Lily Character Sheet
From Ars Magica
Contents |
Characteristics
Intelligence 0
Perception -2 (near-sighted)
Strength +2 (well-toned)
Stamina +1 (conditioned)
Presence +1 (noble)
Communication +1 (well-spoken)
Dexterity +3 (nimble)
Quickness +1 (spry)
Statistics
Age: 19
Warping: 5 (divine)
Decrepitude: 0
Virtues & Flaws
Virtues
- Landed Noble (major, social)
- Wealthy (major, general)
- Privileged Upbringing (minor, general)
- Well-Travelled (minor, general)
- Unaging (minor, supernatural)
- Improved Characteristics (minor, general)
Flaws
- Raised from the Dead (major, story, supernatural)
- Flaw from warping: Visions (minor, supernatural)
- Flaw from warping: Visions (minor, supernatural)
- Lost Love (minor, personality)
- Oath of Fealty: English crown (major, story, required)
- Compassionate (major, personality)
Personality Traits
Compassionate +3
Circumspect +1
Strong-willed +2
Abilities
General:
Speak Middle English: 5
Area Lore (Shropshire): 2 (15)
Awareness (alertness): 2 (15)
Charm (quick wit): 2 (15)
Craft (knitting): 2 (15)
Etiquette (nobility): 2 (15)
Folk Ken (common folk): 3 (30)
Hunt (tracking): 2 (15)
Leadership (inspiration): 2 (15)
Living Language: Welsh (conversational): 3 (30)
Ride (speed): 2 (15)
Academic:
Artes Liberales (grammar): 3 (30)
Civil and Canon Law (church): 1 (5)
Common Law (local laws): 2 (15)
Dead Language: Latin (academic): 4 (50)
Living Language: Greek (academic): 3 (30)
Theology (history): 2 (15)
Martial:
Bow (English longbow): 4 (50)
Single Weapon (longsword and shield): 4 (50)
Combat Information
Burden=9, Encumbrance=1
Armor: Partial chainmail suit; Soak=7
English Longbow: Init: -3, Atk: +12, Dfn: +6, Dmg: +10
Longsword and heater shield: Init: +2, Atk: +12, Dfn: +9, Dmg: +8
Approval Notes
Hard to overcome gender bias among academia without the Wealthy virtue.
I've written a post to explain this point. Wealthy works, but so does Landed Noble on it's own. Wealthy and Landed Noble is too much, but it is your choice which you choose to keep. I'd personally like her to just have Wealthy, but your background infers that you are far more keen on Landed, so I'm fine with that.
...hire a tutor...
Yes, the church seems rather mercenary, and I have no problem with Landed Noble granting you access to a tutor. The tutor will be male though, and your lessons will be conducted in the presence of your ladies in waiting, as it is unthinkable that you would ever be unattended whilst in the presence of a man.
Her learning was to have been seen to by privately hired teachers.
That is fine.
...but it was not unheard of for wealthy nobles to educate their daughters ... educating women (even nobles) had very little benefit at very high cost.
House Jerbiton has set up a small number of academic schools where ladies may study mundane subjects, and this could work well for Lilly.
--I could see the girlhood friend of a Quaesitor being able to get into one of those schools, although I'd have to re-think how Lily and Mnem met, then.
As for Aramaic, it seemed that would be the academic language of choice among the clergy who tend to dote on her.
The local church is not going to like it if you are spending a lot of time with ordained members of the Eastern Church, but they don't need to know. Syriac is the academic language of the Eastern Church, and encompasses over half of all Aramaic texts. If Lilly knows Aramaic, then she knows Syriac, as opposed to other, more obscure Aramaic languages, such as Chaldean. I won't object to her knowing a bit of Syriac if her tutor is from Eastern Europe. Aramaic is not, according to my research, used by the Western Church, but I could be wrong.
--She wouldn't be involved with the Eastern Church.
On second thought, though, that would probably be Greek, as IIRC most of the New Testament was originally scribed in Greek.
Again, Greek is the language of the Eastern Church, and Latin is the language of the Western Church, according to what I've read. However, it will be far easier to find a tutor of Greek, than a tutor of Aramaic.
