Intrigue RPG (System and character creation)

I don't see why not, though lizard men are super rare, and if your guard captain is seen with you, it might cause quite a bit of excitement among the nobles. That's not necessarily a bad thing, it just leads to more attention being paid to you.
And you don't have to switch sexes, the name will go through regardless.

 

No. The name wasn't thematically appropriate. The new name will be "Dangerous Damsels Deconstructing the Duke's Dynasty."

 

Yes and no, the amount of sex varies based on your choices. But, really, every game I am involved in is one of those sexy kind of games. I mean, just look at my profile picture.

 

(LOL)

But ok, I'm in, at least for the first little bit, see if I like it, I'll go read over the thread now and see if I've got any questions that need answers...

 

OK, here is a VERY important question no one has asked yet: is it possible to increatse your stats with training, and if so, how easy is it to do?

 

It is possible, and it will be fairly easy to do so, but it will only be possible at certain points within the game. I will point it out when you can do so.

 

Changed my character back to being male (sorry, but I couldn't find the right picture for a female character). Point to anyone who guesses who he's based off (only a point, it's pretty obvious).

 

OK then, here's what I've got:

Stat: Modifier
Martial: +4
Warfare: +3

Finance: +0
Deception: -1
Espionage: +0

Seduction: -3
Charisma: +0
Command: +3

Perception: +1
Willpower: +3
Fortitude: +4

HP: 5

(This Factors in All Modifiers.)

Jharl James Ghembretton's story is one filled with tragedy and sorrow. Born the son of Earl Adam Ghembretton and Countess Maria Ghembretton (ne'-Silversham) James was betrothed to Vidame Margaret Respire when he was 12 years old. This aroused the unremitting Ire of Count Halon Mountbatten who had wanted his son Wendell to marry the beautiful and accomplished young woman. He arranged to have the youth captured by slavers while out hunting and sold in a foreign port, thinking he would be dead within the year from disease and malnutrition.

He underestimated James strength of spirit and resolve. James childhood training in weapons, warfare, and propensity to brawn made him a natural pick to be trained for the arena. Within four years James was a gladiator, and a killer. He fought his way to the top, leaving a string of broken corpses in his wake, eyes ever fixed on ONE goal, to return home and seek his revenge!

In all his time in the arenas he never took a lover, though many women were shoved at him or threw themselves at his feet. To him his betrothal was as binding as a marriage vow, and he would forsake it for nothing and no one.

Eventually he was granted his freedom, manumitted at the order of the High King of the North himself. He took his accumulated winnings and outfitted a dozen long-ships: filled them with the best sell-swords and freed gladiators money could hire, and returned. He found Halon escaped from his clutches by the ravages of old age, and worse, the woman he had waited from the age of 14 to the age of 30 for married. Not only married though, but in what he felt was the ULTIMATE betrayal, to the very son of the man who had him kidnapped to become a slave!!!

His RAGE knew no bounds. He and his men marched from their landing point at port Helm-War on the southernmost tip of Mountbatten County straight for the county seat at the Eponymous mountain in a twelve day storm of fire and blood: burning fields, butchering bull-cattle to eat, and looting the treasuries of every single village in their path. However they did it in good order, only one rape was committed by his men, and when he heard of it he personally administered the sentence of forty lashes to the five men involved and offered the girl a dowry to any convent she chose to name*.
(Interestingly, she accepted the dowry but refused to join a convent, instead saying she would wait a year and a day from the death of her rapists and then on the next full moon ask her childhood sweetheart if he would accept her hand in marriage. She and her beloved, (now husband,) now own the main tavern in James county seat, and have recently been delivered of a pair of fraternal twins, firstborn son and daughter both...)

His when they reached the open plane that ringed the mountain they were met by Count Wendell Mountbatten and his army, but James asked for parlay.

He offered terms of immense simplicity: the two armies need not strike a single blow, James and Wendell, themselves and no others, no champions or seconds, would duel to the death: winner take all. If Wendell was victorious James men would turn over all the plunder they had taken, lay down arms, and return to the port and their ships, then leave. If JAMES won, his men kept all their loot, and James would be vindicated in the sight of all as the party wronged by Wendell's father and his treachery, and forever after all the heirs of his line would bear the bar sinister of bastardy on their arms because Margaret's betrothal to James had been wrongfully annulled because he was believed dead.

The very fact that James will be the character I play in this story shows how the duel ended...

Margaret was distraught, her husband was dead, her county in ruins and beggared, and the man who she had once thought she would marry, then mourned his death, was the cause of all and had effectively MURDERED the man she had come to love and the father of her children whose part in the outrages committed against him had been non-existent! Until James miraculous return Count Halon had taken all knowledge of what had occurred in that forest to his grave, no trace of word had reached her ears that there was any possibility he could be alive, for more than 14 years he had just been a ghostly memory and a small portrait that she kept among her mementos. James had less than no sympathy and informed her that their betrothal was PROPERLY dissolved not in person and custom demanded but by a folded and sealed NOTE delivered by five of his best warriors.

The majority of his men were paid and sent back to the ships, while James and a handful of his most loyal and elite fighters made their way, paying as they went from the spoils of their victory, to James parents estate, where he was to be dealt another blow. His mother and father, heartbroken over his 'death' had pined away and left the estate in the hands of his younger brother Justin. Justin had long desired to become a priest, but had married and produced heirs as he must. The met on good terms, and over a month of drinking, crying, and talking long into the night came to an agreement. Justin would cede to his older bother's claim and become a monk as he had once dreamed, on the condition that James adopt his two sons and daughter as his heirs and never marry. He could sire all the bastards he pleased, most nobles did, but he must never have any ligitimate children.

