For now, post up your character sheet/stats and any backstory you've rolled up.
You're going to be starting basically in a prison cell, deserved or not, so bear that in mind.
Retch was born, as many goblins are, into squalor and a large extended family. His unfortunate flatus caused him to be shunned by the Laughing Few Tribe, and he left them relatively early in life, when he stumbled into the Maze of the Goblin King. Somehow he got sworn into the service of said King.
In the couple decades since Retch has murdered and stolen in "service" to his King, sometimes going so far as to leave some of his takings out as offerings. During one of his more recent "jobs" Retch managed to get the jump on a mage, and has been carrying his spell book with him since.
They don't remember who made them, or who their soul was before they were Ruin. A clockwork of exquisite craftsmanship, Ruin stands 6 feet tall, their body an immaculate, androgynous statue of burnished brass. The most impressive part is the face - bare metal, but with thousands of tiny articulated parts, able to express the full range of human emotion. Not that Ruin is particularly emotional.
They remember being wound up six years ago, and nothing else. They knew three things immediately - their name is Ruin, they *loved* Master, wherever Master was, and they were built to kill. Unthinking, they killed the goblin who had curiously wound them up. They would kill for a time to survive, or for money, but as they went along guilt grew inside, and in time they tried to find less.. terrible work. For a time Ruin was a poacher, killing animals to fulfill their function and selling them to those who needed to eat. They settled in a tiny, shitty village on the outskirts and 'prenticed with the local ferryman, much to the amusement of anyone who wondered why a 6 foot tall, 300lb mechanical being who would sink instantly would risk such work. "I cannot drown," they would say when people asked them, shrugging and pulling on the rope tirelessly that forded the river.
They wound down one day, alone and far from home, while out poaching. They woke up in prison, key turned by a fellow inmate's hand. They don't know how long they've been there, but Ruin is adaptable. They can start again. And the mysterious code carved into their arm seems to promise that one day, somehow, they can find the Master again... they have many questions.
Ruin is a 6' tall, 300lb humanoid clockwork. They are agender, though their form is graceful in a way that makes more fleshy people think of femininity. Their soul was fully cleansed in the Underworld before their creation and they have no memory of who the previous owner was. They have adult maturity but limited social experience and a lack of formative memories makes them dry, serious and emotionless. They don't want to be a killer, but they are built that way, and fighting your schematic is difficult. While living in the little village they became loosely involved in worship of the New God, but they are largely agnostic, more desperately seeking meaning in their new life and terrified of being alone. They are stand-offish and slow to form friendships, though they are deeply loyal to those who earn their trust. Speaks the Common Tongue. Though they do not remember, their Maker has a deeply scheming and self-serving nature. Their key is set high up and in the centre of their back in a deep recess, which Ruin is completely unable to reach.
After the prison break, Ruin leaned further in to his natural talents, honing his criminal skills and ultimately taking up the Path and training of the Rogue.
Key
If the key is turning, you count as
a creature and use your normal statistics. If the key isn't
turning, you count as an object and use the statistics
in the following description in place of your normal
statistics (your Health becomes the object starting
number). Your key stops turning when you become
incapacitated or at the end of any round in which you
got a 0 or less on an attack roll or challenge roll. Any
damage taken in excess of your Health applies to your
Health in your object form; if you take damage equal to
the Health of your object form, you are destroyed.
Weapons and Equipment
Dagger, Garotte, Long Knives x2, soft leather armour
2x coils of rope, Rowboat, 7 bits, backpack, tinderbox, 2x torch
Special cloak with 18 pockets carefully sewn into the lining
Perception: - Health: 15 Defense: 5 Strength: 0 (+0) Agility: 0 (+0) Intellect: - Will: - Speed: 0 Immune: attack rolls against Intellect, Will, or Perception;
attacks that allow challenge rolls to resist using Intellect,
Will, or Perception Suppressed Afflictions: Any afflictions you had when you
become an object are suppressed and have no effect
for as long as you remain an object. However, rounds
spent in object form count toward the duration of those
afflictions. Object:You cannot use actions or triggered actions, and
you cannot move. You are completely insensate.
Failing Magic: If you became an object from becoming
incapacitated, the magic binding your soul to your body
begins to fail. At the end of each round, roll a d6.
6: You arrest the failing magic, and you are no longer
incapacitated, but you remain an object until
another creature uses an action to restore power
to you. 2–5: Magical failure. If you get this result three times,
your soul escapes your body, and you remain an
object permanently. 1: Explosion! You explode in a 1d6-yard radius from
a point in your space. You are destroyed, and
everything in the area takes 2d6 damage. A creature
that gets a success on an Agility challenge roll takes
half the damage.
Wind the Clock: While you are an object, any creature that
can reach you can use an action to twist your key. If you
are not incapacitated, your mechanisms start working
again, and you become a creature at the end of the
round. If you are incapacitated, roll a d6. On a 3 or lower,
you remain incapacitated. On a 4 or higher, you heal
1 damage and become a creature at the end of the round.
Repair Damage: A creature can use a tool kit and an action
to start repairing you. If the creature spends a total of
4 hours working on you, it can make an Intellect
challenge roll with 1 bane. On a success, your object
form heals 1d6 + 1 damage
(Key and Object Form rules from Shadow of the Demon Lord: Ghosts In Machines, p.7. R.J. Schwalb.)
A wayward Jotun soldier of the southern ice sheets. One of the more level-headed of his band before it was finally defeated after a raid on the shores of the Empire, Orm had been an idealist far as the giants go. Despite following his chieftain to war, he'd been drawn to the idea of taming the impulses of the Jotun. That there was some manner of responsibility to be had with their stature and power among the small races. Perhaps a day to carve out a place of preeminence and leadership, to show these people the way.
But that was very long ago. If one were honest, he kept to the sea and raiding not only for his bizarre ideals, but for the tug in his blood to see the wider world. To forget the restive home he once had and the family he's long forgotten. To see more of the people he thought of guiding. All there was to see, however, was just more blood, sand, and terror.
Up until very recently indeed, to be an orc was to be little more than a living tool. Very few orcs particularily liked this arrangement, but what were they gonna do? Runt was one such orc who spent his days dreaming of bloody revenge in the name of the Dark Gods. Named by the guards for his scrawny (for an orc) from and oversized tusks, Runt was raised in the army's communal wards, learning from birth that his looks would make him a target for the other brats and that he'd need to learn to defend himself. By the time he was old enough for proper military training he was well able to hold his own and had gathered a few of the other outcasts around him, causing the human officers to single him out for extra training. They got quite the laugh out of the adolescent orc learning to read. With literacy came strange dreams, the voice of Black-Eyed Grimnir himself whispering of rebellion and bloodshed to come. When Drudge's rebellion finally came Runt was the first of his garrison to raise his hand against their human oppressors, and the last to finally put down his blade. In the months since Runt has struck out on his own, seeing Drudge's place on the alabaster throne as a continuation of the human's empire rather than the storm of chaos that Grimnir is owed.
Too long in this pit, he has forgotten the life he once lived. Now there is only the hunger, inflicted by a stranger seeking a companion in the long night. Why was he freed? If ever he knew, that too is forgotten. He knows well why he's in the cell - vampires are unwelcome guests anywhere, inevitably criminal, and a potentially useful experimental subject.
The only possession left in his clawed hands is a reliquary containing a fingerbone, and he imagines this must mean something.