--The older texts (the ones she'd be pulling in huge favors to be able to look at) would be scribed in Greek though. Seems a bible-nerd would really want to be able to read the new testament in its untranslated form. If that's not the case I can drop the secondary academic language altogether.
- can be the noble for one, possibly two local manors, neither of which can be Stretton. At this time, Church Stretton is a Royal Manor.
> Just pick them then, please?
You can have a single manor in the same part of Shropshire as Church Stretton, or two which are further afield. I'll need to go and rifle through my research...
Also, I believe this is incorrect, as Stretton would have been in the Earldom of Shrewsbury, and Robert de Belleme was stripped of title for treason a few decades prior to gameplay. Most of the area was split into fiefdoms that the crown sorta threw around for the next couple hundred years.
- Basically, the King wanted to build a castle to watch over a very important road, and so took possession of the manor.
"In the Middle Ages such importance as Church Stretton had derived from its location on the main Shrewsbury-Hereford road and its status as a royal manor rather than from the size of the settlement."
"By the mid 12th century there was a royal castle on Brockhurst hill"
- I have better quotes if I go digging through my research.
- Needs to lose the Wealthy Virtue. This won't be a problem, skillwise, as you already recieve 100 extra points from Priviliged Upbringing and Well-traveled.
> Skillwise, that *is* a problem, as it removes 70 points of skills; no small amount of re-allocation.
As Lily has Unaging, and is 19 years old, she can very happily afford to be three or four years older, and thus gain 60 or 80 experience points. Her apparent age is yours to freely choose with that virtue.
She doesn't need to be particularly youthful, as in order for her to be a female heir, I require her to be a widow, rather than unmarried. As a widow, she has the right to re-marry, so this doesn't affect gameplay, and merely adds one more body to the conflagration in your background.
--Unaging doesn't make her lifespan get any longer, she just doesn't *look* any older-- the reason I chose that virtue was to make her forever appear the same as she was at the time of her death. She's still going to die of old age at the same time she would otherwise. As far as the widow thing goes, I addressed this further down.
I pose that Lily would _not_ outrank the majority of nobles she'd encounter with the Wealth virtue, by the very nature of being female.
They have sworn oaths to you, and you have the power to do bad things to them if they break them, or merely earn your displeasure. That's one of the reasons you can't be Lady of Shropshire.
--She's not supposed to be the Lady of all Shropshire. Perhaps this is where we're having a misunderstanding. I listed her name as "Lily of Shropshire" because the common surnames folks chose back then was based on what they did or where they were from, but mostly because I hadn't really been able to sit down and pick a good Norman name. You'd said before that as a wealthy landed noble, she'd have 2-3 feifs; I assumed all those feifs would be in Shropshire, so for lack of a better name, I called her "Lily of Shropshire." Even as a wealthy noble I wouldn't expect any more than three manors at most (and I was really thinking more like two). Wealth wasn't supposed to mean "OMGIOWNSHROPSHIRE" - the impression I have (though I haven't read Ordo Nobilis in quite a while) is that much land would probably be more virtue points than any character has to spend.
The plan was that she is very popular among the commonfolk, loved among the clergy, entertains some leeway from her superiors due in no small part to her popularity with the church, but as far as her peers go, she's nothing until/unless she gets married. That's why she hides away from them. And again, as far as estates and soldiers come into gameplay, it's intended that she's given primary control over whatever manors she owns to the royally-appointed seneschals, and I am more than happy to cede that any soldiers loyal to her are tied up defending their own castles. Lily would not be going off to march into war unless she's explicitly ordered to, which wouldn't happen anyway because no one would follow a chick into a battlefield. Yeah yeah, they followed Jeanne d'Arc but that was two hundred years later, and even she was treated with disrespect as a mere figurehead until she proved herself a competent military commander (which Lily is not). As I see it, should Lily be Wealthy, that means she basically has the ability to pay for the instruction she wants, can afford to host feasts and festivals for the commonfolk, and she's not tied to her manors as far as running things goes. Wealth allows her three seasons a year to do what she wants; to me, that's huge. Playing a noble companion that can't ever go anywhere because they're tied up taking care of their own lands, well, that'd suck. As far as servants go, they're off doing their jobs; she should never have with her more than perhaps two ladies-in-waiting and a bodyguard.
