god, I hadn't even considered any of my characters and their existences until like, a few days ago? after years of them all just sitting in the back of my head slowly rotting lmao

anyway, I dunno if I have a favorite necessarily given that I haven't really done much with any of 'em, but I think the most fleshed out one is the protag of a book I started writing in middle school that I got a huge ways into but never finished.

so there's this kid named Cael, right, who's got what's essentially atla avatar powers. (brb changing their pronouns on the fly lmao) they've lived a fairly sheltered and simple life in an island nation that's kinda typical medieval-fantasy-esque minus any of the general populace having supernatural stuff, where there's a sorta oppressive governing body that has access to an army of regenerating shadow monster soldiers which are p much just suits of armor that can be programmed to carry out a task. magic powers are strictly forbidden in this nation, under the assumption that they'd be too dangerous for a regular person to have access to, so the shadow soldiers are often sent out to investigate rumors of magic  usage and quash whatever incidences occur. Cael's parents are fully aware of this, so they've done their best to keep their kid safe.

Cael had few friends growing up, living in a reinforced cottage on the outskirts of some village I never named that their parents had rigged up with some enchanted masonry to essentially self-destruct on a timer should the shadow soldiers ever approach within a certain radius of the building. Their parents btw didn't have magic powers of their own, so they had contact with some shady folks in the "resistance" who could construct their house for them (I ain't gonna go into the resistance here).

ultimately, Cael got a bit too reckless with their power, alerted the shadow soldiers, who then descended on their home and obliterated it. Cael's parents had the foresight to predict this and had sent their child away preemptively by only a few minutes with their best friend Jaii, and as they watched their childhood home with their parents still inside detonate from a distance Jaii pulled them into the woods and they ran.

yadda yadda yadda typical young adult fantasy plot ensues, etc. but none of that matters to Cael's backstory.

going way way back into the lore of this world, Cael was descended from an ancient hero who fought in a war millions of years ago between magical creatures who controlled the four base elements and magical creatures who were attuned to light and shadow. the ancient hero was p much just the avatar from atla (but I had never seen the show before and didn't really know of its existence when I wrote all this so gimme some slack plz). Cael inherited their powers from this ancient bloodline in a sort of universe bid to keep the powers of light and shadow in check should the need arise (it laters turns out that the forces of light and shadow were puppets of another branch of magic powers, namely that of psychological manipulation/communication/etc. who also had its own descendent who winds up being the plot-twist-villain towards the end of the book).

there are a number of other sorts of magic in this realm, some of which are more active or overt than others, and some of which are pretty passive but still useful. Cael has magic with the most raw power and potential, but is unable to check the villain without the aide of their friends and all of their innate powers (they were all drawn together by the descendant of the physicological magic users who sought to rid them in one fell swoop to remove the last remaining roadblock to total power but who also underestimated just how potent their powers combined would become).

oh also, I was gonna set up for a sequel by having Cael and friends find an actual gun just, washed up on a beach on the eastern end of the main island. or rather, it would be in a plastic crate or something so the gun was still functional. the world presented to that point was all swords and bows and arrows and shit, so having an actual gun show up was going to be a real shocker. the island nation the book takes place on, and the surrounding islands, were actually going to be mysteriously dimension-warping and wind up in our own real world but retain their own strange physics and universal rules and such within a sort of pocket dimension with a permeable outer barrier. this dimension warping was a result of magical imbalance in their world over the course of the book which would slowly cause things to get messier and messier on a metaphysical level until eventually it spilled over into another universe. this magical imbalance was what the antagonist sought to prevent, and as well was the source of the ancient war of the hero that Cael was descended from. I don't know where shit was gonna go in a sequel, but I knew it was gonna go somewhere weird and interesting.

holy shit that was a lot of words, my b