In this thread I’d like to intro­duce to you the first two PCs ever cre­ated for play­ing an actual cam­paign of Blade of the Iron Throne. I intend to relate their exploits, ses­sion by ses­sion, in another thread. It is my hope that this will serve as exam­ples of both char­ac­ter and sce­nario cre­ation for Blade and to acquaint you with the word of Xoth – or at least with my gam­ing group’s ver­sion of Xoth, which is just one of many pos­si­ble ver­sions, no bet­ter than your own. And of course to hope­fully enter­tain you with our antics.

The cam­paign is played by mem­bers of my reg­u­lar gam­ing group. It is ref­er­eed by Helen, a lady with­out much prior expe­ri­ence with Sword & Sor­cery, and the char­ac­ters are played by John, a friend of ours, and of course myself.

And now, with­out fur­ther ado, meet my char­ac­ter!


Prince Shahrul

“Born in a palace,” he whis­pered. “And I’m dying behind a rock wall!”

– Robert E. Howard, The Trail of the Blood-​Stained God

Shahrul was born in the sprawl­ing impe­r­ial palace of Khaz­abad, sired by the all-​powerful Padishah of Khazis­tan, Abdur II, upon one of the count­less con­cu­bines in his harem. Like his scores and scores of broth­ers born to the women of the harem, Shahrul grew up hardly ever meet­ing or speakig to his impe­r­ial father, but among the lux­u­ries afforded to some­body of the exalted blood of the line of the Padishahs of Khazis­tan. The minor prince lacked for noth­ing, his every whim being indulged. Dab­bling in what­ever plea­sures and pur­suits took his fancy, Shahrul grew up to become a courtier, a self-​styled poet, a duelist, a lover, and an ini­ti­ate into the mys­ter­ies of sev­eral cults.

But one short month ago, Shahrul over­stepped. Always a fancier of women and fan­cied by them in turn, his aged father’s newest fully-​wed wife, the lovely ebon Princess Sha­bela from the the black king­dom of Azimba, aroused his lust, and he hers. A short, pas­sion­ate affair was con­su­mated – and inti­mated to his impe­r­ial father. As it turned out, the entire fling had been care­fully facil­i­tated by Sammu-​Ramat, another of his fathers’ queens, as a ploy to dis­credit Sha­bela and strengthen her own posi­tion. By sheer luck alone did Shahrul man­age to evade the guards­men sent by an enraged Padishah to carry out the death sen­tence of hav­ing his son slowly broiled to death in hot bitu­men. Hav­ing fled head over heels to the far­ther reaches of his venge­ful father’s realm, to Zul-​Bazzir, Shahrul hopes to have eluded his pur­suers – at least for now.

Prince Shahrul is a hand­some young man with a close-​cropped dark beard, cur­rently dressed in travel-​worn remains of courtly fin­ery aug­mented by bits and pieces of coarser cloth­ing. His bear­ing is aris­to­cratic and haughty. It can shift from almost effem­i­nate to steely in the span of a mere blink, and his eyes can just as quickly go from their usual warm, mel­low, and heart­melt­ing gleam to their more nat­ural cal­cu­lat­ing cold­ness.

He is 23 years old.

A: Pro­fi­cien­cies (16). B: Attrib­utes (29). C: Sor­cery (Dab­bler). D: Skills (18). E: Cul­ture (Deca­dent: Arro­gance, –1 TY). F: Assets (3 Poor).

Brawn: 4
Dar­ing: 5
Tenac­ity: 3
Sagac­ity: 5
Heart: 5
Cun­ning: 5 (focal)

Reflex: 5
Aim: 5
Knock­down: 5
Knock­out: 4
Move: 5
Power: 5

Good Assets: Lit­er­acy.
Poor Assets: Arro­gance (TY to stay calm in face of dis­re­spect); Con­nec­tions (death war­rant by Padishah of Khazis­tan, comes up in a ses­sion on 10+ on d12); Lech­er­ous (TY to resist sex­ual temp­ta­tion); Sus­pi­cious (+2 TN friendly social inter­ac­tion); Wastrel (Loot goes down way quicker).

Pro­fi­cien­cies: Cut & Thrust 7 (MP 12, scim­i­tar); Bow 4 (AP 9).

Sor­cery: Enslave­ment 3 (SP 8 ); Scry­ing 2 (SP 7).

Skills: Cus­toms 2, Eti­quette 4, False­hood 2, Infor­ma­tion Gath­er­ing 1, Occultism 1, Rid­ing 4, Seduc­tion 3.

Pas­sions:
Regain Wealth and Power: 3
Elude Padishah’s Wrath: 1
Vengeance Against Queen Sammu-​Ramat: 1
Left Open to Tie in with Other PC(s): 1
Drama: 1

Loot: 1

Manek the Giant

Manek’s ear­li­est mem­o­ries are liv­ing in the slums of Zul-​Bazzir, a young child being trained by some old woman to serve as one of her beggar-​urchins. When the woman was knifed, six year old Manek became one of the many home­less gut­ter chil­dren of Zul-​Bazzir. For three years, he eked out a mea­ger exis­tence on the streets, until he was finally unable to avoid the slavers. By that time, Manek tow­ered already head and shoul­ders above the chil­dren his age, and the slavers sold him to a caran­vanserai. For two years he toiled as a porter, in the ware­houses util he escaped, only to be cap­tured again after two more years of bru­tal exis­tence on the streets of Zul-​Bazzir. By now, though only 13 years old, he was already as big as any adult, and all scrawny sinew and whip­cord. His buyer trained Manek for the pit­fights, and soon the hulk­ing teenager dealt out and received fisiticuffs with the best of them.

