Stock

Not everyone can be a Hero.

The limits of life, unliveness and death are blurry for the toy species, whose lives are dictated by the capricious All-Mighties.
Toys will be brought to consciousness by the Breath-of-Life, ready for adventure, and will retain or lose that consciousness in confusing, fleeting ways.
But even for those that live long and healthy lives, not everyone will get a name or even a continuous identity. After all, only some people can be heroes.

To be a Stock Character

A big percentage of the toy population, increasingly so in recent years, will be considered stock people: Some of them will be silent, seemingly content individuals working on simple tasks that need to be done, of the non-adventurous types, almost like the background decoration of the life of actual heroes.
Other stock toys will wake up one day and live a marvellous adventure, just to become unalive hours later, and wake up again someday in the future, a blank slate with no memories, fresh for a new task.
Those are usually people closer in aspect and pursuits to the heroes of their nation, though in some cases will look more uniform, be similar in aspect and grouped together with other stock people.
This state of fleeting identity might sound like a horrifying destiny, but the toy does not suffer, and perhaps one day they will not be reset.

Perception

Stock people are hard-working and appreciated by their compatriots, but in some cases not so much by their Breath-of-Life All-Mighty, who might trade them for some other individual better suited for their unknown pursuits, especially if they don't fit the "theme" that the rest of their group seem to share.
Heroes might pity them, but in the end, they learn to accept their existence as people they will meet once, and that will not be related to the one they meet the next time in any other way than inhabiting the same body.

The Hidden Advantages of Being an NPC

While heroes have a much better chance than stock people at living a long and fruitful continuous life, so do they have an almost certain destiny of their consciousness slowly going into an indefinite lethargy as their All-Mighty loses their Breath-of-Life with ageing.
As the heroes are generally very appreciated by their All-Mighty, they might cling to them even in their disinterest for adventuring, condemning the hero to be unalive forevermore.
By comparison, stock people tend to be kept only for the time they are of use for their All-Mighty. Once that time has passed, they are commonly given to a new All-Mighty whose Breath-of-Life is still going strong. Each time this happens, the toy will have a new chance to become a hero, but even if they don't, some would consider their longer, always ready-for-action life a better destiny than standing on a shelf, staring at infinity forever.

Knight of Vintiver by Naelin

Type

Neurological

Origin

Divine

Cycle

Chronic, Acquired

Rarity

Common

Affected Species

• Toy