Dirk, a Kobold. He was a disabled veteran who fought in the last war in Eberron. Essentially a fight moved into his cave and his clan got caught in the crossfire. Having nowhere to go he joins with the troops. By the end of the war he is about 60. He has never known a kobold to live past 5. It says a lot about the sort of lifestyle that they live when he lived longer as a soldier. He was a Beast Master Ranger and his companion was a service dog named Biter.

He started as a joke character. I like to be a bit goofy with my characters and have serious sides to them as well. I talked in a Joe Pesci voice the whole time. Dirk would tell tall tales and insisted he knew a little something about everything. He would collect souvenirs and I would keep track of them. Months and sometimes years later (a huge hiatus due to Covid) I would mention them. Sometimes made by throwaway NPCs.

The moments that really made him my favorite character were the boss fights. Our DM had portals open during two major ones. I guess as an escape route, I don’t know. I think I (the player) misunderstood what was going on the first time and left, I thought everyone was going to go through. A few people did but some of them stayed and started beating up the boss. Literally one of my only backstory elements of Dirk was his survivor’s guilt. Now he had more. Another funny aspect of this is that a lot of the more serious “main character” types ended up dying and a lot of the sillier characters lived. (I’ll talk about the second one later.)

Anyways, we did have a revival thing a few months later where we had to convince some of the people who died to come back to life. The DM had us pair up. Dirk was paired with another character who also fought in the war on another side. Where Dirk was a bit sloppy, confused, and served as a very low ranking member of Aundair she was a very high ranking general of Cyre. Her little sister had supposedly been killed but was actually being mind controlled. That first boss fight involved her as a minion. So in her vision she has her family and Dirk had to convince her to abandon it because it was a lie and her sister still needed her. I don’t know how I managed but I just dug deep within myself and was able to make direct eye contact, with a totally straight face, and talk to her still in a (toned down) Joe Pesci voice. I don’t remember what I said exactly, and the exact words aren’t really important, but the whole table was losing their minds. Everyone was in awe of this and just staring at us with their mouths agape. I think that was my favorite moment of all, just managing to twist this goofy side character into the heart of the group for a moment.

Another running joke with Dirk was that he loved gold. He would explain that being part dragon (a child of Eberron he would tell you, because he lived in the earth, which itself is Eberron, as far as he understands at least) he wanted to hoard shiny objects. In a particularly stressful moment he climbed on top of a pile of luggage and pretended it was his hoard as he slept. He would tell people he believed that if he could amass a large enough pile of gold and sit on it that he could become a true dragon. So he liked shiny stuff. In another boss fight that was very similar also with a portal, a character manages to get a crown off of the boss that was shooting lasers at everyone. “Dirk, take the crown and get through to portal!” I freeze. Again, a beautiful moment where some of the few personality traits of the character come into play. He wants the crown, of course, but obviously his friends are more important, and last time he left through a portal a lot of them died, but this thing was shooting lasers at everyone. I really don’t remember how I acted it in character. I know out of character I have that context. He did end up obeying the order, but he was very unsure about the whole thing. I think everyone loved that fight though.

I was done with Dirk, I had been playing him for over a year and wanted to move on. I felt like I had already had the best possible moments with him and couldn’t top them. So I made a new character between sessions and next session Dirk pretty much just said “I’m done. I can’t handle this. I still want to help but I just can’t emotionally handle this anymore.”

That’s the story of Dirk.