As a hulk­ing giant of 16 years, he was pur­chased by the noble­man Ghuz­man Bey as a curios­ity body­guard and exotic accou­trement. After some­what over a year in Ghuz­man Bey’s house­hold, Manek saved his master’s new – and thus favourite – con­cu­bine, Yas­meenah, from a tame chee­tah going mad, break­ing the cat’s back over his knee. Beseeched by the grate­ful Yas­meenah, Ghuz­man Bey granted Manek his free­dom and sent him on his way with a small pouch of sil­ver.

As long as Manek can remem­ber, he has had strange visions, and even stranger dreams, telling and show­ing him out­landish things he was never able to place. What he does not know is that this is his blood, his ances­tral mem­ory, singing to him; Manek is in fact the bas­tard child or maybe grand­child of a Kuthan.

Manek is a muscle-​bound giant, yet sill look­ing slim and even lanky because of his immense height of 2.3 meters. His bronzed fea­tures seem to hint at Yar-​Ammonite ances­try, an impres­sion rein­forced by his habit of shav­ing his pate. He dresses in a short tunic over calf-​length trousers and wears san­dals. His weapons con­sist of a pair of cres­cent dag­gers and a knuck­le­duster car­ried in his pouch.

He is 18 years old.

A: Attrib­utes (34). B: Assets (3 Good). C: Sor­cery (Dab­bler). D: Pro­fi­cien­cies (6). E: Skills (13). F: Cul­ture (Degen­er­ate: Giant, Hal­lu­ci­na­tions, –1 HT, –1 SY, –1 TY).

Brawn: 7 (focal)
Dar­ing: 6
Tenac­ity: 5
Sagac­ity: 4
Heart: 3
Cun­ning: 6

Reflex: 6
Aim: 5
Knock­down: 7
Knock­out: 6
Move: 6
Power: 5

Good Assets: Aggres­sive (-1 offen­sive TNs before first defen­sive action); Brawler (-1 TN unarmed); Night-​sighted (dark­ness penalty ¹⁄₃ nor­mal) .
Poor Assets: Giant (+1 TNs grace & eva­sion); Hal­lu­ci­na­tions (hal­lu­ci­na­tion 11+ in any scene).

Pro­fi­cien­cies: Brawl­ing 6 (MP 12).

Skills: For­eign Lan­guage (Yar-​Ammonite) 4, Heal­ing 2, Pre­cog­ni­tion 8, Sur­vival 1.

Pas­sions:
Learn About His Ori­gins: 2
Crush on Yas­meenah: 1
Make a Place for Him­self in the World: 1
Left Open to Tie in with Other PC(s): 1
Drama: 2

Loot: 2

Man, I am look­ing for­ward to read­ing this story again. Folks this will be a nice exam­ple of how cold iron meets non-​Euclidean geom­e­try! Err…I mean, this is going to be a good read!

This actual play thread is one of my most favorite. Really nice read and clever planning+improvisation skill of GM.
Wait­ing eagerly for your next posts

Many thanks, aljen. As the cur­rent story arc about the intrigues of Queen Sammu-​Ramat has ended only now, I am also paus­ing a bit with the account, but I plan to con­tinue it next week.

And I have to say that you’re right about the ref­eree, Helen. She does have a good story instinct (but then she is a pro­fes­sional edi­tor for a pub­lish­ing house), and she cer­tainly knows how to impro­vise. And she isn’t afraid to call for a few min­utes pause if she needs time to think about how to react to some antic of John (Manek’s player) or me.

And speak­ing of her I’d like to com­ment on how I, as a player, did enjoy the NPC Isparana. Helen did some­what con­sider Isparana “her” PC (though with­out favour­ing or pro­tect­ing her) and specif­i­cally designed her to go against the grain of many hero­ines of Sword & Sor­cery. Here’s an inde­pen­dent fight­ing woman who is nei­ther bit­ter, dri­ven, hate­ful of men, or afraid of hav­ing some fun between the sheets.

Even though I am double-​posting and com­ment­ing on my very own gam­ing account I still would like to draw your atten­tion to a detail fromt he recent ninth episode, namely to how Malmiranet’s mother received back her “freed” daugh­ter. I found that the ref struck an extremely appro­pri­ate Sword & Sor­cery note with how she played that. Every­where else, par­ents would rejoice to be reuinted with their child, lib­er­ated from slav­ery. Not so here; Malmiranet’s mother was not only dis­pleased to see her daugh­ter again, she had actu­ally sold her into slav­ery in the first place!

Very much in tune with the sen­ti­ment of many S&S tales.