What inspired you to make your character(s)?

Great thread!  I really enjoyed thinking up where my characters came from and why I made them so. Here are some TLDR musings ^^
 
 
Rhannoch
 
Cataclysm is launched. I want to try an RP realm, as well as the new Worgen starting zone and Warrior Class. To start off with I drew from one of my archetypes from an old forum RP I was once a part of, “The obstinate war veteran”, although I wanted to play towards a nautical theme.
 
Now that I’m really thinking about him, I could not deny that Rhan’s character has two main – if unintentional – influences. The first being one of my favorite fictional characters while growing up.
 

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The other being downright badass with a masterly moustache of his own.
 

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 Lomonde
 
 Hmm…

There are not enough Night Elves going about in Stormwind.
Call this a fantasy setting? Where are the musicians and IC storytellers?
Oh great that’s Pirates of the Caribbean Theme is stuck in my head again.
Being a Guardsman is all very well and good, but I guess would be fun to cause mischief-
 
That was when Fran’cala Lomonde crashed through the window for me. A proud and humble bard, outrageous liar, kaldorei expatriate and shameless swashbuckler extraordinaire! Here to combat all the dreary dramatics of brooding Final Fantasy-esque antiheroes everywhere!
 
With Rhannoch being so serious and upright, I wanted to play a lighthearted, musketeer-esque character of extremes, who could laugh in the face of danger while sprinting in the opposite direction. So enthusiastic he requires a flamboyancy aid, The Silver Fox delights in adventure and causing trouble wherever he goes!
 

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Cromdale
 
Although I made Lomonde to make up for the hordes of serious, drama-heavy brooding antiheroes, I am just as guilty in creating (a somewhat Byronic) one myself here! XD
The second char I ever made was originally from another PvP realm, but after enjoying Fyffe so much in Natures Grasp, I was itching to play my druid again in an RP setting. A quick realm change later, I started thinking about how to introduce him to the server. With the arrival of MoP imminent, I looked towards the recent conflict in Hyjal for inspiration.
Drawing from the stereotypical Kaldorei template here, there were no major influences here, but ironically there is a surprising parallel between himself and this chap right here.
 
 

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 EDIT: Aaand with WoD announced out, we can probably scrap -that- Garrosh redemption idea out the way.



Fyffe
 
 
…
 
 
Not sure how to begin here. I’ll get back to it later. 
*slaps on TLDR Tag for now*

Amaryl wrote: A character I used anonymously for a long time to poke ridiculous fun at the "Elitist Crowd" Watching how far he could go.

XD u troll.

Tho with Una I wanted a Char who would be the counter class to the grim, selfimportant and ego driven chars that blight RP. Una is smarter than you and views humans as children or a kind of really smart murlocs. When people try to do the "eyeroll/belittle/lolracist RP at him he would break them.

Una is in a cold war with the Legion and old gods, he RPs to amuse himself.

Hey, the amount of times that Djego walks up to some-one, with his pink-tabard and is summarily Ignored trying to pick up ladies was fun as hell, just to then log in to Amaryl and watch them RP with me super seriously. That always amuses me.

Amaryl wrote:Hey, the amount of times that Djego walks up to some-one, with his pink-tabard and is summarily Ignored trying to pick up ladies was fun as hell, just to then log in to Amaryl and watch them RP with me super seriously. That always amuses me.

I feel awfully left out; or was it that you where only targeting specific races and/or females alone?
Never had the pleasure of bumping in to Djego, even though I have followed his career from a far for a long time now.

I wasn't in ironforge very often. and the Cartel always RPed with me, because well i was just another idiot,

but yeah in vanilla/tbc, the council crowd was fun to make fun of. and mostly i was targeting females.

Har'khan: My headcanon for my main and favourite char has always had him as a fairly pleasant troll who strangely finds comfort among Tauren culture. Bringing this headcanon into Defias, I considered making someone who has already gone through serving the Horde, acting the adventurer and playing his part to save the world, and instead seeks a more peaceful life having done what he can in healing the wounds of the Catacalysm. However what with recent events, he finds himself inexorably drawn back into Horde matters.

