Delving Deeper: Einar Wyldsol

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Welcome to Delving Deeper with Oleander Hawthorne, where we have meta game discussions about our characters, events in the game, the world, or even just to demand of someone "What the hells were you thinking!?"

In this episode we chat with the tattooed wonder, he who stalks the night, the Darkness to the Ghost: Einar Wyldsol.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:30

Welcome. This is a Dissonant Whispers interview. I'm Oleander Hawthorne, and I have with me here Einar Wild Soul. For a little get to know ya, little uh character interview for us to find out stuff that we don't necessarily find out in-game or things that happened pre-recording.

SPEAKER_00 0:51

Anything you want to get off your chest before we start?

SPEAKER_02 0:54

I don't like his shaved face. I just have to say that I told him I wasn't even going to record this today because I was so mad that he shaved his face.

SPEAKER_00 1:03

I nicked the mustache too far up and looked silly, but we're in the vault zone, so we're gonna do this.

SPEAKER_02 1:08

Oleander might be a little heavy-handed at times. I came and he had a chin strap, and I made him go shave that because it was emotionally upsetting to me.

SPEAKER_00 1:17

So I cooperate. And now I feel bald.

SPEAKER_02 1:20

Yes, now he's a naked baby.

SPEAKER_00 1:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:23

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:24

So, uh, anything about the start of the campaign.

SPEAKER_02 1:27

Okay, well. Let me let's start out first. First question. What kind of character at the very beginning of the campaign were you trying to make?

SPEAKER_00 1:35

So me and the DM had come up with, you know, I was gonna go with uh DD Batman with a little twist, because I grabbed an ink right off the bat as my weapon, and so I had kind of like a symbiote vibe. I could throw some ranged punches, and it was fighter monk to start, because you know, right until session one, because I thought, you know, a brawler using unarmed fighting, it could also exploit Florida blows a little. But um, yeah, yeah. That was the start of the character.

SPEAKER_02 2:05

Now I'm trying to remember what level did we start out as? Five. It was level five. Yes, five. Yeah, I yeah, I think it was level five. Yeah, and so yeah, each of us got uh what two greens and a blue or something like that. Or like the r the for as far as rare items go. And yeah, I thought it was neat because I had never heard of the idea of an ink tattoo. Uh a tattoo, yeah, yeah. So your ink is a magical tattoo that you are attuned to. So I just thought that was really, really cool because I'd never heard of that as an idea, and I always love the stuff that people come up with that I'm not familiar with. Even though I've been playing for 20 years, there's always stuff you just don't know. Now, how has your character deviated from your original intent?

SPEAKER_00 2:47

So immediately, like session one, as we were going in, there was some confusion and some worry about having flurry of blows, and if unarmed strike should also count for flurry of blows and doing full damage, and if I was gonna be doing so much damage off the start, and instead, I just dropped it. So we'll come back to this and I'll just go straight fighters. We dropped it immediately for fighter, like as the session went, like got going. And instead it was, you know, two attacks to start and action search, which was, you know, still pacing each other. But uh it also let my character immediately be like, well, I did take a feed at four, and it was shadow touched, and in my story, I had shadow and fee, and knew Fay Touch was coming right away. Wait, away. And then as I got that, I started going, kinda like having all these powers on this melee character, and we're still with the plan of, you know, Batman, we're gonna bring in the monk. But then there was the problem with our DM Stewie loving to just hurt me. He loved beating me up. Like hitting-I don't know why. Hitting Einar was a thing. A lot. And I do remember the again, you know, the one fight, the demon fight in the church, and I was yo-yo'd seven or eight times. And we do play it with, you know, these me and Drax, you know, when we went down and Delphines like this too. You break a bone when you go unconscious, or something broke, something went wrong. But then the magical energies have re-knit, but the memory's still there. And so it was a traumatic evening, and the player too was like, I'm gonna die! So I said, forget this monk crap. I had still not gone too far, my wisdom was still only at 12, I had lots of con and strength, and my bloody brother Drax, he just didn't seem to have the same problem with this half damage absorbing stuff, so I was like, I want that. And so I went barbarian. And the DM and I also talked about the ones that we liked and didn't like, like how Zealot seemed fun, but really kind of broke the cool tension that we were going with for resurrections, and like Beast was just staring me there as the character in with the backstory, because we were talking about, you know, well, a fun vigilante character with lots of powers. Beast's powers kinda kinda made sense, and so like the most physical changes have come from that as far as my intending to build. And then there's you know, other things to come, but Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:05

