Tell me about your character's parents

They're a duke and duchess who shipped her off to become a vengeance paladin just like all the oldest children in the family. Her little brother's going to inherit the estate once they die.

It's complicated.

I like how a PC's relationship with his parents says more about the player's previous DMs than it does about his parents.

They were traditional Thayan red wizards. Which is to say, they were experimenting to make their offspring more powerful mages.

My character was part of a batch of three. One failure who didn't survive infancy (we hope,) one success (played by my wife, who rolled an 18 during character creation and is playing a beautifully bitchy necromancer,) and one disappointment who had no talent for wizardry and left home to join the army. Of course, in Thay that means the Legion of Bones, where they train you to command undead troops until you distinguish yourself enough to be turned. So I'm playing an oathbreaker paladin with asshole wizard parents.

Never knew her mother, she was raised in a matriarchal commune that was actually a coven of witches. Father was some no-name sacrifice she never met.

They live in another country. :^)

Her father is a famous inventor and a pioneer of technological advancement in the setting. She was all set to follow in his footsteps, but when her mother died during her teens she ran away from home in order to search for... something. Exactly what she's looking for is something the other players haven't figured out yet.

She's the BBEG. I'm the forever GM.

I don't now about my birth parents but I got pick up by a single hunter and her two daughters (oneesan and imoutochan)
Is it incest if my character adopted?

It's a mass-produced technomagical construct built to fight in a setting's WW1 analogue, so no parents.

They were gassed in the holocaust.

Supernatural fox bitch who works at a banking company, and a gunsmith with over 12 kids (8 eight of whom survived infancy) with another woman.

My rogue's mother is still alive and kickin' but she's been brought up once so who knows what she's up to.

His father is a major recurring NPC. He's a lazy, slovenly drunk who hits my character up every so often to borrow money to pay off his gambling debts and get out of jail. Kind of the village idiot in my character's hometown. Hugely important to the plot right now for reasons too complicated to go into.

He was raised in a convent.

That he burned down hoping it'd let him join an invading army.

It didn't work, and he joined the party to get revenge on the invading army for making him waste kindling

She's the immortal witch queen of a matriarchy. My characters penis was a big disappointment.

Warlock father. No magic powers inherited.

They are producing parfumes in a nice little town in not!Renaissance Italy.
Last time they received a letter from me, I was in not!Arabia. Currently, we just got back from a "hike" on not!Mount Everest and went to another mountain to get some lost knowledge from troll ghosts. Fall is starting soon and they might consider me dead.

Mother was frail and died not long after childbirth, father migrated looking for work after leaving my character with his grandfather to be educated as a butcher/meat monger.

Mother is a disgraced noble who is now deep off in la-la land, and dad is an elven bard who doesn't see 30 years as a significant amount of time.

If your siblings are Pic related then you won't have many people criticizing you for incest

Being called out for bestiality and called a pervert should be a bigger concern

dirt farmer peasants who lived and died in their tiny birth village

They're dead, either because I killed them on the backstory or because my GM is going to kill them

Adopted.

>My characters penis was a big disappointment.
Your GM lets you play a self-insert?

>because my GM is going to kill them

your loved ones were raped/mutilated/murdered every fucking time.

Damn Daniel back at it again with the sick burns.

My father died sealing a powerful wind demon into the sword that I am sworn to protect.

My mother is alive, but constantly ill, leaving me the family's only source of income.

>self-insert
Is not that long

>My characters penis was a big disappointment.
What does that have to do with his parents?

If That does not stop troll from breeding before.

They were sacrificed by an evil witch cult after a long and happy life together as fully paid-up members of the witch cult, and their sacrifice unleashed a dark magic that it had been their lifelong goal to release.

They're just regular Mandos, nothing special about them.
Even my Sith had a normal family before becoming a PC. I never gave any thought into psychoanalyzing my characters, but I think he respected his dad much more than he respected any of his bosses in the Sith order.