I remember watching The Lion King, and whenever Rafiki (Swahili for "friend")came onscreen, he always had my attention. While quick, light-hearted and easily dismissible, he holds a deep connection and a strong understanding of the natural world around him which he is willing to share with others should they seek it. Not to mention he’s a tanking badass and lives in a tree.

As much as I want to keep Wow’s shamanistic abilities very distinct and as far away as possible from the "bending” utilised in the fantastic show Avatar, I imagine my aquatic shaman (yeah, it's an RPG canon class) flowing with the same languid, fluid movements made by the Foggy Swamp Water Tribe, whipping the waters around him into life as he calls upon the water spirits to 'dance' with him,  hence his Earthen Ring nickname (although not in the same ballet manner that Shyamalan presented it in his film...which does not exist).

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The original incarnation of Sanara was a very strange beast - very young, violent and cannibalistic hunter using primal shaman magic. The reason for this is of course that I had no idea about Draenei lore beyond the fact they were native to Draenor and mostly wiped out by the orcs.

So, I re-created Sanara as the antithesis of the original non-character. Instead of being young, she was incredibly old, and instead of being forceful, physical and violent she was soft, elegant and wise, and instead of being a cannibalistic murderer, she was a caring mother, both literally and figuratively.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.] Zalissa
was my first character on DB, made around the TBC era. I initially went into her character with no idea what she was going to be other than a street rat of a young age. The first day I logged on I got taken hostage by Robberts, a very old pirate RPer who isn't around anymore. After she was freed and such we got talking and decided that they would be related, father and daughter. After this it gave me more of an insight into how an adolescent abandoned child would feel. Very very angry, and thus Zalissa's infamous anger was born. She was really shaped by the people around her too, Aesthetic, The Cartel and Quinian made her worse of criminal and a person. If she'd been around different people she'd probably be RP'd differently. As for her appearance, I'm not sure. I guess since in American movies the goth kid is the bully, Zalissa was created with a sort of gothic look, i.e. dark eye makeup, pale with black hair etc. Her colour scheme later became to be mainly red however, red like blood, red like anger, red like violence. My inspirations for her are as follow:

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[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.] Alorah
was my first magic character, she derived from a character from The Shatar before I moved over, called Aurielle who was considerably youthful and silly. I sort of made Alorah like an older version of that but without losing the playful side. The silliness in her character came from the fact that all High Elves would be completely miserable since half their race is dead, and they're still somewhat second class citizens in the Alliance's eyes. So what better mask for an illusionist to wear than a happy one? I was tantalized by the idea of illusionism as a school of magic, which to this day still makes me think of Alorah as quite unique as I haven't encountered many illusionists in RP. As well as her concept of her crystaline ability, which I tailored to fit World of Warcraft, admittedly it isn't entirely original by me, for example Emma Frost from the Marvel universe is what inspired me to create my own spin off. Other than that, Alorah's quirkiness doesn't really come off anything I can think of. I'll update if I remember.

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[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.] Adrielle
is possibly the hardest but most fun character to play. I already have Alorah and Zalissa who muscle into the spotlight and are traditionally attractive women, so I decided to make someone that shied behind the curtain, and that character is Adrielle. Germaphobic, painfully-shy, clean-freak with a stutter and a series of social anxiety problems. It's surprisingly hard to be a character that is quiet and reserved, and is often bullied and picked on for being so. It's hard because keeping true to the character instead of just changing for the convenience of a situation like so many people do, which is easy to do so - especially when people are being idiots and you want to put your two cents in. But Adrielle is often my 'break' character when something highly volatile and exciting has just happened on Zalissa or Alorah, I log onto her and play mother goose. Adrielle also came from a previous character concept from my old realm, where I had a char called Neave, whom I moved over and turned into Adrielle. Her appearance is the most controversial thing about her, I stay true to the idea that Adrielle is more 'cute' than beautiful, I intended to make a sort of 'Ugly Betty' type of person, smart but not hot. I actually picture her as asian to most people's surprise, now without going down any racists roads as to smart or cute stereotypes - Hyuna (The Gangnam style girl) is what I imagined Adrielle as if she tidied up.

