Character creation

Please roll up and discuss your characters in this thread. Roll 4d6 six times, taking the best 3 on each roll for your attributes, then assign each number to the stat of your choice. We're not using the alternative human rules, so humans get +1 to all attributes. We are not using feats, just class features. Let me know if there's a race or class in Unearthed Arcana that you'd like to play; otherwise, please use a race and class from the Player's Handbook.

Languages
When you are determining languages, consider that there are three human languages that might be useful in the region: Keolish (primary language in Hochoch and the rest of the kingdom), Marchian (primary language of the various March countries), and Imperial (the language of the ancient conquerors, still understood by most people). If there is a common language throughout the world, it's Imperial. But for the starting town of Hochoch, they'll speak Keolish as their primary language, Imperial and non-human race languages secondary, and will understand Marchian and speak it in heavy accents.

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Edit: I like to use a Motivations mechanic for characters in my campaigns, but here it is optional. I encourage you to consider using it, but you do not have to do so.

Motivations
In addition to the character's background, trait, ideal, bond, and flaw, your character has a relationship with an NPC that provides a motivation to be adventuring. Choose one or roll a d6 to determine your motivation from this list.

MOTIVATION
1 – Love
2 – Revenge
3 – Ambition
4 – Greed
5 – Fear
6 – Compulsion

Having determined motivation, it's up to you to name the NPC and provide further details about your relationship and how it provides that motivation for your character. For instance, here's two examples of Fear motivations:

Example A: Your family has a history of a rare and ultimately fatal congenital disease called Dianthronitis; one of your parents died of the disease, while the other parent was journeying to find a cure. That parent has never returned, and now you have started to exhibit signs of the disease. Your local cleric, Henrad Polivate, has conducted research for years, trying to find a cure. He's consulted ancient tomes and contacted various other experts in healing, and finally found lore that suggests a possible rare series of rituals, prayers, and ceremonies which will ultimately create a potion to cure the Dianthronitis. But the ingredients of the potion are exceedingly rare; you must quest to find the ingredients and/or earn the excessive amount of money to purchase them.

Example B: The local crime boss, Amberan Daruli, has identified you as a threat to his control of the community. To eliminate you, he has abducted your child and holds it hostage, forcing you to leave the town and never come back, while sending back regular payments of money to keep your child alive.

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Edit 2 (2023):
Here's the current party composition, with active characters in green, and characters who are staying in Hochoch in blue.
Aanbo Earthshaker, a L1 dwarven monk hermit
Ogbar, a L1 human barbarian outlander
Xana Beren, a L1 gnome warlock charlatan
Durren, a L1 human fighter outlander
Klak, a L1 dwarven paladin acolyte
Morgran, a L1 dwarven cleric pirate
Quest, a L1 human mystic sage
Sara Stone, a L1 human ranger hermit
Thacogygax, a L1 dragonborn sorcerer far traveler

Torch x13 - 1cp ea.
Tinderbox - 5sp
Chest - 5gp
Manacles - 2gp
Rations x10 - 5sp ea.
Mess Kit - 2sp

- Total is 12gp, 8sp, and 3cp

Half is 6gp, 4sp, 1cp.

* I'm also ditching the 3 wooden stakes. Couldn't find a listed cost, so didn't take anything for them.

2nd-level monk feature
You train yourself to use a variety of weapons as monk weapons, not just simple melee weapons and shortswords. Whenever you finish a short or long rest, you can touch one weapon, focus your ki on it, and then count that weapon as a monk weapon until you use this feature again.

The chosen weapon must meet these criteria:
• The weapon must be a simple or martial weapon.
• You must be proficient with it.
• It must lack the heavy and special properties.

Life in the frozen north is harsh and unforgiving. Early in Reptile's life, he lost him mother and father to the wastes. He was raised by the clan. Being such his outlook in the clan was set. He wouldn't be anything.

Reptile was aggressive, smart and wise. At a young age, he took the test of manhood. He was sent into the wastes with nothing and had to prove himself. Three days later he came back wearing wolves' skin. He had killed three of them with is bare hands and cunning. His rage was born.

His effort didn't go unnoticed. He was foolish to think with no backing that he would advance in the clan. An older one that favored him brought warning to him. That his effort was bring him an ill fate. He had left to much of a mark. With this, Reptile gather his things and left the clan. There was no fight he could win here.

He left behind also is girl Lon who was the leader's daughter. Surely that also was part of what was leading to his demise. It was a forbidden to him. He would miss her, and he is sure his leaving will leave a mark on her.

Reptile has traveled from the northern wastes to Keoland. Life still hard for him. It was easier to survive, but he could trust no one. It bothered him so not to have the better life so many he had seen have. He had nothing as he came to realize. He has lost much of his clan thinking. He was sure that there was better.

Being fairly much trashed and with some desperation he landed a gig as a watchman in the big city. He put his all into this and gained respect. He for once owned some things. Life was finally getting better. He had reforged himself.

But his rage was never far. It has hard night of rain and late. He came upon a rude drunken man. One thing led to another, and his rage took him. He beat the man nearly to death and to be sure he would never walk again. When it was discovered that he nearly killed the mayor's son, it ended his career and marked him. Reptile was no longer a city watchman and never would be again.

With life on the run, he ran into Cecily. She took a liking to him. Since Reptile was smart young man and knew his number, she brought him in to do of all things, paperwork. Daily he would do clerical work tracking the requisitions and payments for the organization. It was rather a menial job and did to calm his rage.

Eventually Cecily realized that doing clerical work was not the best use of Reptile's unique talents, so she sent him out to join the effort to establish a new field office in Hochoch.

