Whilst I'm GMing for this story, what each person gets out of this story, including their adventure, is ultimately up to them. It is expected however to be something deeply related to politics, warfare, and to a minor degree analgous to the seventeenth century. Knowledge of these things is not required - NPCs will do their best to educate you - but it will be helpful.
A sense of ambition and desire to enrich your character's life is appreciated.
Dooms
Everyone has a fate. You can’t fight it, much.
A weaver has mocked your future in ink, spelling out your doom from front to back, top to bottom, with a flowing black tatau in a tongue you don’t recognize. When first she saw it, Lady Arianne called it beautiful - and commanded you to keep it hidden for their own good.
Even if you hide it, the doom written on your skin can’t be avoided. This will be one of the personal throughlines of your character, central to their arc, journey, and relationships. It also changes fundamental aspects of the story to suit it, giving you a unique experience and me a fresh challenge. their doom will haunt them all the way to the end, and it will be the death of you.
It begins with hazy memories of your past. You already know how it ends.
Brother - His name was Noah.
In the waste-clogged alleys and hellish inhumanities of the great city where you were a slave, you were not totally alone. You had a brother, a slave just like you, and he did all he could to keep you safe, fed, and happy. Sometimes he even succeeded.
Then Noah disappeared. Gone, lost in the urban hell. Without Lord Orys, you would have starved or worse. Ten years and two thousand miles separate you from the terrible place that stole away their brother, turning the dim memories into vapor, but still you remember him.
And he remembers you. His love will be the death of you.
Heretic - Do you speak to the fay? Do the demons speak to you? Do one of the planks in their room hide a copy of the Marter that you read in hope of understanding the one true God? Would Marlans even know the difference?
A deeply pagan and conservative land, to believe in anything other than the Ancestors is just shy of betraying the baron’s trust itself. Perhaps you can convince them to believe in their good intentions, to look above their hatred and see the beauty of tolerance, or even convince them to join you.
Visions - You see into the Dust. Spice above everything.
It lets you see; the spice. Burning stone angels, and the whispered secrets of princes. Blood soaked battlefields of ages long past, and fragments of the discordant futures that will come to be one day. Just a line or two of that holy red sand, and you’ll dream.
If one gets over the vivid nightmares, it’s wonderful. The Songbird chimes her songs, and deeper you go each time, uncovering existence’s secrets in a blissful fog. Ancestors forbid you run out of hits, or take a tainted line, or try to quit. As if you could. And why would you want to stop, anyway?
Not all was meant to be dreamt. The nightmares will follow you.
Host - Deep, deep below, you feel it.
Past the warmth in their gut, all sensation tapers away into nothing. Only rarely does it come out. It doesn’t seem like the demons from the stories, if it even is a demon. There is no cruelty that you’ve found, no vile treachery nor hunger for their soul. If you’re lucky, it might even crack a joke with you.
Yet still, it remains. It saved you when you were buried into a cave by a snowstorm, giving you a warmth their body no longer had. It had you stuff goat cheese into the chef’s shoes, and the two of you both laughed at that one. It gets hungry when you see corpses, but neither of you talk about that.
It really is sorry they chose your body.
Professions
You may live in a barony constantly in the throes of war, but that doesn’t exempt you or anyone else from learning a trade. After they reach puberty, it’s customary for Marlan children to be sent on a gap year (there’s a fancy term for it but I forgot it) where they can learn something other than the job they were raised to do. their Lord has seen fit to send you on theirs, and it’s from their gap year that you’re returning.
What was their profession? The ones below are standard, but with a good reason I’d accept pretty much anything, including multiple professions.
Cadet - You’ve been kicking around soldiers all their life, and have become the cadet of master-at-arms Herr Katya Franz, who has taught you a wide range of martial skills.
Clerk - Numbers and letters always came naturally. Lady Arianne recognized their talent, and has made you one of her scribbling apprentices.
Trapper - Stealthy, clever, and without too many scruples, you decided you actually want to make some money and went to be a trapper under House Varain’s warden, Rakel.
Whittler - The art of scraping and scratching at wood to make something beautiful. Most Marlans carve their own unique animal mask for ceremonies and festivals.
