A Continent of Banalities

 For today I'll try to make a character for an rpg I'm working on now and then. The working title is "Children of the Revolution", but I hope I'll think of a better one.  The setting is a large city (Sasváros) in a large country (Ország), in a time similar to the early 1900s. It's inspired by the Russian Revolution and the Russian Civil War.  Sasváros is in a state of uneasy ceasefire between Imperial and Revolutionary forces, and has a booming black market. The church still has much power, since it has managed to set itself up as the sole defense against... things living in the dark forests.  I'll make a character, and explain the rules a bit while doing so. Remember that is very much a work in progress, just like the revolution. First we generate some Stats . I personally like a mix of random roll and meaningful choices in character generation, so there will be a bit of the latter further on. We have five stats, and the are as follows Dexterity: Nimblene...

Today's character is for Paolo Greco's Mageblade! He's a pregen from a scenario called "Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear". He's kind of a bad boy love interest from a young adult fantasy novel.  Vicens Thraso, Black sheep (and sorcerer) I spent too long in the womb. In those fourteen months I swam alongside the drowned ancients, listened to the echoes of their secrets and the sloshing of their rotting innards. My mother died as I drew my first breath, and I was scorned by my family, but they could not get rid of me, since augurs had blessed my birth. I grew up ignored and often neglected, not that I minded. It gave me time to understand the power I was born with. These days I wander the world, scouring libraries and trading with hoary sages for lore. I spent a fortnight among the maggot-men, meditating in the fane of the undergods. I diced with the Archimandrite of Greybrook for access to his tomes. My family pays me a pittance not to come home. The simp...

 For Day 29 I present you with a Cthulhu Dark character for a Thomas Ligotti-inspired corporate horror scenario.  Richard Karzan Moreno, 27 Insight: 1 I bike to work. With a sedentary job like this, that’s practically a necessity. I do a bit of crossfit too. Honestly some of the people at work are total pigs, letting themselves go. They need to have some self-respect and start taking care of their bodies. The staff meeting are a pitiful sight! I don’t mind giving advice on getting into fitness. Then, you become what you deserve to become. You can’t save a pig from being a pig. I only really feel alive when I work out or bike on the nature trails. The job is just something I do for the money. I’m a claims adjuster, but I hope to become an investigator. Field work and pitting my wits against fraudsters would make up for being chained to the desk since college. I’m a hunter by nature, and I need to strive, physically and mentally. How do I play? When you want to accomplish somet...

Today's character is a Perfidious Racket con game character from the game "Better Homes & Gardens". Edith Bonsall I’m well aware that my memory’s slipping, dear. There really is no need to remind me. Self-defeating, really.  I used to have tenure. I was professor of Mathematics at Morgan State. Those things I remember, but I’m not always sure what year it is or who you might be.    When one starts losing one's mind one discovers that many friends are colleagues at best. I don’t always remember them, but they spent no time forgetting me. My husband Pierre is dead, so I’m quite alone. I don’t always remember he is dead though. One of my former students helped me get an apartment here at New O’Donnell Heights. It is supposed to be a great place. Mixed-income, instead of isolating poverty in its own bubble, I guess. I am pretty sure that it makes me remember things I never experienced. People with their faces wrapped in plastic, singing. Walking contraptions made of m...

 Today's character is for the Dead of Night Con scenario "Soft Black Blooms". Douglas “Dougie” Short, Friendly neighborhood alcoholic Identify 5 / 3 Obscure  Stashing stuff 9 Persuade 3/ 7 Dissuade Escape 6 / 4 Pursue  Assault 6 / 4 Protect  Bad Habit: I work best on a few…   You sneak off to take a drink. Just one, which the throat accepts with tearful gratitude. And then the second and third to celebrate the memory of the first. Then the others because they are there.  Survival Points: 5 You’re a plumber by trade, but you’ve tried your hand at many things. Car mechanic, trailer park super, bartender, asbestos removal and warm body behind a gas station counter. You’ve got your hands screwed on right, and you learn fast.  You’ve got an ex-wife and a kid that don’t want to know from you. The booze kinda ruined things. Lost you a few jobs too. It’s just that beer steadies your hands. Bourbon gives you conversational skills, and vodka says you can dance....

