@Aaron- I'll make sure everyone knows the link.

@David- *bow* I'll get you the play report on Monday. This weekend, gaming will be awesome. My players will enjoy the break from constant Dystopian Misfit (my game) play testing. 

P.S. David, the game looks so nice. 

I've already sent it out to my group and we are playing in the 14th century.

Alright, sorry for the delay in posting this one, everything decided to fall apart on me a few weeks ago, and it's taken me a while to get it all together. Here's Scarlett, the Chevalier of Pestilence and Famine

Her name wasn’t always Scarlett. Back when she was a child, before she was forced out on the streets, she had another name. But when she became pregnant, her step-father wanted nothing to do with her, and the person responsible for her child was too busy getting drunk at prom to help her take care of him, she took on a new name.

Scarlett wasn’t proud of what she did, but she did what was necessary to feed her kids. She loved them more than life itself, and would go to whatever lengths it took to take care of them. Unfortunately, it was her job that led to her death. When she did not please one of her clients satisfactorily, he turned on her with a knife, and stabbed it straight through her heart. When she awoke, the motel she had been in was in ruins, and next to where she had been lying on the ground was her client, dead. She grinned malevolently, and took his dagger from his still warm hand, then plunged it into his body, repeatedly. This was the first Temptation.

Suddenly, she remembered her children. Were they okay? She ran, in her tattered, blood-stained dress, as fast as she could, barely even noticing the devastation that surrounded her, or the perpetually orange sky above her. When she got to her home, she saw her kids were dead on the ground… and standing above them were the Nightmares that killed them. She felt an unbridled rage against these creatures and all like them build up in her body, and with it, a new, untapped power. She noticed the dagger that was still in her hand, and once again gripped it tight.

This was the second Temptation.

Horseman: The Black Horse
Scarlett is not afraid to use her… special abilities to her advantage when fighting the Nightmares. They may be inhuman, but they’re not incorruptible.

Traits:
Ferocity – 4. Scarlett is angry – at the Nightmares, at the world, at pretty much everything she can be angry at – and she’s not afraid to use that to her advantage.

Creativity – 3. Due to the special arts that she knows from her previous occupation, Scarlett tends to think outside of the box when confronted with a problem.

Tenacity – 1. Scarlett has little interest in living. She knows that in this world, her death is inevitable, and just wants to make sure that she takes out as many of the Nightmare bastards as she can while she’s at it.

Divinity – 2. Scarlett learned early on that it was easier to give into temptation than it was to use her own power; she now struggles with an internal conflict between Divinity, and Temptation.

Skills:
Seduction. In order to be good at her job, Scarlett had to be able to win over even the most reluctant client. Even now, with so few people to "practice" on, she still has a knack for entrancing people.

Culinary Arts. As a single mother of two, she needed to know how to make sure they were well-fed with what little money they had, so she is skilled at making a delicious meal with even the barest of supplies.

Torture. Since she has begun her vendetta against the Nightmares, Scarlett has learned every way she can to make their demise be as unpleasant for them as possible. She doesn’t even know if they feel pain, but that’s not going to stop her from trying anyway.

Botany. Before she had to drop out of school to take care of her child, Scarlett wanted to be a scientist. Her knowledge about plants is one of the few that comes from her "first life", and one of the things she clings to to remind herself that she is human.

Self and Destiny:

Self – 4
Destiny – 8

Available Seals:

Seal of Destiny
Seal of Light
Seal of Balance
Seal of Persistence

For some reason, the first image that came into my mind when I heard that the Chevalier of Pestilence and Famine was a spy character was a member of the oldest profession. So I decided to make her.

I spent a lot of time tweaking the story up at the top, and to be honest, I'm not entirely happy with it, but I think it conveys the major themes I'm trying to get across – her anger at the Nightmares for killing her children, and most importantly, how succeptible she is to temptation. I think the latter is really a major theme that whoever theoretically woud play this character would have to deal with.

I had a few other things I wanted to say, but I forgot about them. So let me know what you think?

Post edited 2:14 am – October 18, 2009 by allgeektout

Terminus Est is becoming my favorite system for character generation of all time. I'm terrible converting concepts into numbers, but since there are so few numbers to deal with here, it's fairly easy.

And something else that is the three-dimensionality that I can give the characters. Scarlett is a prostitute, but she does it to feed her kids. She's vicious and ruthless, but because her kids were murdered. The whole contrast between good and evil becomes very murky in Terminus Est, and I love it.

I really took to heart the whole "use skills to add depth to your character" advice this time around, giving her Botany, which is completely unrelated to who she is now, but is a relic of who she once was. I chose Torture because I wanted to show the depths to which she had been driven.

Of course, my next character is pretty much all about sunshines and rainbows, so that kind of ruins things. I wonder if I can change her story while still keeping her concept the same, because there's one line that I came up with that I really want to use.

Oh, no, see the sunshine and rainbows character was not sunshine and rainbows PRE-apocalypse. She's happy POST-apocalypse. Beforehand, she was a pretty depressed and morose character.

I suppose I may keep her as is, just to provide a contrast with Scarlett. Jakob and whatever I name the fourth one aren't really particularly optimistic or pessimistic one way or the other, so it'll be nice to have some balance.

Now I'm going to name her Sarah just for you . To be honest, I was actually thinking of that name anyway. I need to really figure out how her story goes before I can get started, though. I'm having trouble really getting a strong picture of her or fourth guy's story like I had with both Jakob and Scarlett.

I'm having a great time playing Terminus Est, I did a review of Terminus Est (I'm bias) at my website:

http://www.laughingjackwilton.com

I've also been recording the playtest of Terminus Est in the form of a series of pdf documents. The single irk of the system that I noticed was the long conflicts. Some can last a while, especially in the next segment in the playtest.

Sara is a nice name in general.

Hello, project I haven't done anything with in a depressingly long time! How's it going?

Hey, David, does the CC license you are using for Terminus Est mean that other people can do commercial stuff with it? If I can work up the willpower to do so, I think I might want to release the four Chevaliers (along with some new seals and a brief summary of the Terminus Event) as a $2 PDF or something. Art would be the one stumbling block there – does anyone buy RPGs without art? – but other than that, I think I can do that.

This is, by the way, different than the thing I asked you about on Twitter. I'll send you a Wave about that maybe tomorrow. I need some time Away From Keyboard.

Of course. It was just something I was considering, since I'm gonna write these characters anyway. 

Thanks for the speedy response!