General Thoughts & Considerations

Images of Characters

The central story of the campaign will be the efforts of a group of Ilviran missionaries to establish a temple in Coranan and spread their faith in Tharda.

Players should create characters who will fit in to the missionary community. This means that the PCs (player characters) should be followers of Ilvir. The PCs should also have beliefs (per the Burning Wheel rules) that will explain their involvement in the missionary effort and will help encourage action connected to the group's missionary activity.

PCs do not need to be priests: lay characters are perfectly fine. Nor do they need to be religious fanatics. They should, however, be characters who have a sincere desire (as represented through their beliefs) to be part of the missionary community and to see the mission succeed. 'Spies' seeking to subvert the missionaries, 'secret' followers of other gods, and the like will not be appropriate. 'Loners' who care for nothing but themselves are also inappropriate.

That said, it is perfectly appropriate to play characters who have doubts about the mission or their involvement in it, about Brother Olrau and his prophetic utterances, or even about Ilvir himself. Doubt is the flip side of faith, and players who wish to play characters for whom belief is a struggle, rather than a given, are certainly free to explore this spiritual tension. Appropriate beliefs (per the Burning Wheel rules) must still be taken.

Appropriate Background

The missionary group has come to Tharda from the Kingdom of Kaldor, in the east. The PCs, therefore, should probably be native Kaldorans. (Some of of Kaldor's settlements have substantial Jarin-descent populations, so playing a Kaldoran of Jarin descent is an option.)

PCs of a different background may be acceptable, but players should first check with the GM to confirm. Also, please understand that all PCs must be human. Player characters who are Sindarin, Khuzdul, Gargun, Ivashu and the like will not be permitted.

In terms of social class, any options are possible— Ilvir finds adherents among peasants, soldiers, urban laborers, guilded merchants, and even the nobility. As Brother Olrau teaches that “we are all children of Ilvir”, a missionary group containing a diverse social mixture is viable, especially as the characters will all be foreigners in Tharda, a nation with an alien social structure.

In terms of the game world, PCs may have almost any sort of professional background or training (i.e. lifepaths in Burning Wheel terms). Nevertheless, players may wish to consider what kinds of lifepaths will be of greatest use to their characters in an urban, religious-themed campaign. A character fresh off the farm, whose only skills are ploughing fields and slopping hogs, is certainly possible— but it may be harder to find ways for him/her to contribute to the group's success.

Appropriate Connections

As the PCs have left Kaldor and traveled to Tharda for religious reasons, players should be prepared to play characters who do not have strong ties to their native land— or to accept the in-game and meta-game of having such ties.

If you play a runaway serf, for instance, you should be prepared for the possibility that your lord might try to hunt you down and drag you back to Kaldor. If your PC is the eldest son of a baron, you should be prepared to accept that if the father dies, your PC will probably not be able to succeed him without ceasing to be a regular character in the campaign.

This is not to say that PCs should be totally deracinated, without any ties to their homeland at all— only to suggest that players may wish to consider such issues when coming up with character backgrounds.

Players may wish to consider the possibility that they have not come to Tharda as 'lone' members of the missionary group, but are bringing members of their family (who may have mixed feelings about the misionary venture) with them. Such details will, of course, need to be worked out with the GM, and may require the taking of relationships (per the Burning Wheel character-burning rules) for family members.

More information on the specifics of handling starting relationships, please see the Generation Methods page listed on the upper right column.