NPCing Chars

[LoganGrimnar]

Could i have a Char NPCed if i dident want to play him anymore?

[lonnarin]

Come on now, and miss out on the Mith statue?  So many people retire at 9 tokens that the crypts are going out of business!  Bah, you family men and your duties.

[Talan Va'lash]

I'd imagine so, but this would be Leanthar's call and would depend on circumstances.

Also, a character that just retires wouldn't really have need of being an NPC unless they're out doing something that still constitutes world involvement, but more as an NPC than a PC.

[SuperMunch]

Mith, a family man?  

In his own words... Bah!  

Go on and get that elusive 10th DT and let Bjorn celebrate your life like he did Cole's...  With a pipe and pipeweed.

[lonnarin]

mwahahah, had to give him something to tide him over in the Soul Mother's lobby!  The smooth elevator jazz they pipe into that place can only be tolerated via smoke, and the only magazines are decade-old Highlights for Kids with all the mazes and crosswords already done...

[Stephen_Zuckerman]

Blast, the crosswords, too? Grr...

Heh. I wouldn't mind having a character or two transferred to NPCs, myself; I've lost interest in them, and it beats the tar out of just having them deleted. Maybe I should work on getting Cynn into some army service, so she can be a cool-looking Gsword-wielding guard. Tyeaan would OBVIOUSLY try to become a Librarian at the Great Library.

[Nyralotep]

Just start doing realy evil stuff to become CE then you become a NPC.  



*note, the above comment is not to be taken seriously*

[Thunder Pants]

to my knowledge only one character has been turned into an NPC upon retirement, and that would be the exceptionaly odd, or oddly exceptional dwarf Alexei, which who can be found looking for scrolls near the temple of Aragon


well actually i take that back, Freya Valkerie in Krandor used to be a character of Forsetti's, but i believe when he through the npc in there it was more a lack of names and a fondness for that name that he named the NPC that, i don't believe that she retired and started shipping packages

i guess what i'm getting at, is that it's not unheard of, that a character becomes an NPC, but A you'll need to probobly give the DM team a reason to put him out there, and secondly, he will likely have had to have made a mark in Layonara

[Leanthar]

We do allow this sort of thing. But we need a good amount of information on the character (development thread) and stuff like that. We need to have an idea of where to place him and all of that as well.

[Stephen_Zuckerman]

Oooh. Well, that sounds absolutely excellent; I even know what a nice little static quest would be for my elf character...

I'll do a write-up after I get some sleep.

[Stephen_Zuckerman]

Double-post so it'll bump the notification email for those who've subscribed. And yes, it is essentially an expanded clone of my character submission; let's face it, I haven't played him for more than four or five hours, TOPS, since getting him approved.

Tyeaan, born to a pair of exiled Moon elves from Voltrex in the small trading stop that would eventually grow to be Hlint, grew a fascination for learning very early-on in his life. He constantly berated his parents for more tales, stories of the world beyond thier small homestead, stories of anything and everything. Magic was another source of fascination; his father, posessing minor sorcery, did his best to help talent bloom in Tyeaan, even hiring a powerful Bard to help the young, well-spoken elf to evoke some latent skill with the Weave. However, there was no hidden talent to discover - sorcery was beyond him.

When his father died, falling in pursuit of a large Dire Boar, Tyeaan's mother took more interest in the boy she had before half-discounted as a dreamer and avid bibliophile. She took it upon herself to teach him the basics of the classical Elven training in "suitable" arms. Over the course of three years, she taught him a moderate level of proficiency in the rapier and longsword, his understanding of all manner of bows having been granted a mere ten years into his life by his doting father. The great length of time it took him to learn was mainly due to his constant escapades to the new-built tavern to speak with travellers in hopes of discovering new tales, and even languages.

Upon coming of age in 1383, Tyeaan set out on a quest for knowledge, having heard tales of the great schools of Wizards, who learned thier magic through diligence and hard learning. However, the unfortunate need for money led him quickly to take a job in Blackford Castle as a servant. In this same year, though, the Great Library was founded, and a portal there placed in Blackford Castle itself. Barely escaping the notice of the guards, Tyeaan was able to find his way to the portal, and when he touched it...

He awoke in the courtyard of the Library. Entranced, he made his way inside, where the sheer number of books and scrolls shocked him into fainting, barely five feet beyond the entrance. Waking again, it was this time to the concerned face of a human mage, and librarian of the Great Library, by the name of Nester Faln. Faln initially tried to sent Tyeaan back through the portal, but the young elf fell to his knees, weeping and begging for the chance to read even a single book. Faln regarded him for a moment, then silently retrieved a thick tome, titled in Elvish: Anmailanelaa el Saanireweny Silletyycilaneel eo anira Amailela, or "Treatise on Methodic Manipulation of the Weave." Underneath, scrawled in a round Common script, was another title: The Basics of Wizardry.

Tyeaan fell to reading immediately, and sat there, on a bench beside the entrance to the Great Library, for two full days, his gaze seeming to burn into each page as he read, a lusty glee glinting in his eyes at the same time. Faln eventually tired of his company, and returned periodically, wondering each time at how the elf could still be sitting there, drinking in the very same tome he, himself had learned the fundamentals of magecraft from. When Tyeaan finished, he looked up at the human mage, his gaze direct and focused. "I want more," he said. And Faln brought more, and more, soon enough sitting by to make comments, and answer the occasional question. He brought the young elf food, books, and his own company for six months, still awestruck that even an elf could do nothing but sit and read ninteen hours a day, the other five reserved for Trance and sustainance. Finally, unthinking, Faln brought Tyeaan a tome written in Gnomish. The elf was puzzled for a moment, and then asked for a book that would teach him the language.

