Nefrondin: My Hypocrisy

+Kiel Chenier tagged me in a DM appreciation month challenge thing, and this is the original post:

Well, DM Appreciation Month is nearly over. Before it ends, I propose one last self-indulgent tradition.

Lore Garbage:
As a DM you get to post one really self indulgent thing about your game world. Something that isn't immediately applicable or useful to your players, but something that you just think is fun or cool or creepy or silly.
The kind of thing that if you told it to your players, they'd say "Oh, that's cool...hey, where do we go to buy dog armour again?".
You can do this however you like, but I suggest trying one of these two options:

• 10 Random Facts (that make your setting totally unique).Make a blog post listing ten random setting details about your game (no more than a short paragraph each) that differentiate it from every other setting. Stuff like "what are the dogs like?", "How does magic work?", "Which semi-important NPC is actually a poly morphed miniature pony?".
• Who's this dude? (and what's his/her life story?)Spend a blog post talking about a prominent NPC from your game. Give us all the weird and obscure details about them. Dip into spoilers if you want. Give us an NPC's backstory that your players will probably never get around to asking or caring about, but for some reason you do. 

When you're done, tag 3 people you'd like to see do the same. Know a dungeon master that could use some time to just twaddle on? Want to hear more about someone's game world? Tag them when you post to Google+.

Some players have characters that they bring to game after game. It doesn't matter who the Dungeon Master is, it often doesn't even matter what the setting is. That player always wants to play the character they have nursed to life over dozens of adventures.

Honestly, I usually roll my eyes at this. I prefer players come to my games with new concepts that they are excited to explore as our game grows. But that makes me a bit of a hypocrite, because there is one NPC that I bring into games over and over again.

His name is Nefrondin (Nef ren dyn). He has been many things, but originally he was a wizard NPC created by my high school friend Marcus. We used to play one on one all the time, switching DM duties back and forth. Nefrondin was made for an epic level game. He was a crazy powerful wizard obsessed with species, cloning, and mutation.

At the time I was playing an Elven Arcane Archer. By the end of the first encounter with Nefrondin I had been turned into a Drow, and the wizard had escaped. It was obvious that he was going to play a bigger part - but a few sessions later my character died.

For some reason we were both really captured by the idea of this wizard though. I'm not sure what about him intrigued us so much, but from that day forward he kept showing up again and again. For awhile I ran a game where most of the multi-verse had been destroyed. Marcus was playing one of a handful of divine touched characters that had survived the destruction. At first the world he played on was small, but as he grew in power, the world expanded. The idea was that the Divine Touched would restore the multiverse over time.

But there was a catch, most of the Divine Touched had been powerful characters before the apocalypse. But now their memories had been wiped, and they were all back to square one. I introduced Nefrondin in this game, and he picked up the title "First of the Humans."

It's been over fifteen years since those one on one D&D sessions came to a close. Marcus has moved across the country and I see him maybe once or twice a year. But somehow Nefrondin always ends up appearing in my games. Most of the time it's just in passing. My group is all new now, and no one would remember him from my high school days. And so they never know who he is.

Or sometimes I weave him into the background of my setting. In college I created a huge world called Cromina, and he featured there as the First of the Humans as well. There were myths and legends about how he came into the world and was lonely. They were god taking a rib from Adam type stories... only Nefrondin was gay. Not only did he need to find a companion, a husband... but he also had to figure out how to have children when the only two humans in existence were male.

And every once in awhile, if the power levels in a game get high enough, he comes back as a significant NPC, intact with his race changing lab and obsession with learning the secrets of life.

I'm not going to tag anyone because I'm really just getting started, an my friend over at Skullboy Rolls the Dice has already been tagged. But I really enjoyed getting a chance to share something about a character I've been attached to for over a decade. Thanks Kiel!