When I first
joined AOKP, I had only the vaguest idea of the direction I wanted to go
with my Court persona. The name "Aeric Bannier" was taken from a
character I had played in a D&D campaign that ended just prior to my
Page Turning. When put on the spot for a name for my persona, his
was the first name that came to mind, so I went with it.
The
Original Aeric Bannier
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Aeric was a young
Paladin who sought glory and honor as a knight- errant. He was idealistic
and open-minded, if brash and hot tempered. In time, he united a
fractuous people against a common enemy, and sacrificed his life to defeat
that enemy. I initially conceived of my Court persona as just such
an idealistic youth, but this would soon change. In the end, only
the hot temper of the original would remain.
About halfway
into Page Turning, I had a change of heart in the type of character I wanted
to play. While Aeric was one of my favorite characters, I wanted
to play something a bit darker for a change. Another character of
mine came to mind, one which I never really got to play to my satisfaction.
Veladorn
Sabrin
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This character
was a Dark Elf swordsman banished from
his homeland because of an affair with a traitor to the state. He
was a great character, and he had a darker edge. He also found it
wise to hide his true nature from the humans around him--for AOKP, that
meant masquerading as Aeric the Human--so I was able to keep my original
character concept as a cover story, while actually being something else.
This added a new dimension of roleplaying challenge to an already deep
character. In time, I would ditch the Dark Elf idea, but many of
the concepts introduced at this stage--a dark hero, a tragic past, a secret
identity--would make it to the "final cut."
Once I became
acclimated with the people in AOKP and how the game was played, I began
to have second thoughts about my persona. I wanted to make something
new, not merely recycle an old tabletop character. Plus there were
several people who were playing nonhuman characters at the time; I wanted
to be unique. Of course, I had already established some things about
Aeric through my roleplaying so far, so rather than come up with some convoluted
way to explain a radical change in character, I decided to simply take
those elements already established and build upon them.
The first of those
elements was his personality. Through his behavior at Court every
week, Aeric was established as being humorless, tempermental, and extremely
sensitive about slights to his honor. Next was a tragedy in his past
that he was trying to escape or forget. Finally, although no one
actually knew about it In Matrix, there was also the concept of a secret
identity.
In the end, I
decided to try a type of character I had never played before: the Reformed
Villain. I would play the "bad guy" who had turned over a new leaf,
and sought to atone for his evil deeds by dedicating himself to the Light.
And so, the final incarnation of Aeric was born.
Folken
Fanel
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The primary inspiration
for this new Aeric was the character Folken from the anime series Escaflone.
Folken was one of those villains who did what he did because he felt it
was the right thing to do, and when it was revealed otherwise, he switched
sides. No one really trusted him when he did, of course, and
in the end he gave his life to undo the evil he had helped wrought.
Folken was dripping
with style, charisma, and dramatic angst, all of which were elements I
wanted for my Court persona. So I set out to make my own version
of Folken. Of course, I was limited by my own acting ability and
real-world charisma, but nobody's perfect.
I decided to take
the "Bad Guy Gone Good" concept one step further. Instead of having
Aeric do what he did because he believed it to be right, I decided that
he did it because it served his purposes. I decided to make Aeric
an outright evil character, one who saw the error of his ways and reformed
in the hopes of atoning for his crimes. I would leave in him the
spark of goodness, but it would be overshadowed by events in his life which
drove him to Darkness.
Aeric would be
the former lackey of a powerful evil villain, not because he mistakenly
believed his cause to be right but because he craved power more than anything
else in the world. I was inspired in my choice of motivation by the
greatest villain of all time.
Darth
Vader, Lord of the Sith
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When the prequels
came out, I knew my decision to model Aeric after Darth Vader was a wise
one. I saw in Anakin a young Aeric, before the years of abuse and
denial of power led him to turn to Darkness for fufillment. Thankfully,
it didn't take electrocution by the Emperor (or in Aeric's case, the demon
prince Pazuzu) to turn him back to the good side. I look at Aeric
as a sort of "what if" type of character; what if Darth Vader--Anakin Skywalker--hadn't
died at the end of RotJ? What would his new life be like? That
question guides a lot of my In Matrix decisions as Aeric. |