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Vaell

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When I created this character, it was merely for conveniance. The Disciples were the ones to inspire the character in a sense simply because they inspired me to join the server when I was hopping about looking for RP. I told them that I'd make a Paladin and level it in their guild and have the levelling process as part of the character development; I couldn't be arsed when I really thought about it so I asked if I could simply move Vaell. Initially, the character was a careful and 'wise' mage, closer to an Obi-Wan Kenobi than the thing he is now.

What changed? I realised how much fun being a pompous mage was. Initially, I'd have to say I'd be inspired by Terry Pratchett's Discworld...
Go to 7:15

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Another inspiration came from Walter Bishop in Fringe (possibly my favourite character in anything!)

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If you watch those, you might find a lot of similarities in personality to Vaell. I was inspired by Drustai's magical thread-mabook-thing, it allowed for me to understand how I can make wielding magic far more fun than what I believed beforehand. The idea that you can quite literally do anything with magic makes the Mage class the best for creativity. The way to play Vaell was to turn off your inner-filter and say the worst things that come to mind.

Kyven

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I actually have no idea what inspired me in the first place to make this character. Maybe it was the lack of corrupted guards or just simply because I came up with a character concept that excited me. The extremely comely guard that becomes ugly after he opens his mouth; what's not to love?

Renzah

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This is one of my favourite clichés to draw upon - 'The Wacky Salesman'. Eventually I was hoping to get to a point where Renzah has wisened up in Stormwind and becomes similar to someone like Saul Goodman from Breaking Bad
(Some spoilers from S1 - S3)

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This would have only happened when he actually developed as a character. For the beginning, I can name one particular character that I had taken inspiration from and the ability to use GHI to make a variety of ridiculous items made it possible. That character was none other than a poorly raised version of Stan from the Monkey Island series.

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Tavius

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Inspired by Tom Hardy as Bronson. I wanted some mental cannibalistic criminal considering crim role-play at the time was at a weird stage. I didn't get to play this character that much which is a shame because it had a lot of potential to be quite fun. Perhaps in the future.

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Achuos

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After Drogu was killed off, I faction changed and was prying to come up with a character. I loved the look of a bald ghoulish DK as they just look so crepid and broken. I stopped playing the character after only one or two scenes of RP because I felt like it was going nowhere. After watching the Dark Knight Rises, I decided to use the look of a pale Bane but to avoid a lot of the character's traits due to needing to be overpowered to pull any of them off. I decided to go for a more manipulative sort but maintain the brutal look of Bane. I was also inspired by a random incredibly new RPer who I've only ever seen once that just so happened to have one of the coolest armour sets I've seen for a DK. I also kept Bane's voice  

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Drogu

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This one is probably the most simple. I was inspired by the Hellscreams and the Warsong clan. I chose Dragonmaw for his origin due to the colour of his skin and because it allowed me to give a pretty exciting background to the character but for the most part, it was simply the idea of playing your typical gruff and war-hungry orc that pushed me to make Drogu. I couldn't be arsed to level which is why he was a DK but that only allowed me to play with his constant thirst for rage and battle even more.

Zhuyan were made around the nurgle cult, eliphas (a chaos marine from 40k) and mozgus (a character from the berserker manga). Not much else really.



Nihilia were initially meant to be your average squire that tries to do things bigger than her, the typical clumsy blondie. Then the scourge had their fun and she got mad, but i didnt really knew how someone that mentally fragile and sensible should cope years of extreme torture.

then i saw this video

inspiration:

and there ya have it

Inspiration eh... I can't really say I have much in terms of inspiration for my characters.

