blind characters in games of any media, present and discuss.
Hello guys,
as blind gamers I thought we ought to turn things on their heads a bit and instead of talking about blind gaming, we instead talk about the blind in games, both audiogames and actual games in the mainstream.
There is no restriction on media, and in fact most of my examples I'm starting with are tabletop or card game characters, so if you know of a tabletop rpg character or something, feel free to share.
Here's what I've got to start.
Kenshi from the Mortal Combat series: This guy is a blind swordsman with telekinetic powers. In the first game I remember him from "Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance" I think he wore a bandage over his eyes. One of his fatality moves was that he would telekinetically dismember his foes, popping their eyes out onto the ground as the first step. His blindness in what little story there is is never presented as a handicap and I'll tell you he could be pretty nasty if you fought someone who knew how to use him. I think the character is actually based on a Japanese legend but not sure.
Now onto the D&D characters I know of.
1. Grimlocks: If you've ever heard of eyeless cave fish, imagine eyeless cave people instead. These creatures, I believe most likely heavily inspired by the Morlocks of the Time Machine, became lost in the underdark (an enormous realm of caverns that extends for thousands of miles below most D&D worlds) and were enslaved by mind flayers. Like most captives of the mind flayers, they were experimented on until they were inexorably changed, made permanently mad and rather wild and bloodthirsty. After the mind flayer empire fell, the sub-intelligent creatures continued to worship the mind flayers as gods, often serving as slaves for more intelligent, more powerful peoples of the underdark. In terms of power, they are a weak, low-level threat, however, they have some interesting skills surrounding their blindness. They have blindsense over 60 feet. This means they can't be affected by the blind status and also automatically detect any object within 60 feet of them, including invisible enemies. However, if they are caught in an illusion that makes a lot of noise or are deafened, they gain the negative effects of being blinded as well. The Six Swords Alexxa game features these monsters here and there.
Detrechans: another bizarre predator of the underdark, Detrechans are sort of like four-legged giant featherless ostriches. Though they are more monstrous than that. They hunt by echolocation and can even harness their sonic cries to launch blasts of sound that are basically hammer blows on their enemies. They are actually highly intelligent though they are pretty evil. Though they are very much a serious threat and could easily murder a low-level party.
I'm not going to go into oozes and all the creatures that obviously are blind from having no eyes at all by the category of monster they are. but there's two unique characters of relatively recent date that appear in published D&D adventures, one more or less good and one evil, though they are very similar to one another in terms of stats and basic archetype.
Uller: (guessing on spelling of the name as I haven't seen the adventure in nearly 10 years) A githzerai monk in the "scales of War" adventure path published in Dungeon Magazine, Uller appears in an early portion of the adventure when Githyanki pirates (githyanki are sort of an antagonistic cousin race of the gitzerai.) attack his monastery while the heroes and players are there. The players can't stay together and win the fight because the monastery is enormous and the pirates are attacking on several fronts, so they have to split up and run several simultaneous fights in several places. Uller can come with the heroes or go elsewhere, as he's the grandmaster of the monastery. However, along with blindsight, he has among the highest stats of any monster in that adventure and wherever you send him, he's well-equipped to take care of the threat wherever he goes pretty much by himself. Also there are some social encounters with him in the adventure and he's not only incredibly powerful, he's very wise and insightful as well.
and then the flipside of that character.
Mirili: or a name similar, appears in the adventure "Princes of the Appocolypse" as the chief Martial artist in the Sacred Stone Monastery, a weird group of monks that are actually a front for the cult of the black earth, a group dedicated to an evil prince of elemental earth who seeks to utterly destroy the world with his element somehow. She's sort of the boss monster for that part of the adventure. She's the trainer of the monks, though her training mostly involves quite literally beating her students to within an inch of their lives. The whole group wear gilded gargoyle masks, but hers has no eye holes. She is pretty tough, and she's got both blindsight and tremorsense. Deafening her will get rid of her blindsight but she'll still keep her tremorsense. Tremorsense is that she can automatically detect something moving on a surface she is in contact with if it is within 60 feet. The only way to bypass that one is to either attack her from somewhere she isn't in contact with or beyond her reach, or by suspending her off the ground or wall such as with telekenisis or similar tricks. She's a stereotyped bitter blind woman who lived a tough life who takes out her frustration by beating everything and everyone she comes into contact with without mercy.
They both channel the "blind kung-fu master" archetype, but thought I'd share them anyway.
What do you guys think of these characters? and please share your own if you know any.
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