Actor - You’ve spent much of your life lying to people to entertain them, but Lord Orys has hired an entire troupe of them to bring life and prestige to Marlas, which means people will pay you to lie to them now.
Gofer - Rarely seen without a satchel at your side, you deliver mail as well as whatever else needs to be moved across the unsafe woods of Marlas.
Cook - Although Chef Henrik’s food is legendary, many still question the sanity of allowing a former prisoner to cook Lord Orys’ food. Despite his qualifications, he has allowed you to become his pupil, rarely discussing anything that isn’t food.
Physician - Ginead decided that your hands were steady enough to become her apprentice, allowing you to learn under the mushroom-addled pellar. Or to spend time with Gunhilde, her lovely daughter.
---=---
The boar is not dead, though to all the other hunters’ senses it is. It lays motionless on its side within the sled, tied down by rope with two arrows sticking discordantly out of its hide like seams of broken bone. Frozen blood pools in the cracked stomach of the sled, collecting rather than leaking now that red ice has sealed the wood. Poison leaching out of the arrowheads keeps the boar docile, and its breathing so light that only you can see. An ovate in too-thin robes shivers as she ties a garland of rosemary around the beast’s neck, murmuring prayers to the ancestors that they might find the kill worthy.
Winter has seized the land in its vise, its unending waves of cold and snow having transformed the Barony of Marlas into a crueler scape, one you doesn’t quite recognize. Tranquility abounds along the driven snow, all through the clearing, hiding the buried world and the woes of man but unable to snuff them out. You knows well what a mirage it is, the oppressive winters of his homeland no less savage than the bloodletting summers. The numbing cold does not soothe the aches, for you knows they’ll be worse come morning, come the thaw. Too soon this clearing will melt, its river gone from white to red, the whole Septima Line thrust back to war.
Baron Orys refuses to yield to midnight season, to accept its peace, and so from his great warhorse’s saddle he brazenly belts out a mixture of drunken lyrics and commands, determined to master this hunt even if he does not partake. An entourage on horseback spreads out in his orbit, ranging from eager young footmen to grizzled junkers, all in varying states of inebriation at his command. Their braying is nearly louder than the hounds’, who hungrily stalk between the sled and the hole they pulled the boar out from. Teased by the hunt but yet unrewarded, they’re too unruly to be kept in check by the kennel master.
On foot slog the unfortunates who actually have to take part in the hunt, you among them. They huddle into their hemp canvas cloaks, glancing up at the moody afternoon sky threatening to crack open with another snowstorm. Dark clouds sweep in low from the south like a riptide, a single vast current swept in from the mountains already menacing the Oldwoods. Its furthest gales reach them as tongues of vengeful cold, flecks of whipped-up snow biting into your exposed skin.
By the boar’s nest leans a typical Mallean, one of your two erstwhile comrades. Sigorn is tall, pale, broad, with the close-set, wide-boned features of a commoner, and a shock of red hair grown out to protect against the elements. Beneath his cloak he proudly bears his blood-flecked armor, each dent a Darkman put into it a point of dear pride. He’s not the only one, either, the clearing filled with dozens of youths whose first blooding ended in victory amid a blizzard. Baron Orys, deep into his cups after six days of nonstop celebration, saw a break in the storms and gladly called a hunt. When informed he could not go on account of his shattered knee - he simply grinned, and ordered himself tied to his saddle.
You remember the moment his lord fell from the saddle as if it were burned into your nerves. The screaming of horses, skidding hooves catching on the frozen ground. On the edges of your vision a rider smashes into a branch in the din, others don’t move at all for fear of the blizzard. Your spurs dig, the borrowed steed whines, and you races for your lord - only for another to reach him first.
“What a woman.” Sigorn sighs beside you, craning his neck to look at one of their lord’s companions of honor. Susannah Oye, junker unlike the others, a pretty, willowy noblewoman well into motherhood, with the lean, ruthless look of a ranger. Her two poisoned arrows are what struck the boar down, and her pride curls off her body like steam. Sigorn’s face cracks into exaggerated appreciation, and then he turns to their lord’s other honored companion. Another woman, this one as young as they are, haughtily-built and leering with none of Susannah’s refinement. Many of those looks are reserved for you, forced to slog on foot as just another hunter. “Anya too. I think she fancies you, eh?”
