Torden Stormborn, Herald of the Apocalypse - Playing Evil Characters with Thisasbstractthought (D&D 5e)

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Hello friends welcome to characters without stories, a TTRPG podcast about the roads not yet traveled. I'm star. This episode I'm joined by abstract a forever DM working towards owning a gaming store and cafe.

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Hello, I found abstract through Tiktok. Like a lot of my guests.

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He's known for taking characters from popular media and bringing them into a TT RPG context. So I'm really excited to have you on the podcast and I'll give you a chance to plug your projects at the end. But right now, do you want to tell listeners a little bit about yourself?

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I am level 38. Now that's the way I like to say it because it makes it sound not as bad family man. I have three children. My oldest is 12. My youngest is seven. I've been playing Dungeons and Dragons since I was 12 years old. And like you said in the intro, I'm hopefully working towards having my own gaming space. I don't know that it's gonna be a gaming store as much anymore. It's just gonna be a cafe where gaming happens.

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So abstract, tell me who are you bringing to the table

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Well, today I'm talking about my character, today?

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Torden Stormborn. He's a gem sapphire Dragonborn Tempest cleric who prays to Torm the God of, you know, weather and skies and lightning. He's actually a religious zealot that is just constantly bringing up his faith and his God. I kind of based him off of like a Southern Baptist preacher. He was very much you know, in your face with his religion. And, you know, very adamant that you should repent your sins and be ready for what he calls the everstorm, the end of the world.

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So how did you come up with the name Torden Stormborn?

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Well, Torden actually means thunder in Norwegian. I believe that was one of the ways I come up with a lot of character names is I just pick a specific word. And then I go on Google Translate, and translate from English to different languages until I find something that I enjoy that, you know, I think sounds like a good name.

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That is I do that all the time. All the time.

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Yep, normally, it's Latin, but the Latin word for thunder wasn't very good. And then Stormborn. He was literally born during a storm. So he was just kind of gifted that name.

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He doesn't carry up a family name, per se.

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Uh huh. What does Torden look like?

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It's based off of the antagonist in Jojo's bizarre adventures. So it's taking that very, you know, traditional good looking human, and just kind of incorporating that onto a sapphire Dragonborn. But with that, you know, just haughty, evil look, and, you know, most of my characters tend to be lawful evil.

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Hmm. Okay.

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Yeah. Yeah, I've had a lot that come up a lot, where people are like, Well, how do you play an evil character in a group dynamic? And I'm like, it's easy. They don't consider the people in the group enemies, right, like, so then they're okay with him, like any good evil villain is going to have cohorts and allies, and my definition of evil has always been just not following societal norms. Right. Like, it doesn't necessarily mean there's this completely selfish.

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megalomaniac. Right. But they have, you know, especially lawful evil, they have their own code of conduct that just doesn't align with what everybody else thinks that code of conduct should be.

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I think the alignment system, to me is a particular failing of d&d, because I don't think it is complex enough to handle how we are going to approach morality and lawfulness within our games. Yeah, so it's not something I ever really used. Like, I was kind of experimenting. Matt Colville had a really interesting video talking about alignment and talking about using more of a thematic approach. So that was kind of what I was doing in my in my game, but I don't know that it's really necessary. And I think for so many people, if they're relying on alignment, then that's actually hurting their character growth. And if they're not, then they're parts of the game that they don't wouldn't necessarily have access to.

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Yeah, yeah, I 100% agree. I've always used the alignment system as more of just a baseline, right? Like, this is the benchmark for lack of a better word of what my character's thoughts and feelings are. But I've never like strictly adhered to it.

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Right. Like, you know, like I said, generally, my characters would be lawful evil, which I just use, like I said, they have this code of conduct, that doesn't align with what other people think they should do. But they adhere to that, right. And then I've actually had a bunch of my characters where they go through redemption arc, which is one of my favorite things to do.

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So they go from, you know, being this evil, cold, calculating, not maniacal, but essentially, what a lot of people would consider a villain. But then as they interact more with the group, you know, they go from being this cold calculating almost a villain to being, you know, more in line with what people would consider to be good as time progresses, right? Like they learn, you know, through the power of friendship, right, if we want to want to really break it down to a trope, right?

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But yeah, so like you said, I don't think alignment should be something that needs to be strictly adhered to. But I like to put it forward, especially when I say I'm gonna play an evil character to the group at the beginning. So I can then explain because a lot of groups as soon as you say evil, they don't want to stop right there.

