when she does right, for that or any other reason, her words are spiky and scrawling, with a little extra jagged emphasis on any letters with pointy bits like 'k' and 'y'. If she can draw a straight line or an angle instead of curve on any letter that allows it, she will.
154: How much does your character care about other people respecting their authority?
If it's in an area that she has a lot of knowledge about, she considers that knowledge to constitute authority, and it ticks her off when people don't listen. Also any other situation where she KNOWS she's right about something--if the dam is going to collapse and she tells you to evacuate, and you argue with her, that's going to piss her right off! But she doesn't really recognize authority in the general legal or social senses anyway, so she wouldn't even really register if she was given that kind, and definitely wouldn't bother to employ it. As far as she's concerned, authority comes from expertise, anything else is invalid. Not even stupid or illogical, she just... doesn't really understand that it exists.
---
Greignar
24. What is your characterās opinions on squirrels?
Well, he eyes most surface animals with a small amount of suspicion, because very few of their equivalents in the Underdark are as harmless. That said, they're kind of cute--not as cute as moles, but not much is as cute as a star-nosed mole. And squirrels are also very delicious.
40. If a loved one died, how long would they stay in mourning?
A very long time. If it was old age, that changes slightly, but if it was any other reason, or his wife regardless, and he was close to them, he would be... very solemn about it, for a very long time. He'd still carry out his duties, but it would be at least a couple decades before he started to live the rest of his life again.
70. Does your character have any guarded/secret guild knowledge or family recipe?
His clan is a clan of stonecarvers, and he has lots of family secrets of different techniques and cuts. Not really useful as a paladin, and he'd share the standard dwarven knowledge, or essential safety knowledge, with anyone, but the family secrets are mostly about aesthetics, so no harm is done and much gain comes to his clan from keeping them.
86. Is your characterās fear reaction to fight, flight, or freeze?
Definitely fight! He's a blustery, angry, hitting-prone guy.
174: Does your character get homesick?
All the time. The only reason he left home at all was a divine calling; if his goddess would allow it, he'd never leave his city again. He misses his home and his clan and his family so much.
---
Gabriev
30. How independent was your character as a teen?
Pretty independent, insomuch as the hobgoblin legion structure allowed! It had been on a war footing since he was very young, and he was entrusted with the duties that hobgoblin teenagers are given to prepare them for later discipline and command earlier than a lot of his peers. He was very proud of it, and proud that his parents were proud, too. He didn't need help or direction for a lot of things, but he did regularly look to make sure his parents were aware of and approving, because showing your competence and standing on your own feet is one thing, but shaming your parents is another.
64. Do your characters know any old blind swordsmen per the trope?
Gabriev's life is a little trope-y already (I like what I like), so... yes. While traveling alone, trying to get ahead of the legion, but before she'd really started to integrate with larger non-goblinoid society, she stopped to help out what seemed like a blind old man (you respect your elders, and he'd clearly taken the wound in battle), which paid off later when the village he lived near tried to kill her just for being a hobgoblin. She could have fought her way out, with fatalities, but he stepped in to prevent them and then took her home and sheltered her for a little while. And that would explain where she got her non-legion-issue longsword!
71. How good is your character at reading people and navigating social situations?
Fairly good! Not as good as he thought he was, but there's a difference between reading people and realizing that someone you'd been raised and trained to trust absolutely is a liar. One expects honor as the default from one's superiors, after all. The legion enforced courtesy and manners, which meant that seeing through them was a necessity of advancement. He has a bit more trouble with non-hobgoblins, but he's learning.
102. What is your characterās greatest source of guilt?
The deaths of the members of her unit who were killed during the pursuit after they rescued her. That's actually why she ordered the rest to disperse; the deaths ate at her too much.
134. Has your character ever been alone in a hostile environment and been forced to travel a long way to reach a safety that wasnāt for sure?
The flight from the legion, for sure! He knew enough about the legion's long-term military plans to know that a big chunk of the land his unit initially fled to, on the opposite side of the lines, was going to get swallowed up, so they had to get through that land, which was hostile because they were currently fighting the legion, before they could even think of slowing down. And he didn't know how far out people were going to be outright hostile, as opposed to just wary of them. There might never be a safe place. Even a country away, it's not really safe, just less likely for him and his survivors to be killed on sight. (Another reason to scatter, since at least that way a few might survive, while if they were caught by enough people, even non-goblinoids might kill them all together.)
---
Housin
66. How much of a disappointment/scandal to their family is your character?
Her actual family? Well, far away, on another continent there's a clan of snakefolk who still know the story of a young child, only six years old, who was stolen away during a raid. By the time one of the elders of the clan had arranged a parole and traveled unarmed through the lands of their enemies, suffering great indignity, to the house of the one who had taken her, that one had sold the clan's young daughter to scaleless strangers from across the sea, who had taken her from the warm sands of her home forever. It's not an unusual story, and it and others like it drive the constant warring and raiding between the shore-clans and the sand-clans, each striking against the others to avenge the last offense. But uncommon or not, not being able to redeem a child who was in theory paroled is still a disappointment to the elder and to the clan. A loss is not less grieved for not being the only one.
