Character Challenge 7 of 31: Corsairs Captain Erika "Fierce" Kelly

The world of Corsairs is an interesting place: a role-playing game of sky ships and floating islands. Basically pirates with flying ships and lands floating above a burning ocean. We played a while ago, and we left the group with their own ship and open skies ahead. Not sure if we'll ever get back to that or a new game, but since then there have been a few updates. And so we'll generate a character with the updates from Speed, Strength, And Wits. And I just found that if I print it as a booklet it actually printed the PDF correctly, so I just have to fold the pages! Now if I just had one of those long staplers, and if I had printed the 1s page on cardstock - insta-zine. Something to remember.

Captain Erika "Fierce" Kelly from a nice random pirate name generator. A Corsair has 3 stats, and each stat you choose the level from Low to High (or 2 to 4d6). Then you assign skills within each stat. 

• Finesse - for things that require dexterity, speed or nimbleness
• Might - for things that require strength and power
• Wits - for things that require knowledge, brains, and wisdom

I may have noted that before, but these are basically the same stats (ST, DX, IQ) from the Fantasy Trip. Which makes sense to me: seems this is really the bare minimum breakdown you can have if your game needs stats for characters. 

Our captain is smart and has high wits and can use 4 dice for those rolls, has a medium finesse for 2d6, and finally, she is pretty small so not much in the way of might. She lives by her brains, not her brawn!

from Artstation

Coming from a long line of Alderil Empire Naval officers, Erika's father was killed before she was 3 by the Corsairs fighting the Alderil Empire. She joined the Alderil Naval Academy at a young age and graduated third in her class. During her first excursion, the AENS Bloodwyre was boarded by pirates, and she was taken hostage. While at first she was terrified, she eventually discovered that these Corsairs were fighting for theior homeland's life: the Alderil Empire's greed for the repellium that allows their ships to fly above the Molten Sea is also what keeps these islands floating. While Erika knew tis in theory, the reality of seeing an island, once home to hundreds of families, sink into the Molten Sea caused her to rethink plan of vengeance. 

While she is still after the specific corsairs that killed her father, she has also turned against the Alderil Empire, at least as far as anyone knows. She takes a fierce joy when attacking the Empire's ships and now commands her own, the feared Redstrike. Yet she rarely kills the enemy: she maroons them on a floating island. Unknown to her crew, she will often leave a message with the survivors. No one knows what games she is playing at.

Erical gets her moniker the "Fierce" from her cutting tongue. More than one battle has been swayed by this petite woman screaming curses at their foes with startling accuracy as to their personal habits. 

And finally, I will have to have her complete crew, ship and possibly refuge completed. Just as with the Planet Mercenary characters, I am now going with my sub-challenge being creating an entire crew for various games to act as my NPC antagonistic groups, assuming we do play these other games.

What Speed, Strength and Wits adds

There are some new optional rules, such as splitting your attack. If you have 5D to attack, you can actually split that into a 3D and a 2D attack. Attacks succeed when the enemy does not make their opposed roll. Though I really need to re-read that whole section for combat it we get back itno this game!

The fame mechanism has been added, which can be both a help and a hindrance. And like other fame mechanics, it may be relative to where you are at. 

Conditions have been expanded from charmed (advantage) and cursed (disadvantage) to include determined, inspired, knackered (aka exhausted), malady, scuppered, three sheets to the wind (drunk). 

Abilities have been added, and I used one for our small captain even though it is a mechanism to use in stead of improving a skill level. Abilities have a cost though: 1 luck the 1st time, then you become knackered. So use beyond once or twice a session is frowned on basically. 

Relationships are changed to have a larger sliding scale. The relationship mechanism is similar to loyalty and all that from other games. Something I always have a hard time with for some reason,

Virtues are added, and are sort of similar to the Fate game, at least the way we'v ebeen playing. Should you do something that triggers a virtue (as determined by the player or GM) the character will become determined or inspired. At a cost of 1 Luck as well. If the player is acting contrary to their virtue, another Luck and they are knackered. Seems like an interesting mechanism to try to align player behavior with their character's stated self-image. Though I've been really lucky and the groups I am in are usually really good about playing their characters well. 

There are rules for a refuge, the player's hideout. Sort of like levelling up in old school games and you start your own fortress/monastery/stronghold/whatever.

Finally, some trading rules. They expand out the basic loot and all that to make things a bit more nuanced. I think - I only briefly read over those rules. Until we get a game to run that is probably al that will happen. Sadly I only have so much time!

And finally - I should have done a Star Trek Borg character for 7 of 31. A pretty big collective group!

2024 Challenge

Captain Tardis Challenge Site

Day 1: Classic Traveller Trace Hoolens

Day 2: Mechanoid Invasion P.A.V.M. Marissa Key

Day 3: Classic Traveller SubSector Navy Rony Sonnet

Day 4: OSE Witch Bellatrix

Day 5: Mechanoid Invasion Commando

Day 6: Planet Mercenary Captain

Day 7: Corsair Captain Erica "Fierce" Kelly

Day 8: Classic Traveller Pirate