Farmers and horse breeders that live relatively remotely.
Honest, hard-working people who mostly wanted their children to take on the same business they're in. Not super happy about my character leaving to be a militaman, but he was third in the line of succession anyway, and they do see it as a good cause. They've grown to be somewhat accepting of his career, but still hopes he's going to come "home" and settle some farmland in the area.
Vaguely Catholic in belief, though they're not exactly theologically inclined, and it's more a set of moral values than a particularly developed faith. There's no real church or priests in the area, and it's as much culture as it's religion. His father values this the most.
Both of them can read, which isn't that uncommon in this setting, and teach their kids as best they can. At the very least, they make their children read what books they have that's relevant to the farm. Mother knows two languages, as does my character (although it's accented and the vocabulary simple).
They're not terribly well liked in the local community, but that mostly has to do with my character's grandfather being kind of a dick.

They still live, though they're getting older and require more help, which the older brother is in charge of. He's going to take over the farm in not too long, I think.
They've not become relevant in the campaign.

On his mothers side? Local ruling noble house.
On his fathers side, aging but respected priest-adventurer from the Kingdom next door.

He never met his mother and grew up with his father in the Graveyard that he tended.

it created a huge upset when i found out they were actually die-hard furries
they are wookies though, just like me

only the mother

My character's mother was raped during the multi-decade war. She died at childbirth and my char was conscripted/adopted by a band of mercenaries.

Didn't like 'em. Ran away and joined the army when he was 16. Grew up and raised his kids better than he had been raised

Refugees from a dead kingdom that was overrun by demons, living under the ever present shadow of the local inquisition.

He doesn't talk about them much, in the same way he doesn't talk about his background in general much for the dual reasons of growing up in the shadow of hell is a-shit and the Witch Finders might hear about his location.

Needless to say, he's a bit of a quiet one.

Woah Gattsu you are soooooooooo original!

I bet your char wields stupidly big swords too!

Guns are more effective vs Protestant heretics.

Father was a hedonist who went around being drunk and draining the family's money before getting an elf pregnant. The elf then left the child at his door steps and disappeared into the night herself. Trying to avoid a scandal, the man took the child in, but proceeded to neglect him for a good 40 years before my character told him to go fuck himself in a manner most foul. The father died of old age and the mother is in parts unknown.

>all these dead parent and edgy backgrounds

Father is a pencil pusher up and over in Not!Egypt working as a personal assistant to some higher ups in the religious orders. Mother was a friendly stay-at-home type who really didn't do much more than pump out children like her life depended on it.

And well, since nobody gets paid when they're too old to work it's kinda right. The kids need to send up gold for their well-being.

It kinda sucks my character was forced out of his home by the party when they blew up his home and took him along in a plot where they're now blamed for murdering the Emperor.

It IS a TTRPG, people will always be like that. :^)

My character's father was a Men at Arms during a very long war. A peace treaty was signed between both kings. After 20 years of war, few soldiers and knight had any home to go back to. Some were living like lords after having conquered one of the many castles. Why should anyone want to go back home?

Many captains of companies began to style themselves wherever they had been knighted or not. They formed free companies, fighting neither for lord nor the gods, but for themselves. The whole army became bands of robbers on a nightmarish scale. The company of my character's father was 16,000-strong.

Eventually the majority of the companies descended on the Holy Site where the head of the Holy City. They burned the surrounding countryside and threatened to attack the Representative on the gods unless he handed over "a spiritually uplifting sum of money". He offered pardon for all the sins committed, the the sum equivalent to the salary of 3,000 years of work and a job of marauders on the warring city-states far away.

Remember that you asked for this.

>Iliira the drow rogue

1/?

Complicated question.

Her biological father, Iliira knows absolutely nothing about, and knows enough about drow society to know that her mother might not have known and certainly doesn't care about him, either. He's most likely dead.