Now, is there anything from your background or backstory that you're wanting to tell people about, either that has been revealed prior to recording, or is part of your character's motivations, your personality, uh things that affect your choices but wouldn't actually necessarily come up in game uh or discussion?

SPEAKER_00 5:23

Yeah, there's definitely a few things with Einar that we'd be talking. I mean, um a big part of his backstory, and the important part is obviously he's Drax's brother. We're adoptive brothers. Brought in by um a monk warrior father who had a problem with the Obsidian shadows, and trained as me from we don't even know my proper age, we're debating it at this time. So, um, the half-elf was trained until about 13 as, you know, a bit of a combatant, then they met his brother, another r durable ruffian who his dad brought in, and like Big Daddy Styles trained these guys to become vigilantes, and the party met them about three months after they'd lost him in the war that they're involved in. And so that's right, he he placed a character, the ghost, out of the ghost and the darkness. Sorry, he's the darkness, his brother's the ghost. But uh, but they met them as those characters, and it's something that he ran with for quite a while in the campaign for different reasons in trauma. Um there's also the big story crest point of the the night that we were assaulted viciously. We were um it's obviously the vamp bite night. We we had our DNA messed with.

SPEAKER_02 6:39

It was vicious for you. For me, it was still an assault, but I was charmed, so I thought it was great.

SPEAKER_00 6:44

A little more loving, yeah. Me and me and Barthalon were explaining exchanging blows to the death. Him missing off as I collapse in a heap. It's not good. But whereas she had a more traditional vampiric infection, where when she needs blood and gets blood, she turns vampire mode. Einar was different. For some reason, like he needs blood, but on a less sustained basis, a little less cycle as he figured out for them. And he gets really strong. And drinking blood heals him for the amount of damage he does. And incidentally, um, we decided his bite is his unarm strike, and I'm an unarmed fighter who also can enhance his. Yeah, you get the point. But I got the hampering of my rage interferes. If I try to rage and go into my beast mode, the ink may overcome me and I may become more venom-like, or I may lose out control, and another beast emerges on top of my beast, and I become a vampire Batman Hulk creature thing that the DM came up with me after watching some of our favorite shows and talking about this stuff, and you know, our lovely.

SPEAKER_02 7:51

Hulk and man, that it was great. It's great out of control. It's great if we could point him in a direction uh that we were not, you know, in front of. Uh, not so good if he sees us.

SPEAKER_00 8:05

He considers everything on the battlefield a target.

SPEAKER_02 8:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:08

Everything.

SPEAKER_02 8:09

So And even then, Oleander will not turn on him and we'll take care of him.

SPEAKER_00 8:14

They trust each other. It's the foundation. Which I guess gets to the other big thing. Um the other big major character thing that's really important, obviously, is the relationship that began between them, but how? Because it's the big night, right? It's the ballroom night where Delphine meets her ex-fiance and everything that goes along with that, and the multiple fights, and the transformation into the Bambat for the first time, along with the ink overcoming him for the first time, and then there's the brief moment of pause before they can even address it. The trauma of fighting and trying to get the kids and losing them, and Oleander having to pull out the vampire, and Drukin's abandonment of her, turning invisible when she's trying to communicate with him and walking off because he can't handle this, and like the devastation devastation it left her in. And and you know how my my bro Drax loves me, but he's always he's fine. We've already had a half half-minute conversation earlier that I got this, but I'm needing time. So he goes and crashes, the roll running off, the party falling apart. And you have to understand that to this point, Iner had still been keeping to just him and Drax, except checking on Oleander, because they had a similar problem. And he was taking care of their feeding, whether it was hunting and bringing back food for her and figuring out her cycle of needing feeding versus his.