Myrtha of Three Elms Crossing was the older sibling in a family of five. Her father left his wife and children, off to seek his fortune in the south, when she was but twelve years old. Her youngest brother, Ylan was a babe of six months. Her father never returned, and Myrtha and her mother had to fend for the family by themselves. The rotting cough took Ylan before he was three. Times were hard and, when 'uncle' Bregar suggested that she become his 'pprentice at the village smithy, she thought it was a grand idea. The extra coin would help feed Rhona, Alliot and Peka, and would alleviate her mother's life of toil.

Bregar's taking her under his wings also increased her family's acceptance in town. They had com from out of the valley, and adhered to the Old Faith. Those two facts made them queer in the eyes of most of the community, even more so than their flan heritage. The smith's gesture was like a blanket of acceptance finally falling upon the unlucky family, and life improved much over the next years.
Work at the smithy meant relentless labour, for Bregar served Three Elms Crossing and multiple nearby hamlets. Some of his fare was even bought by fancy mercenaries coming across the land.

On the eve of her 19th birthday, Myrtha felt she had her life on a good path. She was engaged to Elber, a local farmer's son who had courted her relentlessly for the previous three years. Her siblings had grown and were healthy and proud villagers. Even her mother seemed to allow herself to slow down, focusing on her basket-weaving and her garden, and letting go of farm work for the bigger farmsteads in the village.

That autumn, the news from out of town was not reassuring. It appeared humanoids had been seen out of the woods, cattle left unguarded had been slaughtered overnight in pastures a mere day's march away. Unable to provide direct assistance against an inchoate threat, the local lord ordered militias to be raised. As all able bodied younger folk, Myrtha began drilling under the auspices of the local militia chief, a retired soldier nearing his seventies; her cohort were a score of green peasants working up some form of martial readiness in the few hours between the end of workdays and sleep time. Learning to wield sword and and spear, to block with a board of wood, all of these acts felt natural to her.

Early winter snows seemed to calm the region down, as life in the fields slowed and the community gathered at night to seek comfort around a shared hearth, a horn of mead, and stories told by the elders. The calm was an illusion. As famished wolves, the hitherto concealed bands of humanoids rose from their hiding-holes and converged on Three Elms Crossing in a moonless night in Sunsebb; the village had planned for a raid by a small, opportunistic party; this was something altogether different. The militia and able-bodied menfolk sought to hold the larger band back, while the non-combatant women, elderly and children barricaded themselves in cellars prepared for just this occasion. Messengers sped away to seek help from neighboring settlements.

A horrid night of slaughter ensued: the raiders burnt houses and farmsteads, and cut down most of the outmatched resistance. They were led by a particularly cunning ogre and — despite heavy losses among the humanoids — his presence bolstered their morale. To avoid being surrounded, surviving villagers scattered in the confusion. Having seen their militia chief cut-down by the ogre, and having no idea where her family or her betrothed were, Myrtha fell back with a group of villagers, covering their retreat. Dawn was near when the fleeing party was cornered. Myrtha and two exhausted militia-men faced off against seven humanoids and their oversized leader; the came her party were still being sought out by the raiders. An unexpected calm took over her mind then : she could see the large humanoid was hurt, that his allies were hesitant. She challenged the ogre, taunted him, and the three young village militia attempted to draw the leader out. She had a natural gift for drawing attacks towards her, and used it to focus the ogre's attention on herself while the the villagers tried to climb out of the natural trench they had been trying to hide in.

As folks from Three Elms later told the story, Myrtha managed to evade and harass the ogre, while most villagers made it out. Her militia companions and her sacrificed themselves for the community. She was the only one to make it out of there alive, though badly hurt. According to some tellings, she delivered the killing blow to the chieftain, and that shattered the raider's resolve; according to others she held the raiders back long enough for reinforcements to come to her aid.

She wouldn't know, as she has no recollection of what happened after that unexpected moment of calm. It took her a week to rise from her delirious state, and she took two months to mend fully. It was a bedridden Myrtha that learned of her betrothed's death, and that of two siblings burned in a cellar. Uncle Bregar made it out alive, as did her mother. The local Lord's men-at-arms came around and hunted down the remaining raiders. The tale of her heroism reached the Lord's ears, and she was called to his service, as a reward for her bravery. That is where she learned more advanced sparring skills, while her reputation as a hero of the downtrodden spread : she was the "Valorous Maiden of Three Elms", in some traveling troubadours' song, and the the "Doom that Beset the Ogre" in a child's play by a traveling troupe.
She felt a bottomless well of loss and pain, with a creeping sense of responsibility. Or was it guilt? Deep down she knew she ought to have died, or didn't deserve to survive. She drank more now, compulsively chewing the tallo-weed that tainted her lips purple but also alleviated the pain, more spiritual than physical now. When she sparred, she sought the pain. She was addicted to the feeling of courting death, so she could finally receive her just punishment.

Her grief endured. A year ago, she took leave from the Lord's service — to many folk's surprise. She had heard of opportunities elsewhere. She took leave of her mother and siblings, leaving them with what coin she had managed not to spend. She silently wished for people to forget the "Valorous Maiden," she wished to just be her mother's Myrtha again. She wished she could remember her father's face. She wished the contour's of Elber's face were not fading so quickly. Myrtha was a good name : it wasn't known, no one associated it with the telling of her tale. So she headed away, unburdening herself from her grief with every league she marched.

2nd-level monk feature
You train yourself to use a variety of weapons as monk weapons, not just simple melee weapons and shortswords. Whenever you finish a short or long rest, you can touch one weapon, focus your ki on it, and then count that weapon as a monk weapon until you use this feature again.

The chosen weapon must meet these criteria:
* The weapon must be a simple or martial weapon.
* You must be proficient with it.
* It must lack the heavy and special properties.