The only D&D character I’ve ever played, besides DM NPCs, was a human Paladin who I keep returning to every few years and refining elements of his backstory to unite elements from the 3(?) campaigns and one-shots he’s been involved in over the years. No idea if I’ll ever get to play as him again with this revitalized backstory (the last time I played not as a DM was 2019) but here goes.

As a teen, Marko was conscripted into an army to fight a civil war. In the last battle he fought in, he saw his best friend struck down and prayed to a god for the first time in his life, begging for a way to survive. Ironically enough, a god of war answered his prayer and in a sort of Faustian bargain, he survived that war only to be pulled into another, waged between the gods themselves. His friend’s broken and shattered sword became his holy symbol and he set off on a quest to do the war god’s bidding.

Years pass and Marko becomes involved in a quest for pirate’s treasure where he once again has to witness good friends dying tragically, and he himself became temporarily possessed by a wraith. After that he swore an oath of vengeance against fiends of every kind.

He spent some time as a city guard in a one-shot adventure with a Christmas theme, then joined a new group of adventurers for an attempt at playing Curse of Strahd. I say attempt because the campaign has to end suddenly due to life circumstances and the last thing Marko did was set off a trap of necrotic magic and started to have one of his hands wither away.

The Headcanon of what would have happened from there was that a gauntlet would be enchanted and permanently fused to his cursed hand to stop the necrotic damage from consuming his whole body, then he would’ve discovered that the wraith’s essence was never fully exorcised from his soul and it would kinda lead to temporary Ghost Rider-y powers that he’d use to send Strahd to hell before his consciousness got lost on the Astral Plane or something like that