A sense of ambition and desire to enrich your character's life is appreciated.
Dooms
Everyone has a fate. You can’t fight it, much.
A weaver has mocked your future in ink, spelling out your doom from front to back, top to bottom, with a flowing black tatau in a tongue you don’t recognize. When first she saw it, Lady Arianne called it beautiful - and commanded you to keep it hidden for their own good.
Even if you hide it, the doom written on your skin can’t be avoided. This will be one of the personal throughlines of your character, central to their arc, journey, and relationships. It also changes fundamental aspects of the story to suit it, giving you a unique experience and me a fresh challenge. their doom will haunt them all the way to the end, and it will be the death of you.
It begins with hazy memories of your past. You already know how it ends.
Brother - His name was Noah.
In the waste-clogged alleys and hellish inhumanities of the great city where you were a slave, you were not totally alone. You had a brother, a slave just like you, and he did all he could to keep you safe, fed, and happy. Sometimes he even succeeded.
Then Noah disappeared. Gone, lost in the urban hell. Without Lord Orys, you would have starved or worse. Ten years and two thousand miles separate you from the terrible place that stole away their brother, turning the dim memories into vapor, but still you remember him.
And he remembers you. His love will be the death of you.
Heretic - Do you speak to the fay? Do the demons speak to you? Do one of the planks in their room hide a copy of the Marter that you read in hope of understanding the one true God? Would Marlans even know the difference?
A deeply pagan and conservative land, to believe in anything other than the Ancestors is just shy of betraying the baron’s trust itself. Perhaps you can convince them to believe in their good intentions, to look above their hatred and see the beauty of tolerance, or even convince them to join you.
Visions - You see into the Dust. Spice above everything.
It lets you see; the spice. Burning stone angels, and the whispered secrets of princes. Blood soaked battlefields of ages long past, and fragments of the discordant futures that will come to be one day. Just a line or two of that holy red sand, and you’ll dream.
If one gets over the vivid nightmares, it’s wonderful. The Songbird chimes her songs, and deeper you go each time, uncovering existence’s secrets in a blissful fog. Ancestors forbid you run out of hits, or take a tainted line, or try to quit. As if you could. And why would you want to stop, anyway?
Not all was meant to be dreamt. The nightmares will follow you.
Host - Deep, deep below, you feel it.
Past the warmth in their gut, all sensation tapers away into nothing. Only rarely does it come out. It doesn’t seem like the demons from the stories, if it even is a demon. There is no cruelty that you’ve found, no vile treachery nor hunger for their soul. If you’re lucky, it might even crack a joke with you.
Yet still, it remains. It saved you when you were buried into a cave by a snowstorm, giving you a warmth their body no longer had. It had you stuff goat cheese into the chef’s shoes, and the two of you both laughed at that one. It gets hungry when you see corpses, but neither of you talk about that.
It really is sorry they chose your body.
Professions
You may live in a barony constantly in the throes of war, but that doesn’t exempt you or anyone else from learning a trade. After they reach puberty, it’s customary for Marlan children to be sent on a gap year (there’s a fancy term for it but I forgot it) where they can learn something other than the job they were raised to do. their Lord has seen fit to send you on theirs, and it’s from their gap year that you’re returning.
What was their profession? The ones below are standard, but with a good reason I’d accept pretty much anything, including multiple professions.
Cadet - You’ve been kicking around soldiers all their life, and have become the cadet of master-at-arms Herr Katya Franz, who has taught you a wide range of martial skills.
Clerk - Numbers and letters always came naturally. Lady Arianne recognized their talent, and has made you one of her scribbling apprentices.
Trapper - Stealthy, clever, and without too many scruples, you decided you actually want to make some money and went to be a trapper under House Varain’s warden, Rakel.
Whittler - The art of scraping and scratching at wood to make something beautiful. Most Marlans carve their own unique animal mask for ceremonies and festivals.
Actor - You’ve spent much of your life lying to people to entertain them, but Lord Orys has hired an entire troupe of them to bring life and prestige to Marlas, which means people will pay you to lie to them now.