SPEAKER_02 9:31

Because uh Oleander was not paying attention to her own needs.

SPEAKER_00 9:35

So the party didn't even realize he was half vampire for a bit at first because he covered their tracks so well on feeding and just, you know, making it look like he was doing normal stuff for them. And so he kept a routine, went to check on her. And, you know, the poor devastated girl who's pretty much ready to cry herself to sleep and feels abandoned by the whole party.

SPEAKER_02 9:52

I cried myself to sleep every single night for I think uh almost the entire first half of the campaign so far. And I and I specified that.

SPEAKER_00 10:03

Yeah, honestly, so she's thinking of leaving, she's devastated. He's just come to check on her as usual. She's saying she's fine. She's feeling less vamp low at that point. She can also see, like, this broken and battered eyed art who's busy checking on her. He hasn't been healed. The party is again, honestly, kind of treating him like the monster they sometimes call him. Like one person in particular. Um, and you know, she's the whole, maybe you should come in and are you okay? And his guard drops, and he comes in, and they go to the balcony talking, and they have an eight-hour chat, and as the as the armor comes off and the comfort levels rise, and the conversation go on, and the healing, and the both magical and honestly just conversation, because you're talking about a character who was stuck in a role. He lost his father, doesn't know how to deal with protecting his brother or continuing this war. This is an emotionless, predatory, constantly paranoid character that has to be ready to fight at a moment's notice, and uh, and this is the way he had been, and she realized the character underneath it, who's this compassionate, emotional, caring person who will throw himself in harm's way for others people other to be the vigilante that they have to be, it's not that you don't care, it's you care too much. And then they realized they have a lot in common, like coming from cloistered families. I taught them a lot about honor and caring for each other and caring for other people, and how kindness is a fundamental requirement, and that those that don't have it maybe don't deserve it back, and that's where you can draw the lines, and they just a relationship began. They they started.

SPEAKER_02 11:42

We both came from um, although he came from a very strict and uh I I don't know, I don't know what the word for him. Was I abusive, maybe? Yeah, yeah. All that considered, we both came from very loving backgrounds.

SPEAKER_00 11:56

Yeah. As loving as a you know, big daddy father who's willing to, you know, smack his kid and putting those wheels. We both felt very cherished by our parents. He waited until we were a mature age until he took us into the field.

SPEAKER_01 12:11

Okay, my background is actually way more traditional than his.

SPEAKER_00 12:15

It's messed up. But the relationship is fundamental because it brought him into the party and get it changed his views.

SPEAKER_02 12:23

Now, what um Okay, what is is there a favorite moment pre-recording other than what you've already mentioned, uh, that has affected your character's development or choices?

SPEAKER_00 12:39

Affected my character's development or choice. You know what? I can definitely go with something that actually I think is another major one here. Madame Oh wait, she's she is recording.

SPEAKER_02 12:48

No, that's recording. No spoilers.

SPEAKER_00 12:51

No spoilers! Well, then the other one would probably be, I mean, it didn't affect, and I've already mentioned it, so we won't go into the bridge again. But let's go into uh Drunken's resurrection. That's a pretty major major moment, um, i in stuff because I mean you saw where people were on the party and how much they cared. It was one of the first moments too for the rest of the party to actually see a glimpse in the um of the character underneath, because Einar wasn't just this hyper-paranoid character in that moment. He was a character of action, getting what needed to be done. When someone needs to be told we need compassion in keeping this person here, it's Einar spends all night not only talking to her first, sorry, to him first, but then the next night, when she needs, you know, a vanguard, someone who doesn't abandon her in the forest, it's Einar who is who's sitting there and waiting. And so this this was a night where he connected with, I think, a few of the party members. But Drunken and him solidified their bond a little bit because of what he said and how he was there for him, I personally think. It showed Delph it showed Delphine a little bit more, like, wait a minute, this isn't you would have expected maybe it was Roldo step up or something. No, it was Einar who stepped up to sacrifice.

