Creating a Complex Character
- Dec 25, 2017
- 2 min read
The Story behind the main antagonist of the first chapter in the Forgotten Lands.
Description
A large dragon with both legs, arms, and wings. Fafnir has a long serpentine neck with decorative horns and spikes around his head, and back. He has the color and pattern of a komodo dragon, the wing membrane is red with black. His eyes are like a tiger’s eyes, but with a cat like pupil. Along with his deadly claws and sharp teeth, Fafnir also has the ability to breath fire. When he does breath fire, his eyes have an orange glow to them, and a faint orange/red lava like glow appears on his neck.
Story Behind Fafnir
Peaceful kingdoms once ruled these lands. It used to be full of vegetation and fantastic creatures, but all that changed once Fafnir presence appeared…Now it’s all dust and dirt.
– Mysterious Witch
The Badlands being rich with mining camps has attracted the attention of a dragon, one that is said to destroy anything, and everything, in his way for gold and jewels.
Fafnir slowly began take over the Badlands and destroyed many kingdoms and creatures that lived there. In the past Fafnir used to be a human, a king, that ruled over a kingdom that was known for its gold and jewels. As a king, Fafnir became corrupted and started to destroy nearby villages and kingdoms just for their gold. This corruption started to slowly change his figure, and the once majestic kingdom. Due to fear of his own people, Fafnir fled his kingdom. In his own exile, after many years, Fafnir completely changed into a feared dragon. Once powerful enough Fafnir returned to his kingdom to destroy it, and all the precious jewels and gold were once again in his possession.
Fafnir holds a variety of alliances with many powerful characters in the Badlands
Creating an Antagonist
Fafnir is an extremely important character that we needed to get right. He is based directly from the ancient Norse mythology of Sigurd and the dragon Fafnir. Since he is the main antagonist of the first chapter of the game, we took a different approach on creating his character. The first thing we did was to create his background, we knew what Fafnir’s current personality in the game was going to be, but we wanted to go deeper into why he acts, and does the things he does. Unlike other characters, with Fafnir we had a well planned out story for both his past, present, and future.
For his physical features Fafnir is a dragon. We did not want to bring too much attention to his dragon aspect, but make him look more like a winged lizard and realistic. Honestly, Fafnir does not have any special visual features that would make him recognizable like the other characters that we created, but he does have a memorable story. It is important to create an antagonist that will be somehow remembered by the audience. And since dragons are very common, it is hard to create a visually different dragon that can standout from a very large group, so we had to rely on the story. The creation of the character was an entertaining challenge.
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