Savixeon's Characters

Hi everyone. This is my first time here so I hope i can have a great time here. But this isn't what you came here for so I'll get to my character.

Name: Greagan
Age: At least 40 years old
Race: Chimera (This is the best guess that anyone can come up with for what his race is)
Height: 6'3''

Greagan woke up 40 years ago with only the memory of his name and with a journal that held some information about him. After a valuable companion of his, named Adap, taught him how to speak to and interact with others he began to look for clues to his lost memories. As time passed he spent more time living his current life than he did looking for clues to his lost memories. After 40 years he has made a good life for himself and is known as a good guide. He still looks for clues to his memories but he does it casually unlike how he did it when he was first looking for them. The reason he still looks for his memories, according to him, is so there will be someone to mourn for the past him.

The journal he woke up with 40 years ago has been a reliable source of clues to his lost memories and for information about himself. It seems to be linked magically to his memories and when he remembers more of his lost memories, new entries appear in the journal. The entries are written in the manner of a scientific observation and that has disturbed Greagan a few times when reading the entries. One of the first entries in the journal details the writer finding Greagan as a child and guessing that he was not native to Felarya.

As a chimera Greagan possesses traits from multiple animals. The traits that are readily apparent are from wolves, birds, and monkeys. His body is humaniod and has wolf ears, retractable claws on his hands and feet, and a small layer of fur. He has hawk like wings and a prehensile tail that can become barbed at the end. The other traits become apparent when he adapts.

It seems that the race of chimeras that Greagan is a part of are able to change their bodies to adapt to new environments. This process makes other animal traits the chimeras possess rise to the surface and transforms their current physical traits to match the new environment, such as hand webbing lengthening to help the chimera swim or tails shortening into fins. If Greagan adapts to water, gills that had been unused on land would start working, and if he adapted to the underground his claws and hands would become mole like. The changes his body goes through while adapting aren't exactly pleasant since quite a few parts of his body undergo drastic changes when he adapts. This process isn't instantaneous and can be very dangerous if done too quickly. Because of this he is cautious about when and where he adapts.

In terms of magic Greagan can use some basic level fire, ice, and lightning spells in an odd way. What he does is instead of casting the magic on an outside target, he cast the spell on himself and channels it through his hands( similar to a touch spell in dungeons and dragons). The spells aren't as powerful as they could be as a result but he usually only uses magic if he needs to get away from predators quick.

Greagan is incredibly blunt when it comes to a person's ability to survive in Felarya, not even hesitating to tell a person face to face that they would die if they went out into the wild. He talks to Adap a lot whether he is alone  or is guiding people and while this could be seen as rude in some situations it is actually seen as strange. Mainly because Adap is a ghost and Greagan is the only one who can see and hear Adap.

Welcome to Felarya Savixeon! Be sure and drop by the "Introduce Yourself" thread and uh, introduce yourself.
As far as feedback goes, I presume the question marks mean this is a WIP, so I won't pick on the race part. What we could use is a little more on his appearance - not overly detailed, but enough so we have a mental image of the guy and could pick him out in a picture. I don't know how committed you are to the amnesia thing, but I find that is getting a little cliched in the OC world.

Man I should get some sleep so my next post is more, um, not hard to follow. I'm nuts, you'll learn that as you spend time around here.

Thanks for the feedback parameciumkid. I wrote this post a little late last night so I did forget to add a few things like his appearance and abilities so that"s my bad. I did mean to put the question mark on his race there though. It is there because chimera is just a guess of his real race as far as any of the characters are concerned. I will edit that in the original post to clear that up and I'll add some of the stuff I forgot. I did realize a while ago when I was thinking over my character that the whole amnesia thing could be seen as an annoying cliche and character trait which is why I decided to make it so it wasn't recently that he lost his memory. That's also why I have him looking for his lost memory 40 years after the fact.
Now I'm off to introduce myself.