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We don't allow evil characters.

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And I'm like, Well, okay, and I get why you would say that, because I can see how it can be problematic. But let me explain to you what I mean by evil. And as far as the original alignment chart goes, most player characters end up being evil.

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Anyway. They don't try to redeem the villain, right? They don't try to capture them alive. They don't try to foil their plot that essentially they just kill them. That's what happens in almost every game I've ever played. And if you want to be good, murdering the villain is not good.

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So in both a game that I'm playing currently, and in the game that I'm DMing I'm running a game where all of the characters are teenagers. And they killed like a mini boss.

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And then they they're all like, This doesn't feel right. And we ended up retconning it and making a rule that you cannot kill NPC is that we're just going to assume you're doing non lethal damage. And I think at first I was like, Oh my God, I don't really know what to do with this, but it's been really great. And then I'm playing in another game where we're talking about genocides. I can go in very different directions.

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Yeah. And that's always something I've tried to encourage players and games that I run is to attempt to capture rather than kill. But, you know, sometimes you make the villain irredeemable. Right? Like they've done horrible things, you know, maybe they deserve is the word they're probably going to use to be killed, depending on what they've done. You know, if you like, if you have a lawful good Paladin in your group, they should probably be against that no matter how evil that person was. Right? Like, or if you have a cleric of Pelor, or, you know, one of the more forgiving gods, they should be more like, Well, hey, we should he should sit in trial, he should, you know, be judged by his peers, and we shouldn't be jury and executioner and when I've rarely rarely rarely had that come up in a game. Yeah.

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So they have a folk hero background. Yes.

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So the folk hero background. his backstory was that he was born during a terrible storm. And his mother died during childbirth. And as he was growing up, he was taken in by a cleric of Torm, who is an evil diety of Tempest and storms and lightning and thunder. He was told of a prophecy that a sapphire Dragonborn whose mother died during childbirth and who was born during a storm would be the Herald of the ever storm. And the Everstorm being this apocalyptic end of the world event.

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Do they have a voice?

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Have you developed a voice for this character?

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No, because I never really got to play him.

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Generally, I kind of start with a baseline and like I said, he's kind of based off of, you know, like a Southern Baptist preacher. He was going to be very intense. But normally what I do with a voice is I'll start with kind of a baseline and I'll develop it as I'm playing the character. And since I only got to play him for one session that never ended up happening.

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Hmm, yeah, I can see that.

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But if I was gonna wing it, right. He'd probably be something like the ever storm comes brother. Yeah, very Torm is calling you.

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So why did the kind of Southern Baptist preacher persona come into this character was that kind of the initial idea?

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It's a mixture of things. At the time, I was reading The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson part of the Stormlight Archive. And the Everstorm comes from that that's where I got that name. And it kind of reminded me like, What if someone was, you know, the Herald? What if someone was the voice of the Everstorm. And when I was in high school, I was the goth kid. You know, all black clothing, the sterling silver necklaces with like a pentacle on it, and long, dark hair. And there was a preacher man that would be outside of my school on a regular basis, that would always tell me I needed Jesus.

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So that's kind of combined those two things together, where I was like, what if this, you know very religious character, you know, was talking about the apocalypse? Why didn't at the same time to Quentin Tarantino, his character in the movie, Little Nicky, and I just thought that would be, you know, a really fun, interesting character, to be adventuring, right to come across all of these, you know, different characters and pretty much telling them that they need to repent before the world ends, and that, you know, the end of the world is nigh.

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So let's delve a little bit back into Torden's backstory. How did Torden grow up? What were that? What was their family like?

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Well, he was raised by his father who, after his mother passed, his father was kind of negligent, so Torden mostly raised himself. You know, he had to become independent at a young age, when his father was approached by this cleric of Torm. After hearing the way Torden was born, like I said, there was this prophecy that said that Dragonborn, who was born during a storm, whose mother died during childbirth would be the Herald of the Everstorm. And I think his father was just kind of like, yeah, sure, have him, and handed him off to this preacher. And I think that's why he's not much for relationships of any kind, because it's just not something that are in his life.

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Is there somebody in his life that's really important to him?

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Well his mentor, and the cleric of Torm, who took him in, he was the only person to ever really show him like respect and kindness, and kind of talk him up. And that's why he's so obsessed with this idea of the Everstorm. Because that's the only thing that anybody's ever told him about himself that he felt was good and worth it.

