Here is the rough draft of my character background for RC's campaign that I just submitted. Trish's only response was repeatedly saying "Oh My God"
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Viteaz is a neutral good , ranger(beastmaster)/wizard(divination) cowboy half-elf with the folk hero background.
Hailing from Derrydale, a small cattle raising community, Viteaz never met his father and his beautiful human mother died when he was a baby (DM opportunity - the father is obviously an elf, but he could be a hero, a mega-dick, or play absolutely no role in the campaign at all).
Viteaz was taken in as a baby by a local tanner who used to be sweet upon his mother before she mysteriously left town, came back pregnant, and then died shortly after giving birth. The affection that the tanner once held for his mother was to become the bane of his life as the tanner's wife instantly did not care for him at all. As soon as it was feasible, he was exiled to the barn instead of the family home.
Spending nights in the barn , Viteaz was terrified of the spiders and the snakes that were out there. His only friends were the barn cats. They protected him from vermin and kept him warm at night by sleeping on him. The friendship of the barn cats would lead to Viteaz's secret overriding ambition, a quest to find the Goddess of Cats, Bastet, and somehow through her pay back felinedom. (DM opportunity - is Bastet just a rumor, or a real goddess? does she live or is she long dead? in a far off land?)
As soon as he was physically able to contribute, the tanner's wife demanded he be put to work, apprenticing in the tannery. In the summer when it was slow, Viteaz would be hired out to local ranches to work through the round-up. He learned horsemanship, animal husbandry, rope skills, and most importantly, how to cook as he was oftentimes relegated to the chuckwagon due to his slender stature and lack of strength.
As he grew, when he wasn't working, which was most of the time, he began to slip out into the woods that surrounded the ranches that adjoined Derrydale. The tanner's wife didn't mind so much as she didn't have to see him and he began bringing home trout and the occasional grouse for the family larder.
It was out in the woods that he met Algorth, the local eccentric/hermit who was actually a hedge wizard. At first Algorth's only interest in the annoying kid was to get some trout but when he realized the kid had an incredible intelligence that was going to waste, he began to tutor him in knowledge that Algorth felt was useful.
Just as importantly as the tutoring, Algorth introduced Viteaz to his friend, the half-elven ranger Elden. Elden roamed far and wide through the forests but whenever he was in the vicinity of Derrydale, he always stopped in to check on Algorth.
With the inclusion of Elden, Viteaz began to get a double education. Elden wanted Viteaz to know more of his heritage and taught him Elvish; Algorth wanted him to know the language that was the basis of all magic and taught him Draconic. Elden refined Viteaz's fishing skills,; Algorth taught him magical theory. Elden taught him tracking; Algorth taught him rudimentary math, rhetoric, and geography. And so forth the teaching went on. The attention Viteaz received made him happy and he worked hard at being an apt pupil.
As Viteaz entered adolescence, he developed another problem: his half-elven looks developed in fine features. As a kid, his interactions of the other children of Derrydale were mainly relegated to Viteaz being bullied for being a half-breed. But as his looks developed, he began to receive attention from the girls of Derrydale. This only served to increase the bullying from the young males of Derrydale. The beatings he received grew worse, so Viteaz becan to try to be more perceptive to where danger lay, and failing to avoid it, he tried to be persuasive and deceptive enough to avoid a beating.
Life in Derrydale had always followed a set rhythm until one spring day of Viteaz's 18th year. That was when the village found itself in directly in the path of a roving war band of goblins. Viteaz, having finished early in the tannery went to woods. Going to one of his favorite fishing spots he caught a mess of trout to split amongst the tanner's family and Algorth.
Yet when he arrived at Algorth's hut, he found the hedge wizard lying dead amongst the bodies of eight goblins. Following the goblin tracks, he quickly returned to the village where he found the four remaining members of the war band terrorizing the village inhabitants. Stealthily, he slew the four goblins one by one.
Without saying a word to the gobsmacked villagers that he saved, Viteaz gathered his belongings and left Derrydale hoping that he would never return. Algorth had mentioned a goddess of cats, and Viteaz set out to find her
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