Her mother was Avaunya Ii'ilmerias, matron mother of the Hosue Ii'ilmerias, Third House of Sschindylrin, a drow city. Due to various circumstances involving Iliira's older sister Ectanis, House Ii'ilmerias was destroyed by rival Houses while Avaunya was just a few months pregnant with Iliira. Everyone in it was killed (or presumed so), but Avaunya managed to teleport away. It was supposed to be to a safehold but due to the vagaries of faerzress Avaunya was instead teleported to a surface world forest. She was also abandoned by Lolth, losing access to all her clerical magic.

Avaunya wandered for several days there. Her weapons and armor crumbled to ash in the sunlight, and though there was water she had no idea what was safe to eat and what wasn't - morning sickness from her pregnancy not helping there - and so was starving when she was chanced upon by a group of moon elf forest nomads. The elves might have killed her if not for how pitiable a situation she was in, and so instead captured her. When it became obvious that she was in the early stages of pregnancy, the moon elves reached the (rather unfortunate, to them) conclusion that they really couldn't kill her.

Avaunya lived for several months among the moon elves, hating most every moment of it but not knowing what else to do with Lolth having abandoned her. Mostly she was certain the elves would torture her to death any day now, but it didn't happen.

As part of the nomad group's nomading, they made their way to a human lumberjack village called Gell's Pass to trade. Avaunya was told in no uncertain terms by the elves to stay out, for her own safety.

She eats men's livers.

Father was the son of an eunuch.

Father had the shipfitter blues
Loving you has made me bananas.

2/3

Naturally, Avaunya didn't, mostly to spite the elves. While in the village (wearing a big ol' cloak and hood to hide her features, and doing it at twilight anyway) she made her way to the local inn and tavern. She found just about everything in the inn and tavern disgusting and primitive when compared to the refined tastes of a drow. Especially the innkeeper, a man named Korbin, who had been a lumberjack prior to injuring his right leg, making him walk with a limp. Korbin was just an absolute disgrace. Loud and rude and vulgar. Nice build, though. Never really lost the lumberjack muscles despite switching to innkeeping. Beard was intiguing, too, even if it made him look like an overlarge dwarf. Korbin, for his part, thought that Avaunya was a bit of a stuck-up bitch and wouldn't indulge her desire to be treated like royalty.

The moon elves (who would be in town for a few days as part of their trading) found Avaunya and dragged her away from the inn, but the next night she went back there anyway, and ending up talking with Korbin more. Mostly they traded insults back and forth. By the end of it the elves found Avaunya again, this time revealing to Korbin that she was a dark elf in the hopes that he'd not want to see her again.

Turns out he didn't care that much, though. When Avaunya came back on the third night, he asked if she wanted to stay rather than traveling around with the elves. She did. The moon elves were, for the most part, glad to be rid of her.

For the next year and three months (elven pregnancies are 2 years long), Avaunya lived in Gell's Pass with Korbin. She was gradually introduced to the village so that they got used to a drow living in their midst, and she, meanwhile, gradually started warming up to the idea of living on the surface world, even if it meant staying with Korbin - whom she was falling in love with, a feeling that Korbin reciprocated.

3/3

Unfortuantely, Avaunya's pregnancy became difficult in its final months, and her labor was...damaging. Gell's Pass didn't have any clerics or other magical healers, and sadly Avaunya passed away giving birth to Iliira, living only just long enough to learn she had a daughter and name her (an obscure drow word meaning "point of light", i.e., starlight).

Korbin wasn't about to abandon Iliira, of course, and so raised her as his own daughter. This was difficult for a number of reasons beyond simply needing to find a wet nurse - namely, elves age about a third slower than humans until the age of 25; this includes their minds as well as their bodies. Iliira took longer to learn to crawl, longer to stand, longer to say her first words than a human child would. What's more, sunlight burned her eyes and skin fiercely, though she built up some resistance to both over time. Even once she was old enough to start playing with the other children in town, those children would out-grow her - several of her childhood friends, for example, hit puberty, went through it, got married, and had their first child, all before Iliira began puberty herself.

