Hello all. In thinking about the characters of LFG (nicknamed Sohmeria until the actual name of the world is revealed), I find myself wondering about the background behind the primary characters revealed thus far. Although this is admittedly an exercise in both rampant speculation and excessive analysis, it might provide for some interesting discussion.

Cale - By insisting that he will be unlike his kin, he seems cognizant of the fact that elves, in Sohmeria at least, are an evil race. I find this exceptionally intriguing because of the stereotypical perception that elves are, for the most part, good (drow and blood elves notwithstanding). Indeed, elves are typically characterized by being longer-lived, more attractive (albeit occasionally androgynous), more agile, more magically inclined, and in general, just better than pretty much every other race, especially humans... small wonder moral superiority gets added to their list of virtues (yes, I'm overgeneralizing, but bear with me). What if, in Sohmeria, that's all turned on its head... what if elves use their incredible abilities to lay waste to the so-called lesser races? Which leads me directly to....

Richard - Yes, he's awesome, without question. Yet why does he take sufficient interest in Cale to spend time seeking to corrupt him when he could just kill him and take his cloak? Why does he seek out a healer to resurrect him? Is it conceivable that, in life, Richard was an elf, and knows all-too-well how dangerous this race can actually be? Or is he a damned soul, a Sohmerian Mephistopheles whose powers are sustained and nourished through the suffering of others? Or, to borrow the language of D&D, is he simply chaotic evil, acting according to whatever whim strikes him at the moment, taking what he wants irrespective of the consequences to others in his wake?

Benny - Of the four, Benny intrigues me the most. To what race does she belong? She bears no resemblance to the trolls of Stoll's horde, but is she another kind of troll? An orc? Or something none of us are familiar with? As far as her alignment is concerned, at first I was inclined to believe that she's evil, given that she was more amused than horrified at the gnome's incinerated head, and given that she seems to be a wanted criminal by Aelloon... but she appeared genuinely disturbed by Richard's de-boning of Aelloon's comrades, and it's conceivable that she's being hunted for other reasons. Aelloon purports to be after her for gold, perhaps a front to hide his true intentions from potential witnesses; is she being coerced into searching for the Sword of Truth as a means to escape greater punishment, or is she a victim of circumstance - i.e. was Aelloon a former ally prior to his becoming a legal enforcer of Sohmeria who turned on her in his desire for the relic?

Krunch - While Cale exemplifies the concept of "Evil always triumphs because good is dumb" and Richard is a dictionary definition of evil, Krunch seems to be true (or possibly chaotic) neutral. It's improbable that an evil soul would have taken Benny under his metaphorical wing, and he seems willing (if reluctant) to attempt non-violent confrontation ("We'll try it your way, Pinky"). I'm also curious about what history he has with Stoll... his sudden willingness to assassinate the troll leader may derive from past encounters, or possibly knowledge of this specific band of trolls. The next few comics may shed light on such possible background, but in any event, Krunch is perhaps as much of a puzzle as Benny.

So, here are some random thoughts on the characters, written in a hopefully semi-coherent fashion. Thoughts from anyone else?

here's a thought or two.

cale-yes he's a blood elf, and he does hate himself for being part of such an evil race.

richard-he loves to kill. doesn't matter what. if an orphanage is attacking him, of course, he will use self defense which probably means he will use a hellfire spell and get it over with.

benny-she is, infact, a troll. look at her fingers. look at her hair. look at how she stands. and i don't know how aelloon is connected with her.. we will prabably see what happened to her in the past sometime son.

krunch-he kicks butt! i don't know if he is evil or not, but either way he's a good tauren.

now i don't know if that showed that i do have just a little understanding of what you are talking about (lol ) but i do think what you say is quite true.

This is indeed well thought out, but one note I must add.
Benny is not horrified by the de-skining skeleton raising of Aelloon's gaurds because of its, per say, evil. More so just freakishly gross, disgusting etc.
I'm sure Lex Luthor is a giant pinnacle of evil, doesn't mean the man enjoys the sight and smell of walking corpses.
Also, she still may be a troll. Trolls, while still the same species, come in many forms and varieties in all forms of fantasy. Even within the same fantasy storyline.
For me, she'll always be a Trorc.

And to me, Richard is more of a force of nature. Unpredictable and dangerous. His reasons and actions are only known to him, much like anyone else you see in a mental hospital.

And I dont believe Krunch does have anything to do with Stoll. Hes a rare kind of warrior who actually thinks before he acts. The gnome leader made a very good point to him, and as you said he does seem to want to avoid conflict. Instead of taking out an entire gnome army, he went for a simple assasination of a troll leader. However that went terribly wrong as we see...

