Mythras: Tarnen the Wanderer Part 1

Introduction

Welcome to my solo campaign of Mythras: Classic Fantasy. We did the prep work for this over on the YouTube channel where you can watch the playlist to get up to speed. In the video series we created our hero Tarnen Setor, the son of a successful bowyer in a grim medieval world mostly populated by humans.

His mother died long ago and after his father succumbed to blacklung when Tarnen was 26, he saw his life laid out ahead of him, working in the family workshop, having children with a homely wife and then dying mostly likely the same way as his father, never experiencing life outside their settlement. Since he has an older brother who naturally inherited the business from his father, he realised he could follow his heart and give in to the pull of the outside world, setting out for a life of exploration and adventure. His brother and two younger sisters would be able to handle the family business together anyway.

Character Stats

I made a bit of a mistake in the character creation video due to having to flip between the core rulebook and the Classic Fantasy one, so Tarnen missed out on 100 skill points. As someone helpfully pointed out in the video comments he was meant to receive 100 points for his standard and professional background skills plus 100 points for his standard and pro class skills (called profession in the core rulebook).

For any Mythras fans out there, here's his characteristics, attributes, skills and passions.

Character Info

Class: Fighter

Rank: 0

Race & Culture: Human Civilised

Homeland: TBC

Deity: TBC

Age: 26

Gender: M

Frame: Medium

Height: 5'11

Handedness: R

Weight: 196 lbs

Characteristics

STR: 18

CON: 12

SIZ: 14

DEX: 11

INT: 16

POW: 9

CHA: 16

Luck Points: 3

Attributes

Action Points: 3

Damage Mod: +1D4

Exp. Mod: +1

Healing Rate: 2

Initiative: 14

Move Rate: 20'

Initiative Penalty: 0

Magic Points: 9

Standard Skills

Athletics: 37%

Boating: 30%

Brawn: 47%

Conceal: 20%

Customs: 72%

Dance: 27%

Deceit: 37%

Drive: 28%

Endurance: 32%

Evade: 37%

First Aid: 27%

Influence: 47%

Insight: 40%

Locale: 42%

Perception: 25%

Ride: 26%

Sing: 25%

Stealth: 27%

Swim: 29%

Unarmed: 29%

Willpower: 30%

Professional Skills

Language (Common Tongue): 72%

Lore (Strategy & Tactics): 50%

Craft (Bowyer): 32%

Streetwise: 35%

Commerce: 42%

Survival: 26%

Oratory: 30%

Combat Styles

Fighting Man: 49%

Unarmed: 44%

Passions

Help those in need: 55%

Loyalty to siblings: 55%

Destroy monsters: 48%

A note about his passions - I decided his father was a good man who taught him the importance of charity and kindness to those less fortunate since he had built his business after starting with nothing. He has a large family with three siblings and I thought it would make sense for them all to be very close and loyal to each other.

The passion "Destroy monsters" comes from a roll on the background events table during character creation. Earlier in Tarnen's life he was attacked by some kind of unnatural beast and while he survived, now and then he feels as if it's watching him from the wilderness, choosing the best moment to strike and finish the job. He'll probably have to confront The Beast at some point in his adventure. We'll have to see.

Mythic Game Master Emulator 2nd Edition

This is what I'll be using to run the adventure. If you haven't used it before there are plenty of good YouTube videos about it that you can catch up on. I've populated the characters list below. In character creation I rolled up two allies and a contact for Tarnen, so I've added them to the list but not fleshed them out yet.

Characters List

The Beast

Family*

Ally 1

Ally 2

Contact

*I chose to make a group called Family rather than list out his entire family as single characters, otherwise we'd be almost certain to get a family member whenever we rolled on the table. In addition to his siblings Tarnen has two aunts, an uncle and three cousins so it would get a bit ridiculous.

I haven't written anything in the threads list yet, but we're going to start him in the wilderness between settlements that we'll generate, and his first thread will be to make it to the next settlement.

Equipment

In the character creation video I rolled up his starting wealth as 60 silver pieces but forgot that his gentry social status gives him a x3 modifier to that, so he actually has 160 SP. It's worth mentioning that the standard currency in Classic Fantasy is the silver piece, not the gold piece.

Fighters begin with a full set of scalemail which should give him a bit more survivability as a lone character, and a dice roll determined he starts with three weapons/shields. I picked a bow since he's a bowyer, a longsword and a buckler. Unfortunately, "a full set" of armour doesn't include a helmet, so he'll buy a leather helm for 50 SP.

Now to buy some equipment for the open road. He'll need to be able to camp out in the wilderness, travel at night and of course carry all his gear in a backpack.

Reinforced backpack (holds up to 20 ENC plus 5 ENC hooked to the outside): 7 SP

Bedroll: 1 SP

Tent: 10SP (I made up this price as it's not in the books)

Cooking pot: Free, taken from the family kitchen

Craft tools (Bowyer): Free, taken from the family workshop (I'm including fletching in these tools' abilities)

First aid kit (10 uses): 25 SP

Flint & tinder: 1 SP

Knife (For butchering game, cutting ropes etc): 5 SP

Basic lantern: 10 SP

Oil flask: 1 SP

Quiver: 2 SP

Waterskin: 5 CP

Rations x5 days: 5 CP (I made up this price too)

Total: 63 SP

Remaining wealth: 47 SP

Generating Tarnen's Destination

I want to do as little worldbuilding as possible for this campaign and let the world create itself as we play. All I know so far is that it's a grim medieval Europe-style continent settled by humans but plagued by a common monster race called arlobs. There are no demi-humans, orcs or goblins but there may be other well known humanoid monsters but few and far between. The underworld spawns weird unique monsters that will be randomly generated. These will be found in dungeons and sometimes roaming the wilderness or attacking settlements.

For Tarnen's first destination we'll roll a totally random settlement using the D30 Sandbox Companion.

Type: Small city

Size: 7,800 people

Businesses: Alchemist, armour smith, fletcher, healer, horse trader x2, inn x2, leather crafter x2, magic supplier, potion seller, provisioner, second hand goods x3, scribe, sage, smith x2, tailor x4, tools seller x5, weapon shop x3

Government: Plutocracy. Governed by the wealthy.

Reaction to outsiders: Curious about.

Economic background: Doomed (Make daily D30 roll. Economy collapses on a 1).

Prices & Taxes: Average

Settlement issues: Widespread drunkards. Disease will spread.

Nearby threats: Ogres

For the name I'll use Sandbox Generator:

Queenstead

The first result I got was Queenbottom but it sounded a bit too rude.

So there it is - We'll join Tarnen on the road to the small city of Queenstead where some kind of economic crisis has made the inhabitants turn to drink, with a plague sure to spread due to their low hygeine. That's where we'll start part 2 of the adventure next time.