103. How well does your character deal with their anger?
Everyone knows that the snakefolk across the sea have no emotions, as cold as their blood, and therefore Housin never gets angry. Sometimes she witnesses something that causes her to act in response, but there's always a logical reason behind that action, when she sits down and thinks it through afterwards--being trained to act first and speak later, she doesn't have to articulate that logic to herself before she reacts. There was a perfectly logical reason why she had to abruptly slam that person who was making untoward advances on the barmaid into a wall and skewer them to it with a broken chair leg. And she will tell you what it was as soon as she's had a chance to word her very logical reasoning in a way that emotional people like you will understand.
122. What is your characterās greatest secret?
Housin is keeping lots of secrets, though she doesn't really think of it that way, because there's a lot she'll tell people about if they ask. But there's also a lot that she'll wriggle around actually saying so completely that neither she nor her interlocutor has any idea that a subject was avoided! And probably top on that list is the big gaping hole that opens up in her chest every time she sees one of her companions in danger, which she assumes is their respective meddling divinities giving her a warning of doom if she lets them fall. Because she very literally cannot recognize fear when she feels it, especially fear for another person, which is very different from the prey-feeling that will slow you down if you let it when your own life is at risk.
In terms of secrets she knows she's keeping, though, a fair number of the murders she's done would count. Probably the topmost is the time she assassinated a high priest, because people stop caring about the merchants and the politicians if you get far enough away, but religions spread across borders.
135. Would your character be content to go back to a normal and quiet life after going on an adventure?
Normal and quiet life? What is this thing you speak of? She wouldn't go BACK to it, I'm sure. To be honest, one of the reasons I've stayed well away from the theoretical resolution to the trio's quest is that there's no way for it to end happily for everyone involved, and I have at least two different possible endings for each of them that I don't want to have to choose between. (If I never write it, then in my heart they're traveling together, forever, personal duties temporarily and eternally suspended to let them pursue the communal one they share to each other.) But one of the options for Housin would be settling into what one or the other of her companions considers a 'normal' life, and trying out NOT being a dissociating murder machine for a while. I... don't know that it would ever stick or fit, though. Her life hasn't been normal since she was six. She'd have better luck on Fifth Red Petal's island, where they have something resembling therapy, but she's a lot less likely to voluntarily go there, or be welcomed there if she went.
151. Would your character ever go cliff diving?
Oh, absolutely. She LOVES trying new and exciting things, she's very genuinely fearless about that kind of physical danger (being a monk means a vertical speed and slowfall), and she loves a good adrenaline rush.
---
General Questions
44. Are any of your characters overshadowed by other siblings? Or have parents who clearly have a favorite?
Well, Myerzo and Cirion are deliberately set up that way--each sees the other as the 'favorite' and are secretly a little resentful of it. I think Gruthark feels that way even though it's not actually that way, because his brother went into the family religion and Gruthark is kind of a black sheep. Vroskaul was not so much overshadowed by his sister as manipulated by her, but he kind of respects what she did, tbh.
55. Do you have any characters who despite trying their best ended up being horrible parents?
The children of Vizziu's tribe all got kidnapped by assholes, and they consider their bad luck involved, but it wasn't really their FAULT. Likewise, Hiophis had to starve and eventually eat her previous clutches to survive, but that was considered the correct and moral action by her culture, so... it was a loathsome choice, but sometimes those are all you have. Greignar loves his sons, but in-game, was having a REAL hard time grappling with his older son's gay drow romance.
I think of Franzka as having STOPPED trying her best when she left, and that transformed her from a previously-good parent to a kind of shitty one.
62. Have any of your characters adopted anyone?
No, though sometimes Coyote and I talk about a dim distant future that includes the possibility of Yelkha and Bryn adopting a child or children. I think a lot of my characters have the potential, but none have had the opportunity yet.
107. Do any of your characters feel confined by their lives and the expectations placed upon them?
Lots of them! It's a traditional impetus for leaving home to adventure, after all. Going straight down the list, in particular we have Cirion, Corric, probably Darshanta when I stop using her as an NPC and actually write her up, Franzka under her first name, Gruthark, Hallifax, Rudnik, Ryxtlin, Sh'reel, Tiaathque, Yildgrunn....
171: Are any of your characters hallmark villains in terms of personality?
Naal, definitely, he's the "just want to see it burn" type to a T. Which is what I designed him for, after all! Calgara and Myerzo are both Blood Knights (it's a trope I like), and I suppose Gabriev is evil in some respects, or at least was one while still a Fist.
Sadly, one of my favorite tropes is the Affably Evil type with a personal code, who has enough power and security to afford to be very polite, and even help the heroes out if it serves his interests, but is still without a doubt a bad person. And that's better-suited to an NPC. Though I definitely have a recurring villain (with some different faces and names, but they're all expys) in a lot of my stories in that mold.