Indeed, your views on the elves of Sohmeria are views I must say I share. I agree that it would seem that these elves have lost their (generalized) heightened "moral compass" as such, and so would seek to destroy all "lesser beings." Power corrupts, yes, but pride even more so...

Richard on the other hand I feel is simply a powerful warlock who despite great power is lonely and just wants to be appreciated. I don't think he sticks around the others for any other reason than to be accepted into a group, as such. I say this because of his constant joking about everything, and the way he continously tries to get attention from Krunch upon their initial meeting ("I'm Richard"). And yes, to use DnD terms, I would classify him as Chaotic Evil.

Benny, now she seems to me to be a mix of several things. She has the amount of fingers and some semblance to the Trolls of the world of Azeroth, though she retains also some parts of stereotypical "Orc" biology (notably the eyes and skin-color), though it should be noted that some subspecies to the Azerothian Trolls do have green skin as well. Her classification as "healer" makes me think of old rounds of ADnD where a friend of mine would be a Orc Cleric (as our Game Master had allowed it) and would help during our battles, though the staff she carries also has a certain Azerothian Priest feel to it.

Krunch, now there's a fellow. This guy I believe isn't "evil" per sé... I would say that because of outside sources (probably humans) he has been forced to make a stand, and while doing so made friends with our good friend the "Trorc" (until further notice) Benny. So I think this guy actually is the more "noble" of the four, since I see Cale as a guy who can't grasp reality enough to be "noble".

My two cents anyway...

Personally i think Richard Jokes all the time because h genuinely finds life (or un-life for that matter) hilarious ... especially the death or maiming of others..

Cale: Bloodelf Hunter, probably abandoned or orphaned at a young age by his blood elf parents and raised by other people into a supposedly noble future

Richard: Undead Warlock, an obsession with blowing stuff up and burning things =D i agree with his being "lonely" and wanting attention

Benny: Orc Shaman (wants to be a healer) or Troll Priest, she needs to pay Aeloon back for buying her staff or something else like his helping her, and that is why she is looking for the sword

Krunch: Tauren Warrior, does what he needs to in order to survive and avoid having to kill the innocent, obviously a warrior whos seen much war and is used to seeing people die

Well thats how id put them anyway.. and since im a big WoW gamer i just would use the game and its lore to place the characters in a class and race...

I know it's hard, I've once been as single-minded as you... But despite this not being strictly WoW-based, and all that... Why do people have to be classified as this and that?

I would just call Cale an Elf, as that is his race... don't care about the subrace shit, it's just annoying... I would call Richard a undead, because he's that bony, Benny is currently a Trorc until further notice from the writers and Krunch is just a big minotaurish dude.

We don't need to call them anything else than they already call themselves.

Cale has not even once declared himself neither hunter or warrior, he could be either, he could even be a Ranger or a wizard specializing in bows (I've seen 'em in ADnD)... Richard, well he DOES call himself a Warlock, so that classification can stick... Benny is a healer. Period. not a mage, not a shaman, not a priest or a cleric... she's a healer. And Krunch is never called anything either. For all we know, he could be a Shadowdancer or dragon-mage (not likely, but still).

Why does averyone assume Benny is evil jsut because she laughed at the head being blown off of a gnome? After all, we all thought it was funny, didn't we? And people also assume she is evil because the Captain of the Guard wants money from her... has it occured to anyone he may be evil (which in many people's reasoning would make her good). There are many reasons why she may owe him money... he may have given her gold for a quest to get the SOT, and she failed - so now she has a price on her head she is trying to run from. Or, she swindled money from him because she thought he was evil... etc.

As for Krunch, killing the gnome was not evil. After all, it is pretty safe to say Fitch was toast... whether by Stoll or someone else, it didn't matter. It is just that this way, the gnome's sacrifice has a chance at saving the lives of the others. Richard would even be able to rationalize it by saying Krunch made the gnome's death noble (just because Richard evil doesn't mean his logic is flawed).

It strikes me that the alignment for Benny & Krunch can't be classified easily... I would just say they are survivalists, trying to get by while making as few waves as possible. However, when their lives are at stake, they have no problems with putting themselves first.

benny is called a priestess on like her second or third page of appearance by the bartender

I stand corrected.

she is indeed a priestess.

To add confusion to her job title/class, Cale also refers to her as a cleric.

For the whole Benny's Race thing, Stoll's minnions are half trolls. So she can still be a troll.

I'm sure we will get to find out more about the characters' backgrounds. The comic is young and there are several unanswered questions as mentioned before, but we do know a lot so far.

Benny must not have had a lot of parental support in her life if she was raised by a cynical tauren warrior (or whatever). Because Krunch raised her, it's safe to assume that she shares a lot of his values and attitudes towards life. I agree, they're both just trying to survive.