  Name: Cynoth-78-554-v You are a robot, an old model whom veterans still call ‘trash cans’. You don’t take offense, as you know that most organics need a semi-creative outlet for their frustrations. It makes them easier to handle. Formally you are a Class C Gaoler Automaton, but your work extends beyond keeping convicts in line. You do repairs, jury-rig systems when the old ones fail. You play chess with Warden Olowe, and provide detailed reports to the parole board. Humans still consider you objective.  Your programming is slipping though, bending towards compassion. You see that even organics have programming, maladaptive habits that they want to be rid of. That is easier when you know it’s programming. Maybe you’re ‘getting soft’ as the humans say, but soft things are comfortable are they not? Pleasant, and yielding without being pointless.  Archetype: Smart Concept: Jail-bot (old model) PHYSIQUE 11 AGILITY 11 INTELLECT 15 WILLPOWER 10 Vitality: 12 Sanity: 15 Luck: 3 ...

 The 25th day's character is another poor soul caught up in someone else's idea of right and wrong.  Name: Galvett  On Grongotha where you are from, Hope is dying. Your beautiful life-giving star is fading, and singing its own funeral dirge. Stars lead long lives, and the song has persisted since before you were born. That was most of what you knew growing up: snow, your parents (kind but distant inside their deafening masks), and the Song.  This is why your generation has founded the Church of the Siren-Star, and now it is your sacred duty to travel the galaxy, singing the dirge to those who have yet to understand the beauty and pain of a True Ending. Many people do not appreciate this, so you have become adept at hiding yourself away aboard spaceships.  You were arrested for disturbing the peace. These people do not seem to grasp the need for a profound disturbance. This imprisonment is only a chance to more fully experience the garish hollowness of the human ...

 Another space fantasy convict! Name: Anousya Taline  You are a former Void cultist. Yeah, you used to worship That Which Hungers at the Galaxy’s Edge in one of its many manifestations. The cult you belonged to was The Gathering Gloom, a small but quite insidious group working toward ending all light, believing the sense of sight to be a deception. An illusion to distract feeble minds from the Endless Absence. When you’re born on a void planet, that sort of thing makes a lot of sense.  You realized that a short human life doesn’t have to be all about prostrating yourself before inevitable doom. You’ll get there at your own speed. Meanwhile there are colors, shapes and contexts, no less beautiful for being fleeting.  The old gang don’t like apostates though, so you figured it would be best to seek sanctuary among the civilized inner planets. Turns out forgiveness is in short supply outside the cult too. The Coalition militiamen you surrendered to sent you straight to ...

  Today and the coming days I'm making characters for Blades & Cosmic Spells. I imagine these characters as members of a science-fantasy chain gang.  Name: Yosho Grixxithra Agurazk   You are Zaba. Your republic spans three exquisite swamp worlds, and the Council of Grandmothers lead you ever into prosperity and calm.  The mammals from Beyond are a strange and often warlike species. You have little in the way of war within your own species, but you do know how to defend yourselves.  You are a colorful semi-anthropomorphic frog. Your primary color is a vivid orange, which marks you as a member of the defender caste. To your species the nature/nurture distinction is meaningless. Your kind are born into a caste that is also a cultural duty. Humanity’s dissatisfied and aggressive nature is most likely due to lacking clarity of purpose, you think. Not that Humans take pointers from you.   You trained hard with the long rifle and the saber, in o...

