Welcome to the Dog Days of Podcasting, 2022 season. This year we’re taking part by creating 30 NPCs to use with table top gaming, writing projects, or other creative endeavors. These NPCs are system agnostic, but may include minor suggestions for how to run the characters with a party of adventures and explorers. They are written with a specific genre in mind, but will include notation for how to use them within at least two other realms.
That said, let’s get started.
Today, we’re visiting The Grim Displaced, an NPC designed for Sci-Fi campaigns.
The Grim Displaced
II
Uneasy and distraught, this seeker knows the price of exploring the distant and surreal. Born to the chaos of the cosmos, with a life spent chasing a dream, a cure, but eventually landing on private acceptance and compassion, they find themselves a speaker for the unknown, a witness, and a healer of hearts.
Bodies are molded by discomfort and woes as they age, but some are cast to pain straight from the forge. The Grim Displaced was born on a world fluctuating between the physical and the immaterial and have spent a lifetime feeling their flesh wracked between realities. They sought cures, travelled to distant enclaves, found sister moons, but never found a salvation. Only sympathetic voices and long-lost cousins that shared the same story. Left with a sense of acceptance, they’ve come to rest before the next big challenge brings them back into the heavens.
They can be encouraged by those who seek the unknown or coaxed to help guide those whose pain and condition need a hand of compassion and a lesson in crafted family. The Grim Displaced can be made distraught over the loss of connection, or fear of a worsening condition as the immaterial looms closer. They do not wish to become a ghost adrift in stellar planes.
As a semi-retired explorer, they can share their knowledge of distant stars, hidden paths amongst the mountains, and the secret ways of the galaxy. They are knowledgeable about the limitations of medicine and can help guide those learning to deal with a body reforged by life’s dangers.
In space and slipstream stories, they are an explorer looking to the rim of known space and wondering what’s out there, their bodies objecting to the gravity-freed movement but still advancing forward.
In ages of discovery, they’re an explorer of distant shores, with parts replaced with interesting prosthetics and a ship built to support them. As long as there is a wind to sail by, their eyes will be set firmly to the horizon.
In fantasy, they’re a world jumper, always looking for a way to stabilize their presence in reality, and saving those who can’t find a place to land.
Never lost for long, and hope always within reach, the Grim Displaced may not always be the source of joy but they will always see to the survival of their friends. They seek not to be an example, nor to be a hero; only to share a kind word and a sense of exploration.
The audio portion of this episode is shared on a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. Sounds and music are provided by Syrinscape’s Market Street 2076 Soundset. Please see the website for individual song and sound usage. The text for this episode is shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Have a good time with the character, and let me know if you use them for something.
Until tomorrow.