Well, Landed Noble or Wealth, on their own, entail two seasons of 'work', and I'm happy for you to propose whatever mode of employment you like, given that her lands are administered for her by a representative of the King who doesn't have your best interests at heart. It isn't as though you have gained the benefit of an NPC properly managing your domain for you.
You can spend it visiting other nobles, knitting with your ladies, etc. As a noble, you at least get some choice over where to place your exposure points.
--Wealthy non-nobles have three seasons free, not two. The benefit of NPCs properly managing her domain is one of the large factors in why I wanted Wealth in addition to Landed Noble. I wanted her to be available for adventuring at any time of the year. As a non-wealthy noble, she can't go anywhere in spring or autumn, because she has to be overseeing planting and harvest. That may seem fine to you, but it doesn't to me.
Please do not assume the worst of my intentions. I'm not choosing Wealth as some manner of being uber-munchkin powerful.
It isn't your intentions, it is merely that fact that if I inserted Lily into the saga's setting as she currently stands, the mere fact of her existence would have an effect on the game, and there will be times where it will seem irrational for her not to wield her power to solve problems with nobles, etcetera, given that she has that capability. Even without acting, the nobles, being aware of her, will act completely differently. If one noble begins to defy you, another may decide to act on your behalf, because it is a great political opportunity.
However, Wealth is fine... if you drop Landed Noble...
--I really think you have a much higher opinion of how Wealth interacts with Landed Noble than the 5th edition book indicates. More than one feif, free time, and can afford expensive tutoring and equipment.
I want Wealth so that the character can have the leeway to learn what she wants, better the standard of living for the commonfolk, and have the freedom to adventure however much she wants.
The book seems craply written with regard to the wealth virtues, so I have tried to explain it on the forum. A character who has Wealthy or Landed Noble on their own, has plenty of cash to splash around.
--It looks pretty straightforward to me.
If you'd like to work out a new homemade virtue which works some way that would make both of us happy, that'd be fine with me. The main things I want are:
- at least three seasons per year free
- to be able to toss a lot of money at the church
- to be able to buy expensive equipment and have access to learning
- to be able to hold festivals a few times a year where the smallfolk are treated to great meals and have fun
- to make sure that the peasants who owe her fealty are treated very well.
Oh, and were it to allow twenty points per year at character creation, that saves me from having to either rebuild the character or tick down her lifetime.
The fewer people loyal to her, the better she'll be able to care for the peasants who are in her domains. Perhaps a homemade minor virtue which grants material wealth by granting higher-quality sources of income without increasing the number of feifdoms she has? Possible higher-income sources that appeal to me are the breeding of exceptional quality horses, or perhaps there is a forest with trees whose wood is prized for bowcraft, something along those lines. I care much less about Lily having tons of holdings than I do about her being able to afford to be very generous to the church and commonfolk (without having to worry about impoverishing the place), have free time, and afford education, training and equipment.
I don't want to call on the king for tea or lead vast armies into battle.
Well, Lily certainly swore an oath to the King to provide him with a large number of soldiers, some of which are numbered among your fifty servants, but the bulk of which are numbered amongst the servants of the many lesser nobles who hold a portion of Shropshire, and thus must provide soldiers if you ask them.
If she is the 'Lady of Shropshire', the King will expect her to mobilise an army of at least 500 men within the first ten or twenty years of the saga, because He will command it.
It would probably be great fun to lead them to the battlefield, but I'm not sure whether it is permitted for Lily to do so.
--Again: She's not intended to be "THE Lady of Shropshire", she was supposed to be *a* lady, from Shropshire.
There's quite enough fighting going on at our doorstep that whatever warriors owe allegiance to her are quite busy holding down the fort, and she's more than happy to let them keep doing that, because it frees her up to muck about playing with books and sharp objects.
Theoretically, the run-up to a war would be a very busy time for Lily, but given the administrator...
The English+Norman 5 were based on Michael de Verteuil's post to Berklist; he says lower nobility of England would be natively bilingual in the two, because their wetnurses would be common English folk but their families speak Norman French. If you disagree that's fine, I only added Norman on there after I read his post; I don't care too much about Norman, as she's to interact with the smallfolk far more frequently than the nobility.
