Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary Influences

Base/Origin

The first step to creating your own Wildling is to pick their Origin. Where did they come from? Where do they live? Maybe you don't know these things, but maybe you do. For starters, pick a region on this map. Did your character travel far until they stumbled upon the land you are now in, or did they come from somewhere nearby? On the map you will see a host of options to choose from are available, whether that be Draelish clans, Heart cultures, or Wild Kingdoms, with possible Wildlings scattered about.
If your Origin involves rocks or plants, consider looking at the type of environment you may have come from. If your Origin involves animals or hearts, look at the list of Base creatures to choose from. Perhaps you are a combination of multiple things, with a certain Attribute being exemplified. Or maybe you just got plain unlucky and got stuck with features such as being short, having green skin, a long nose, pointed ears, and some rather sharp claws. You may have tried to return to the old life you once knew, but quickly found that your quiet town of Falcon's Grove had transformed into a scary place full of pitch forks and strange men. Or that your old wolf pack whimpered at the mere sight of you and quickly ran away.
Being a Wildling doesn't always have to be a lonesome thing. Maybe you were part of an expedition of hearts sent to establish new towns in the Komoto Jungles. Nothing strange has happened yet, and all has been going well, you say to yourself, as you and the others begin to climb up the walls of the cavern and settle upside down after a long night out. Or take a pack of jaguars, climbing the trees and bounding off the rocks of their home. After a strange storm passed through the night before, Ugrey decided to stand up and stretch, before licking some damp fur off Regu and realizing he, in fact, had thumbs.
Another approach could be that your kind has always lived within these mountains, watching as the pups learn how to hunt in the forests below. One day a strange creature that calls itself a Heart approaches you, and after several dozen meetings you both can now understand each other, even if just a little, with it asking about a possible alliance to take down a common foe.
Wildlings offer players the opportunity to play a species other than Draelish or Heart. They are strange beings, offering a glimpse into the world through another lens. They may also be the same as you, just with a different look and style of doing things. It is really up to the player to decide how much they want to lean into being a Wildling versus a Draelish or Heart. Most of the time people just want to play as a Bear-person that can lift strong things, or perhaps a Bird-person that can fly just a bit. Wildlings are cool beings, and sometimes that's all a player really wants.

Powers and Abilities

This is where the design really begins to take off. After coming up with the initial direction you want to go, now start thinking of ways you want that base to be shown off. Wildlings are naturally more powerful than Hearts, having access to inherent magic unlike them. They also have their natural abilities that came from the form they once knew, or that have been passed down and/or assimilated over the generations. These are fairly straightforward to come up with. If your Wildling was inspired by sources other than basic animals and environments, try thinking of where they may have came from, or what do they most closely resemble now? Maybe they even had some Aspectual Mutations thrown in, either from subtle influences, a long lost ancestor, or an unknown beginning? Take the Kedel for example. Basing them off of the common Kobold, I took their dog-like nose and pack tendencies as a sign that they came from dog-like creatures. With them being discovered in the savannas of Mafect, I made part of their Origin as Hyenas, with the other half coming from Dragons. Sometimes foreign Aspects get pulled from seemingly nowhere and impressed upon others, giving them an inheritance of sorts but not a direct connection. Though the Kedel are dragon-like, they cannot use Essence like the Draelish. This idea of their Origin has helped influence how I created their traits and abilities, with some of the power budget being devoted to giving them abilities that point to this strange assortment of Aspects.

Your Story

What is your character's role in the party? Do they have any goals they want to accomplish? Perhaps they are trying to secure trade agreements with a local Heart kingdom, make a name for themselves and their kind, or maybe they just want to fight big monsters and destroy evil. Wildlings can be anything you want, since they rarely hold a permanent place in this world...but maybe yours will. The Yuragori have a rich history as skilled hunters. Content to live out their days in the jungles of Kotoma, they once suffered a severe bottleneck in population. Clawing back from the brink, little is remembered from that time, yet they still live on. On the other hand, the Ssahssekk-Til were a formally ancient Wildling empire that saw massive decline through the centuries, with their former cities now nothing more than crumbling ruins hidden deep within the Maw. Or the Yesvn. They are a group of Ur-Wildlings that commonly fight each other to the death to see whose strongest, and have reduced their species down to one survivor. Thus the biggest challenge to any Wildling character is wrestling with the fact that change/chaos is something inherent to them, unlike those filled with Law. Wildlings are like bright jewels that glitter in the sun. Come night, they may fade for a time, before dazzling the world once again.

Dr. Doctor by Sam Santala

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