I've never replied on other sources for my characters, I've used my gut feelings to act out their beliefs, their reactions, their behavior in general.

My characters were never planned ahead, they became who they are by chance. There's been influences that has caused certain events to take hold for my characters however.

For example, Coppersocket, my pride. The green she wears was originally inspired by the fact that I played a Dryad in Oblivion.
As for character personality. I don't think there's anything there that can properly relate to anyone or anything to say "This was where I got inspiration".
Weakness, possibly. That's probably the inspiration I've had.
Flaw, malnutrition, hatred, strong willed, ignorant, adorable. These character traits is what builds up Coppersocket, along with the running themes of Incest and Abuse that I put into nearly all my characters.
Putting them into a position of a weakling who strives to do better.
Because Coppersocket, is by no mistakes, a weakling. She's pathetic. With the only thing to keep her standing, her own desire to do so.

But let's see. My initial idea for Copper was a soldier for the Argent Dawn, a proper soldier with proper military training, a strong girl. However, I hadn't exactly though the character through back then, and I let things run it's course. Before I did have the chance to get properly used to her, I ran in to the Cartel. Where I, on the spot, gave her a fierce loyalty to her family.
Two more traits of which I give my characters, love for their family and a religious belief to mirror my own disbelief in religion.
Things happened, and Copper quickly developed a Stockholm Syndrome for the Cartel, to the point of even falling in love with one of the two who had originally forced her into the group.

She's very different, she's very strange. I absolutely love her, and as far as I am aware, she's VERY unique.
I cannot think of a character that is anything of her sort. She's a emotionless, handicapped, robot with stockholm syndrome. Who despite her numerous injuries throws herself in combat, standing strong, and even attempting at boosting morale among those around her.
I just can't see anything I could have used as inspiration for her current being, she's just too different from the "original" Coppersocket. Which was a Gnome who just wanted to be a Paladin.
She's broken so many of my regular standards for a character, and turned my view on things around.

I can with ease say that today, there are no inspirations that make Coppersocket who she is. My inspiration for Coppersocket today, is Coppersocket herself.

She's truly an amazing character.

Actually, Nifty had a massive influence on Copper. So I suppose Nifty is the "inspiration".

Necro because of the mention in that other thread!
I have too many characters, who each on their own aren't very well known by more than a handful of people currently, so I'll explain the one that was something more to me: Dwyburn.

When I created Dwy, I had a number of thoughts in my head which ended up making the man:
1. The name: Finding a name that isn't taken wasn't easy when I started on DB in early Cataclysm. Having just read the ASoIF-series, I remembered that Maester from the later books, Qyburn and stole his name with a slight modification.
2. Age: As a twenty-something in WoW, I feel old. Dwy thus became 40-ish, as all the 13 year-olds RP 20-something.
3. Class: I wanted to play a hateful, ascetic preacher. Discipline sounded right.
4. Race: Human, just because I didn't know any Alliance lore at all, and figured I had a head start with humans, by being a human, and having played WC3 (not Frozen Throne at that time though).

The rest kind of fell into place as I played. Extreme loyalty to his inner circle and distrust of outsiders (the evolution of the initial hate-preacher thing). Being forced by RP to serve Army of the Damned undercover gave room for a dimension of paranoia and doubts about which masters he really served, and dillemmas of orders vs own wishes etc.

As my first RP toon Dwy wasn't as consequent as my following ones, but by the time he slipped on a lightning bolt and fell to his death from a roof, almost every action he'd ever performed IC was tied to the massive thing that was his personality.

It was a good run.

Paozi is pretty much this motherfucker right here:

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I wish I could say that I was a little bit more creative, but that's all there really too it. Iroh is practically a pandaren already in his own show.

It's true. When Pao speaks, mystical flutes play in the background.

When Eldiros Almadros first came to the server and to RP in general. i was unsure what to do with him. The general stereotypical old sage of wisdom and Power has been my ideal character in all roleplay games, from baldur's gate to oblivion in the past.

