Character Creation: The Wildsea

It's pretty uncommon that I get a game in the mail and immediately want to read it, but here we are.

The Game: The Wildsea
The Publisher: Mythworks
Degree of Familiarity: None (yet!), but it's not a million miles from Blades in the Dark
Books Required: Just the one

Well, it's not the first post-apocalyptic RPG I've seen that a) has the world covered in forest and b) refers to said forest in nautical terms (that'd be Summerland), but it's definitely the best realized. We play as wildsailors, folks on ships cutting (literally) their way through the treetops of the Wildsea, bringing cargo or passengers or just exploring. 

Like Blades in the Dark, The Wildsea manages to strike that precious balance between "enough setting to feel like a place you can explore" and "enough room to feel like the world is yours." So let's make a character!

Let's see. Chargen can either be "quickstart" or "freeform," and the difference is mostly that if you're doing quickstart you're choosing from a predetermined set of lists rather than just doing whatever you want. I think I'll actually do quickstart because I like the narrowing of focus it provides. 

OK, so, that in mind, I must first choose a bloodline, an origin, and a post, and make various other choices from that option. I don't have a concept because this game doesn't so much pass the Chupp test as send it postcards from orbit, so let's just start with picking a bloodline and seeing where that takes me.

My options are ardent (basically human), ektus (cactus-people), gau (mushroom people), ironbound (constructs made of wreckage and ghosts), ketra (mutated fish people), mothryn (moth people), and tzelicrae (a billion spiders in a trenchcoat). As much affection as I have for the "colony of creepy-crawlies" type of character, as seen waaaay back in my Hellas character, I'm gonna go with ardent and keep my weirdness in origin. 

OK, so, as an ardent, I get two Aspects and there are a bunch of dope choices. I'm gonna go ahead and decide on my origin and post, though, just so I know a basic direction. 

So, for origin, I'm picking anchored. That is, I died and returned as a semi-corporeal spirit (or maybe a sentient story?). For post, OMG I LOVE SEVERAL. Um. 

Well, let's narrow it down. I like the idea of a ghostly corsair. I think it'd be fun to take one of the weirder posts, too, like mesmer or tempest. Navigator, also, has some appeal. Yeah, I think I'll do that. 

OK, so I'm an ardent anchored navigator! As such, I get questions to consider from each of my facets:

So with all that in mind...my guy was part of an undercrew, working on a ship whose captain had gone a little mad. They strayed too close to the Conflagration, a huge ever-burning fire in the north, and the ship wound up catching fire (something in the fire exploded and spat up burning chunks of wood; one landed on the deck). The navigator of the ship, realizing that they wouldn't be able to put out the fire, steered it towards the Conflagration to avoid the fire spreading out into the wildsea. Many of the crew, my guy included, jumped over and were lost to the tangle. 

He was pulled down into the lower branches, and doesn't remember exactly when he lost consciousness. All he does remember is resurfacing some time later as another ship (very carefully) looked for survivors of his. There were a few - a few that actually did survive - but my guy came aboard this rescue ship with a newfound respect for the navigator who, in the face of terror and death, considered the lives of everyone on the wildsea, not just his own ship. His anchor, a gale flute, belonged to the now-dead navigator, whose name he never learned.

Since then, he's learned to become a navigator and to merge, after a fashion, with a ship. He reads the waves by touching and feeling them, and by listening to the winds rattle the decks. He's forgotten his living family, forgotten why he became a wildsailor in the first place, if there really was a reason. He hears ancestral spirits on the waves and rumors of weirdness when in port, but doesn't think of himself as a distinct being anymore. He's part of the wildsea, just as every other sailor is.

OK, decent start. Let's pick some shit! Again, I get two Aspects each from my bloodline, origin, and post. For Ardent, I'll take Ghostsight (easily communicate with spirits; makes sense) and Ironclad Mind (I'm immune to hallucinations, mesmerics, and mental compulsions). 

For anchored, I'll take...ooh, decisions, decisions. How about Spectral Variance (I can become insubstantial) and Mortal Needs (I don't need to eat, drink, sleep, or breathe).

And, finally (for Aspects), Navigator. Well, I know I want Hullsight (I can see as though I'm anywhere along the outer hull). And...oh, man, a bunch of these are awesome. I think the one most in-concept is Journeys Unfinished (I automatically know the destination of any wrecked or sink ship I come across). 

OK, neat. Now I'll do Edge. I get one Edge from each facet, and Edges are...just kind of approaches or bonuses? Like, Veils would give you a bonus to do things sneakily. For each of my facets, I get to pick from three. The question is, can I double up? No, these are binary. OK, then! I'll take...Tides, Veils, and Sharps. 

Skills & Languages! (By the way, this game takes language and fluency seriously and I'm here for it.) I get a choice of five for each facet, once again. 

So, for ardent, I shall take a point each in Hunt, Sense, Wavewalk, and two in Chthonic. For anchored, I shall take a point in Old Hand and Signal, and then two in Delve. And for Navigator, one more in Wavewalk, one more in Delve, two in Outwit, and one more in Old Hand.

Resources! I pick two from ardent (I'll take a Copper-Colored Chart and Stone Fragments), two from anchored (I'll take Glowing Plasm as a specimen and Back from Beyond as a whisper), and two from navigator (Ship's Timber as salvage, and Dawn Over New Waves as a whisper).

Drives! These are motivations for the character. I get one from each. Ardent: Make amends for ancestor's wrongs. Anchored: Protect the wildsea from fire (that's not one of the choices, but I don't want either of them). Navigator: Discover a great secret of the distant waves.

And, mire. These are quirks or traumas that can bring you down. Ardent: The call of Under-Eaves grows strong. Anchored: Your material control wavers erratically. Navigator: The waves seems callous, unpredictable. 

All I need now is a name and a description. I'll say that his name in life was Zerata, but after he became an anchored he chose to take a name in Chtonic, so now he goes by Charid. Charid is still dressed in his undercrew garb (simple pants, worn leather shoes, open vest) but now wears a sporescarf with hastily scrawled chart-markings on it. He's got a scent of woodsmoke about him, which a lot of folks feel is a bad omen, but there's not a lot he can do about it. 

I feel like in play Charid might eventually "die" again and return as an ironbound, furthering his transformation into a ship. It might also be interesting for him to reconnect with his living family and discover who he was before he died, because he doesn't really remember.