How to build a Warlock?

The description of the question might seem nonsensical for those of you who don't know what world-building is. So, let me explain my question first.<br><br>When building fiction worlds, people often mirror the real life process. Just like we learn a language by reading and writing, the same happens with world-building. You learn the process by actually doing it. This post is about what is in my mind when I am building anything in a world, be it an entire country, a single person, magic, gods, etc. In order for me to build something, I need to have a complete image of what the thing I'm building is, both in terms of world-building and in terms of the purpose it will fulfill in the story.<br><br>You see, if I want to build a guy who is this and that, I need to first explain the same question. Why are you this and that? This is because, you see, the world-building process is the process of answering a massive amount of questions about the world. It's NOT about creating the landscape of a place, giving some special powers to certain people, etc. You can do that, but if you do, you are not worldbuilding. You are just creating a story.<br><br>When you world-build, you can create a story, but your first purpose is to create that world, and not the story. This is because you build a world to tell stories using it, which is something very important to remember. If someone decides to build a story in your world, she will have to follow the rules you have established for it. You can't have a story where your rules are broken, because if so, you are breaking the very nature of world-building. You are creating a story, not a world.<br><br>So, in order to build that guy, I need to answer "Why is he like this?". If this is a result of a curse, I need to answer "How is the curse affecting him?". If the curse is part of a religion in your world, you need to answer "How did this religion appear in the world?". Or, "What is this religion's purpose?". So, you see, every person in your world can turn into their own world. It's not even necessary to answer those questions with words sometimes. One example I have in mind right now is the idea of a mortal emperor.<br><br>It's weird if an emperor is immortal, because how can that even work? If the emperor can't die, then there is no need to follow the usual path of inheriting an empire: the thing of an emperor giving the throne to their children, and they to their children, and so on. An immortal emperor will keep his throne for a really long time, so you might ask yourself "But how can an immortal emperor work? Why is he immortal to begin with?". That is the point. If we want a character to be this and that, we need to establish WHY he is this and that.<br><br>If an emperor is immortal, he needs to be this way for a reason. And this is because of the nature of world-building itself. A world is not a bunch of separate events or things, each one isolated from the rest. It is what happens when things are interconnected. A world is a system, where everything has a reason for existing. So, in order to build an immortal emperor, we need to ask ourselves why in the world he is that, and how does that matter in the story.<br><br>You may have a system where the emperor is chosen, and once he is chosen, he becomes immortal. So, how does the emperor's life change when he becomes immortal? How does the people in the empire see this emperor? How does the empire change because of him? Or, if I want to build a warlock, I need to answer "What is a warlock, and why are they like this?". And this is where the problem begins.<br><br>You see, a warlock is a specific class of Dungeons and Dragons, and they have very specific rules and behaviors. However, if I want to build a warlock, I need to put myself in the category of a 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons combat system. That means that I need to start by answering "What is this combat system, and why are they like this?". And this is NOT the question I want to answer. If you want to build a city, you don't need to build the entire country where the city will be before you start building the city. But in this case, this is exactly what I need to do. To answer the question "What is a warlock, and why are they like this?", I need to build the entire game before getting to the warlocks.<br><br>But world-building doesn't work this way. You build a world to tell stories. And if you build a world just to build it, you are not worldbuilding. You are just creating a world because you want to create a world. This is like saying that you are going to create a maze, but the maze doesn't need to be solved. This maze is just a maze for the sake of being a maze. This is not a problem, however. You can do that, as long as you understand what you're doing. But if you want to build a world, your purpose needs to be steering a direction towards storytelling. If I want to build a warlock but also build an entire game that the warlock is going to be relevant in, then I am not world building a specific thing. I'm worldbuilding the entire game, and the warlock is going to be a small part of it.<br><br>So, how do you build a warlock? Warlocks are a creation of 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons, so what do you do?<br><br>P.S. This post is about world-building, and not storytelling. This is not about how you tell a story about a warlock, but about how you build one.