For his own part, Korbin never treated Iliira as anything other than his daughter, raising her with steady patience. He made it clear to the rest of the village that Iliira was not a threat despite being drow, something they came around to both due to having known Avaunya and because it's difficult to think of someone as evil when you used to watch them try and catch their own shadow.

As a father, Korbin was fairly easy-going. He encouraged Iliira to go out into the world and make her own mistakes, and learn from them.

The rest has more to do with Iliira than Korbin, so we'll stop there. Suffice to say that Korbin is still alive in Gell's Pass, tending bar. He doesn't know about Iliira's "profession" as a thief, and probably wouldn't be too happy to learn about it.

My father was part of the royal Windswept Cavalry. I grew up hearing tales of his victories, living in that huge vineyard. You couldn't spit without hitting some war trophy and triggering another tired old war story.

It was only natural that I joined the army when I came of age. I thought that my fancy education would have helped, that I would have been able to hold back the tide of savage orcs. I was the only survivor of my first combat encounter.

How could I even look at them any more, doctor? Would they see their son? Or would they just see a drunken shell of a man?

Does that mean you're a ghost baby?

My character's dad was the king, and ended up dying of an illness in game. The pending succession crisis was actually the main mover of the plot of the last arc. My character was last in line but I wasn't about to let my siblings kill each other over it OR waste the lives of our men doing so (especially when our kingdom sits on a boarder with the wild-monster infested lands and we need all the fighting men we can get).

My character's mom was literally never mentioned other than she was related to a duke, whose estate I used as a neutral site for a peace conference. Considering she didn't step in and help me keep the peace, and that I couldn't afford a relationship with her at character burning, I gotta assume she's dead as well. Never really been confirmed though.

My character spontaneously was born into being from the nothingness of the void. It has no parents.

Mum died in childbirth.
Pa got killed by bandits.
Uncle fell down a crevace.
Such is life is the polar wastes.

Did a polar dingo also eat ya sister's baby?

My character went back in time and became his own father.

Aye, that'd be flipping right, m8

You motherfucker

Good ol burning wheel
Look mommy I spotted the degenrat

His father was the son of a Count. His mother was a village girl who helped tend to her father's tavern. The nobleman swept her off her feet, promised her marriage and out popped my character nine months later.

His dad used gifts and the promise of a good life for her son to keep her quiet about the affair, but through their letters the Count found out, and arranged his son married. To tie up loose ends and ensure his son's cooperation, he sent a few men to deal with the problem. My mother fled, and my character only learned of his parentage later on when the two of them were in exile.

His father, now the new Count, believes his lover and bastard are both dead. His mother has since settled in another village, where she acts as a midwife under a false name.

You know, for a board that hates on the "my parents are dead and I'm edgy" meme there's an awful lot of dead parents. And an even higher amount of edgy backgrounds. What is this shit guys.

genetics don't work like that you triple nigger

Her father is in the local consul's guard force, and her mother is staying a home, raising her younger siblings. Both of them are alive and well, but she hasn't told them that she's working as hired muscle now.
Will probably visit them if we ever travel to the city my character is from.

Her mom is a simple maid of the palace.
Her dad is the king.
They're both elves.

>no knifeears

They were so neglectful they didn't show up when I was born

Deceased parents are the best!

I can't ever find good witchy knife-eared girl pitches.

>pitches
Goddammit.

There are games where it's better to have dead parents than go through the DM's bullshit.

Dad is the 1st child of the mother earth, mother is a commoner who fell in love with a halfling.

Yeah, I feel your struggle on that one. I'm suspecting my DM of possibly pulling that on me too, espescially since I reminded him of their livelihood by sending them a letter with some cash attached to it.