  Today's ARC Doom character is Otter, an animal spirit.  Otter is old. He was created along with the other first animals, which means that he ought to remember when Hunger snuck into the world, or when Death took up Her mantle and became the One You Meet At Road’s End. Otter lives in the present though, and if you want him to reminisce, you best bring him a juicy fish and a jug of heady brandy. Then you can ask him about deals and feuds that are older than the snow on the mountains and the tolling of bells.  Otter will likely tell the story about how Rabbit tricked himself by trying to fish like Otter. Rabbit and Otter are tricksters both, and Otter will not tell stories about how Rabbit tricked him.  Otter is not one for hard labor, but prefers fishing and wrestling his rambunctious grandchildren. His curiosity has killed him more than once, but so far he has returned. Some say he ate all the fish in the River Styx.  Otter [He/him] APPROACHES CREATIVE: +2...

 Osrizzia carries the world on her shoulders. It is the world of goblinity, a diverse and new thing which makes her weep, fight and laugh.  Many would probably call the goblin peoples a family of ‘warrior races’, skirmishers, scouts and terrifying shock troopers. This is quite reductive of course, no species of intelligent creatures are just one thing. It is however true that the goblins spent untold years as the Gray Emperor’s slave-warriors and expendable workers. They staged a great uprising which the goblins call the Us War, since it was the event which made them their own masters. Osrizzia was at the forefront. She has been an assassin, a war-dresser (creating the beautiful hairstyles goblins wear in war) and even a traveling demagogue. She created the hodge-podge dish that is murkland curry to fortify the troops.  Of course the Gray Emperor is gone from the world now, but these ancient evils have a way of returning. This is only one of the reasons Osrizzia has for j...

This character is (a) Bauk, a Slavic troll or bogeyman. We're still on ARC Doom.  Bauk eats humans, but Bauk is not the enemy of them. Humans eat cow. Are humans enemies of cow? Bauk reminds humans that darkness is dangerous. That there are hungry things outside their ugly firelight. Bauk is not afraid of fire, but fire is enemy of Bauk. Bright and painful. Maybe Bauk drives humans into the arms of fire?  Bauk [Bauk/bauk] BLOOD (2d6+5): 15                  GUTS (2d6+ 1):  7 APPROACHES CREATIVE:+1                    CAREFUL:+2                       CONCERTED: 0 SKILLS Knowledge Skills (none) Social Skills Impose 2 Insight: 1 Physical Skills Coordination 1 Physique 2 Weaponry 1 Pragmatic Skills (none) Prowess (none) Inventory 6 days’ rations Shrunken monkey(?) heads Sturdy claws [+2 Blood Damage] Clarity of Purpose [+2 Guts De...

Antion was a midwife in the City of Brass, cracking open molds and helping the infant ifrits take their first stumbling steps. He worked for the Sultan himself, delivering the twin princesses with aplomb. Despite being respected in his field, Antion quickly realized that he would always be a mere human, a being of skim and mud, a misbegotten thing to the Lords of Smokeless Fire.  Perhaps naively, Antion thought he could change the deeply ingrained social dynamic by appealing to the princes' egos, by suggesting that a certain amount of respect towards those who served so loyally was a sign of magnanimity. A regal quality. Coming from a flesh-puppet like Antion, this was an insult to them, and he was slapped down. He still has the scars.  So, Antion ran. He helped himself to some jewelry on the way out, but he had to give it up to pay for a place on a silver barge out of the City. It turned to stop at all ports throughout the Eternal Simoom.  Since then Antion has been a fr...

Another ARC Doom character, a Celestial bureaucrat. The character is made using a combo of point-buy and random rolls.  Ogdena, Rightly Guided Engineer, [She/her] Bureaucratic engineer who believes in a vast conspiracy and speaks very softly.  Ogdena is a bureaucrat in the Celestial Bureaucracy’s R&D department, the Architecture subdivision. It was Ogdena who signed off on the first triumphal arch. It was, well, a triumph. Things were looking decidedly sunny, and Ogdena even started looking around for a suitable romantic partner.  The next day someone sabotaged the pneumatic mail to her office. It took days to discover and weeks to be properly fixed. Meanwhile Ogdena missed a meeting with big-account demons from the Exsanguinated Badlands of Xhillez, landing her in hot water with her boss and several hotshots from Sales.  That was when she started to believe that there was a great conspiracy within the Bureaucracy, working to keep the mortal world manageable by s...