Oreads: earth elemental blooded, usually thought of as slow
and steady. This week’s random rolls saw our Oread as steady, with clarity of
thought and purpose—but he is far from slow. He has a criminal past with a
neutral outlook on life from the land magic forgot. With Alkenstar city being
so close at hand this character just screamed gunslinger to me, so I rolled on
the gunslinger table for some added info and took some alternate racial traits
to really give him the closer-to-the-earth feel.
Firstly I replaced energy resistance acid, Oread magic, and
earth affinity with ferrous growth, granite skin, and treacherous earth. So our
Oread Gunslinger has actual stone-like skin, the ability to adjust rocky
surroundings to more favorable conditions, and the ability to turn unworked
non-magical iron into any object up to 10lbs. I imagine when he just needs that
one last bullet he’s ready.
The roll on the Gunslinger chart was this:
Gunslinger Training: [Black Powder Presence] You grew up
belittled and even beaten for not being the biggest or the strongest of your
compatriots, family, or race. With no burgeoning aptitude for magic, you looked
for some other way to exceed those who found superiority in brute strength—and
you found it in gunslinging.
Orangus Tarth
Many people think of Alkenstar as the city of the future,
filled with wonderful and dangerous creations, as well as a reliance on science
instead of magic. Even the people of Alkenstar tend to consider themselves
light years ahead of those who still rely on the arcane. But like any city, not
every citizen lives a life of privilege and even Alkenstar has its slums and
back alleys.
The family Tarth were residents in one of these seedier
areas of the City of Iron where they plied their trade on the streets.
Entertainers, both parents spend their days and sometimes nights as buskers,
trying to make enough money to put food on the table. This left a young
Orangus, and eventually his sister Telsia, on their own most of the time.
Telsia was ever the inquisitive type outgoing, and carefree.
Whereas Orangus was quiet, introspective, and somewhat bookish. The young boy
was also small and scrawny for his age, so much so that one would think Telsia
were two years older than he and not the other way around. His sister’s nature
meant that Orangus got a lot more attention than he wanted. Being small and
noticed mean that he was picked on and easily pushed around.
When Telsia fell in with a bad crowd and started dating an
older boy, this street rat took Orangus “under his wing.” What this
relationship more meant was that he was tricked or pressured into doing
things he didn’t want to. When the children’s father died of a disease they
couldn’t afford to cure, Orangus threw himself headlong into the gang’s
activities. His mother felt she had lost not just her husband, but her son as
well.
Orangus grew and when he hit puberty his growth spurt wasn’t
so much in height as it was in bulk. His musculature increased, his body
becoming thick and bulky. His changes didn’t end there either. The legacy of
his father’s family took hold of itself and Organus’ skin became like stone,
his sickly constitution replaced by a hardiness he had never felt before. And
with this came the courage to break free of the gangs.
Telsia still ran with her boy, although their relationship
had soured and she felt trapped. Orangus, however, could not leave without her
and made to confront his former mentor. When the boy pulled one of Alkenstar’s
renown pistols on Orangus, the earth elemental kin reached out his hand and
warped the iron by his touch. Although not the stronger of the two men, Orangus
was surprisingly quick and exceedingly tougher and he lay a beating in on his
sister’s boyfriend, leaving him bloody with a warning to stay away.
Orangus hadn’t realized he took the weapon with him and a
few minutes later the steel tube reverted to its original form. With far more
confidence than he’d ever had and with his life at a crossroads, the young
Oread took up the way of the gun as a means to make ends meet. Unsure as to
where is life is heading, his only loyalty to his sister and mother, Orangus
also has moral life choices to make after years caught up in the criminal
underbelly of the city of guns and steel.
Is this how you pictured the barebones stats of our Oread
coming out? If not how would you have done it? Maybe Gunslinger wasn’t your
first choice, so what was? Tell us all what you would have made?
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