OC of the Day: Aodhan
- Pants
- Feb 23, 2023
- 7 min read
Tiger? Check. Big beefy? Check. Cinnamon bun? Check! It's a Pants OC!!
Aodhan Stoutheart - Barbarian, Adventurer, World Traveler, and a Giant Sweetie!
Name: Aodhan Stoutheart
Gender: Agender (they/them)
Age: 25-32 (varies from game to game)
Race: Tigerfolk
Height: 7'2”
Weight: 410 lbs
Personality:
In General: Jolly, easygoing, gentle giant, loving, supportive, protective, trusting, loves kids and animals
Likes: Singing, bars/taverns, drinking, playful wrestling or fighting, cooking, impressing any manner people (especially potential love interests) with feats of strength, being helpful, long hot baths, singing
Dislikes: Cruelty in any form, overly intelligent conversation or difficult puzzles (one of the few things they get very frustrated and angry over), spiders!!!
Stripes the Barbarian!
In early 2019, I had the opportunity to play online D&D for the first time in ages with some friends. When creating my character for this campaign, I thought "wouldn't it be fun if I just made my existing character, Stripes, into a D&D character?". I brought her in, rolled her up as a Barbarian, and had the backstory of "Oh no! I'm in an alternate world! What do?!"
Alas, however, the campaign didn't end up going for very many sessions (scheduling conflicts, the killer of most adult friend D&D games) and so Stripes the Barbarian got put out to pasture, like many other D&D characters I've rolled up. Truth be told though, there was a lot about the direction of D&D Stripes that I didn't love when playing the actual campaign. Not because of the overall story or the other players (my group was hella fun). It was the dang tiger's personality that got in the way! In theory, it should've been easy to roleplay her (I've known this character since I was 14 after all), however in practice, Stripes was not a fun character for me to play D&D as.
Stripes was meant to be lost in an alternate world, but Stripes also has two children and two partners back in her own world. This created this sense of urgency and stress for her to want to get home. It made her less fun to roleplay because she was constantly trying to figure out how she'd gotten to this world and how to get out. It felt distracting from other in-game plots going on. Ultimately, she just had too much baggage and the overall idea of integrating her into D&D world just didn't pan out for me like I'd hoped. So the fact that the game got cancelled turned out to be a blessing in disguise.
2020, a perfectly fine year... :')
Jumping ahead to January of 2020. There's rumors about some kind of flu thing going on in other parts of the world but nothing we need to worry about, right? RIGHT?
-ugly sobbing-
Haha, anyway...
I was feeling lonely (we were still new to Oregon) so I reached out to my fellow D&Ders on the local queer gamer discord server to see if anyone was interested in forming a game together. The group came together quickly, we secured a Game Master, and were good to go! The only thing left for me to decide was who the heck I was gonna play as...
Initially, I was leaning toward my bard Kia'th (a bird-person homebrew race I'd come up with) or a tiny cat-person cleric that my dearly departed friend Zack Dolan drew for me years ago (it was a surprise portrait of myself as a fantasy character). Sadly, all of the homebrew stuff I was shooting for wasn't that balanced and I didn't really want to spend the time trying to figure out how to fix them. At the end of the day, I decided "Fuck it. Tiger Barbarian again." Only this time, I knew I didn't want to play as Stripes. This time, I would make a new character, one that was born and raised in D&D land. Thus, Aodhan Stoutheart was born!
Designing Aodhan
It was important to me from the get-go that Aodhan and Stripes were different in visuals and personality. Since Stripes is 5'4" (a surprise to everyone who learns this), I decided I was going to make Aodhan be a whopping 7'2". I wanted them to be huge, beefy, and intimidating looking... but with the personality of a cinnamon bun to contrast Stripes' rigidity and cranky nature. They needed to feel like they could crush someone's skull with their paws, but be approachable by everyday people.
I roughed out the initial sketch (see right) at one of our first meet-ups. I wanted Aodhan to feel more tiger-like in their face hands, and feet than Stripes did. But I also wanted them to look/feel humanoid enough that they could reasonably form romantic connections with other characters and... dare I say... smooch them?! They gotta pass the smooch test for me to want to play them. It's a Pants requirement!