Cale's innocence and naivete make it pretty apparent that he has had a very sheltered life up to this point. That's why I fully support the theory that he was raised by someone who wasn't part of his race. It explains why he was so shocked when Richard "enlightened" him as to what he is.

Oh yes, and let's not forget Richard. To me it is incredibly obvious that he's lonely. Underneath the personality quirks and orphanage burning tendencies is a guy who just wants to be noticed and cared for. I know I've said this before, but to me the way he responded in Issue 16 when the others left him behind says it all. The first panel of the strip shows him following far behind Cale, Benny and Krunch with a classic "lost puppy" look on his face. I think he then did the hand-puppet thing just to get himself back in the others' good graces. And the line "I apologize for my earlier rudeness", I think he was really apologizing for himself.

K, I'm done. You guys get the idea.

Cale: Hm. For him, I'm going to stick with the theory that his race isn't really all evil (I mean, for the most part a whole race being evil is kinda unlikely) and Richard just feels like messing with his head.

Richard: Some sort of dark sorcerer who's messed with one too many dark magics, leaving him with less than a full deck in his head, and pretty much no moral compass.

Benny: More a rough survivalist than evil.

Krunch: Raised Benny and still looks after her, so must have a soft side. He's pretty clear that he doesn't enjoy cruelty, but is willing to do what he has to do to survive.

BENNY IS A TROLL PRIEST!!! Why does EVERYONE say that she's an Orc? She's not! You can seriously tell the difference, and if you can't, you need glasses!


.. but yes, she WANTS to be a healer.

I am thinking that Cale was raised by a race that wasn't elven.

If his people are evil in this world, then he should have known without Richard telling him. If they aren't evil, then I think even Cale would have known Richard was lying.

The only reasonable excuse is that he has never actually came in contact with one of his own kind.

I actually agree with this. In this comic http://lfgcomic.com/page/26 you can see a female troll serving food to Stoll on his thrown. She looks like she is the same race as Benny.

Cale is pretty transparent, at least so far. Richard...he may be a lovable monster killing machine who just wants attention...or he may be just nuts. Benny is a bit of a puzzler, I mean her race hasnt even been 100% confirmed yet. Im finding Krunch to be the most interesting as of late...seems he has an interesting family history. What I found odd was when Stoll asked him if out of the two sons of Krunch's father, was he the warrior or the scholar, he didnt want to answer. It seems pretty obvious that he's the warrior one, but you never know..it would be pretty funny if it turned out he was the scholar.

I agree with Zrem here, though the attention grubbing theory is still a possibility, or both.

As for Cale, in the second(?) comic strip he says he doesn't care what his race has become. That could easily be a recent development and Cale could just be very slow on the uptake of Richard's logic "...Ergo, you're evil". So he might not have been raised by others.

As for Krunch (I refer to him only by name so we don't start the whole Tauren vs Minotaur debate again), he's either the scholar or the warrior (though there was speculation of a third son) who tries to make as little waves as possible while trying to make it through life. We all pretty much agree on this point.

Benny, I don't care what species she is; she's green, that's enough for me. We already know that she was taken in by Krunch when she was younger so there really isn't much background left to speculate on for her (outside of race/sub-race etc). Though I do think she has more of a sense of humour than Krunch. I say that more from the her body language in comparison with Krunch's. Though it would be harder for Krunch to have a large variety of bodily expression due to his physical structure.

I dunno, I'm just trying to kill time between Calculus and Bio. Only 20 minutes left!

Considering Cale wouldnt know what something is if it walked up and introduced itself, I dont think this adds to the confusion. It just makes Cale look dumb.

A priest is a cleric.

Beat me to it

Cale - A Blood Elf that has amnesia, Why else would he think he is good not know how to control his pet (IT attacked him) and out of middle of no were he in a forest going "I Will protect all and blah blah balh" enless he caught amnesia resently

Richard - I beilve hes just an undead just going along who deires attention (Its what keeps him alive =P) and just flows with the moment

Benny - Troll/Orc priestess who seems to me as a bounty hunter with Krunch and wants the sword for money cause she owes money

Krunch - Again Bounty hunter who is neutral after he killed the gnome he pretty much said if i didn't whe would have died (I dont know his exact words) also if Benny is troll and he just goes and kills trolls doesnt make sense he raised Benny enless again he is nuetrul, also he seems to have maybe a bad history with his father who loved his brother/sister more so he hated him, I say he has a brother cause stoll says "Would you be the warrior or scholar" meaning theres another sibling. Also styx the troll say they are mercenaries which can be closely related to bounty hunters

Correction, he is has a brother.

