Jackals: A Bronze Age RPG

We've switched over to Jackals. From the DriveThruRPG description:

Inspired by the myths, cultures, and history of the Ancient Near East, and by such ancient texts as the Iliad, the Epic of Gilgamesh, and the Old Testament, Jackals is a Sword & Sorcery roleplaying game set in a Fantasy Bronze Age. With mechanics based on the popular OpenQuest system, the game places players in the role of Jackals – adventurers, explorers, sellswords, and scavengers – and sends them out into the peril-filled land of the Zaharets to make their fortune… or perhaps fulfill a greater destiny…

I am playing Zandakar, a desert tribesman borrowed stolen from Karen Mitchell's Godspeaker trilogy  (of which I am only halfway through the 2nd book). The first was a very harsh reading: full of a strong and violent religion that suffuses the war lands there. While in the first book Zandakar is a war lord by the end of the book, the story is not really about him but his mother, Hecat, and her path from slave to warrior to empress, and her quite possible path into psychosis. It was a good if hard read at times!

Anyway, my take on this character is that he is from the harsh deserts of Trauj, a Alkitar, or Hate Spitter. They are ritualists or magic users. The character creation is interesting: a set of basic stats, then you can add additional values. Non-ritualists only have to split the additional 17 points across 5 characteristics, whereas as a ritualist I have a 6th that gets a share of the points. So the others are definitely bigger and have better base stats. But I have magic! Normally in a new game I try to not pick magic users, but as no one else did (okay, there are actually just two players right now due to scheduling conflicts) I thought I would try. Normally magic tends to be a bit complicated to use, so I generally pick the tank as a character for unknown games. Just hitting things is easy.

In translating Miller's Godspeaker stories, my version of Zandakar does his hortas, a fighting/dancing/almost religious series of exercises. Think of a much more deadly version of tai chi. As I have the desert rager talent, I fight with two scimitars, and that is part of the dance as well. So while I did not pour a lot of the extra points into strength, I did pick deftness to reflect that skill with the swords and the poetry of the hortas. He is also religious, though I am waiting to hear about the gods of the desert to see how to intertwine them with how I see this character. I do need to remember to use a few of the catch-phrases: I am in the eye of god, you are a weak people, that sort of thing. Coming from such a harsh environment, his people think others are pretty weak and pathetic. They also have a foe, some sort of monsters of the desert. 

Fortunately his travelling companion is a giant of a man, even taller than Zandakar. Which is quite unusual as the desert people "come from the race of giants" and are quite tall, while the rest of the world, most people average a bit under 5 1/2 feet tall. Zandakar is 6 1/2 feet, about average for his people. Theocolese is over 7 feet tall if I recall, almost 2 feet taller than the average of his people.

There was a bit of an info-dump at the beginning and I don't have it all straight in my head. The game seems to have a pretty rich world based on Bronze Age societies with a fantasy twist. Our session 0 was mostly getting the characters set up, and getting started on the first actual excursion after meeting Edani, another Jackal. She was our introduction to something we may want to do. I did at least remember to call the fat headman we met later soft and overly fed. This character will be a bit of a stretch for me, as he is harsh, unforgiving and will have a few bloody rituals and things that, being a half-assed vegetarian, will be somewhat difficult to play. But hey, I need to stretch my role playing as well as my game mastering and world building!

I do have an image in my head, something of a cross between all of these images. None are quite right but I think are heading in the direction in my head. I think the bottom two are the closest so far.