Faln brought three, and a tome on Dwarven, as well. Tyeaan devoured the texts, discovering a voracity for language he had only felt hints of in the growing Hlint. Two full years after stepping through the portal to the Library, Tyeaan was fluent in the written forms of Gnomish, Halfling, and Dwarven, as well as his native Elven and Common, and continued to snap up every book he could lay his hands on whose subject matter regarded the Weave. He felt no underlying connection to Lucinda, but his burning passion for understanding drove him onward. Finally, three years after his arrival, Tyeaan turned to Faln for more than books, and obscure questions. He made the request the human had expected since first setting eyes on the barely-adult elf.

"Will you teach me wizardry?"

Faln, gleeful at the prospect of an apprentice, agreed instantly and energetically, and staged a minor celebration with the other librarians for the start of his schooling. The mage put Tyeaan through a rigorous schedule thereafter, though, teaching through example and practice the theories that the elf had learned from the vast resources of the Great Library. Tyeaan was quickly able to summon his familiar, whom he named "Hyeaan," "Quiet" in Elven, and made leaps and bounds in his technique under Faln's tutelage. Over the years, he began to study other languages, as well as the ones he had already acquired, and slowly settled on Celestial, of which there were a surprising number of scrolls and tomes in the Library. Every bit of time he had to spare was spent either practicing his somatic and verbal techniques, or studying Celestial. When his apprenticeship with Faln was completed, Tyeaan devoted all of his time to the study of the language, neglecting his solitary studies of magecraft in favor of pursuit of more material to decipher.

At one point, the elf discovered that he had misinterpreted a fundamental aspect of Celestial grammar, and flew into a rage, burning all of his translations and notes thusfar. Perhaps fortunately, his selection of texts was quite slim, due to the scarcity of the written form of the language, and it only took him six months to re-translate the tomes.

Shortly after this, a full seventeen years after entering the Great Library, Tyeaan decided that it was his time to go out, and find someone who actually spoke Celestial to interrogate. His general understanding of the language would not be enough to communicate, and Faln had too little time to teach further tiers of magic, as he was inundated with new dwarvish texts to classify and shelve, but there was simply no more material to work from...

Only, when stepping through the portal back to Blackford (he was fully aware that he was unable to enter Voltrex proper from the Library, at least for him), he was not sent to Allurial's castle. Instead, he found himself before a great, golden dragon; one he had read about in several witnesses' reports of what they termed "The Dragon Dream."

He and the dragon spoke at length, though Tyeaan was not able to overcome his awe enough to ask the questions he would later regret having withheld. After, when he awoke near the Bindstone in Hlint, he marched straight to the Wild Surge to get very, very drunk.

He had read that alchohol reduced stress.

--------

After consistently trolling the "Adventurer's town" of Hlint for nearly a month, however, Tyeaan recived a postal hawk, containing a stunning bit of news: His mentor, Nester Faln, had been killed in an explosion of his own creation. The human had been experimenting with magic "not of the Weave," according to what was left of his charred notes, and had promptly blown himself to smithereens. Tyeaan returned immediately, fraught with grief, but considered his time at Hlint primarily wasted. He had not found even a single reliable source for the recording of any languages unknown to the young elf, and the memories he felt in the place were a strong distraction to what work he could do. It was more from a sense of resignation that Tyeaan applied for the position his late mentor had held, rather than a desire to fill the other's shoes; he is often found buried in various tomes, rather than filing them.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Eh. Not much of an expansion... If you'd like a condensed version, I'll be happy to type one up.

Tyeaan would, of course, be a librarian of the Great Library. The place does seem rather empty, as it is. Needs some livening up, if you ask me, even if it is a dusty fifth-level elven Wizard studying languages. I could write up a conversation with him, even supplying a little quest to bring him the components for a minor supply-running quest that suited him; much like Jursen's quest, or Kit's, only without an item reward, I would imagine.

[Leanthar]

Heh.. well I should have been a little more clear. We don't do it for all PC's, only those that are at least somewhat established in the world and only when we get some time to put them in with a new quest. By somewhat established I mean at least level 14-15, at the very least otherwise we would be flooded and would quickly drown.

[Stephen_Zuckerman]

Oh? That's a shame. I still do feel that the Library should have someone or something there. *He shrugs.* Do you take applications for standard NPCs? Because, well... I don't care if the little guy in the Library does something; there just needs to be someone. *He chuckles.* It's so empty in there. No need for quest involvement, no need for any of that. *He shrugs again.* But hey, you're the boss.

*Wanders off to get some sleep*

[darkstorme]

There's the seed of an idea, there.. the submission of .erf files containing well-written-and-worked NPCs, possibly with the components for a microquest.  It might allow for some turnover in Hlint, for example.

The stipulations for consideration should be high - a detailed background (to be added to the NPC thread on the forums), streamlined character scripts, reasonably powered and equipped, a good conversation tree, etc - but it would take some building off the developers' shoulders, and allow for new faces to show up on a regular basis.

[EdTheKet]

Do you take applications for standard NPCs?

Yes, but there's no guarantee they'll go into the game (unless you also maybe provide the erf, but that's not my turf). If you look here: http://www.layonaraonline.com/forums/forums/forum-view.asp?fid=54
I have a few of the existing NPCs which have a story, and there's many others out there which don't.

So if you have some ideas on NPCs you'd like to write about, send me a list of which ones, and I'll tell you which I'd like to have written out.

[darkstorme]

I'll start making up notes.  And did you deliberately rhyme .erf and turf, or was that just coincidental?