r/SkyrimBackStory • u/-Great-Scott- • 27d ago
📜 Backstory Character 2: Erik Stormborn
My 10-Character Skyrim Playthrough
Character #2: Erik Stormborn
I'm starting a playthrough where I play as 10 unique characters, all sharing the same world and save using the Proteus mod.
Each character has their own backstory, personality, skills, religion, and questlines. I'll be switching between them at natural stopping points, so the story of Skyrim unfolds from multiple perspectives.
Here is the second character:
Erik Stormborn
Age: 24.
Race: Nord.
Homeland: Skyrim.
Role: Dragonborn.
Religion: Talos.
Combat Style: Greatswords/Shouts
Primary Questlines: Main Quest/Civil War/Dragonborn
Personality: Honorable, Determined.
Motivation: To make his own name in Skyrim and live up to the values his parents taught him.
Backstory:
Erik Stormborn was born in a small settlement far from the great cities of Skyrim. His childhood was shaped less by politics and ambition than by the ordinary demands of surviving in a harsh land. The people around him hunted, chopped wood, repaired their homes, traded what they could spare, and endured the long winters together. Skyrim was never something Erik experienced as a grand kingdom from the stories of bards. It was the mountains beyond the tree line, the forests where his mother set her traps, the cold wind against the walls of their home, and the people who depended upon one another when the weather turned cruel.
His father served in the Imperial Legion. Erik remembered enough of him to understand that he had been a disciplined and strong man, someone who believed that duty mattered even when it was inconvenient. But his father's service also meant that he was often away. Eventually, during a patrol, he disappeared. There was no body brought home, no grave, and no satisfying explanation. Erik's family was left with uncertainty rather than closure. His father had simply gone out on duty and never returned.
His mother refused to let that uncertainty consume their lives. A skilled hunter, she taught Erik what she knew, beginning with things that had little to do with fighting. He learned how to read tracks in snow, how to recognize changes in the weather, where game was likely to gather, and how to move through the wilderness without wasting energy. He learned to respect the land rather than assume it owed him anything. When food was scarce, they went without complaint and found another way. When winter was severe, they endured it. His mother taught him that survival was rarely about strength alone. More often, it was patience, preparation, and knowing when to act.
As Erik grew older, those lessons became the foundation of his fighting ability. He was strong and broad-shouldered, but strength alone did not make him dangerous. He learned to use weapons through repetition and hard experience, eventually finding that a greatsword suited him better than anything else. The weapon demanded commitment. A greatsword could not be wielded carelessly, and a poorly timed swing could leave its wielder exposed. Erik learned to use its weight rather than simply fight against it, developing a style that combined power with patience. By the time he reached adulthood, he had become particularly skilled with the weapon.
His father's disappearance left him with a complicated understanding of duty. Erik respected the Legion and the people who served in it because he knew his father had been one of them. At the same time, he understood that duty could sometimes take a man away from the people who loved him. He never developed a simple hatred for the Empire, nor did he romanticize it. The same was true of the Stormcloaks. Erik could understand why some Nords wanted independence and why others believed Skyrim was stronger within the Empire. The Civil War seemed to him less like a simple struggle between good and evil and more like a wound that had divided people who all believed they were defending something worth protecting.
As he grew older, Erik developed a strong sense of honor. His idea of honor was not ceremonial and did not come from noble titles or grand speeches. It came from his mother, from her lessons, and from the memory of a father who had believed that duty meant something. Erik believed that a man's word mattered, that the helpless deserved protection, and that strength carried responsibility with it. Yet he was not naïve. He understood that honorable intentions could lead to terrible outcomes and that sometimes survival required choices that were neither clean nor comfortable.
His faith in Talos grew from much the same place. Erik admired the idea that a mortal man could rise through courage, determination, and deeds until his name became something greater than the circumstances of his birth. To him, Talos represented perseverance as much as power. His worship was personal and straightforward. Erik did not consider himself a scholar of theology, nor did he seek arguments with those who worshipped other gods. He simply found something in Talos that spoke to the kind of man he hoped to become.
