CHASING THE WIND
Freedom in tension with connection, living at full throttle, and the meaning of home.
DUNEROVER - Independent, Selective RP Blog for Zandi, an original Dungeons and Dragons character. 21+. Crossover friendly!
Rules and Info
Hi, hello! I'm Spottie (they/them, 28)! This blog is:
- Selective
- Crossover Friendly
- Mid-level Activity
Style and Content
GENERAL WARNINGS - Depictions of blood, violence, trauma, death, illness, horror, and adult scenarios may be present. Bigotry is a key aspect of my character's backstory, so themes of prejudice are a given. I'll tag sensitive content to the best of my ability!
ADULT CONTENT - I don't mind adult content at all and I will happily write intimacy, adult headcanons, and general IC friskiness/suggestiveness to an extent on the blog, but I skip smut scenes in threads.
Content warning tag format: #example cw
FORMAT - I write in novel format, but have no specific length preferences and engage in both one-liners and multi-paragraph posts; no worries about matching length!
I use minimal styling for my posts—color, small text and some custom banners. Let me know if it causes any accessibility issues!
Please trim your posts, if you can! If you're not sure how, The Xkit Rewritten extension (Chrome | Firefox) and its Trim Reblogs feature should have you covered. Thank you!
Interactions
AGE - I'm over 25 years old. Please don't engage with this blog if you're under 21. If you don't have your age or general age range listed, I will assume you're underage. Thank you for respecting boundaries!
SELECTIVE - This blog is mutuals only.
CROSSOVERS - This character works best with characters from fantasy settings based in or similar to D&D in nature (Pathfinder, Critical Role, Dragon Age, Divinity, Baldur's Gate, etc).
NO PERSONALS - I do not write with real person RP blogs or personal blogs. Personal blogs, please don't reblog posts unless otherwise indicated. Thanks!
STARTERS - Any post I mark as in-character (#§ ic) and isn't a closed starter or reply to a thread with someone else is basically an open starter. Feel free to respond to them, if you got the urge! Alternatively, I'm always open to mentions and asks.
SHIPPING - I enjoy writing most dynamics, platonic or romantic, and I'm excited for variety! I generally prefer seeing if/how character chemistry works first. Multiship, too!
You are absolutely welcome to contact me via DMs for plotting, ideating, and general tom-foolery—can't wait to meet you!
ABOUT
DESCRIPTION
| NAME: | Zandi |
| AGE: | 27+ |
| ANCESTRY: | Infernal Tiefling |
| GENDER/PRONOUNS: | Male, He/Him |
| HEIGHT: | 5 feet, 7 inches (170 cm) |
| EYES: | Bright orange, black sclera |
| ORIENTATION: | Pansexual, Panromantic |
| OCCUPATION: | Adventurer, freelancer |
| CLASS: | Battlemaster/Swashbuckler |
| MAIN WEAPON: | Weighted chain |
| SKILLS: | Animal handling, wood flute, wilderness survival, basic herbalism, first aid |
| HOBBIES: | Nature collecting, free-running & parkour, racing, exploration, fighting |
ABILITY SCORE PRIORITY (high to low):
Dexterity → Constitution → Strength → Charisma → Wisdom → Intelligence
A muscular red tiefling with large bull horns, bovine ears, and a wide, dark mohawk that ties to a ponytail in the back. He typically wears rugged clothing—most often, a dark gray vest over a greyish-white shirt that's torn at the sleeves. Two vibrant, fiery tattoos on each arm spiral down in a double-banded twist from behind his ears to his wrists, fading from bright yellow to bright orange. His strong, thick tail has a broad and hooked spade at the end.Thick clusters of dark scales and growths pepper various areas on his body from head to tail. Patches of scales run along his forehead, as well as across his cheeks and along his jaw in a mutton-chop pattern. His eyebrows sport chitinous plates, rather than hair. His upper horns, nose, forearms, lower legs and lower tail are tinted dark red, as if soot-stained.He wears a string necklace with a grey and white feather tied to it. His left horn has three smaller feathers tied to the tip by an orange band. He sports three iron hoop piercings: two on each ear and one septum piercing. He has a short goatee at his chin.