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Mm hmm.

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You're talking about redemption arcs and taking an evil character and turning them in a different direction? I'm curious, how do you think that this would affect his relationship with his mentor, and with his church?

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Well, you know, I hadn't really thought of where he would go. Generally, my characters, the redemption, art ends up happening through the narrative and through the story.

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I think that during the story, maybe if something terrible happened, he would start saying that, you know, this is the Everstorm. And then if the Everstorm didn't happen, he might start questioning, you know, what he had been told and how he had been raised. But, you know, without having gone through the narrative, I, you know, I don't know how exactly he would get there.

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So when you're approaching creating a character, when you're kind of starting that process, what does that like for you? Like, how involved do you get in the backstory, how involved you get and building them out before you start playing?

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I get pretty heavily involved. I love creating stories, creating characters. If you watch my TikTok channel at all, and a quick plug, I make NPCs and characters on there all the time. And that's something I really love delving into.

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Usually I start with some base idea. Most of the time, it's just a class. Like if I wanted to play this class, what story would I have wanted who have made before they became an adventurer. And just kind of build it up from there? I actually think on one of your videos, you were talking about making stories, and it was just kind of a, Wouldn't it be funny, or wouldn't it be interesting if, and I actually read Stephen King's on writing. And that's how he said he builds his stories. Like he heard about John Wayne Gacy the, you know, the clown serial killer, right?

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And he was like, Well, what if that was a being that came from outer space? That's, that's what started it, you know. And I think that's pretty much how my characters have always gotten, like, Torden for example, it was, what if this person was raised, saying that they were the Herald of the apocalypse?

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They were what would start the end of the world. But then what if it didn't happen? Right? Like he'd been raised his entire life believing that this was going to go. And so when I made the character, and I'm talking to who should have been my DM for it, and I told him this, he was like, Well, I don't think the Everstorm is gonna happen in my campaign. And I'm like, Yeah, that's great. That's fine. You know, that's, that's pretty much what the character is based on is he's gonna believe that this crazy notion of the end of the world is gonna happen. And then it doesn't. And where does he go from there?

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Right, right. So what made your character start adventuring?

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Well, Torden was convinced of his own importance through his mentor in this prophecy. So he was out to spread the word that the Everstorm approached, and he just kind of ran into adventure along the way. Yeah, like he wasn't searching for it. But he said, the game we were actually going to play was descent into Avernus. Which would have been hilarious, right? Because when the study got pulled down into the nine hells, he would have totally, "the Everstorm is here!" In that campaign setting, the one session I got to play is where it begins being pulled into hell, right? So he just happened to be in the city of Waterdeep when those events started happening around him. So it was never that he was looking for adventure. It just kind of slapped him in the face.

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Right, right. Do you ever build a character around exploiting a particular mechanic? And I guess maybe how detailed do you get into actually the mechanical part of the build?

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Well, my favorite class by far is Warlock and if you've ever seen any of my content, you know that so that I felt that Warlocks were very underutilized. And I never had any player pick Warlock in any of the campaigns I run. And I use them as villains all the time. So when I started playing, I did that where I would specifically pick, you know, this eldritch invocation, right?

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Like one of my absolute favorites is devil's sight where you can see in magical darkness, up to 120 feet. And you combine that with the darkness spell which you can cast on your weapon. And then this pool of darkness just goes with you wherever you go. So then I thought a cool thing to do with that would be multiclass, into where the shadow monk, which at level six can teleport between areas of dim light and darkness.

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So I made a character that was a level six themed pack Warlock and a level six way of the shadow monk, just so I could jump between my own darkness spell.

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Yeah, I mean, that's pretty badass.

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Yep, it was a lot of fun. And the way the shadow monk when they teleport like that, they get advantage on their first attack afterwards.

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Ooh, that's nice. Yeah.

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So it was a lot of fun. And then, because of that player character, I ended up making an entire cult to Therasdun in a campaign I was running, where all of them were a single class and then multiclass into Warlock, and they all took devil's sight.

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There would just be this huge pool of darkness. And all these people teleporting in between them and oh, it was, my players hated it, but I loved it, or there was so much it's so much fun.

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Yeah, sorry. That sounds like a lot of fun. And I don't agree with your players. For this character did you? Did you have any builds that you included as part of that that you thought it would just be?

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This is a fun way to play in combat.

