Character Analysis

Characters must change constantly, lest they cease to become real and instead begin to stagnate.  An unchanging character is a dull and lifeless one, both to the writer/roleplayer and to the reader.  I have had many characters become too disinteresting to roleplay anymore, mostly because I have run out of ways for them to develop and change.  Usually my only solution to that is to kill the character off.

Fortunately, a character's age does not always lend itself to stagnation.  My very first roleplaying character, Riala Goldentail, is still continually changing, even after nearly five years of roleplay.  She began as a run-of-the-mill, fairly clichéd character in a time when nearly everyone was a newbie and the term ROC had not yet been coined.  I started roleplaying her in the Wanderers of Mossflower and later in the Sentinels of Mossflower, with a brief experimental excursion into Redwall MUCK.  Then I left the ROC for nearly a year before finally returning after Taggerung came out and bringing Riala to Fort Ruddler, where she has grown into something that cannot be fairly called cliché.

I actually made a few major changes in Riala's personality as time went on, although it helped that I had left the ROC for over a year and was starting over at Fort Ruddler, an RPG I'd never been in before. I was free to make some fairly liberal changes. Riala had originally been your typical goodbeast warrior, straight out of the books: honorable, fighting for justice, merciful towards enemies, blah, blah, blah.

Now she's quite different. She'll still defend otherbeasts and help others out against vermin, but she's not nearly so honorable anymore. In one scene of Vengeance Quest, she flogs a weasel to get information out of him. In a mission I wrote for Fort Ruddler, she used fire against some ferrets - something most goodbeasts won't do, if Redwall is any example. She's merciless as well. Whereas most goodbeasts would give defeated enemies a lecture and send them off far away, Riala is far more likely to kill them, though they might be unarmed and trying to surrender. She's quiet, fairly close-mouthed about her past, and seemingly emotionless, though she still hates wolverines with a passion. Nobeast could call her beautiful, nor even pretty - she's a mess of scars and callouses.

I changed her past somewhat, as well. Her father was still killed by a wolverine, and she still got her revenge, but I've long held with the idea that vengeance and hatred easily consumes the one with hatred and the desire for revenge. That's what happened with Riala. Her whole life had been centered around one goal: Kill Nightdeath Longclaws. Once he was dead, she had little to live for. She's still searching for a purpose in life, and perhaps - just perhaps - that search will change her for the better.

Sure, Riala's a whole lot less likeable now. She's actually very easy to dislike, even if you're a goodbeast. However, she's a lot more interesting, and hopefully less of a cliché.

Her story began in the cold Northlands, a squirrelbabe with reddish fur and a rust-gold tail, her mother dead from the strains of childbirth, her father a warrior with no idea how to raise a child.  So he trained her in woodscraft and weaponcraft, and the squirrelbabe grew into a carefree, athletic youngling with a great love to her father, her closest companion.  And then the wolverine came...  She watched, hidden in the trees, as her father fought the black wolverine and was killed by treachery.  That one event turned her life and her personality completely around.  She experienced wrenching grief followed by a dark rage and finally a burning hatred that would never completely die.  She vowed revenge.

The last vestiges of the cheerful squirrelmaid were torn away in the next few seasons as she followed her enemy's band of vermin, slaying any who lagged behind, killing all she could.  She developed into a cold-eyed, ruthless killer, with few of the qualms of honor that most of her kind had, her thoughts bent on revenge, her soul warped by hatred.  She had never cried a tear for her father's death.  She locked emotion away and let bloodwrath  take over in battle, pure unthinking rage the main force that directed her whirling club.  And yet there were times, at Salamandastron and at Mossflower, that her quest for blood and her unfading hatred drifted to the back of her mind and she seemed almost normal, even likable.  For the three seasons she spent at the Wanderers of Mossflower she began to regain a sense of honor and even learned to laugh again.  Yet then she found the Longclaws' trail once more, and she fought him and won, but nearly died in the process.  Friends of hers did die.

The loss of close friends and the loss of the vengeance quest that had consumed her life drove her into her shell of hatred and isolation once more, except that now she had none to hate - only vermin as a whole, and wolverines in particular.  She wandered alone for nearly a full season, living yet wanting death, unable to find it.  One day the squirrel set her dagger to her wrist, sorely tempted, torn between death and living death, when a shout to stop shook her paw as she jumped with surprise and sliced deep.  The shouter was a squirrel, Aeloein, a northland bard.  He nursed her back to health.  She hated him because she could not lie to him, because he would not let her withdraw into emotionlessness, because he knew the depths her despair could reach and would not let her drop to them again... because he would not leave her alone.  She hated him, and yet she came to love him.  Just as she was opening up, finally allowing herself to trust, even to love - he was killed by a wolverine and she could do nothing but mourn.

Mourn, and then lock her tears and her love and her pain deep inside her, as so often before, until once again only hate and anger and cold bloodthirst were all that remained outside her shell.  To trust was to be betrayed, to love was to lose, to let down her guard for even a moment was to die.  She would not let herself be hurt again... but in refusing to grieve, to love, to laugh, she was slowly killing herself, her soul, losing all that made her a person until she'd become an unfeeling killing machine powered by hate alone.

Then she came to Fort Ruddler, and she began to change.  Two hares, Mackbry Taffellappen and Teltoli Riverbuck, became the closest things to friends she'd allow.  Both, especially Mack, worked to get her to drop her emotional shields and one by one she began to do so.  She learned, from missions requiring a partner to complete, to work with others.  In a sparring match where she allowed bloodwrath to take over, injuring Teltoli in the unthinking berserker state, she learned to fear herself.  From a mousemaid in a slaver pit, she learned that her hatred was slowly destroying her soul.  In a later battle, she learned that not allowing bloodwrath to take over meant that other goodbeasts would die by her inaction, but allowing it could cause their death by her paws.  From a mission to set up a patrol, she learned leadership and diplomacy and tolerance.

And on that selfsame mission, she nearly killed a comrade, and this second wounding of a companion due to her uncontrol of bloodwrath made her decision for her: She believed she was a danger to others, goodbeasts and vermin alike, and that she could not in good faith remain with other goodbeasts.  Not when battle rage could blind her to the identity of friend and enemy both.  Not when that blindness could cause a companion's death by her own paw.  She left Fort Ruddler to wander alone... and perhaps, someday, find peace.