First pass at Nicolas; let me know what you’d like changed:
As is, he’s a good street scrapper but would struggle against a monstrous foe. But if you find the time and money to put him in some real armour and get a better sword he’ll be a genuine quality fighter.
And the answers to the questions up-thread…
Nicolas’s closest friend in the world, until a little under a year ago, was Henri de Marché. The pair grew up together in the fencing academies and cafes of Araterre.
Nicolas the second son of a lesser noble house struggling to maintain social status with a meagre fortune, Henri the son of a newly wealthy merchant family they always had each others backs. The pair headed to the mainland seeking fortune and fame as mercenaries when Nicolas was 16. That was 15 years ago, since then they’ve fought in skirmishes and wars across the known world and founded the Company of the Golden Hound.
Over the past few campaign seasons they’d made a small fortune in the Carthniss civil war, but a rift grew between the two friends after Nicolas turned down one too many highly lucrative contracts he felt were too risky. Henri disagreed and found enough support to force Nicolas out, out of respect for their long friendship he let Nicolas take a captain’s share of the gold with him.
Where do they hope to end up? Back in charge of his company, or failing that another one. Either way his ultimate goal is to die rich and renowned in a warm bed, next to a good woman.
When he can he prefers to get a good view of the fight so he can coordinate things, and if he can fight on prepared ground all the better. But when he’s on his own, or caught in the middle of things he relies on mobility, and quick strikes.
He’s a better swordsman than an archer, but he’d like to think he’s no slouch with a longbow.
Describe their physical appearance, including eye and hair colour, clothing
style etc.
A tall man, with dark blonde hair and brown eyes. He’s not more than average looking, until he breaks out a smile or boisterous laugh.
It’s easy to tell when things are good, his hair’s well groomed and moustache is neatly trimmed and he stands at full height brimming with confidence, some would say over-confidence.
Now is obviously not a good time, his hair is lank and greasy, he’s unshaven, the confidence seems more like bravado. His obviously once fine clothes are stained and patched, and a bottle of alcohol is never far from his hand
Nicolas is Catholic, and wears a cross, but he doesn’t think too much about it. He’ll pay lip service to the church and attend mass when there’s a service available, and if he remembers. When it comes to other religions, he thinks they’re varying degrees of wrong; Muslims and Jews are at least worshipping the right God. But all that’s for the priests to worry about, non-Catholics are much the same as anybody else on Yrrth, give or take some weird customs.
Magic is a vital battlefield tool, and has all sorts of useful applications in general. Just don’t ask Nicolas to explain any of it - he only cares about what it can do in a given situation.
What is their attitude towards humans/non-humans?
Elves have a certain sense of style Nicolas admires, even if he finds them a bit stand-offish in general. You can’t beat the Dwarves for craftsmanship or a good brew, and if you want a formation to hold have a Dwarf or two act as the lynchpin. Orcs? He hasn’t met one that wasn’t trying to kill him, so that colours things a bit.
In terms of humans, his time in Carthiness has left him with a deep contempt for knights. In Nicolas’ opinion they’re arrogant hypocrites at best. At worst they’re one of the rare true believers in that chivalry nonsense and they’re likely to get anyone unlucky enough to be their ally killed by doing something stupid like waiting for an enemy to pick up a dropped sword.
Slight issue: is he from Caithness, or from Araterre? They’re pretty much on opposite sides of the continent.
Caithness is an independent country of low-magic English chivalry, with a low-intensity civil war; Araterre is a normal-magic French swashbuckler region, a distant and semi-autonomous part of the Megalan empire.
Nicolas as written would work for either location (an Aralaise mercenary could have fought in Caithness), although if he was Aralaise it would justify replacing the broadsword with a rapier or saber if you wanted. OTOH, if you just like the French-ish names but prefer the Caithness background, there’s no reason why one of the Caithness petty nobility can’t be a bit more Norman than usual.
Do you want to change the crossbow to a longbow? You’ll have a usable rate of fire, but much less punch (the crossbow is intended as a fire-and-forget fight-opener).
He’s Aralaise. I figured he’d likely have done a bit of time in Caithness as a merc, what with the civil war and all.
That first pass is pretty much what I was going for.
For tweaks I’ll swap out broadsword for rapier, and longbow for crossbow (That should give a bit more flexibility if we need a combat archer going).
On the disadvantages front: Would an intolerance of knights count? And maybe having a gambling debt to some less than savoury type could be interesting (if it wouldn’t derail things of course.)
And I was hopping he’d be competent to good with tactics, what would I need to give up to boost that skill?
How about this:
Against unarmoured humans, this version of Nicolas is more deadly than the previous; the added reach of the rapier lets you toy with your opponents in one-on-one fights. The new Nic is less able to fight effectively in heavy armour, but has a very good defence (a cloak-assisted retreating parry of 16).
However, that defence only works until you run into something too heavy to stop with a rapier; watch out for polearms etc.
Seems good to me. I can always adjust equipment/tactics in game as time and money allows if I decide I don’t like how it’s working out.
Now I’ve just got to think up a couple of quirks.
(Sorry all, overly long work day today - catching up. Tomorrow/tonight will be similar but hopefully less long.)
BTW, if everyone Googles up whatever they think is the most appropriate portrait for their character, I’ll add those to the sheets.
Kinda looking forward to sketching/painting a character again. Will take a stab at it this weekend.
…And this is why I took the “long-winded” quirk.
BTW, @Mitchell, you might want to check Nic’s math…
If there is interest I could run something much lighter weight on here. Probably powered by the apocalypse to keep rolls simple.
Yeah, I wanted to say something about that (how is $200/week seven times $150/week?), but Hawk is neither familiar enough with the coins of this realm nor with Mercenary rates to quibble with someone who seems to know what they’re talking about.
Whoops, I’d mis-read that as per day. Still slightly suspect, but not blaring sirens and flashing lights suspicious.
I’ll have to make an edit or two
[quote]
Hawk folds his arms, still looking at AI Las’ah. "Tonight we go to West part of city; this is your people, yes? What must we know before tonight[/quote]
Jibrīl’s Wazifi, actually; north, not west. But mixing up al-Haz and al-Wazif is in character for Hawk.
Oops. I got Hazi and Wazi confused.
Oh well, it seems an easy enough mistake to make.
(Or maybe Hawk is still just playing dumb… >.> <.<)
Like I could remember where I was from…
Speaking of which, since the basic geography of Ytarria is common knowledge, see:
Araterre is the bit down around Isle Entelle. The elves don’t have a country, but there are more of them in the forest south of Caithness than anywhere else.
@nimelennar @Daaksyde @Mitchell @William_Holz @daneel
GM NOTE: let me know what you plan on taking with you into West Tredroy (you can arrange to stash unneeded kit at the inn) and give me a cue when y’all are done chatting and are ready for the evening’s excursion.
Ranar will carry everything. He accustomed to keeping his things with him.