The one thing that puzzled James was Clair, his brother's wife: where did she fit in all this?

As it turned out, Clair had originally wanted to become a nun herself, but her position as both the elder and most beautiful sister in her family meant that she was destined for an alliance match. Now both husband and wife could follow their bliss, secure in the knowledge that their children were safe with their loving (if flinty of eye and discipline...) uncle. James hired the best woman he could find to draw up the contracts of retrenchment (His brother was not abdicating, one cannot abdicate if one never was supposed to have the Title in the first place...) and made sure that it was laid down in black and white that while he could marry if he wished, the marriage must be Morganatic, their children could be given titles by his hand and would be gently born, but would have no claim of any sort on his title.

He also chose to style himself in the way of the Northmen, rather than 'Earl' he would be known as "Jharl", for he was minded to see how deep the rabbit hole went: plumb the FULL depths of the conspiracy that had him declared dead when the truth was anything but...

The Castle Manorial of the Ghembretton Earldom:

This cold and somewhat drafty old castle has stood since before the Empire. though added to many times over the years at its core is still the Black Tower, a mighty edifice raised out of many large pieces of basalt from the nearby Strogyin formation, mined and hauled up out of the depths at great expense in a bygone age. Surrounding that are two curtain walls, the first containing the castle proper and its facilities and the second holding the greater portion of the Ghembretton county seat of Ghembretton Vashnoy. (And isn't it time to expand the city's curtain wall again?)

The Gembretton "Bannermen"
The core of James banner-men is 50 former gladiators which joined him in coming south. They have each seen more combat and killed more people than any three people should ever have to, and are somewhat the worse for wear. However, if anyone tries to assaniate James... Heaven help them, because assuredly, no one else COULD.

The other Bannermen are evenly divided between the 25 Sheriffs and Deputy Sheriffs who oversee the various shires within the Earldom and James 25 'Quaestors': his highly compartmentalized network of spies and investigators working on unraveling the conspiracy of his abduction: an incredibly difficult task at what is now 20 years remove...

 

Wow, that's some backstory. Just so you are aware, if you go with this backstory, you will start off with a rather significant reputation. Depending on how you play, that could either work in your favor, or against you.
Other than that, it looks good, have at it.

 

A few last things I forgot that I wanted to run past you:

1: James has an enchanted long sword that he was given by the High-King of the North when he was manumitted. He didn't use it in the duel, which would have been against the dueling code, but there are rumors that he did.

2: The County of Mountbatten is a separate nation within the Empire, which is how he got away with basically sacking the place.

3: James obsession with his abduction is grounded in reality, one or more people is/are actively trying to keep James' Quaestors from finding any more clues. They haven't reached the bottom of the rabbit hole yet, in fact they haven't even managed to find their way into the warren proper...

4: James worships the gods of the north, which are basically Odin and company but a-la Order of the Stick.

5: James is 1/8th Elf on his mother's side...

 

Love to see a character worse at seduction than mine. I however have no idea who he could be based off. He does remind me of Bredon but not enough that i would make a guess...Littlefinger? Nah, no whores involved. I likely just don't know the source material.

With all that support base going up i will have to edit that in soon...will do when i have my trait(s) i guess.
Maybe we should add religion and a description of the home province as well (Thinking along the lines of wealth, good produced and topography)?

 

1: Thats fine.
2: I figured as much, that will do just fine.
3: Of course. From the moment I read that part of your backstory, that was never not going to be a subplot. I'll hook you up with some conspiracy, don't you worry.
4: that is acceptable.

 

Well, for religion, the citizens of Maran most often worship the southern pantheon. The gods contained therein are very many, And I won't cover them all here, but a few of the big ones are:
Kaorr, god of the sun.
Uttia, goddess of the moon
Tythus, god of justice.
and Ibra, goddess of war.

Maran is the second most wealthy nation in the empire, just behind Vrywyth, the seat of the emperor himself. The duke of Maran's manor is one of the largest, most opulently designed buildings in the world.
(You ever play dishonored? Think lady Boyle's mansion, only bigger and more medieval.)
The duchy's wealth comes from it's large size and diverse climate. To the west and north are mountain ranges from which Iron and Silver are mined. Just east of the mountain range in Maran's west is a wetland packed with valuable medicinal plants. The south borders the sea, and fishing and trade operations are booming, and the east of the nation is all dense forest, making harvesting timbre a lucrative business. Indeed it is a land of plenty, for the nation's core is all rolling plains and prime farmland, and the export of grains and foodstuffs is a good business.

How's that?

 

Sugestion: to the west is an area of bogs and swamp, but don't be fooled: though no good for conventional farming these areas of wetlands are home to immense areas of medicinally useful plants that the locals harvest for preservation and sale...

 

That's a good idea. "Just east of the mountain range in Maran's west is a wetland packed with valuable medicinal plants."

 

Alson, what about the fifth item in my post, and if that's OK, I'll be editing the post to incorporate the changes and adding it to the character sheets.

Actually, it's not that, this was why I asked if increasing our stats would be possible later: the reason is that he's still a Virgin at 32...

 

Still worse on paper. Good enough for me.

 

Yeah, that's fine. Sorry, I completely missed that one.

 

The game begins!
http://forum.chyoa.com/threads/dangerous-damsels-deconstructing-the-dukes-dynasty.906/

 

If there are sub-plots, is it possible for my character to have a subplot of hunting down stepwife's faction survivors?