Lore
CHARACTER
A reckless rover with a heart of gold, a devious streak, and little concern for convention. Zandi craves the spontaneous and novel, seeking the trouble that fails to find him—and a life of thrill-chasing and exploring tends to set this in front of him on a regular basis. A nomad at his core, Zandi is a frequent cut-and-runner who claims to belong nowhere; he becomes restless when made to stick to one place for too long, a tricky trait to pair with a yearning for connection and a fond fascination with strange people and creatures. The result is a constant yo-yo between episodes of tangling in the vices of civilization and roughing it out in the wild when settlement walls and faces start to become too familiar. Zandi calls it freedom. Others call it fickle—if they're being polite.Zandi's playful, devil-may-care attitude cloaks a chip on his shoulder, a deep compassion for the vulnerable and innocent, and a smoldering fury towards those who punch down. Ultimately, freedom is his master to a fault, and he'll do his damndest to help others take their own.
STORY
Years ago, Zandi of the Dunes was a young and wily farmhand from the iridescent island of Talagos who rushed back and forth between two worlds. One was the canyoned, shack-smattered and red-striped sands of the Banded Dunes where he lived with his father, a respected doctor, and his pre-teen brother, a budding herbalist. The other was the bustling nearby island capital of Rio'Orah—also known as the Oasis—where he nursed his unfocused rebellion.The denizens of the Banded Dunes were often mistreated by the agents of Rio'Orah's law enforcement sent to monitor them. Violence, theft and harassment was common as the industrial interests of the city slowly brewed on the borders and pushed the Duneish peoples to the edges of the lands they depended on to survive. Zandi, resentful of their treatment and opposed to the actions of their metropolitan neighbors, took to insurrection—rushing around the territory with a band of young Duneish rebels to disrupt the operations of Rio'Orah's expanding industrial presence.But one sabotage gone wrong caused far more harm than Zandi could control. Dragged from the smoldering remains of the aftermath, Zandi was arrested and sentenced to years of isolation in the cavern mines of the Molten Fountain—a terrible underworld of cold, sulfurous air and maze-like tunnels where no soul sent into its darkest depths is meant to return. His people, meanwhile, found themselves evermore vilified. In one night, Zandi had failed to protect his home and lost his freedom.Rio'Orah took infernal measures to ensure his imprisonment, as it did for all its 'miners'—a curse that robbed him of his free will. But Zandi persevered until a miracle granted him escape after months of lightlessness; an entity of feather, fire and sunlight, its origin uncertain, empowered him to shatter his bonds and disappeared. Unwilling to risk more harm to his people and seizing the chance for a new life, he fled into the horizon. The next road has been his only constant since.
VERSES
Zandi of the Dunes (Main/Gen.)
Zandi is a vagabond from a desert land who escaped a death sentence and ran for the horizon. He drifts from place to place, filling his days with whatever urge strikes him when not putting bread in his pocket.Zandi, for the most part, is eager to leave the past behind him. But the scars of the curse that once trapped him below the earth may still pose a problem; the remnants of his infernal tether, though unbound to any place or master, is an ever-present loose end.
Shackle Over Shackle (BG3)
Zandi thought he was doing alright, bouncing around the Sword Coast for the past year. He looked for trouble, sure—a familiar name murmured within the criminal underworld coaxed him towards Baldur's Gate, if only to confirm or dispel the rumors of who it might be himself. Then he was abducted.The parasite writhing behind his eye is a leash with a mystery handler on the other end, and that's the last thing he needs. With the rest of his new eclectic party, he seeks a way to rid himself of it—and more importantly, defend the liberty of the realm.