Sparks Clearpath (Gaming)

by Ragashingo , Official DBO Cryptarch, Sunday, January 29, 2017, 16:33 (2662 days ago) @ Ragashingo

Sparks Clearpath was the second character I made for a Pathfinder game. I'd been playing Nme'an for a couple of years. He is a lot of fun to play, but he is also somewhat limited in the ways you can play him. As a good and honorable knight who answers to a higher authority and who is now (according to the game rules at least) immune to fear, there's not always as many directions for him to go in story wise as some other characters. He tends to be an honest deal maker who will use his authority and skill to right wrongs with the sharp edge of his blade when it become necessary.

Sparks was written almost in opposition to Nme'an's limitations. She is a realitively young Elven Ranger who was originally envisioned as having a much wider range of emotions. She was to have emotional highs of excitement and joy right along side lows of despair and disappointment. She was a good person fundamentally but also didn't have to be honorable at all times. Sparks official descriptionss are:

Appearance:
Though she has the look of a human girl in her late teens or early twenties, Sparks Clearpath's pointed ears, long white hair, and unusual dark eyes, with their bright flakes of orange and red, easily mark her as an elven maiden. As such, she is both slightly taller and slightly thinner than a human of equal apparent age, though a closer look would reveal that she is not unaccustomed to lengthy foot travel nor hard work. Humans almost naturally tend to see her as beautiful or elegant; her own kind, however, would not think her much more than average by their standards.

Sparks' longbow is so often with her that it too is almost a part of her appearance. Its hard, angular shape, save for the rounded wrapped grip near its center, strikes a unique silhouette whether it is across her back or in her hand. Accentuating the bow's unique design is a detailed painting of a long green and brown viper, coiling up the weapon's length.

Sparks Clearpath first appeared in the town of Sharlstown over twenty years ago at the beginning of the spring thaw. She came looking to trade the furs and crops on her small horse drawn cart for farming tools and other manufactured goods that neither she nor her mother nor father could easily make for themselves. People were wary of her at first for being a stranger and for the ornately decorated longbow she wore across her back, but they soon found they had little to worry about. Patient and quiet to a fault, though certainly good natured, the white haired elven maiden would only stay in town long enough to trade for the items she wanted before heading back into the nearby forest.

Though her activities brought relatively little to the town’s economy (the total size of her trades were never very large, she only ever bartered never wanting to deal in hard currencies, and she never so much as rented a room for the nights she was in town preferring to sleep in her cart and eat her own food instead) little by little Sparks built up a good reputation through her honesty and her generous dealings. For a time it was thought that Sparks was distinctly timeless. Those who were mere children when she first appeared grew up, got married, inherited their family’s businesses, and had children of their own all while she barely seemed to age. For most, dealing with Sparks Clearpath was like dealing with a lifelong friend. It came as quite a shock then when she disappeared!

Sparks always arrived with the coming of each new season. She always had and she always would, or so it was thought… until it did not happen. Her usual vendors began to look for her as a stormy winter transitioned to a lovely new spring but she never appeared. Spring passed to summer and then to fall and back to winter all without her presence. Slowly, it became apparent that she was not coming. A year passed and then another and another as rumors of her disappearance began to circulate. Some said she had been killed by animals in the forest. Others told how they were sure she had married, or gone to fight a war, or been arrested and executed. Some even claimed she was a spirit that had fulfilled it task and gone on its way. But everyone knew, deep down, that those rumors were just that and that she had vanished for some real reason. And that she was missed.

Now, some three years later, Sparks has reappeared. She walked into town with no horse, no cart, and only a handful of furs to trade. No longer looking to barter and leave, she now stays to seek out jobs and, in an unexpected change, only accepts hard currency and room and board in exchange for her work. Though still quiet and reserved, living among the town folks has seen her lower her guard if only somewhat. She seems more opinionated now than she ever was before even if some subjects, such as why it took her so long to return, are clearly off limits.

Over the last few weeks the people of Sharlstown have discovered what they long suspected about Sparks Clearpath: That she is a hard worker, a skilled hunter, and a kind if occasionally naive soul who has some talent for trade. Most would say they are blessed to have her in their town but privately there is a new wariness surrounding her. Why did she vanish? Why has she returned? And what is causing her to spend nearly every waking hour working herself ragged in exchange for the money she would hardly have touched just three years before?

While working on her backstory and motivation I came across the fun idea that she and most of her family were involved in a tragic fire that destroyed their home and left some of them badly injured. Sparks herself gained an unhealthy fear of fire that I got to play up at every opportunity in the main game. It got to the point that she would actively avoid campfire and even handheld torches and had begun to worry the other characters. Below are a few of her fun and varied backstory stories I wrote to further flesh her out over the year or two that her game ran.