I totally agree! The faction lore and RP:ing was a real interesting feature that helped out in character development, Lind and Ezeran never interacted much but it always felt like there was a degree of mutual respect between them.
All this begun with me scratching through my collection of minifigs trying to come up with something interesting, I found the torso of an Atlantica-sharkman and then I had this idea of a demonic symbiont etc. As you point out the symbiont was never really the central theme in Ezerans character, it was just a symptom of his past. I am so glad I joined Heroica and went with Ezeran as my character! The friendship with Torald and Petaldan has been so valuable and interesting to follow and it really has meant much to me on a personal level, those three characters has really made an interesting journey both as a strange rag-tag team but also on an individual level. There really is an interesting dynamic between them!
I've taken Ezeran on three quests hosted by @Waterbrick Down (#142, #149 and #157) and they have all been utterly amazing! I see them as the main trilogy for the character-development of Ezeran and WBD has been so generous in hosting these quests by giving him good opportunities to develop as a character. I am very grateful for that! In #142 the friendship between Ezeran, Torald and Petaldan really blossomed. The ending of #149 was one of the more interesting moral dilemmas played out that I've witnessed in any game and Ezerans connection to his past was made possible in #157 by connecting the story to his fathers fate. So really, Ezerans development and riches in character is very much a result of some really clever and empathetic QM'ing on your part WBD!
Torald
What can I say? I really felt a friendship with @Alfadas as much as Ezeran has with Torald. We enrolled in Heroica almost at the same day and Ezeran and Torald became friends almost instantly. Torald really has evolved during these year and has become a complex character. He has this inherent wisdom to him even though he doesn't come across as intelligent. He also seems to have tackled his alcohol-addiction in a good way during this time.
I don't know exactly why he became a battlemage but it was a really nice move RP-wise since it brought Ezeran and Torald even closer.
Petaldan
Petaldan is a really well played character! It's so fresh to have this innocent boy with pure ideals being able to take part in an adult complex world were most characters are flawed and jagged. He brought insights and perspectives that no other characters could have provided and he truly has a heart of gold. I rememeber when he got the "Gloves of the Boy wonder" I designed for him at a Grogmas-event, it felt like giving a christmas-gift to a real kid. I just want to thank @Palathadric for his patience with this character!
#159
Well, I guess I need to say something about the final quest of this whole enterprise! It was an interesting journey even though I had trouble to follow all of the politics, relations, characters and lore. I really feel like I'm still a newcomer to Heroica in a sense and to be honest it's not really all that interesting to try and research and follow all of the other characters relations and all the politics going on. It also reflects in Ezeran as a character really being an outsider (not as much as The Demon Germ) more interested in his close relationships than the bigger schemes at hand. It also comes down to RP-philosophies I guess, I'm a bit allergic to the wall of text-approach that was pretty common in this quest, it's just not something for me.
With that being said it's fantastic to have played a small part of this final chapter and it was fun seeing all of the characters in the same context.