#gingey

His name is Aurelio and he's Wizard/Fighter in me and the homies' hiatus-ed Strixhaven (D&D magic college) game.

idk if you have familiarity with Eberron and the Warforged but basically there was this huge century-long, continental war, and things progressed to the extent the government was manufacturing soldiers to like. You know, fight and kill and die for them. Aurelio was built by a private contractor to be a battle mage and gained consciousness 2 days before a peace treaty was signed and all the Warforged were granted citizens' rights. So he was never dispatched and spent the following year and a half kind of just rotting away in a workshop, only 90% finished with only books and newspapers to learn about the world from.

A lot of the people in Ebberon do NOT like the warforged because they're relics of a really scary and dire war (and also they're like. Built to be soldiers, with all that entails.) Aurelio is really book-smart but has a lot of internalized guilt about being inherently dangerous and he also kind of lacks identity. And he's mesmerized by life and death and the human experiences — stuff like falling in love and growing old. He's determined that the only way he'll ever be happy is if he somehow becomes an organic lifeform, and decides that the best way to go about achieving that is through reincarnation (a spell that must be performed by a 9th level druid). Whether becoming a Regular Guy would ACTUALLY fix him or not... remains to be seen. What he wants and what I want for him are usually sorta at odds.

Anyway -- what better place to find a high-level mage than academia? So Aurelio gets really good at basic illusion spells and crafts a little persona based on his creator and his creator's two sons. Cause he doesn't wanna make people uncomfortable. And he thinks he’d be happier playing out this little fantasy.

He steals some military academy records, and ships himself off to Wizard College... in hopes that he can live some facsimile of human (elf?) experience, secure the allyship of a druid, figure out what he wants to do with his life one he gets it, then self-destruct at the opportune time so that his new druid buddy can randomly generate him a new body.

But he makes all these wonderful friends and has to keep them at arm's length because he's constantly lying to them, even though he's a terrible liar. Until he feels he can't do it anymore and finally tells them. But he's in too deep, he's married to his little lie (not to mention he faked his identity to the school), so he just keeps up with the disguise -- up until recent in-game events which caused his world to shatter a little bit.

He's super emotional (because he's basically brand new and every feeling is new and horrible), a little mischievous, cagey, lacks tact, and is constantly fucking up his interpersonal relationships. But he’s well-meaning and earnest. All he knows how to do is lie (illusion magic) and wreck shit (lighting-damage evocation magic). He wants to be a good, gentle person and a good friend but he's so self-involved that his actions usually backfire in some way.

That's the guy! He's a mess!