If she is the 'Lady of Shropshire', then there is nothing lower about her title. :D She rules an important fief, packed to the gills with 32 (or more) castles, and the owners of all those castles (bar the King, Church, and Sarop/Shrewesbury) have sworn an oath of fealty to her, as feudalism incorporates a pyramid system of oaths. Norman French is, sadly, mandatory, and English is her second language.
I am tempted to give her Norman French 5, gratis, if she is merely the ruler of a manor, as she would be in a bi-lingual situation then.
--I can't see assigning 32 fiefs to a character with anything less than a 6 virtue points. It hasn't been THAT long since I've read Ordo Nobilis :) Not only was Lily not intended to "*the* Lady of Shropshire," but there wouldn't *be* any lord over all Shropshire in the 13th century. Between the late 12th century until the end of the 14th century, the fiefs of Shropshire are like Tiddlywinks that the king tossed around and random nobles picked up.
- Craft (tapestry) doesn't seem to feature anywhere... :P :)
> Grrr. Well, can she knit instead? :) Crafts normally denote an ability to work with a material, but may be more specialised. In both cases, we are talking about wool (I think :D), so I'm happy for her to make anything woollen with her knitting skill, including tapestries. It is one of the oh-so-exciting past-times that a lady and her ladies-in-waiting occupy themselves with, especially if the weather is too poor to go riding.
--All right, she'll know some wool-working, but she's going to hate it. I may have to minorly plagiarize my favorite author and have her name a pair of swords her "knitting needles"...
- I'll need to reassess the character once you have made changes.
The skills look good, though I'm finding it hard to imagine why she would be skilled in tracking :D. If you want to change it, I would suggest a speciality in hunting a specific animal, and if you don't, then I shall assume it is something you picked up once you began accompanying Mnemosyne (unless your background states otherwise).
--I really just couldn't think of anything other specialties. She likes to hunt game (as she's fairly soft-hearted I can't see her maintaining her bow skill unless she practices *somehow*).
Her virtues and flaws look okay:
- Could 'Lost Love' be her late husband?
--Her Lost Love was a Welsh noble who was killed in the same fire Lily and her family died in. I was going to write that they'd all died on her wedding night, but I thought that sounded too trite.
If, on the other hand, her holdings are to have been inherited from her late husband rather than her family, then she'd need to be a Welsh noble for the effect I was looking for. And *that* would open up a whole can of worms that I don't think would be very fun-- if a Welsh woman were holding English lands, I can't see her lasting very long before being assassinated. Indeed, her family and her betrothed were murdered by some spiteful Norman who didn't want to see a Welshman in any position of power in England. So if SHE were the Welsh one, and she were the one to have come back from the dead (not the Englishman she was marrying) she'd be assassinated (again), pronto.
Also, having her be a widow treads a bit too closely on a character from a short story by my all-time favourite author. Maybe a bit too closely for comfort. http://www.fictionbook.ru/author/martin_george/the_sworn_sword/martin_the_sworn_sword.html I hadn't seen Lily much as a Red Widow type, but as a widow, she's starting to sound a bit like Lady Rohanne. Especially considering the specifics of her martial training.
* Her oath of fealty is ultimately to the King, but probably not directly (unlike your Administrator, or the Castellan of Brockhurst Castle)
Although Lily, if she learnt to use a bow and a sword, would learn the Shortbow and 'Shortsword' (the Longbow is not used for sports or hunting, and requires years of dedicated training which caused the skeleton of the archer to become warped to the point where Archeologists can identify a longbowman by just his bones), and the Longsword is a weapon designed for mounted combat (you can't hit them if your sword doesn't reach), I am happy for you to have the larger versions of these weapons.
--I picked longsword for two reasons. First, I thought that a master-at-arms of a noble house would most likely be a longsword specialist. Secondly, the longsword is a "better" weapon, so it seemed the most likely choice for someone who can afford it. I would prefer to have her use a weapon more like a rapier-- a lighter, faster weapon, less likely to hack through armor, but more likely to be poked into chinks in armor (through the visor of a helm, a weak spot in one's gorget, etc). Unfortunately we're about three hundred years too early for that.
