Example characters

Character 1 "the crazy merman": Male [haven't decided on race] Cleric. [Neutral or lawful; haven't decided yet] Good. Tempest Domain, follower of the merfolk god Eadro. Believes he was a merman in a previous life who was reincarnated as a human as a punishment for misdeeds, and has devoted his life to both doing good in the world to attone, as well as trying to learn more and reach out to merfolk. I'd love to be able to have him speak Aquan for flavor (as a language choice granted by background, in place of a more commonly used one), but since it's not a language listed in the PHB table, I understand if that's not okay.

Character 2 "the child": This one is less fleshed out. Definitely using the sage background, and probably a wizard (possibly a sorc instead). Probably Neutral Good. This character is mentally very similar to a child; they want to know and learn everything, and tend to be very naive and trusting. Probably going to be male, and probably using Variant Human for either the Observant, Alert, or, more likely, the Keen Mind feat, if allowed. If not, no preference in race. Note that this character is not actually a child -- they just never really grew out of the childlike mentality.

Glory "the thrillseeker": This is actually the character I use for D&D Adventures at my local game store, so I'm including her less as someone I'd like to play, and more as another example of characters I've created. Female Tiefling Fighter. Chaotic Neutral. Battlemaster. Variant Entertainer: Gladiator background. As a young child, Glory (then Amaiya) took the blame for everything that went wrong in her small farming village. As soon as she was old enough, she ran away to a city, where a group of orphans taught her to survive. It was here that her thrill-seeking nature became prominent. She was always looking for the riskiest heists, getting into fights, and skirting the law in a very obvious way. Eventually, she became too much of a risk, and the other urchins would have nothing to do with her. She became a gladiator, using her Infernal heritage as a way to make herself more noticeable and favored by the crowd, and taking the name Glory. Another gladiator, jealous of her success, framed her for match-fixing, and she was forced to flee and join a band of adventurers, where she's learned to enjoy her new lifestyle, even if it does enable her daredevil tendencies. [This is just a tl;dr version, though I have the more detailed version available elsewhere if you need it.]