Poor Maynard. Born horribly deformed. His left hand has only two fingers, his left foot, two thick toes. A fleshy fin sprouts from his upper back and below that, a writhing tail with a arrowhead tip. And what’s under that mask? You don’t want to know.

His mother arrived on the steps of a small country church in the throes of labor. Why she sought out a church rather than a hospital would never be known, as she died giving birth to Maynard. Who (or what) his father is remains a mystery that will probably never be uncovered. The priest at the church, seeing the baby’s disfigurements, hid him from the members of his congregation. He told them the baby had been stillborn and that he was buried with his mother.

The old priest raised Maynard in secret. He educated the boy and was kindly towards him, but Maynard’s total seclusion heavily influenced his upbringing. He lived in the basement of the church, never able to walk in the sun, or to play with other children.

When he was ten years old, the priest took a spill. His head caught the corner of a table. The impact cracked his skull and he started to bleed heavily. Maynard had no idea how to cope. He tried to staunch the flow of blood and in the process became covered in it. Finally in desperation he ran from the church, screaming for help. Help came, but when the villagers saw a blood-smeared creature hovering over their beloved parish priest, they jumped to conclusions. They attacked Maynard, thinking they need to drive him away from the priest. He fled to his basement, where he was cornered.

And that was the first time his powers manifested. With no understanding of what they were or how to control them, his force lashed out, and several villagers were killed before Maynard broke free and fled into the night.

Maynard’s remorse over the incident twisted him further, but he has pledged to use his powers to try to do good in the world. To try in some small way to make up for the lives he took. And so he became an unlikely Champion, with his withered shoulders and sinewy tail. Shunned even in the diverse world of the Champions, Maynard follows a solitary path, fleeing from the demons of his past.

* * *

Eh, it’s a work in progress.

Maynard is a “Sorcerer” template character. The builder says his primary stats are Intelligence and Presence. Hmm. Presence helps reduce threat level. Intelligence reduces the energy cost of powers. Turns out the Sorcerer framework has some healing powers in it.

What I’ve taken to doing, at level 5, is heading to The Powerhouse and stripping my Champions of all their powers, then building them back up (it sounds like you won’t be able to do this for much longer, though). When you pick (ugh, I hate that I can’t remember the terminology) a Trait (I think — 0ne of the customizations that heavily impacts your base stats). Anyway, when you pick them in the Powerhouse you get a much better idea of what each stat does than you get just from rolling over the stats on your character sheet.

Since I mostly solo, Presence does very little for me, so I rebuilt Maynard with high Intelligence and Endurance. Endurance impacts max power points. During the tutorial, Maynard couldn’t fully power up his main attack because he didn’t have enough energy to do so, even when is bar was full. Hopefully the extra Endurance will help with that.

For his third power I took one of the Sigil powers. I expected this to be a kind of ‘belt’ of rotating doo-dads that did damage to attackers, but instead it throws out sigils in a rather large circle around him. So it’s more of a skill for when you’re going to stand in one place and fight. It reminds me of Shaman Totems in WoW, or healing Runekeeper Runes in LOTRO.

I didn’t get too much farther than the 1st tutorial and then Powerhouse. I spent a long time making this deformed Champion… Oh! And just to reinforce his creepy weirdness, I gave him tunneling as his travel power.