It is just something to bear in mind when writing your background. It is likely that your bow has a much lighter draw than a man's longbow, but I will keep the statistics the same, as it is still a superior weapon to the shortbow. I only know one person who might be able to fire a longbow, and it would take them time.
--I have to admit, this *really* bothers me. I'm sure you didn't mean anything by this comment, but to me it comes across as an implication that a female character of +2 strength is inherently weaker than a man of +2 strength. Saying that she's not strong enough to draw a man's longbow because she's female, despite that she has the requisite strength (+2), indicates a belief that women are always inherently less strong than men. I'm the first to concede that the human genome is a tricky thing and that on average, men tend to be stronger than women. However, when we're defining the abilities of a character by numerical values, that value represents absolute ability, and is neither augmented nor diminished by the character's gender. If gender factored into one's characteristics, then does that mean that a female's +1 stamina gives her +2 to soak instead of just the +1 it gives men, because we have higher pain tolerance due to the ability to bear children? Since it doesn't, then I'd like to request that *all* characteristics remain absolute in the values they represent, regardless of gender.
If you would like for Lily to have only +1 strength because a woman of the times, even one in Lily's position, does not engage in enough activity to condition her body to +2 strength, and have her use a bow with a lighter draw such as you describe, that's something which would be okay with me, because that doesn't insinuate that *all* women are *always* weaker than *all* men. Lily doesn't get out and plow fields or swing a blacksmith's hammer, so I can see her being limited to a max of +1 strength. I just really wanted to use a longbow because none of my ArM characters have ever had any bow skill, and I wanted to play with a longbow.
I have some actual experience of battlefield archery, mainly the 'being charged and hacked to the floor' part, but also the 'running around madly shooting people in the face' part too. Longbows and Shortbows are very different beasts - and while the longbow can't be fired from horseback, and is really quite unwieldy, they do scary things to people. Longbow is for rank-and-file archery, and I've never used one (well, I did once, but I couldn't draw the string, funnily enough... :D), and shortbow is for skirmishing, as you can fire it hastily, while on the move, and use it in more "chaotic" combats, such as when being ambushed.
Ah, that looks like I'm trying to change your mind - but I'm not! :D
--Based on your description here, the longbow is certainly what she would use. Lily should be able to take down a deer, or stand on a crennellated wall and shoot someone trying to storm a castle. She shouldn't be able to run around like Peter Jackson's interpretation of Legolas (*hiss, groan*).
Notes about the Character
Stuck here temporarily.
- I'm investigating the gender issues, but they could be quite severe for someone of her class, compared with, say, the grogs...
> Yes. She should have very little respect from her peers; other nobles should be polite, kind insofar as they're trying to convince her to marry them or their sons, but otherwise disdainful. She should be viewed by other nobles as being a bit of a willful child, and honestly, she pretty much is. She's more concerned with her own fun, and she doesn't realize yet that in order to really protect the people she cares about so much, she *needs* to go out and find a good husband who she might be able to convince to act in their interest. Possible adventures I was anticipating would be scenarios in which she would become painfully aware of just how horribly the commonfolk are being treated by the royal armies marching through on their way to and from Wales; she tries to fix the situation but is utterly stymied, rinse-lather-repeat until she wises up and resigns herself to having to marry some soft-hearted chump. Then going off to seek out said soft-hearted chump. Hilarity ensues.
The reaction would be that, while it's unseemly for the times, Our Father Who Art In Heaven clearly has some plan for her, and they would really prefer that whenever the time comes 'round for whatever that is, she's as inclined towards the church as possible. So long as she remains discreet about being educated, they're willing to accomodate her odd requests. When you control what someone knows, you have enormous power over them
(yet another reason for Lily to become quite fond of the magi, and for that to cause conflict with the church); the clergy's feelings for her should be about 50/50 between genuine respect and their desire to have influence over her. This could be slanted more towards the genuine respect if you're less cynical about the church than I am. (I grew up in Catholic school as a "precocious" child, and having had no small amount of "friendly debates" with priests over the natures of worship, sin, and forgiveness.) Her education would be, of course, facilitated in no small part by the Wealth virtue, as she'd be giving generously to the Church to "prove" her gratefulness.