While I will not say that Eldiros is a ripoff of Gandalf (even though that description is not far off), His character is inspired from personalities of characters from many different sources and many unipue fantasy games, Movies and novels.

Certainly one of these are Gandalf, the stereotype for the old and wise sage. (yet Eldiros has recently developed to be more like Saruman Before he threw in his lot with Sauron, even though that is not entirely the case)

Much of the characters personality is also taken partly from Akkarin in the "Black Magician Trliogy" by Trudy Caravan. A dark robed and very powerful magician who looks suspicious as f***! In 600 whole pages, the author tell us: "he uses dark sacrifices to empower himself and is an EVIL dude!" However, in the last part, he turns out to be the hero of the Story. (terribly sorry guys, since come to Think of it, this was actually the most fatal spoiler ever......   )

Anyway, making an old wizard of great suspicioun surrounding him has Always been a hugely interesting concept in my opinion. Its also funny that everytime he helps people, people are suddenly pointing the finger saying he is a shadow user randomly (not only talking about the DoL   ) That actually adds to the intended mystique surrounding his character. But whatever, Elder Fabulous is gonna make Stormwind Fabulous with his Purple Lightning!

-elder fabulous- = Eldiros

in case of confusion   

Krogon Devilstep

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What inspired Krogon was the need to make a character far different to what my old human used to be. Instead of being brutal, direct and physically overpowering. So I chose the road of stealth, and cunning.

What -shaped- him was far more simple. I based him on a chap that I find rather quite fascinating, a mister Ra's Al Ghul, whom some of you may know from the film 'Batman begins'. For those of you who don't know who that is, its the chap below.

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Ra's Al Ghul is a master of theatrics, deception, subterfuge and intrigue. Not only a dangerous man for his martial skill but more importantly dangerous for the 'ideas' he can create and the ideas he can control. He is, first and foremost, a master of fear. He can control fear in others with numerous tools, and uses it to not only break his enemies (and likely nations), but also to create and strengthen others... namely Bruce wayne, by making them overcome their inner fears and doubts. He's not strictly speaking 'evil', I would put him down as -extremely- chaotic good, which is putting it very lightly.

Though he may have planned to bring Gotham city into a state of self destruction, the interesting thing is why he wanted to do that. He did it because he believed it impossible to save, and likely to infect the rest of the world with corruption, crime and sinister evil. He did it because he believed it the 'right' thing to do.

Krogon himself manipulates fear in his enemies, and even his allies to create whatever effect he may desire to achieve his aims. Be that the demise of a foe, the creation of hostilities between two enemies for mutual destruction or the Training of allies to resist fear. Krogon too has coaxed others into doing things, much like his inspiration... and he too does it for noble reasons (no matter how unclear they may be at the time).

I still get chills when I hear these words...

Ra's Al Ghul: "If you make yourself more than just a man, if you devote yourself to an ideal... and they can't stop you, you become something else entirely"

Bruce wayne: "and whats that?"

Ra's Al Ghul: "A legend, mister wayne. A legend"

Artemis/Gramot Dragneel

Gramot, as he was called originally, was inspired from purely nothing. I was just finished with some worgen pack drama and truth or dare playing, and I guess I wanted to create some more serious kind of RP, so I created Gramot. Soon enough my friend asked me to join his guild he was making with another friend, so I joined and instantly he became an officer, due to it being a new guild and in need of such. He was a proud, happy and kind order-knighted man back then.

Stuff happened and the order of knights broke, I didn't know what to do with him that much, I think I just left it there or continued ''randomly RPing''. Soon however, I wanted to change his name to Artemis because I have just read one of the Artemis Fowl books, and I thought the name would just simply be awesome, so I changed it! I kinda wanted to make him a bit younger too, so I did from about 32/34 to 28.

Anyways, as I changed his name to Artemis, I felt like he was only becoming more cocky, humorous and too cheesy with those attributes, if you get the flow. So, now he's back to Gramot, because I want to make him that proud, kind and happy knight again.