They are still kicking in the farmlands. I dare the gm to fuck with my ma and pa.

His father was loving and spoiled him.
His mother taught him how to live and then she got slaughtered in the street.

He has a few issues now.

Every time a dm complaints all his players have orphan pcs, he should ask himself if he wanted the parents to be alive, so he can use them for a quest that'd cause drama if failed.

If your parents aren't dead right out the gate the dm will make it his personal mission to make sure they die and you trip over their corpses.

Mum's a retired adventurer with a bum leg, two dozen disfiguring scars, a nice horde of wondrous items and about a hundred stories why people shouldn't be adventurers.
Dad's a nutty librarian working for the university who regularly takes books home and drives himself crazy peering into secrets man was not meant to know.
My character is following in both their footsteps. They could not be more proud/concerned.

Adopted by one of the wizards that killed his parents and raised in Aundair for all of his life. Adoptive parent in question has never come up once.

His mother supposedly died of illness when he was still very young. She really loved him and was rather nice to him and all his siblings.
His father since then became much colder and spoke much less, although he did his part to feed his kids: he took the whole thing pretty badly. He hardly showed any love for him not because he hated him, but because he was reminded too much of his wife.
Eventually some years later he supposedly died in a hunting incident, leaving the -still young- character an orphan.
If it counts, though, he had an 'uncle' figure that did work as surrogate father that taught him many things, and while there wasn't a proper 'love' so-to-speak, my character admired and looked up to him.

Dad was a colonel in the army, mom is hereditary second mate aboard a cruiser, mom wanted a kid and hooked up while in port, wham bam thank you ma'am, mom and the endless aunts and cousins and second cousins helped raise my character, who is most likely going to eventually take the second mate posting sometime in her fifties or sixties.

>92 posts
>13 of them contain the word "dead"
>14 contain the word "died"

Wew

HEY-OH

This

90% of my PCs are orphans these days because any that aren't are killed by Orc Hordes in session 1. Every single time.

Other time he wasn't an orphan was when the DM mandated everyone have living family because he's tired of everyone being murderhobo orphans....and then promptly had then all killed session 1, turning them into murderhobo orphans.

I suspect my DM had the self awareness of a sponge some days.

They're a flock of birds. Right now they're probably chilling in a semi-tropical paradise, eating exotic bugs and clay and shit. They'll be back once spring rolls around though, along with all his new brothers and sisters. He'll be there to meet them in the old hovel where he used to live.

My paladins mother had a a shitass evil witch for a mother who lived in a swamp and lured people to their death using him as a decoy

My character's mother and father were mill workers on a gigantic farm in the northeast owned by nobles. They were very poorly compensated for their work throughout his childhood which left their home incredibly destitute.

This probably wouldn't have turned my character into a sellsword with a billion get-rich-quick schemes a day if they hadn't lived so close to the manor that the nobles lived in. So he lived in squalor with never enough to eat while just within view was the lap of luxury. Jealousy and spite ran deep in him so now he does whatever it takes to make coin, no matter how underhanded.

But he does it with a smile and flourish, at least.

>Dad is a single farmer on the edge of an elvish forest, former militiaman who settled with the money he got
>Helps the elves fight off goblins and orcs occasionally, lets them use his farm to stage defenses, gives them extra food
>Mom is an elvish wizard helping to fight goblins and orcs
>Mom and Dad hang out a lot
>Fuck a couple of times
>9 months after one, mom shows up at farmhouse with basket
>"Gotta kill orcs and this kid is too heavy to carry around"
>Leaves half-elf with farmer
>25 years later, farmer kicks half-elf out because he's tired of him squatting in his goddamn house, wants him to go make something of himself

Father's still alive and farming, Mom's still alive out somewhere fighting orcs and goblins, because fuck orcs and goblins.

I don't THINK my GM will kill them off, but this is the first time he's ran DnD with us

oh they're both still alive, too.