D&D: Favorite Characters?

I haven't played that often and when I did it wasn't the full on experience that I'm sure more developed folks get (first time was about 2 years ago), but character creation was a blast for me and so far I've only had two fleshed out characters.

One thing that has ticked me off the most though is the "Mary Sue" characters where a tall, dark haired, quiet guy will plays as a tall, dark haired, quiet elf... with a troubled past. Another thing that's been kind of unique for me is that most of my campaigns have had to start high level so I've never really had to deal with leveling and building a character up it's been kind of a bummer not to be able to do that and I've had to be tossed in with folks doing all kinds of advanced class stuff, which is kind of a pain.

"Walker Grey" was a dwarf slave trader who only enslaved peoples who were shorter than himself and showed much more deference to the taller races, though he didn't approve of height being used as a pejorative. In that campaign I think we helped an Illithid get possession of a hammer that was the incarnation of a dead God, then one of our party had to use it to kill someone, though I can't remember who actually. I think at one point Walker almost started a race war between Dwarves and Halflings because of his race-based slave trading, but the conflicted was avoided.

"Tarrak" was a Whirling Dervish with amnesia. He was put on an oubliette for several years and only given a magical bowl of soup that continually refilled with whatever soup he desired. Though he couldn't remember who he was, he had fallen in love with the bowl and could spontaneously remember amazing Dervish feats though he didn't understand how. He was rescued but got about 5 minutes of talking before everyone else in the party was killed off. I came in late and everyone was supposed to be re-rolling characters so I didn't even really get to do anything with that one.

I was tossing around another idea for a Gnome religious zealot who rode a mech and had some sort of fanatical mission to fulfill though I'm not sure what it would be. The only thing I know about him is that he has some sort of blue bandanna that he wears in battle, which is some sort of important religious thing to him.