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Well, Tempest domain clerics are just great. To begin with their class features and spelling list that they get from their domain. It makes them just a powerhouse, and they get to wear heavy armor. You're this ridiculous tank with these super powerful spells. It's just crazy. My favorite thing I came up with it for him though, is the thaumaturgy spell. Okay?

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It's super basic cantrip. Right.

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It's effect last for a minute.

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Okay. And it specifically says in the spell, you can have up to three effects going at the same time. So his favorite thing to do was make His eyes look like they were lightning had glowing, and it would last for a minute.

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And then he would make the sound of thunder around him that would go in line with the lightning and his eyes.

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Sounds like he deserves some advantage on his intimidation checks.

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Yeah, that's that's how I felt about it, too. And that was something the DM, like I said, only gonna play for the one session. But that's something that DM absolutely loved about the character. He was like, you know, that's really interesting. I've never had someone just decide that they have a cantrip. And the way I told him I was like, essentially, unless I tell you otherwise, that's going all the time. Just every minute. He doesn't again, like, there we go.

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So why are you excited to play Torden eventually?

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Well, you know, like I said, in his concept, I just love the idea of this, you know, repent, repent your sins kind of character out adventuring with all of these, you know, other characters, and just so convinced of his own importance in the world, and maybe eventually kind of getting smacked in the face with reality that, hey, you're going around telling people that the world's ending, it's not changing anything, right? And maybe eventually realizing that there are ways he could make change, but just, you know, having to go through the adventure to do it.

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You know, that's something I'm excited about with any character is just revealing that story, that narrative after the concept, right? Like the concepts fun, and making characters is great, but playing them out with a group of people and never knowing which way that concepts can end up going.

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That's the fun part.

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Yeah, definitely. So kind of to piggyback there and what you were just saying, what kind of campaign Do you think Torden needs?

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Well, he was specifically designed for kind of a descent into Avernus thing.

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But yeah, something like that.

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Something with big, you know, epic combat, and, you know, a lot of character growth moments through, you know, having to learn to rely on other people.

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And, you know, having to discover that maybe this prophecy wasn't even about him, it would take a lot of character development for him to get where I would have liked him to play at so definitely a long running campaign. You know, he's not the kind of character I'd want to play in a one shot because people would just be like, Man, this guy is just kind of annoying.

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You need some time for the other characters to warm up to him.

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Yeah, exactly.

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So and you talked a little bit about wanting to kind of have that realization, on the characters part that the apocalypse isn't happening, or it's not happening the way it was predicted, or you just mentioned even that he is not the Herald. So when you're thinking about campaigns to, you know, put him in eventually, what approach? Are you kind of hoping for there? Or are you more just open to anything?

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Ah, yeah, I think it would be more open to just anything. But, you know, I'd have to be something I would have to clear with whatever group I was going to join, right, because like I said before, he's essentially evil at the beginning. And he, you know, has this prophecy and this idea, but I have to kind of clear it with the DM and the group. Like, is this going to happen, you know, because maybe I come up with this backstory and I bring it to a DM and he goes all man, the Everstorm that's a great idea, and decides to actually have it happen. It'd be something I'd be open to but like I said, it would definitely have to be a conversation. In a session zero about the character,

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Right, right. Yeah, I mean, I think that could be a really fun hook to. Oh, wait.

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Okay, now there is an apocalypse in this world. Yeah. Torden, what do you think happens after you die?

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Think the watchers weigh your soul. Evil you've done. Good you've brought about see which one weighs more.

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Either feed you to Torm. send you to paradise.

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Thank you so much. Yeah, that's great. I love that answer. Well, thank you abstract for sharing your character with me today.

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Thank you for having me. How can people find you?

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TikTok Twitch and YouTube I have the same username on all of them. It's this abstract thought all one word, no spaces or anything.

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And do you have any projects coming up that you want to promote?

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Well, I have just started dungeon mastering professionally. But I am not sure currently, whether I am going to livestream it or not.

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Because I might be directly stealing characters and ideas from popular media.

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How are you doing your pro DMing Do you have like a start playing doc games or something like that where people can find you

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No, I'm actually doing it all through my Tik Tok channel.

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Okay, awesome. You can find me on Tik Tok at starmamac.

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You can also listen on YouTube just search for characters without stories. Please like subscribe, rate, review and share with your friends. Every little bit helps. I'm currently accepting submissions, particularly for non d&d characters. So if you'd like to share your character, you can go to the submission form at characters without stories.com.

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Thanks for listening, and may all of your characters find their stories.