Always interested in your work
@Koweth .
Please let me take the opportunity to nominate
@Revan86 for the character Fara Rychnovská in
The Leading Spirits in the Victoria 3 subforum. Although she was not part of the last chapter from last week, she is one of the central and best characters in this interesting work that blends history book style with narrative plus some gameplay too. Congrats
@Revan86 !
I appear to have fallen behind somewhat, so apologies for belated congratulations to
@Koweth but some on-time congratulations to
@Revan86 . Managing to get a mega-campaign to Victoria-era and also include Best-Character-Award worthy characters is quite the feat.
Congrats
@Revan86. Fara is a favourite character of mine, among many good ones in your AAR.
Thanks, guys, and especially for the nomination,
@Chac1!
I love writing Fara Rychnovská. I have a special place in my heart for her, similar to the one I have for Árpád-Hotin Czenzi from
Lions.
She's kind of an 'accidental' character, of the sort that crop up a lot in Paradox games. A lot of the impetus for her existence in the narrative, came from my background research on the
Tât people as part of an explanation for how
Iranians somehow wound up settling in Astrakhan in my EUIV game. To be honest, I based her on several Armenian and Russian women I went to church with, along with an Iranian neighbour of mine whose husband's car I wrecked on accident (long story), three Dari Afghan triplets who are students at the high school I teach at, a couple of my Iranian FB friends--and, of course, my wife. I also took some inspiration for her from the life of the Russian-Jewish populist revolutionary Rosalia Bograd.
Fara's very much so an introvert where Czenzi was an extravert. And unlike the more
down-to-earth, pragmatic Czenzi, Fara has a mile-wide Romantic streak in her. She loves passionately and with single-minded conviction, and occasionally relishes the thought of herself as a tragic heroine. But she also faces real struggles apart from that. Literacy was very much out of the reach of most ordinary people of her class and culture - but I loved showing her fight for it, and I felt like she kind of deserved that 'win'. Also the ongoing clash between her and her exacting German mother-in-law is something I take directly from my experience of seeing my wife deal with my mother (and trying to navigate where and how I should step in - always a dangerous proposition!).
Anyway, thanks again for the award, and I'm glad you guys are enjoying
The Leading Spirits. Fara's role in that story is far from done!