When I asked for the prompt that led me to the Favourite Fight post, Skull Dixon had a different suggestion. ‘How about what you do when the heroes are not on an adventure, just hanging out at home – pursuing their professions.’
Oh, NOW you’re cooking with Calor. This is something that Beer With Teeth think about a lot. Adventurers are special, but even adventurers are part of their community, and they often do normal-people things, with normal-people friends.
My Humakti likes climbing with one of the other PCs. She runs a lot, and she’s learning to swim. She enjoys looking after her armour, which is good, because her armour gets damaged a lot. She’s got a bone flute that makes a buzzy sound, and so far her temple hasn’t managed to confiscate it.
Sometimes she hires out as a guard. Her Temple makes a lot more money out of that than she does, but she’s fine with that. It’s easy, relaxing work for the most part, wandering around Boldhome with people who want a celebrity bodyguard and haven’t yet found out about the drawbacks.
Sometimes she bothers her Sword Lord with questions. She does her best to limit them to one an hour, but she’s better at blurting things out than staying calm. Sometimes she bothers her High Sword with questions. Those questions are probably a lot more important, and she’s afraid of taking up his time without good reason.
A typical day of Temple Duties for her, which I have just made up, is something like this:
| Dusk, for an hour or two | Early evening devotions. Oversee the teaching of lay members in Humakt’s mysteries. |
| Late evening, into the night | Night meal, in the Temple. Berra usually takes it somewhere to eat alone. She tries to find new places to eat, but she has explored the Temple pretty well by now, so she will probably just find somewhere with a view. Berra is forbidden to eat vegetables. |
| Late night | Settle down in barracks. Wriggle too much and try not to annoy the other initiates. Fail. Still, at least they are unmoved by such things as pain or pleasure. Do not play the buzz-flute. We have learned this from experience. |
| Midnight to early hours | Sleep. Berra sleeps lightly, and prefers being awake, as she has a very high Movement Rune. Once she wakes she cannot get back to sleep. |
| Pre-dawn hours | Woken for guard duty. Dress in bronze armour, except for the left arm – Humakt has informed Berra that she needs to leave a target for anyone who fights her. No armour there, and no padding. An hour by the gate, and then patrolling and checking on other guards. |
| Post-dawn hour | Breakfast. Berra likes oat porridge with salt, or bread with interesting things embedded in the crust. Her Movement Rune makes her need change, even though she knows she should be immune to these minor pleasures. After breakfast she meditates. She’s bad at it. She’s getting better. |
| Early morning for a couple of hours. | Sword Graria assigns Berra to a noble who wants money escorting across town. She picks up two other initiates, those with lesser standing in the Temple, and puts them on horseback. She rides her bison. The money transfer, from a market to a private house, goes well. They ride back past a few flashy residences to show off the man’s importance. |
| Late morning, until noon. | Berra has a light lunch. She tends to snack during the day, so she does not bother with the kitchen. She goes to a snack food place that does frybreads with a guaranteed non-vegetable option. |
| Noon | Lunch is being served. Berra forgets she has eaten, eats again, and regrets her choices. Then she has a short lie-down, gets up, and goes to ask her Sword Lord if he ever craves vegetables. He says yes. |
| Early afternoon | Berra lights several Temple Lamps and spends a while guarding them, as a ceremony goes on deeper in the Temple. The Sword Lords do important things most days. She does not ask her Sword Lord about it. That wouldn’t be right. |
| Late afternoon | Berra teaches sword and spear to lay members, initiates, and any fool who thinks that he can take her down just because she is small and in leather armour. She’s wearing the leather because she used to be a scout, and she’s used to it. |
| Dusk | Evening meal is early for reasons she cannot find out. She eats with her comrades, because it is important to be well known to those you fight with. Then she makes preparations for the next day. Berra is not on duty overnight, but she checks her weapons and armour anyhow. |
The Temple is a big part of her social life, even if she finds it hard to stay within its walls. She might not see her family from season to season, but her Sword Lord is a constant in her life. Coming back from a journey to the Temple of Humakt is as close as she usually gets to coming home.
It’s different when she has not got time she owes to the Temple. She still stays there, but she does a lot of other things as well. Tune in next week to find out what…
2 Comments
Add Yours →I love the way you use the Runes for the personality. That is also how I portray my NPC´s and my own PC.
Thank you. I also do the same thing for animals within the campaign – the Runes don’t mean anything in terms of power, but we know that Doqeia the Horse is a bastard because of her Death Rune and her Disorder Rune.