Shadows of Old Night - Dramatis Personae

[Desdichado]

The actual "story hour" to come later, I suppose. I wanted to start archiving characters first—both NPCs and PCs.

I make character models using Hero Forge Pro. Some of them are a little older, but as new features and assets have been added, I've tried to make sure that things are upgraded to not look primitive and clunky. It's not like real art, but I can do it with the tool without having to roll the dice and hope AI can interpret what I want, so there's that.

Before I start any campaign at all set in the Old Night setting, I always run the players through a similar exercise; they get assigned the following temporary characters. About an hour or so into the first session, they've always been TPKed by at least the initial villain that the PCs will end up facing off against... and after the TPK, we cut to the next morning, and the PCs are standing around investigating the deaths of the temporary PCs.

This has occasionally gotten awkward when the same PCs, or at least the same players in the same campaign, start a new season or whatever of the campaign and the same temporary PCs get killed again, but hey, it's the in-joke.

Friedrich von Johannes - Although the son of a country gentleman in Timischburg, Friedrich isn't set to inherit although he has a reasonable comfortable living, so he has taken to wandering around the countryside hiring himself (with his friends) out to investigate problems and otherwise make additional money and pass the time as an "adventurer"—keeping in mind that Old Night isn't really a standard D&D-like campaign where adventuring for profit is a thing. This means that he's a combination wandering bounty hunter, trouble-maker and mercenary. He's a cheerful sort, with an uncanny can-do attitude, loves to build complicated gadgets to deal with problems, and considers himself a regular Renaissance man. Which is appropriate; he's also a typical slightly goofy yet affable jock type; athletic and a good fighter and pretty charming.

Daphne FitzBlake is the daughter of another country gentleman, from the Copper Hills area, a quiet countryside far enough away from the rival city-states of Garenport and Barrowmere to not need to worry too much about political fallout from either. Rather scandalously, she runs around the countryside with a Timischer guy and some of his "retainers". She's also scandalously fairly capable and breaking and entering and not being seen, is a fantastic gymnast, and can hold her own for a few moments in a fight until one of the larger stronger guys of her group can jump in to help her out.

The daughter of Daphne's father's steward, Zelda du Velmois is a bit of a know-it-all; well-read, scholarly, and has a burning curiosity for occult knowledge that she should leave well enough alone. In spite of its illegality in every civilized land, she is capable of bring a bit of magic to the group when needed.

Gavin Shagford is a country boy from Friedrich's neck of the woods who ran away with his more upscale friend and landlord to escape a boring life of farming. As if that didn't anger his father enough, he also ran off with their large dog... uh... Scoob. Tall, lanky, sarcastic, hungry, and loyal if outwardly cowardly, Gav seems to find more trouble than he knows what's good for him.

When the first campaign, Darkness in the Hill Country begins, the four meddling kids (and their dog) are in Barrowmere, standing in a quiet, rather shoddy neighborhood late at night in the pouring rain with a shady merchant, Eric Gylle, so he can meet someone he's doing a "deal" with. They didn't ask a lot of questions, because it sounded adventurous, fun, and he was offering to pay a fair bit of money for an easy assignment; just escort service. Although lacking really accurate time-keeping capability, they're all quite sure that the contact is a good hour late.

They hear strange tittering, chittering bark and howl like sounds coming from the dark, and half a dozen daemon baboons suddenly emerge from the rain to attack them, following by a man with a strange green lantern, a metal mask over his face, and magic that far outstrips Zelda's. After a brief combat, they inevitably are all killed along with Gylle.

 

[Desdichado]

Meanwhile, here's my four PCs, which took over after that point. All of them had some backstory rolls generated by the tables in Knave 2e, so they're all a little random. For that matter, that's where their names came from too. The bold below is either the random pre-game career or the two personality traits that each character rolled.

