Hello everyone! In the course of my trying to find a redside Guardian I'm happy with, I settled on Hellfire Assault / Stone Composition as a combo to play with. It has been fun so far, but I've been struggling a bit with figuring out just who this guy is. Should anyone have some ideas or inspiration to share, I'm all eyes! I'll start with what I've used as a basis thus far.
Hellfire Assault, by default, uses felfire green and white, which is quite unique compared to any other effects like it. While customizable, I didn't see any reason to do so (though Invenger has done well with their bright blue version!).
Stone Composition is everyone's favourite to hate stone armor minus the Granite Armor option that dedicated melee specialists get. It also gets Quicksand, a PBAoE Dull Pain, Earthquake, and Eruption. All in all, it's exceptional at helping a team not only stay standing, but to pull everything into a vortex of horror. The downside, of course, is that there's no minimizing the visual effects of stone armor, so much of your costume is going to be hidden.
That out of the way, my thought process was then to figure out just what I've seen in the past that mixes stone and felflame, and my recollections took me to World of Warcraft's
Infernals. Visually striking, mixes the disparate elements perfectly, and even matches general ideas and colour schemes. While not something I want to lift wholesale, it does make for an excellent baseline inspiration to figure out just who So Below is.
Now... since Infernals are demons in their own cosmology, and we have demons in plentiful array here in the Rogue Isles... what can I lean on? We have the demons of Cap Au Diable which tend towards volcanic critters, not to mention the electric gremlins running around (though not direct demons per se). Who likes to meddle with demons? Why, the Circle of Thorns of course! Their behemoths, wraiths, and erinye are in abundant appearance.
Which leads me to the current idea of the character: a Circle of Thorns Ruin Mage tried to bind a brimstone elemental (daemon) as part of a summoning ritual. The mage lost control or was interrupted (possibly by some do-gooder...), which allowed the brimstone elemental to possess him. Given that a Ruin Mage is already possessing some hapless host's body, this allows the possibility that there may actually be 3 personalities present here.
While all of this is well and good and informs me of
what So Below is, what it doesn't do is tell me
who he is. That, dear reader, is where I could use some help. Whether it's background adjustment, costume suggestions, or personality advisement, I could use some help with this one. He's fun enough to play, but I like to have some intrinsic motivation for the character to do what they do as well!
