HOMELAND Cimmeria
ATTRIBUTE ASPECTS Eagle-eyed & Fast and Fit
CASTE Warrior
ARCHETYPE Mercenary
NATURE Sneaky
EDUCATION Educated on the Battlefield
STORY Glorious Battle
TRAIT Veteran
WAR STORY Survived a Massacre
SOCIAL STANDING 1
GOLD 7
FORTUNE POINTS 2
VIGOR 11
RESOLVE 7
Hunter: You’ve lived with the wild as a constant neighbor, and know how to take from that environment what is necessary for survival. When in the rural parts of your homeland, the Difficulty for any Survival tests you attempt is reduced by 1, even if this reduces the Difficulty of the test to Simple (D0).
Sentry: You learned at a young age that the watchful eye subsists on little rest. So long as you have had a total of four hours of sleep within the last two days (either one four-hour stretch or multiple short rests), you suffer no penalties for sleep deprivation when making Observation tests.
Subject: You are a subject in good standing to a lord or king. While subject to their laws, the taxes you face are much less than the more expensive taxes others experience. Whenever you pay Upkeep within your homeland, you can reduce the amount of Gold the Upkeep costs by one.
Strong Back [Rank: 1]: You are a magnificent example of human physical prowess, all-too-frequently abused for this ability. For any Athletics test that generates at least one success, you generate one additional success for each rank of Strong Back. Further, your Encumbrance limit is increased by 1 for each rank of
Strong Back.
Ancient Bloodline:
No Mercy: When making a Melee attack, you may re-roll a number of damage dice equal to the total number of Melee talents
(and ranks in those talents) you have acquired, if desired. You must accept the results of the re-rolls.
Born Wild: You can reduce the Difficulty of any Survival test to find food and shelter by one step, to a minimum of Simple (D0). Born Wild is factored into the difficulties of all Survival talents.
Tracker (Rank 1): You have learned to anticipate the movements of prey. When
making a Survival test to track a creature or group of creatures, you may spend 2 Momentum or add 2 to Doom to find a shortcut or other way of intercepting the creatures being tracked. You may also substitute Survival for Stealth when attempting to ambush creatures being tracked. If purchased twice, the cost is reduced to 2 momentum and 1 Doom.
EQUIPMENT
Brigandine long coat (Armor 2: Torso/Arms/Legs) with helmet (Armor 3: Head; Heavy)
Rough hammered jewelry
Simple undyed cloth, worn in the fashion of your people
Broad-headed Axe still stained in places with the blood of those it has slain
LANGUAGES
Cimmerian
Shemitish
Background:
Born in the dark, bleak lands of Cimmeria, Kern’s tribe was one of the few permanent settlements to be found in that land. His father was one of 3 smiths in the town, and as such held a place of honor within the tribe.
Located at the head waters of the Black River, the village protected one of the passes through the Black Mountains into the Pict lands. Battles between the warriors of the village and Pict warbands were a common occurrence, and the smiths of the village were kept busy creating and repairing the arms and armor of the warriors.
Kern was born in the fall, and during his first winter his mother dies during a Pictish attack. As soon as he was able, the boy spent most of his time in the forge, watching his father work and being cared for by the many warriors who frequented the place. He was taught by their stories and honed his skills under their tutelage. By the time he was twelve, he was travelling with some of the scouting parties tracking Pict hunters in the mountains. It was during one of these trips that disaster struck. A Pict war party, one of the largest seen in decades, swept down from the mountains and sacked the village. When the scouting party returned, there were only ruins and the dead to greet them…and a band of Picts who were left behind to clean up any stragglers.
The men of the party rushed the Pict savages while they pushed Kern back, telling him to flee to the mountains. The boy wavers for a few seconds, but saw that the Cimmerians were heavily outnumbered and that his death would amount to nothing. To his everlasting shame, he fled back into the twisting canyons and peaks of the Black Mountains.
Over the winter, the boy was barely able to keep ahead of the Pict hunters who tracked him. At one point, he was trapped in a box canyon by one of the region’s most fearsome beasts, a great Black Wolf. The creature had tracked the Pict hunters as they closed in on Kern. When it looked like he was going to be captured and killed, the wolf descended on the hunters and killed them all. Taking many wounds, the wolf was maddened with pain and turned to kill the last human standing, but the boy had already taken a spear from one of the dead Picts and as the beast pounced, he could brace the spear against the ground and bring it up to impale the wolf. Skinning the beast, and taking supplies from the dead Picts, Kern escaped the mountains, and by the spring he found himself in Gunderland.
Over the next ten years the boy hired himself out as a mercenary. Starting off as nothing more than a spear holder, Kern learned from the others mercenaries, as well as recalling the teachings of his villages warriors. Slowly he gained in skill and reputation, until he acquired enough fame and gold to purchase better arms and armor and travel south through Aquilonia, Ophir and Argos, finally arriving in Shem where he was hired to fight in a battle in the west of the land, only to have the plans changed and his mercenary troop destroyed by their “ally”. Again through fate, the warrior found himself the sole survivor of a disaster, and he fled with a group of others into the surrounding hills.