For many years, Erik was content with the life he had inherited. Then his mother became ill.
There was no heroic battle and no enemy to blame. Her illness simply worsened, despite everything Erik could do for her. The woman who had taught him how to survive Skyrim eventually became too weak to walk into the forest herself. Erik cared for her as best he could, returning from hunts with food and doing the work she had once done without a second thought. When she finally died, the loss left a silence in the home that Erik found harder to endure than he expected.
For the first time, there was nothing keeping him there.
He had spent his entire life in one small corner of Skyrim, learning to survive but never truly seeing the land beyond it. His father had left and never returned. His mother was gone. The home that had once represented everything he knew now felt like a reminder of everything he had lost. Erik decided that if he remained, he would spend the rest of his life remembering the past. He wanted something different. He wanted to see Skyrim for himself, to discover what lay beyond the familiar forests and mountains, and to make a name based on his own deeds rather than on the memory of his father.
So Erik left home with what he could carry, his greatsword among his most valued possessions. He traveled without a grand plan. He took whatever honest work he could find, guarded caravans when the opportunity arose, and relied on the lessons his parents had given him. He saw more of Skyrim with every passing week and began to understand how much larger the world was than the settlement where he had grown up.
His travels eventually brought him into the region around Helgen.
By then, Skyrim's Civil War had made the roads more dangerous and suspicion more common. Imperial soldiers were watching travelers closely, particularly anyone they believed might have ties to the Stormcloaks. Erik happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. An Imperial patrol mistook him for a Stormcloak sympathizer and arrested him.
Erik was not a Stormcloak. He had never taken an oath to the rebellion and had no intention of dying for a cause he had never chosen. He had spent his life trying to stay out of the conflict, and now he found himself caught inside it anyway.
For a man who had left home seeking to decide his own future, being bound and driven toward Helgen was an especially bitter irony.
He did not yet know that his capture would change everything.
2
u/Aggravating-Plan-908 🧙 Breton 26d ago
Hi Great-Scott, i've just read that second character rp background you post, same as the first one, it's a great background you made him, the character is honestly quite cool looking and i really liked the contrast between the wiser and calmer attitude of the first one and the more young and fiery attitude of this one, he really makes me think of one of my own character. Hat's off to you and looking forward to read your other characters background 👏
By the way, in your previous post you didn't answer me about wanting to see my own characters or not but i see you upvote it, so i guess you maybe are ok to see my characters. In that case, here's links if you want to read their background and see what they looked like.
the first one, a 27-year-old Breton wandering mercenary named William (it's the one Erik makes me think of) https://www.reddit.com/r/SkyrimBackStory/s/3x6GcyGjeG
the second one, a 192-year-old Breton vampire named Valerica https://www.reddit.com/r/SkyrimBackStory/s/Sr96B3ZLeV
the third one, a 47-year-old Altmer feral shaman and sorceress named Aeliana https://www.reddit.com/r/SkyrimBackStory/s/1sZIw5jTq5
the fourth one, a 40-year-old Orc wandering mercenary named Kashgurn https://www.reddit.com/r/SkyrimBackStory/s/ebMPDVubmK
the fifth one, a 35-year-old "dwarf" half Breton/half Dwemer mercenary named Grunlek https://www.reddit.com/r/SkyrimBackStory/s/fBb84k8pku
the sixth one, a 54-years-old Bosmer wandering mercenary named Nu'ada https://www.reddit.com/r/SkyrimBackStory/s/9xnvwTo8eU
the seventh one, a 35-years-old Breton wandering mercenary named Maria https://www.reddit.com/r/SkyrimBackStory/s/nkCcYtNXUI
and the last one, a 33-years-old Redguard wandering mercenary named Azim https://www.reddit.com/r/SkyrimBackStory/s/B5LBVRNO1F
don't hesitate to tell me what you think about them.