12th character: Uhinnatu, Black Sword Hack

 12th day, 12th character! Or I dunno how many actually, if we count all the Lugules and the Gumeis as one character each, I guess the 7th? Oh well, lets count every version of every character as different and keep it simple. Speaking of keeping it simple, I went OSR today, with Black Sword Hack by Kobayashi, based on the Black Hack. I'm not too familiar with the Black Hack itself and it turns out it's semi-important to note I'm using the original Livre de l'Ours version of the game rather than the cleaned up version with colored illustration and a few changed details. In any case, character creation was super quick, I basically did it  way earlier this morning as I drank my coffee and could have done even faster if I went in blind and played the exact character I got from rolling the stats. As I came in this with an idea of what type of character I wanted to make, I did allow myself to swap one set of stat, so I put 10 in strength and 12 in intelligence to start with, as the planned character was to be a wicked sorceress. By luck, I also got a 12 in Charisma, which seems to be useful to form pact with demons.

Art by Lifaris on YCH.Commish.Com

 After determining stats, the game makes us roll a d20 for our birth, I got 15, this cutie above was born in the middle of a mercenary camp. This step is actually part of the few thing they changed in the other version where you roll on a similar table but based on the next step, your origin, instead of this shared one. The origins are Barbarian, Civilized or Decadent, I picked Decadent for her. Already, I'm getting the idea that her father is a Conan type (the barbarian, not the talk show host or the detective) who conquered a City State that was part of an ancient and decadent empire, becoming king by his own hands. Despite her relatively low birth and ethically being of that barbarian people, Uhinnatu joined that empire's culture very early and became a spoiled and nasty little sorceress. Back to creation, we get to pick three Backgrounds, basically small abilities with stat bonus that would form your class in class-based game. We have to pick two from our Origin and one can come from any list, so I picked Forbidden Knowledge and Warlock from Decadent, Herbalist from the Barbarian list. Forbidden Knowledge lets Uhinnatu learn 4 random spells to start the game with, Warlock gives her a pact with two demons and Herbalist let her collect herbs in nature to brew healing potion, poison or hallucinogenic, giving her a total of +2 Int and +1 Cha. With that, all that's really left is rolling starting weapons, the game telling us to roll a d10 on the Decadent weapon list and d10 on whichever I like. I went with Decadent for both, rolling a Crossbow and whatever a Blood Metal Sickle is. Had I rolled a 10 on either roll, I would have just gotten nothing for that roll, so pretty lucky. The game also helpfully gives us some clothes and 100 coins, I'm not sure if I'm supposed to use that money to buy some gear now? I decided no, Uhinnatu isn't planning to go adventuring, she'll get forced on the life of adventure!

 We also gets starting language, the game telling us we speak Thyrenian and another language tied to our origins. Then we get a small list, helpfully telling us Thyrenian is spoken by the Merchant League, which make sense for a common language. I pick Askavian, the language of a crumbling empire, that makes sense for the culture Uhinnatu joined as a small child after her father conquered part of it and was culturally assimilated. We're also told that our HP is equal our Con, that our damage is d6 armed and d4 unarmed and our Doom dice is Ud6, meaning that it starts as a d6 and drops to a d4 on a 1 or 2, then to nothing when that rolls 1 or 2. That Ud (usage dice) also how the game tells us to track torches, ammunition, rations, influence and other things that deplete on uses, an interesting mechanic but I have no idea what's the usage dice for my crossbow, there's no price listed for ammunition or torches, the rations are given a 1d6 coin cost by the day, so??? I found a SRD and a copy of the other version of the game, neither helped, in fact in that version, they outright said the Usage Dice was for abstract concept and it's easy to write down the number of arrows you have, which sure, but I still need to know how many that is? Welp, whatever. For the demons, I get to pick two from a list, with an explanation on how summoning them works. It's not just throwing bodies in a fight like it is in D&D, they're more invisible influence and relying too much on them is pretty risky. I chose Sloth and Wrath, making a target fall asleep or go berserk respectively. For the spells, there's no random table, but there's exactly 30 spells. I thus pulled out my trusty d30, rolling 4 times on my desk and almost having it roll down to the floor 4 times, that dice is basically a sphere! You can see the spells I got by zooming on the sheet, I wrote down the effect.

Art by tienshinhan on ych.commish.com

 And that's it for the sheet! Unhinnatu is a spoiled sorcerous princess, probably used to sacrificing people and being generally a brat protected by her Hero-King of a father, normally a villain character creating problem for a brawny barbarian protagonist by trying to keep him as a slave or something. Instead, she becomes the victim of a ploy, either as punishment for her misdeed or as a side-effect of her father getting deposed, forcing her to quit the safety of the royal palace and slum it up with a bunch of morally dubious vagrants and ne'er-do-well. Her father would actually be proud to see her following in his footstep, as much as she's probably unhappy about it!