Allow me a moment of self-indulgence while I talk about my character.

I am presently in an all WoD LARP, which allows people to play anything from a vampire to a Promethean to a ghoul to a floating mask. It has it’s issues and being someone who doesn’t like mash-ups (without a good reason), it can pull on my belief suspenders. I can buy-in to some degree, and accept that I’m playing a mage and you’re playing a vampire, but when someone offers me a trip to the goblin market (deep inside the hedge) with their ogrin cousin, I have to stop for a moment and ask…. “But what is that?”

So. Because of my lack of appreciation for mash-ups, I effectively keep to my corner of the multi-verse, solving problems that I can visualize being part of my own character’s story arc. It has ostracized me, but it’s self-imposed.

So. Here’s my character concept with a short rant at the end, and I promise it’s quite original.

Heimdall is the Swedish son of 9 mothers (just like the myth, yes) , an experiment to make a mage from scratch, from a perfect environment. Educated on the role of a mage in society, raised to believe to put others before himself, and taught to ensure the survival of Atlantis. Heimdall was made to be the perfect Guardian of the Veil (mages who keep the secrets magic out of the hands of the mundane and stop paradox).

Because of his background, he believes in the whole, not the individual. He has spent his life forsaking a personal life in order to serve the greater good. He is aware of his value as a tool of this magnitude and has on more than one occasion hinted at his worth. He obeys orders from the guardians without fail (a trait absolutely lost in rpg characters if you ask me).

Recently, Heimdall got involved in a number of storylines. He’s married now, with a child on the way. A very complicated matter. He also had some dealing with high-ranking people in Washington and then a storyline emerged where he accidentally killed a mage from another order. The situation was complex to say the least and we all overlooked that the person I killed was a “replicant” anyway and not real.

This would be learned later.

I missed a session due to being very very sick and I recommended to the ST in charge of the mages that I be abducted and have parts of my memory wiped. This was a month ago. And due to some strange timing issues and so on, we only got to start resolving this storyline last night.

However, this is where things get really interesting.

Heimdall is not vengeful, but he is stoic and kind of a dick. Someone messing with his memories is beyond the pale. A campaign of screwing with the Seers of the Throne began (those most obviously responsible), which led to a very long private session in which I learned about the person I killed, the Seers’ need for me to stay alive, and a possible thread where I wiped my own memory on purpose.

The best part of the evening came when I was chatting with a Timothy Leary-inspired mage turned minister of Unitarianism who was giving me advice about freedom of the mind and being who you are and finding happiness. Heimdall turned to him and said, “You drank from Rousseau’s cup. I did not.”

I told the ST I deserved 100 XP for that. I’m not sure he’ll give them to me.

Heimdall left the minister and finished the evening with a conversation with his boss, basically realizing that his quest for revenge might be futile. With all his angst pointed at no one and nothing, he took a very long break from the mage circle, only coming up for air to help another mage with a problem the might affect the city.

The story isn’t over, but playing a character from another culture, with a completely different value system, that isn’t based on the philosophies of the American value of “freedom” is highly liberating in many ways and challenging in others. As a result, the morality system in the WoD game line comes into question. Clearly morality is different for everyone. I’m not a bio-ethicist, but I have to imagine there’s a lot of mid-Western American values written into the rules for what is Moral and Immoral for WoD. And for someone who isn’t from here, he’s not likely to care too much about things that are important to an American.

Something to think about.