Character Information1This will be added to and updated as the game progress. For now, some details may be incomplete as I haven’t gotten the character fully fleshed out in my mind yet.
Name: Caitlin Frost
Class: The Helmed (refer to Class – The Helmed)
Looks:
Calling: Getting to the bottom of the mystery of the Black Army and the Rooks of Purple Flames (refer to Calling)
Nature: Brave and a stickler for rules; a very literal person
Things like Calling and Nature can be determined by pulling cards from the deck and referring to the rule book or decided by the player. I decided to go with the card-drawing method.
Stats
Exploration Score: 2/5
Combat Score: 5/5
This is decided by the class you want to play. These numbers determine the number of cards you can draw during your exploration and combat phases, respectively.
Inventory
- Helm – headpiece weaved from wires into a mesh crown; an electric Rookstone ensconced within
- Weapon – spiked war hammer; square striking face on one side and clawed pyramid-shaped spike on the other. Teon had given her the weapon when she insisted on exploring Rook ruins on her own, but Caitlin had only ever used it to help her climb up sides of fallen Rooks and to breach stuck doors.
Treasures
- none to start with
Class – The Helmed
During character creation, the rule book asks you a few questions regarding the class chosen and how they relate to your character. Here’s a summary of the answers.
Caitlin Frost has always been fascinated by Rooks. Some people see them as monsters, others as sources of wealth, but to Caitlin, the Rooks were puzzles to solve, and each one was different.
Those slow, stumbling creatures never came near the room that housed the village where she grew up, but there were plenty of decommissioned Rooks dotting the countryside for the budding Helmed to explore and learn from.
Caitlin found that she had an innate understanding of the layout of rooms within a Rook; she instinctively knew how parts of the Rooks were connected and by what circuitry.
But although she always wanted to see a living Rook up close, Caitlin was forbidden from such a dangerous undertaking by her older brother, Teon. Instead, she had to satisfy her curiosity by tinkering with the smaller Rooks that hunters occasionally brought back.
Even after Caitlin gained her independence and Teon moved to the Capital to join the King’s Guards, Caitlin found herself reluctant to go against her brother’s wishes. She instead focused her energy on mastering Rook alchemy and the village of Colander, where Caitlin lived, often benefited from the elaborate gadgetry she created using the salvaged automatons.
After her apprenticeship, Caitlin embarked on crafting her first Helm, which also symbolised her mastery of the craft.
Her design was elaborate, and the required parts cost Caitlin nearly all of her savings.
It took Caitlin a month to weave the internal wiring of a Rook into a mesh crown that fit her head, but the resulting delicate netting pronounced the crafter’s skill to all who saw it. A transparent, faceted crystal that was the Rookstone rested in the web just above the brow, enhanced by the wiring that connected it to its user.
The Helm was Caitlin’s most valued possession, and it allowed her to focus the electric Rookstone’s power either externally as an attack or internally, forging a connection between Caitlin’s mind and whatever Rookstone gadget she was tinkering with at the time.
Calling
One night, Caitlin returned home from spelunking in the Rooks Ruins to find Colander in ruins. Parts of the village was reduced to rubble, and other parts were up in flames.
Her own modest workshop/apartment above the seamstress’ shop had been all but levelled.
Reports from the survivors described an army of black-armoured men marching through the village, setting fire to anything they can and running down anyone who fled the burning buildings. But most horrifying of all were the large Rooks which rained cannonballs down on buildings and people alike. If the reports were to be believed, the Rooks had burning purple eyes and followed the instructions of the army’s general.
Caitlin had never heard of anyone controlling a Rook before. It represented a threat to all the citizens of Colostle; skirmishes between cities had remained small because of how hard it was to feed and maintain large armies. But Rooks didn’t need to be fed, and if someone found a way to weaponise the automatons, they could change the power structure of all the Roomlands.
After some discussion, the villagers dispatched Damon – one of the few uninjured hunters – to the Capital to report the incident to the King. At the same time, Caitlin – with her knowledge of Rooks – was sent off to track down the Black Army and figure out how they were controlling the giant automatons.
Footnotes