Character Profile: Azaith

Character Name: Azaith

System: Twilight (Home grown)

I miss Azaith. I miss a lot of my old characters - RPG characters rarely get the closure that the characters of a novel get. RPG characters can die, retire, or the game can just end - either because its finished or because some new game has come along. When that happens, the character sheet goes in a file, probably never to be looked at again. Sometimes a character sees new life in another game, but its rarely the same.

Its difficult to describe Azaith, because he was a shapeshifter. He could also go invisible, and was able create illusions, most commonly of himself. He was the slipperiest character I've ever played or seen. He was like paranoid water. And he was crazy, and he was so much fun to play. To get an idea of what Azaith was like, you could check out Fuzzy of Sam and Fuzzy. I used him a lot for inspiration. Of course Azaith was a lot more paranoid. He had to be, a lot of people wanted to kill him.

I've played evil characters, violent characters, deluded characters - but Azaith was something special. The sheer randomness of his actions, his ever-changing justifications and excuses... it was exhilarating constantly having to come up with this stuff, and tremendously liberating to constantly create new goals without being limited to common sense, consequences or recent history.

One thing I was dissatisfied with though was that Azaith was a lot more destructive than he was creative. I had meant for him to be more balanced, but its a lot easier to destroy than it is to create. Assassinating the lead member of a trade delegation could be done on a whim,  but staging the epic musical "The Necromancer Has No Pants" took a lot of effort from the entire gaming group.

That campaign ended with a climatic finale - the evil god was destroyed or banished or whatever. Azaith made a brief return as a 4th Ed Halfling Thief/Warlock, pushing the boundaries as much as a 1st level character could, but it wasn't the same. Twilight was really a unique system, and I'll probably never really play Azaith again.