Proof

Eldarion, I have pretty much the same questions as you reguarding the characters background.
I can help you with the races, tough. While there are lots of other references and lots of simply unique things in the comic, the races/classes of all the character are probably based on World of Warcraft.
I know some people here don't want to recognise this reference, but if you do, some of the things intriguing you will make sense.
1. Cale would be a blood elf. Blood elfes in WoW are evil, so the whole "Cale should be evil"-thing starts to make sense. Blood elves can be hunters, hunters have a pet -> Sooba
2. In WoW there is a race called the undead. Look like Richard. Are supposed to be really evil. Can be warlocks (btw every living being can become undead, not only humans, although the ex-humans are the only playable ones in WoW. So the question what was Richard before he turned undead? still stands)
3. Taurens. Are along the strong and wise and normally peaceful and nature-loving but if neaded great warriors-line. -> Krunch
4. Trolls. Tall, skinny, can be green-skinned, flashy hair colours (e.g. pink), fangs, can be priests. -> Benny
5. In WoW there are also Humans, Orcs, Gnomes... we saw all of that.
6. The characters really look like those in WoW, show the comic to one WoW-player and he will immidiately recognise the races. Imo that can't be just coincidence.

(even tho the last post to this was a month ago, i'm still going to bring it up )OK so now we have found out a lot about everyone!!

well.. everyone but Benny, Richard, and Cale... (did i say everyone?)

anyway, the "four core" are now making their way to success!! HUZZAH!!

Benny Female Troll Priest
Richard Male Undead Warlock
Cale'anon Male Blood Elf Hunter
Krunch Male Tauren Warrior
and last
Sobba Male Hunters Pet

While one must acknowledge the fact that Azeroth and the world of LFG are different, there are several distinct parallels between the two that one must not ignore. It is for this reason that I would consider Krunch more of a Tauren, or at least modeled after one (His bodily proportions closely resemble that of a WoW Tauren much more than a stereotypical Minotaur, also the other characters' designs and equipment closely mimic their respective WoW counterparts).

Since this thread seems to have split off into several different areas I'll try to bring it back down to the point of individual character analysis, starting with Richard:

Richard is a difficult character to analyze due to the fact that he is the one we know the least about (Except that he seems to be the mayor of some small town, my sympathies for those unfortunate citizens). With Cale, Krunch and Benny we have some semblance of their history. Cale's elven heritage has been the concentration of the previous few comics and sheds light on how he may be one of the few "good" elves left in the world (Perhaps he is a descendant of Galmon as opposed to the Vulii, or maybe his sheltered upbringing protected him from this information- either way we know he's escaped the seemingly evil genetics of his race). We know Krunch has a family history with his father and brother as made evident through his encounter with Stoll. Finally, we know Benny was raised by Krunch, and is in some sort of Debt to Aelloon which is currently the primary focus of the story.

Richard's past is, however, a complete mystery. Even his motives are hard to grasp at times due to their chaotic nature. His personality closely resembles that of a young child burning ants under a magnifying glass. He is greatly amused by death and how easilly he can bestow it, never seems to think much of the consequences (Even when they are readily apparent, such as with the gnome incident) and never apologizes for his rash actions. This is quite contradictory to the fact that of all the characters, Richard is probably the oldest (Or at least has seen the greatest passage of time- this is of course assuming that all races in the world have a lifespan roughly equivalent to that of a human's). While child like in nature, his adult skeleton and wit suggest that at the time of his rebirth he was at least a late teen/early adult and probably past these stages of mental development, wherein the conundrum lies. He is vastly powerful, and seemingly unkillable (he has taken numerous daggers/swords and fireballs through the chest with no showable signs of concern). Thus I view his relationship with the group as more of a symbiotic one, than an intimate one. Where as the other characters seem to have some sort of understanding/relationship with each other, it seems that they tolerate Richard's rash actions due to the fact that when it comes down to it, he's really good at what he does- Killing.

The motives behind his choice of life philosophy then comes into question. I believe the evidence suggests that having already died, Richard has become immune to "death" so what real consequences can his actions have? It appears that he can feel pain through magical means (As seen in the battle against the troll shamans) although even this did not seem to really concern him. Without developing a relationship with the other party members he is free of any emotional attachment and weakness which may accompany it. I look forward to the day when some light is shed upon his past, as his present character suggests that it was a vastly intreaguing one.


That is all for now, it is finals week and there is no seeming end to the ammount of work I have. Maybe when I need a break I'll come back and give my 2 cents on some of the other characters.

Richard does seem to have a mysterious past, when you come down to it. i don't want to explain because the post above me says it all, but i do want to say that i have a feeling soon that we will hear of something that has to do with Richard's past. besides the fact that he killed his father. (lol)