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Hello Forumites and Members of the Obsidian Order. Given what has been revealed about the world thus far and the overall theme of the playable races revealed, it is to my understanding that we will be given a pallete of tolkien-esque playable races that may or may not be flavored in ways to make them interesting and not generic. Obviously if all the playable races were something odd like bug men, alien like slugs with psedopods for vocal speech with multiple eyes, ghosts and ghouls, or anthropomorphic/magical Animals like Gnolls, Dires Tigers, and Werebears [oh my!], then the more hard core RPG players from the 70s to early 90s will most likely drop the project altogether. Not to mention it would make it exceedingly difficult to make a compelling story centered around your actions as said creature in a different type of game world. So with these little tidbits of exposition in mind after that huge run on sentence that would make most editors consider the euthanization of such a person as I, consider the companions. Several Companions have been revealed to us already, all of them human or human looking, though the guy that looks like a mage may not be human [he kinda reminds me of the scholarly Illum from D&D]. Other than the basic and predictable backstories following human mercenaries looking for work with a troubled love life, or perhaps the scholar with his own agenda after professing interest of some sort of otherworldly quality of yourself, what sort of stories and interesting perspectives may be expressed by these companions? The Baldur's Gate Series, the Neverwinter Nights Series, Even Dragon Age have all, very successfully I might add, made me care deeply for the campions I chose to travel around with. But even then, I began to grow bored of the fact that they come from the expected and tried and true backgrounds [other than Minsc]. This Brings me to my actual point of this poorly worded Dissertation, Companions. Dragon Age Origins: Pebble[That Pessimistic Golem Statue thing with the lisp and odd sense of Humor] NeverWinter Nights 2: Neeshka[Had to Mod her to give her the Tiefling Tail] Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer: That Ghost Wraith Thing of Evil Doomy Doomyness Neverwinter Nights 2: Storms of Zehir: The Lizard Man that Guides you to his Chief Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark: Mother Fracking[the kind where you use high presure of water to break of rock for oil] DEEKIN [The Kobold Bard of awesomesauce that may or may not multiclass into Dragon Disciple and become a winged Kobold of fire breathing goodness] Neverwinter Nights: Kingmaker: The Solar outsider, The WereRat What do all of these companions have in common? They are all Non Human and Come from very different baackgrounds. Why do they matter? They bring very interesting, if sometimes humorous, perspective on things in general. They allow you to view their race or their circumstance with a perspective that is otherwise unavailable when fighting their patron races be they lizard men, golems, undead, kobolds, were creatures, and planar outsiders. I feel Project Eternity can greatly benefit, story telling wise, with a companion that is not any of the playable races and is out of the Tolkien "norm." I am currently not quite sure how it would fit with Project Eternity Lore, or how awesome the team behind making the companions actually are in creating interesting and memorable characters. Creating Companions based off of class or racial stereotypes can indeed railroad the character of that Companion into a specific path, but I for one believe that creating exotic and very different companions can add more to the game than it would detract. I am not sure how my thoughts will be viewed/praised/flamed, but please talk away, I am happy to discuss things as long as things stay civil. P.S. I am not crazy nor on the verge of a nervous breakdown, Just trying to express myself after being subjected to days of boredom and instant insanity puzzles [Look up Instant insanity puzzles and realize my dilemma] P.P.S. Thank you for reading, I hope you had fun.