Meet some weirdos who crawled out of my head.
The first D&D character I ever played was called “Mama”, a min-maxed 5th edition forest gnome circle of the moon druid that I played from 3rd to 5th level over the course of 1.5 years. Mama is captured on this page as a tan woman with an orange headband and antlers, wearing a large gold hoop earing and a brown patchwork shawl across one shoulder.
During that campaign, Mama’s signature move was becoming a mountable bear and casting spiderwebs for the party to light on fire to create dangerous terrain for enemies. Although I created a backstory for this character (she managed a halfway house for convicts, teaching them to provide for themselves through farming before she wound up adventuring), we hardly roleplayed, so it wasn’t very important.
My second D&D 5th edition game started during the pandemic as a one-shot to break out of hell with a couple of my friends who I convinced to try D&D for the first time. The DM asked what type of characters we wanted to be (The Face, The Brains, The Muscle, etc.) and handed us pre-made characters. I chose the Face as the only friend who was comfortable role playing at first. I got a female tiefling bard named Kaylis in return. She is captured on this page as a pink-skinned female tiefling wearing a gold crown, earrings, necklaces, and a red one-shouldered cape over a black top. She is crying while smiling and forming a heart symbol with her fingers.
In order to return to the mortal plane and complete the one-shot, each character needed to form a complete soul out of a mosaic of discarded, shattered ones in hell because our original souls were stolen. After more than two years of hunting down the dopplegangers who stole our original souls, we were successful and got to entirely re-spec our characters and write our true backstories. It was a super fun late game twist, so here’s more about the real Kaylis (D&D Beyond character sheet):
Kaylis is deeply insecure and starved for parental affection because she grew up in an orphanage despite her royal infernal heritage. Her mother, Lady Fierna, never recognized her due to Kaylis’ illegitimacy, so Kaylis’ goal in life is to become so famous as a bard that her mother will find out who she is. Kaylis formed a performing troupe called Kaylis and the Musicianaries (“musicians” + “mercenaries”) with three other companions: Bardon (Monk), Sheva (Cleric), and Barbena (Barbarian).
Finally, I’d like to introduce you to Toeri, a giant egg-laying rooster bard. I played as Toeri for a D&D one-shot that was captured across several Twitch livestreams in a game DM-ed by Dinolemons. Toeri’s toxic traits include endless egg puns and trying to solve everything with freshly laid eggs. She is pictured below as a coy-looking chicken posed behind two massive egg tarts, illustrated by my massively talented dear friend, Ame! The name Toeri comes from this one time Twitch chat egged (sorry) me on to model some socks I had received in the mail. I modeled it on my hand, and a sock puppet character named Toeri was born. It doesn’t make much sense, but nothing we do during Twitch streams does really.