Gofer - Rarely seen without a satchel at your side, you deliver mail as well as whatever else needs to be moved across the unsafe woods of Marlas.
Cook - Although Chef Henrik’s food is legendary, many still question the sanity of allowing a former prisoner to cook Lord Orys’ food. Despite his qualifications, he has allowed you to become his pupil, rarely discussing anything that isn’t food.
Physician - Ginead decided that your hands were steady enough to become her apprentice, allowing you to learn under the mushroom-addled pellar. Or to spend time with Gunhilde, her lovely daughter.
---=---
THE BOAR, WINTER 3rd, 1628
The boar is not dead, though to all the other hunters’ senses it is. It lays motionless on its side within the sled, tied down by rope with two arrows sticking discordantly out of its hide like seams of broken bone. Frozen blood pools in the cracked stomach of the sled, collecting rather than leaking now that red ice has sealed the wood. Poison leaching out of the arrowheads keeps the boar docile, and its breathing so light that only you can see. An ovate in too-thin robes shivers as she ties a garland of rosemary around the beast’s neck, murmuring prayers to the ancestors that they might find the kill worthy.
Winter has seized the land in its vise, its unending waves of cold and snow having transformed the Barony of Marlas into a crueler scape, one you doesn’t quite recognize. Tranquility abounds along the driven snow, all through the clearing, hiding the buried world and the woes of man but unable to snuff them out. You knows well what a mirage it is, the oppressive winters of his homeland no less savage than the bloodletting summers. The numbing cold does not soothe the aches, for you knows they’ll be worse come morning, come the thaw. Too soon this clearing will melt, its river gone from white to red, the whole Septima Line thrust back to war.
Baron Orys refuses to yield to midnight season, to accept its peace, and so from his great warhorse’s saddle he brazenly belts out a mixture of drunken lyrics and commands, determined to master this hunt even if he does not partake. An entourage on horseback spreads out in his orbit, ranging from eager young footmen to grizzled junkers, all in varying states of inebriation at his command. Their braying is nearly louder than the hounds’, who hungrily stalk between the sled and the hole they pulled the boar out from. Teased by the hunt but yet unrewarded, they’re too unruly to be kept in check by the kennel master.
On foot slog the unfortunates who actually have to take part in the hunt, you among them. They huddle into their hemp canvas cloaks, glancing up at the moody afternoon sky threatening to crack open with another snowstorm. Dark clouds sweep in low from the south like a riptide, a single vast current swept in from the mountains already menacing the Oldwoods. Its furthest gales reach them as tongues of vengeful cold, flecks of whipped-up snow biting into your exposed skin.
By the boar’s nest leans a typical Mallean, one of your two erstwhile comrades. Sigorn is tall, pale, broad, with the close-set, wide-boned features of a commoner, and a shock of red hair grown out to protect against the elements. Beneath his cloak he proudly bears his blood-flecked armor, each dent a Darkman put into it a point of dear pride. He’s not the only one, either, the clearing filled with dozens of youths whose first blooding ended in victory amid a blizzard. Baron Orys, deep into his cups after six days of nonstop celebration, saw a break in the storms and gladly called a hunt. When informed he could not go on account of his shattered knee - he simply grinned, and ordered himself tied to his saddle.
You remember the moment his lord fell from the saddle as if it were burned into your nerves. The screaming of horses, skidding hooves catching on the frozen ground. On the edges of your vision a rider smashes into a branch in the din, others don’t move at all for fear of the blizzard. Your spurs dig, the borrowed steed whines, and you races for your lord - only for another to reach him first.
“What a woman.” Sigorn sighs beside you, craning his neck to look at one of their lord’s companions of honor. Susannah Oye, junker unlike the others, a pretty, willowy noblewoman well into motherhood, with the lean, ruthless look of a ranger. Her two poisoned arrows are what struck the boar down, and her pride curls off her body like steam. Sigorn’s face cracks into exaggerated appreciation, and then he turns to their lord’s other honored companion. Another woman, this one as young as they are, haughtily-built and leering with none of Susannah’s refinement. Many of those looks are reserved for you, forced to slog on foot as just another hunter. “Anya too. I think she fancies you, eh?”
1x Laugh
