Here's the monk I made for a medieval setting game that wrapped up. I'd really like to bring her back to play again at some point.
The Helders Samuel and Cassandra were a highly skilled hunter and trapper team. They disappeared one winter while out hunting and their bodies were never found, leaving their only daughter, Alyxandra, behind. She was taken in by Mother Gram, who quickly put her to work.
Originally, Alyx was the town’s unofficial delivery girl whenever someone needed one of Mother Gram’s treatments. One of those was Malik, a boy not much younger than her who was under the care of Father Dake and his acolyte Amatus. She would often deliver his medicine and then sit with him and talk.
As she grew older, she began to chafe under Mother Gram and started to look elsewhere to live and work. She ended up following Branigan around for three days until he finally let her come on a hunt. After returning, the old dwarf told her that she had “her father’s eye and her mother’s memory” and allowed her to join future hunting parties. She eventually became one of his best tree mappers, a subset of the hunters who spend more time in the trees trying to keep tabs on the migration patterns of the forest's denizens than actually hunting. They also serve as forward scouts, though the need for that skillset hasn’t arisen in decades. It was here that she met Kevin, a lumberjack turned hunter. They get along well, trading barbs about him cutting trees and her being an orphan. Both of them understand what it means to not have a "real" family. Together, are one of the first pairs Branigan calls when he needs something done.
There are three days in her life that she will never forget. The first is the day her parents vanished. The second is when she was 7 and playing hide and search with some of the other village children. Thinking she was very clever, she decided to hide in the abandoned temple. If everyone thought it was cursed, no one would ever look for her there. When she snuck in, it felt like there was a different energy inside. Old stone was completely overgrown with vines and other plant life. It felt like the forest itself was trying to claw back what had been taken from it. While hiding, she stumbled upon an old necklace with a bird’s skull on it. It wasn’t until much later that she discovered if she focused on it, she was able to cast magic. While the spells aren’t anything like what’s in Father Dake’s sermons, it made her feel special and she began learning as much about Koed, God of the Forest, as she could. The third day was when she was 17. A noble was passing through town during a festival and decided to spend the day in Corkirk. Alyx had just returned from a hunting trip and saw the young man lambasting the innkeep about the quality of his stew. She walked up to the noble, dropped her bloody kill onto his lap, and said that if he was going to complain about it, he might as well make his own meal. It was after this that she learned the man was a noble, but she didn’t back down and wondered out loud if he could cook, or if he had to order his servants to do everything for him. The noble stood up and drew a sword, and that’s when Alyx realized just how big a mistake she made. She sprinted out of town and hid in the forest for two weeks just to make sure the noble had left. Since then, she’s gotten better about choosing her words, but sometimes she still doesn’t think about who she’s talking to before saying what’s on her mind.
While not a regular patron, she's known by face and by name at the tavern for its regular fight tournaments where she consistently makes it to the later rounds and has occasionally won against opponents much bigger and stronger than her.
And my warlock that specifically didn't make a deal to get his powers, but had them literally thrust into him.
Chandris was the son of a whitesmith. Most of his father's work came from the local lord, though occasionally a wizard or fiend hunter would commission a ward or binding circle. Chandris was discovered to have some minor talent for magic when he accidentally melted a pewter ring he was helping with when he was 5. Thought to be more sorcerous in origin than wizardly, Chandris stayed with his family and tried to learn to work magic into his father's creations.
When he was 11, his town was attacked and he was captured. A wizard among the captors noticed his talent and claimed rights to him. Claiming that she was trying to discover the Pathway of Magic, the wizard bound him in chains that suppressed his ability to call upon magic and ran experiments on Chandris for months while using him as a manservant. This finally culminated with the wizard strapping Chandris down within a binding circle and summoning a fiend, using Chandris' body as a medium. For a week, the wizard interrogated the fiend, until another captor made a mistake and bent the binding circle. When the wizard tried to question the fiend that night, it broke the circle and killed her. Using Chandris' body as a puppet, the fiend razed the whole encampment. As it was leaving, it stepped over a wagon wheel. Summoning as much power as he could, Chandris turned the wheel into an impromptu binding circle. Caught off guard, the fiend vanished from Chandris' mind and he passed out.
He awoke among the dying embers of his prison to a small pup licking his face. Chandris now had ritual-looking sigils burned into his back and neck, but he couldn't hear the fiend. He gathered what he could and began traveling back to his home. On the third night he began to see the spirits. Some were victims of circumstance like him. Some were power-hungry and wicked. There were stable hands and kings, bandits and knights, court jesters and arch-mages. Either way, they had all fallen under or to the power of the fiend that had possessed Chandris.
When he finally arrived to his home, it was filled with strangers. After the attack that had taken him away, another lord had taken residence in the castle. Overcome with grief, Chandris knelt in front of what had once been his family's home and screamed. He felt the sigils on his body heat and glow before fire exploded around him. As he looked through the flames, he saw villagers staring at him with fear and mistrust. Reacting, he fled the town before they could gather the courage to chase him. As he ran, he heard in the whispers of his mind the sound of a fiend chuckling. Knowing that whatever happened on that wagon wheel did not excise the fiend, Chandris has spent his life searching for a way to rid himself of this dark influence, occasionally seeking advice from the spirits of those already lost.
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