Eventually, I was able to get the character design to a place I was happy with! Thanks to some help from Jay, I was even able to draw them armored up!
A New Direction
Eventually, the campaign didn't work out and the group disbanded. I didn't want to abandoned Aodhan though. I kept playing them on varying D&D Discord servers, a couple of one-shots, and I still have their character sheet ready to go in case I get called into another campaign!
In early 2021, I illustrated a picture of Aodhan relaxing in a hilly mountainside, smiling, and looking generally peaceful. It's the cover image for this blog and one of my all time favorite drawings of them. It captures their personality perfectly and I was very proud of the background (as I don't like drawing backgrounds often). The design of Aodhan shifted a bit in that picture, and it inspired me to do a redesign of Aodhan based closer to that illustration than my previous ones.
I changed the bodytype to a more masculine shape, thickened them out a bit more, and softened their muscles to look, well, more huggable. For their armor, I gave them a simpler kilt, ditched the pants and chest wrapping, and added a cool chest harness thingy at the suggestion of my best friend Morgan.
For their face, I reintroduced a bit of humanoid back into the design while still keeping things like the fur and kitty snoot. Overall, I love this new direction for them!
Backstory Time: The Wandering Tiger
Alright alright I know y'all are dying to hear this beefy sweetheart's backstory so let's dive on into it!
Okay so... don't judge me here... but Aodhan's biological family are no longer alive...
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Don't judge me though. Let's be real, having deceased parents is almost like a D&D requirement! But Aodhan's backstory isn't actually that tragic so... relax!
Aodhan was rescued and adopted as an infant by a clan of wandering caravan of Dwarven merchants and artisans called The Goats Boon. The Tigerfolk village Aodhan was born in had been raided and burned to the ground by a gnarly group of brigands. The tiny tigerfolk cub was taken in by the Dwarves' head guard, Brigid Stoutheart. She trained Aodhan from an early age to help protect those around them.
Now, I know what you're thinking. "This is the part where they experience crap their entire life for being different!" but you're WRONG! The Goats Boon are good people, and so Aodhan was showered with love throughout their entire upbringing. Even if strangers found the tigerfolk scary, their clan defended the furball and loved them unconditionally. So while they did experience some assholery growing up from townies, their found-family made them feel loved and accepted.
On their 20th birthday, they received a vision from their ancestors. The vision showed what had really happened to their birth family and that there were still living members of their village alive, but in need of help. With the love and support of The Goats Boon, they set off to find and rescue as many of their fellow tigerfolk as possible.
There's more to be told here, but I'm actually in the process of writing Aodhan's backstory up in a short story format. I'll be posting it on the blog here so, keep an eye out for that if you want to learn more about them!
"You always make your characters so beefy and tall!"
Alright, alright. You want the truth here? I'm short. I maxed out my height at 5'2" and that's that. And you know what? I friggin' hate it. I hate not being able to reach things. I hate people thinking I'm a pushover (I mean, I am, but that's besides the point). I hate that people can see the top of my head at any given time. Stop looking at it! Quit it!
...Anyway...
Playing tall characters, especially big strong ones, gives me safe and reasonable control over something I've never had control over before. I get to be the tall one helping people. I get to be the strong one defending my smaller friends. I get to be a protector. I am usually the strongest party member of any group, I get to take the hits and keep going, and I can step in and save my friends' characters from danger should things get sticky. When it comes to the real world, I often feel to small and helpless to make a difference. But at least when I play Aodhan (or some of my other tall, beefy, strong characters) I can feel like I'm doing something physical to help others, even if it is just in a roleplay fantasy kind of way.
Aodhan ticks a lot of ideal character trait boxes for me and is super easy for me to love. They're big and strong but also incredibly kind and loving. They love to lend a hand where they can and use their strength to help people, whether it's fighting off bandits or helping the village crone carry her laundry. Aodhan is by far one of my all-time favorite thembo characters and a super fun player character for D&D.
Plus, they're a tiger. And we all know how I feel about tigers :]
Enjoy some extra Aodhan pics below! Leave a comment and let me know which of the Aodhan drawings in this post are your faves!
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