Stilton Kingsfax. Stilton is pretty much a classic fighter. In fact, given that he rolled randomly that his brief career before the game was as an acolyte, maybe he’s almost a paladin even. He also rolled that his personality traits were formal and can-do attitude. He still has good relations with the church generally. Rather than being an acolyte in a traditional D&D sense, he grew up an orphan ward of the church, raised by Reverend Willes Garre, and he’s both grateful and appreciative of the church, as well as honestly believing in its mission and its doctrine. But it wasn’t actually ever his intention to make his career out of the church, it was more he was expected to work around the church as part of his upbringing. His formal personality should be interpreted more as a good old fashioned Southern politeness “yes sir, no ma’am” kinda stuff, translated into fantasy terms.

Bertram Hardmont. The next character is kind of a thiefish character, although he has the shadow sword feature (kind of like a soulknife weapon, if you remember that class from 3e), so he’s also a little bit mystical (plus it saves money on weapons, which is good; neither he nor Stilton rolled up a lot of money.) His randomized career was saboteur, which his player interpreted as he was part of an organized crime gang that also did mercenary work, and he was kind of on the fence whether he was more of an engineer for breaking into places, or a regular street criminal. His two character traits were love-struck and slacker. The latter is easy enough, but we had no idea who he’s love-struck for at chargen, so his player intepreted it as he tends to fall head over heels for every skirt that gives him a smile or a glance, kind of like Bingo Little from Jeeves & Wooster.

Tabitha Gamcott. One possible target of his brief amorous obsessions might be the final PC, Tabitha Gamcott. She is gunning to become the Old Night equivalent of a sorceress or whatever, once she can get her hands on some magic. In the meantime, she wields a quarterstaff and a bow, and will definitely focus on ranged attacks. Like most women (cf. Paris Olympics women’s boxing) she’s not as physically strong or capable in melee as the men, but I’ll find a way to make sure that she adds to the party, and not just in terms of looking pretty. Actually, the drama once she learns some magic will be pretty entertaining, I think. Old Night has a uniquely Lovecraftian magic system, which I can’t really take too much credit for, because the idea has been kicking around for a long time (I’ve had it ever since reading about WH40k psykers in the middle to late 90s, for instance. Five Torches Deep, Deathbringer, and Shadowdark all have roll to cast with mishaps on natural 1s too, although I’d already used the d20 Call of Cthulhu interpretation of it to come up with my own very similar interpretation).

Tabitha’s random pre-game career was pirate. She was orphaned too, but part of a family affair of river pirates, bandits and other ne'er-do-wells on a small boat with her uncle, some cousins, maybe a brother or two who had all turned to crime, and she was often the bait; pretty, innocent looking, etc. She hated this life, however, because she’s at heart not a bad person or a… well, y’know, a pirate by personality, so she bailed when she got the chance and left to explore the world. Curiously, even though she rolled up more money than the boys and has a free weapon, she still ended up literally completely broke; not a single copper penny to her name. She also has very few items of any kind; no way to catch food (other than her bow and arrows, I guess) and no way to cook it either. No bedroll or blanket to sleep in. No winter coat. Not even enough to buy some street food or a night at an inn. She’s financially kind of desperate as the game starts, which I think will make her kind of fun. Her two personality traits came up as gullible and humorless.

Fitzhugh Grimwatch. The final PC comes from a poor but once noble family of Garenport in the north, but his family has lived in Southumberland since the loss of his family fortune in his grandfather's youth. His father served a distinguished career as a Ranger (a kind of roving commission equivalent to a US Marshall) and is nearing the age where he needs to retire, but he spent as much time as he could teaching young Fitzhugh what he could of his skills when he was home. Born with many natural talents (i.e., very high stat rolls), Fitzhugh took well to these lessons and served for a time as a young junior scout for the Rangers, often wandering far afield on his own. His natural abilitys and tendency to have spent much time along, not to mention his knowledge of the former position of his family has rendered him somewhat arrogant and anti-social in his manners, but he's loyal and brave and has a keen desire to serve his people.