This is the story of Evanna Spectre. Because my character Bree Gemgee (halfling, rogue) died in the Tyranny of Dragons campaign due to being swallowed, I needed to create a new character. I asked my party what they would like to add to our party, and they all replied, including the DM, with: tank. Well, Evanna Spectre is MY take on a tank. I got my DMs permission to create an LV5 character.
What I will talk about in this blogpost:
- Get to know Evanna Spectre
- Backstory
- How I think I’ll roleplay her
Get to know
Okay, so, Evanna Spectre is based on a character most people familiar with pop culture will know: Luna Lovegood. Evanna stands for, Evanna Lynch (the actress), and Spectre stands for one of her favorite items, the specter specs. I created Evanna Spectre as a take on a tank for DnD, a cleric. But no, not an ordinary cleric, a cleric from the twilight domain. This is a new domain, from Tasha’s cauldron, and I do not know what to expect, except that it seems awesome to play. The spells, the extra features, and bonus actions are really something. Then for the race, I chose Kalashtar. I never played a Kalashtar before, but since they have a close connection to dreams and psychic domains I liked her for my take on Luna Lovegood.
For all the numbers, skills, features, and details, you can check her out: https://ddb.ac/characters/42657080/wcqSyG
I imagined Evanna Spectre to be a dreamy – head in the clouds – cleric. Always wanting to do good and support her party, but also very clumsy and slow to catch up. But when she does something, she is good at it. The cleric part shines through because Evanna, like Luna, has all her knowledge and spirituality from her father. This means that her wisdom may be high, but her intelligence is somewhat low. This can be explained by the fact that she thinks she knows a lot about omens, animals, and other stuff, but because her sources aren’t reliable, she is not that intelligent.
Yes, I know that Luna Lovegood is a Ravenclaw and is a very intellectual person. However, I made this character based on the fact that she is open-minded and very curious, which suits the Ravenclaw heritage.
Backstory
The backstory is based on Luna Lovegoods’ backstory, as can be expected. However, in the Harry Potter series, Lunas’ mother dies from a magical experiment that backfired. I needed to make it more impactful to create an incentive for Evanna to be determined to go out by herself.
I grew up in a small town with my father Rhys and my mother Anna. My dad has his newspaper and he presses it at home. My mother was a professor in the city and conducted her research in her lab at home and the school for artificers. When I was 9 years old my mother was experimenting at school and it went horribly wrong. The spells and the potions backfired: she blew up herself and the school. Many people died that day. Daddy says it was an accident and tried to convince people of her innocence, but no one ever believed him. They all thought that Anna Spectre was a vial and wicked woman that played with her spells and potions for evil. That opinion was shared among many families in the whole city. It was based on little bangs and puffs that came out of our house and the school. It was all innocent and no harm was done to anyone.
From that day on Dad always tries to clear her name by doing good things for the community but people look at him as a senile man with weird sources for his news. I think that THEY are mad! My father is the most knowledgeable man I know and I learned everything from him. I was bullied a lot after my mothers’ accident, I suppose they also thought I was weird and mad – but I don’t care what they thought of me… Years later, people still did not want to hang out with us, despite our lovely charity. We planted trees, created places for animals, helped people gathering food, etc. I brought my father’s newspaper every morning to the whole village. Nowadays, my father cannot pursue his goals anymore: he cannot help people anymore since he is getting older. He still presses his newspaper and wants to walk his rounds. He asked me to continue doing good for the community and beyond. I went on a journey, away from my father, at his request. I joined a group of people that fought a common enemy: an evil mage and his followers. We succeeded, but the group fell apart. People got married or moved away for different reasons, but I lost my friends. I am searching for a new group of friends, although I am not good at making them.
The DM will provide an adventure hook, and I need to know when I can introduce her, but that is to be determined.
How I think I’ll roleplay her
I think I’ll roleplay Evanna Spectre as a woman with good intentions and always trying to help others. The latter should be emphasized ‘TRYING to help others’; this means that she means well, but imagine… In the backstory, you can read that she and her father tried to do good for the community to plant trees and create places for animals. That view is from THEIR perspective. From the community’s side, Evanna and her father are planting blights for example, or are creating places for Owlbears to sleep. That is not helpful at all.
I’ll also try to be as dreamy as possible like I’m in an astral plane with my head in the clouds. This means that I’ll probably be too late in a battle (which is not difficult with a -1 initiative score).
Furthermore, I will try to see omens everywhere I go. Like Luna has her nargels, Evanna will do that with will-o-whisps, for example. Telling that it is a rare species of creature and that they mean no harm. I’ll see how many people I can fool with this.
Last but not least, I picked spells that reminded me of Luna, instead of selecting all damage spells. Evanna Spectre is created to support the party and deal a lot of damage when an enemy attacks a member.
I’m very excited to see how Evanna Spectre will turn out, but more on that about a week from now, after the introducing DnD session!
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