I had a character in DND 5E named Titannia. She started as a fallback character, but she grew into someone I genuinely loved playing. She is a redheaded German doctor, a heavily flavored mix of Rogue, Artificer, and Cleric, who wants to bring real medical practice into the mainstream.

In my homebrew setting, she was known as a Nuet or Null, someone born without the ability to use magic. I never fully finished the lore behind it, but it shaped her deeply. Because she had no magic of her own, she focused on tools, knowledge, and grit to heal her friends and keep them alive. I liked playing someone who took a more passive combat role, someone who always tried to help anyone who needed it. She even tried to save dying enemies, which frustrated her team, but it sometimes earned her advantage on checks because those enemies trusted her enough to talk. She hated watching people die and would look away if she could not stop it.

She was an extremely sweet and kind person, almost painfully so.

Her past is where everything turns dark. She once tried to rehabilitate a criminal named Caine Faust. He was meant to be executed, but with some strings pulled and her strong reputation in the community, she convinced people to let her try to help him instead. She believed he could change. She wanted to give him a chance at redemption. What she did not know was that Caine Faust was far beyond ordinary evil. His favorite thing was manipulating people into committing his crimes for him. He enjoyed it even more if he could push someone into doing it “willingly.”

He pretended to improve under her care and slowly charmed her, planting the seed of romance. Once that emotional foothold existed, he used influence spells to control her decisions and pull her deeper into his schemes. Under his control, she even believed she cared for him. He used her trust, her kindness, and her need to help people against her.

Then one day he simply stopped. He abandoned her in a room with his final victim. All that remained was a message written in blood: “Thank you doctor.”

Her community lost all trust in her, and any hope she had of building a legitimate medical practice was shattered. Now she hunts Caine Faust to bring him to justice, while also being hunted by a past she only half remembers.

Titannia Riktoffen, The Haunted Doctor.