SPEAKER_01 14:09

We're gonna need a whole nother video to talk about Drunken's resurrection.

SPEAKER_00 14:13

We will, that's why I'm not diving in.

SPEAKER_01 14:15

That is a lot. It's a good one. A lot.

SPEAKER_00 14:18

But to get in. Focusing on the yeah, that night when everyone was to abandon you after the thing, and how Einar. That was a bit of a change in his character too, because he was really that day, it was it was all about the party there, and all about seeing who who stuck their necks out for each other. And a few people had their necks on the line and did extra and showed that they were there for everybody, and other people were task done. Now I'm tired. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:49

Now, what is Einar's goal or aspiration for this campaign?

SPEAKER_00 14:57

So there's the early one, and there's the two current. Um, traditionally, right, it's the burning the obsidian shadows out of existence. That was the mission. Period. Done. Drax and Einar both grew beyond that pretty quick. We realize they're part of a bigger situation. We're part of a bigger, especially Einar, realizing he's part of a bigger situation and story. And to the character's nature, he feels tied and obliged to do it. He made her a promise. The first night that their relationship started before it even was a thing, as a friend, even, just as a just as someone who cared for her. She was terrified about being out there, she thought she was in over his head, her head. He felt she belonged there, that she made a difference. And he made a promise to her that regardless what happens, she's getting home. Whether he carries her there or crawls with her on her back, that she's getting home. And now he wants to go there with her. It sounds like a lovely community. He'd love to defend it from the shadows and then the It is a nice place.

SPEAKER_02 15:59

Everybody loves each other in in the family. Uh, a little weary about anybody outside, but he would be welcome.

SPEAKER_00 16:07

He could be their pet crypt. So let's go one, but also it's um. He ain't down with being this key.

SPEAKER_02 16:15

But are you down with the sickness?

SPEAKER_00 16:17

Oh, oh, we've been down with the sickness. Okay, just checking. Anyway, so uh bad.

SPEAKER_02 16:22

Alright, what uh wait, wait.

SPEAKER_00 16:26

Doesn't want to be the key. Wants to like break the gate.

SPEAKER_01 16:29

Ah, yes.

SPEAKER_00 16:30

Yes, I must break the gate, not open the gate. This is what must happen.

SPEAKER_02 16:34

No. Okay, uh is there anything else in particular aside from that that you want to quickly add on? Um.

SPEAKER_00 16:45

How deeply he cares about his brother. Like, going into the campaign, the only thing he has in this world is his hatred for the Obsidian shadows and his his will to stop them from hurting others, because that is a big thing with Einhart. It's very much about, you know, I mean, he's got a list of 101 rules his dad tried to instill in him that he has in the journal that we've got written out, and some of them are great, but they're often like mashups of like, here's a philosopher and a general staying, let's put the two of them together, right? And some of them make great contextual sense, and some of them are dangerous in the wrong mindset, but you have to understand, like, the character is this altruistic character that believes right is right, you do it because you can, you know, someone can't help themselves, then you do it. That sort of thing. And so, I mean, I guess that's what I would focus on is just how how much he has found a family and how determined he is to keep keep them from arm and end this thing with the devastation that's going on around him.

unknown 17:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:47

Einar is a very compassionate character. That is um externally external view uh is that um yeah, compassion and empathy and sacrifice is uh the basically the key words uh for Einar to describe him.

SPEAKER_00 18:05

That's pretty good. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:07

And thank you guys very much. This is Einar Wild Soul, brought to you by Dissonant Whispers. And thank you very much for joining us.

SPEAKER_00 18:52

Hey, if you're enjoying the tale, maybe it was a like, a follow, even a comment wherever it is that you're listening to.