Personally, I think it has the potential to be a really interesting character. Though to be honest, he seems a little busy on a visual level, being a mix of a bunch of different animal parts. Because you described him having specific parts of each animal he sports, I'm guessing he has a more humanoid base? This would be something to add into the bio. I notice you said he sometimes gains different animal parts that have been coded into his genetic blueprint when he adapts to different environments, but you don't say anything about him losing other parts in the process, which I think would be a great drawback to this adaptability power. For example, if he adapts to underground living and gets mole hands, he loses his wings, or if he adapts to underwater living and gets gills, he loses his wolf claws in favor of webbed fingers and/or loses the barbs on his tail in favor of a fin. Things like that would make him much more interesting, because it would make him really have to think about how he adapts.

Also I think you need to elaborate on his personality. Remember that a good character has not only positive traits but negative ones as well, for which other characters could dislike him. A general rule of thumb I use for writing a character's personality is to just include things another character would be able to tell about them from only meeting them one or two times, and not get too hung up on situation-specific traits or how hey would react to situations that wouldn't be very common. ^_^ The description of the personality should give readers a good idea of what the character is like on a personal level, but not give everything away about them so as to render interacting with or reading about them uneventful or pointless.

As for his magic ability, I'd be a little more specific about what sort of spells he can cast. There's all huge variety of magic in Felarya, and an even larger variety of ways to make use of it. There are spells involving specific natural elements like fire or ice, spells that allow one to breath underwater, spells that bring drawings to life, spells that put one person's soul in the body of something else, spells that put people to sleep, spells that make the insides of things bigger than the outsides, spells that create sound, spells that turn things into other things, and spells that simply shoot hunks of magic energy into things! And it should go without saying that nobody can truly use them all (because if they could, then there'd be no danger in the story! :p) because learning magic takes time and effort.

That's all the feedback I have for now. I hope it helps!

Thanks for the feedback Nyaha. Yeah he does have a humanoid base and I need to add that. When he adapts it is like how you said certain parts of his body do change but they don't really disappear, they just change functionality. I just included a few examples because I thought that it would be too distracting to have a full explanation of that ability right in the middle of it. Do you think it might be a good idea to put a full explanation of the ability in the original post?

Thanks for the advice on the personality. That was something I was worried about since I want to leave some things about him unknown so people will be surprised by some of his actions. Also thanks for the advice on the magic. It seems that a lot of the things I need to fix are because I forget that other people don't know my character as well as I do. I just need to learn from this and do better on my next character.

Well, if I may point out something right here, you can always change an existing character. I myself am always updating my characters' bios concerning changes on looks, abilities, and personality. You don't have to adhere to everything exactly if it isn't working.

Also, I do think it would be a good idea to give a good description of the ability somewhere in the bio. You don't have to be too specific, but at the very least you need to give the reader a good image of how it works so they can imagine it.

Thanks again and yeah my characters have definitely gone through a few updates and revisions before they got to where they are now.

Well I have to say he sounds like a interesting character! I have some questions and a comments. Let's start with "Adap taught him to speak"...Do you mean to say he taught him his language and assuming this story is set in Felarya the native tongue? Cause we have a translation spell for that. ^^; As for your bio I like the character. He seems to have pretty original beginning and interesting traits, but what does he look like? What color are his eyes, does he have hair? What does he wear? So many blank spots there. ^^; Also what is he like personally? Needs more details on who he is as a person.

Thanks, I keep forgetting to add the little things that other people wouldn't know. As for Adap teaching him how to speak I meant it more in a sense that he helped Greagan remember how to speak, cause he did know how to speak before he lost his memory.

Savixeon wrote:

Thanks, I keep forgetting to add the little things that other people wouldn't know. As for Adap teaching him how to speak I meant it more in a sense that he helped Greagan remember how to speak, cause he did know how to speak before he lost his memory.

It's okay allot of people do. For a first time bio? It's probably the best I've seen in a long time. ^_- Honestly I've seen far worse. Just add in those details and it'll bloom.