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Brigs Morgan:
Pretty much turned out nothing how I planned, But I love him for that reason. What inspired me to make him the way he is, Was pretty much a blend of deadpool and jack sparrow with a little tarzan sprinkled on top. If I had not made Brigs first, The character Vaas from farcry 3 would have summed up most of what I wanted him to be. Just this raw force of insanity. Although now he is a pretty chill dude compared to what he was. What made me want to change him to a monk and "better" himself was just a love for kung fu movies and such. His build has always been based around martial arts and parkour. A small, Nimble ball of dreadlocks with an immense bloodlust and obsession for melon juice.

Neverwas:
A result from reading too much creepypasta way past my bedtime. He is actually not based on slenderman, Even his tendrils are not from slendy. If anything I picture him looking more like "The rake". I suppose I just wanted to try and scare random people RPing mostly. People are freaked out by skinny, Pale creatures that talk nonsense. The holders series is probably the greatest source of insperation though, Seconded by "Zalgo". I get a semi for anything remotely lovecraftian also, So no doubt I took some form of insperation from his mind too.

I picked Druid for OOC reasons.  I wanted something with stealth and that could heal.  Otherwise, I just love playing the typical soldier/rogue character.  Clad up in rough, leather armour with a worn blade.  An everyday layman.

As for character personality...created Djazor with a blank slate.  Developed him over time through stories and in game events, etc.  I miss my undead but won't go back to him because I can't live without instant flying any more, and most of the guys who I spent years playing with on him are now gone.  So I'm finding myself working aspects of his personality into this Druid's, because I found Roleplaying my Undead so much fun (and when I DID decide to interact with new people, they enjoyed him, and I was able to enjoy them more because I knew how to react to whatever their situation was.)  I struggle to enjoy RPing brand new characters after spending so much time developing a couple of dedicated characters since 2006.  I'm having fun now, though - this Troll has already started to develop a bit on his own, and it's interesting adding traits from my Undead into the mix.

I don't base characters off anyone from TV/film, etc, because I find that when people do that they don't let their characters develop.  They want their character to be batman, so they don't do anything to them that would make their character suddenly become less like batman.  Apart from this character, every one I've made has started with some basic traits.  Some have stayed fairly close to how they started, but the most fun ones have been completely changed and developed purely by the other player characters around them over the years.  When you spend so much time every night RPing with some of the most diverse and interesting characters there are, you can't help but see each one of them shape your own character in some new, fascinating way.

Sadly, many of those great, great people are now gone, and while there are still good guys around, there aren't enough interesting or diverse non-sues in the one spot now (in my opinion, at least) so most character development is done in my head while I resort to WPvP and RP only when I get bored.

LotR most likely, as well as the idea of being the chivalrous knight who rides in and saves the day.

Initially Bennedict was simply a character I made to try out the paladin class, but as time went on I got more interested in DoL, and was inspired by Beladon, Aarian, Karthan and the lot.

Addie was a totally spontaneous unimportant character I made to host The Fallen Blade. Enjoyed her so much I just made her real and developed background story around that. This type of thing is usually how my characters are made. Take for instance my Mage started as a joke character who was just a figment of somebodies imagination.

My grandfather on my father's side. He had just passed away when I was making what would become Cìd, so I molded him to be looking quite like him, with a mix of his strenght and my humour. Since then it has just went on.

I just wanted to make an orc by the time DB was going to be opened up since I've been a big fan of the whole "honourable savage" shtick that's been going on since Warcraft III. I didn't really have a specific archetype in mind, though I did plan on making Koz a shaman at first. Then it turned out the pre-made orc guild I had joined already had waaaay too many shaman, so I changed him to a hunter instead and incorporated the shamanistic/mystic element into his background and origin story. The one point of inspiration I did have at the time came from Robin Hobbs' Farseer Trilogy books, from the character Fitz and his connection to animals and the volatility of it.