AJ: AJ went out of his way to make things easy for me – easy to figure out why his character would be in Tarrish, and easy to figure out how to motivate him to go along the railroad tracks: Vermillion is actually from Tarrish, and works for the Nightsong Guild, an organization that hires itself out for security, retrieving “lost” items, and the like.

I understand that the Nightsong Guild is an organization in one of the D&D books – AJ is planning to move the character into the Nightsong Enforcer prestige class. Until then, he built Vermillion as a fighter/rogue, with his low charisma manifesting itself in a roughness of speech.

Vermillion ends up on the initial adventure as the result of a hire by a customer of the Guild. A ship that was to deliver a valuable gift for the customer’s wife has gone missing. A number of people are likely to be hired at the Vind Hall (sort of like the Adventurer’s Guild) to try to salvage it, and others are likely to light out on their own in search of the ship.

Mike: Mike has, off and on, for the last couple of D&D campaigns, contemplated playing a half-orc or some similar monstrous hybrid. This is in keeping with his general desire to want to play something “different.” In my world, however, the monster races – known as the Stamm, collectively – have been driven to the edges of civilization, and such a character would be short-lived.

In chatting with him, AJ suggested that he ask me whether it would be okay to play a Jotunn. The Jotunn are a race of “large” giantish sorts known for their ship-building abilities. We end up using Monte Cook’s giant model, with the 2-level adjustment. We decide that Boeden has left his home city of Farolan to serve as a guard for some of his kinsmen, who have established a shipyard in the League city of Halveet.

Mike’s decision to play a Jotunn causes me to make an adjustment in my plans for the original adventure: The missing ship, I decide, is one built by the Jotunn, hired by the leader of Torei as the first in a planned fleet of trade ships for that recently established nation. Boeden will be in Tarrish with one of the other Jotunn, awaiting arrival of the ship.

John: John decides that he wants to play an archer/fighter/rogue sort, from the nomadic horse clains of the Middle Redding. The bio he gave me at the beginnning of the campaign is short: Duran killed the son of his chief in an illegal duel over a girl. Although the other guy picked the fight, Duran fled because he knew the chief – Duran’s own uncle – is the vindictive sort.

When John gave me this one-paragraph bio, he said, “I know I’m setting myself up for trouble down the road, but you can do with it what you want.”