When I built the PC Aedhros, I had in mind JRRT's "Dark Elves" Eol and Maeglin. I also wanted to build a 4 lifepath PC who would be a Dark Elf (my friend and I had agreed to build 4LP PCs), and the Spouse lifepath seemed a good way to get that build,
and it also provided an obvious reason to have become so Spiteful (both Eol and Maeglin are also spiteful for reasons connected to spouses and in-laws, albeit not because of a death as in Aedhros's case). My friend wanted to build a Weather Witch, and so I made sure to build in a connection to the human port, via Aedhros's father in law.
To save anyone having to cross-reference, here once again are some of the salient elements of this character:
Beliefs
*I will avenge the death of my spouse!
*I will never admit I am wrong
*Only because Alicia [the other PC] seems poor and broken can I endure her company
Instincts
*Never use Song of Soothing unless compelled to
*Always repay hurt with hurt
*When my mind is elsewhere, quietly sing the Elven lays
Relationships
*Hateful relationship with my father-in-law, the Elven ambassador at the port (blames him for spouse's death)
Reputations and Affiliations
*+1D rep ill-fated for himself and others
*+1D aff with the Elven Etharchs
Traits
*Born Under the Silver Stars (To those who look upon me with clear eyes, there is an unmistakable halo, like white light through a gossamer veil or stars shining at night)
*Dark and Imposing (I once was fair and beautiful to all who look upon me, tall and slender, rounded by graceful curves)
*Etharchal (My noble heritage is recognisable at a glance)
*Self-deluded
From this, we can see certain dramatic needs, and certain ways of putting the character under pressure. There is the hatred and desire for vengeance, aimed particularly at the Elven ambassador at the port. There is the spitefulness, the instinct to repay hurt with hurt and the attitude towards Alicia, as well as the refusal to sing the Elven healing song (Song of Soothing) that he knows. He is dark and imposing, whereas once he was fair and beautiful; and he has a reputation as ill-fated. But he also, when his mind wanders, sings the Elven lays to himself; he is self-deluded.
There are many ways this character might develop. In the last session, for instance, his attitude to Alicia changed. More than once she collapsed unconscious from the strain of spell casting (such that only by using the Song of Soothing could Aedhros bring her back to consciousness, which he needed to do so that she could help him in his plans), and she was humiliated in other ways too. But nevertheless, she did help with his plans. His Belief about Alicia is now
Only because Alicia is not utterly without capability can I endure her company. That might change further; so might his Instinct not to use Song of Soothing, if he finds that Alicia continues to need his help. Maybe that could even change his views about hurt and vengeance! Or lead to better self-awareness.
But for any of this to happen, the play needs to be about these things. To create opportunities for their expression. Which is the whole orientation of Burning Wheel, and the focus of the system's advice both to GMs and players.
If Aedhros finds himself sailing out at sea it will almost certainly be related in some fashion to Alicia, who is a weather witch and has as one of her Beliefs that
I will one day be rich enough to BUY a ship. Shipwreck could be a consequence of a failed check (it's one that I've used GMing in Burning Wheel), but it would be adjudicated and applied using the methods of the system that I have already explained. Suppose, for instance, that Alicia and Aedhros are travelling on a ship
with the Ambassador, and Alicia's player fails a Weather Watching check, and hence (in the fiction) Alicia fails to anticipate the impending storm, which is to say (at the table) the GM narrates a shipwreck as a consequence: the three characters being washed up on a strange shore could be a possible way that things develop; it clearly has potential. But I've already described a situation that has almost nothing in common with the module X1.
The "storyboard"
@Lanefan has sketched has nothing to do with Aedhros (or Alicia) as characters. It involves a pointless quest (go to city to get records), a fetch quest (clearing name), some pirate sub-plot, a desert island detour, more pointless info-gathering with Elves, a quest to some Elves, and then a pre-planned framing of a "final confrontation". It is a storyboard which is almost never about Aedhros and is about whatever the GM wants it to be about (family secrets, riches, pirates, etc). It shows no grasp at all of how Burning Wheel is played; and the idea that you would interrupt the sort of play I am describing via an excursion through X1 - a module which is about hexcrawling through a pulp-style tropical island, on the basis of a discovered "treasure map" - is frankly just bizarre. (Burning Wheel could probably handle it in some form, though some of its machinery might spin a bit idle; but I wouldn't be brining this character to that table. If I wanted to play that game, I would build a completely different PC with a completely different suite of attributes and build elements.)
There seems to be an implicit premise in the questions posed by
@Lanefan and
@Micah Sweet that there is some sort of virtue in a player being indifferent to the situation the GM frames them into, and a concomitant taking of exception to the notion that play should in some fairly robust sense be
about the character that the player has established (via build and play). Of course we all have our preferences, and are under no obligation to revise or even examine them: but I don't think it can be that mysterious that someone - eg me! - would regard as
railroading an approach to RPGing that very obviously requires the player to subordinate their conception of what the game is to be about to the GM's conception of the same. That's the essence of a railroad.