So here’s my first contribution to RPG Blog Carnival April 2010.

Dicer and Drosha are a pair of very minor characters in my game, based on a point of metaphysics I’m not entirely sure would work in that universe outside my interpretation but that I’ve been exploiting like crazy within it: they’re the former familiars of a person tasked with keeping the world out of trouble, before said person went and bought the farm, leaving them masterless and ready to party.

My original concept for them came from a combination of trace-doodling with a book of Japanese design motifs and a need for characters who could serve as comic relief and information. Dicer, a god-sparrow, is the most outrageous of the two, constantly cracking jokes and saying things that, while true, are just asking for some sort of reprisal. Drosha, whose original animal form was that of a crane, is the straight-woman; she speaks less, chooses her words more carefully, and often ‘translates’ her younger partner’s commentary into something less potentially offensive or interprets what he’s already said into something a bit more useful. Dicer is about instinct and gut reaction; Drosha is about analysis. Dicer is a risk-taker, likely to poke at things or feed them bits of trivia just to see what happens; Drosha prefers to minimize the risk (though not necessarily the unexpected) in her life.

Kes summarizes Dicer and Drosha.

While their first appearance was serving as comic relief on a one-session mission with which the group was assisting, they later popped up in a more expositionary position. Sometimes, when the information came at social risk, they’d ask for a bribe, most often food (“Cross my wing with scarabs,” Dicer chirped, when asked about one of the other NPCs). On the other hand, the fact that they (or at least Dicer) clearly enjoyed just delivering information in a semi-comedic way and seeing how people reacted to it made them excellent choices for the fourth-wall mail slot I created on the campaign wiki.

The names, of course, came from spring semester molecular biology at my college. The original Dicer and Drosha are enzymes that target double-stranded RNA. But I was listening to that lecture after I’d made my original birds-in-kimono trace drawing and before the birdies had made their first appearance, and the first thing that struck me about it was that those sounded like things that could potentially be names. Besides, I’ve always liked mnemonics, and how better to ensure that I at least remember the enzymes existed, if not what they did, then by gluing them to some of the things I remembered most easily?

Unlike many of my other characters, they haven’t shown much by way of emotional impetus or nuance. They’re just there, and mostly there to have fun. But that might just reflect the fact that the group hasn’t talked to them much; they’ll be playing a greater role in the concurrent solo game, and I’m already looking forward to seeing how much more about them comes out when I’m playing them on a regular basis alongside someone who wants to know things.