Yes! I know! The bad news is that it's been a looooooooooooooong time since I paid any attention to this, at all, and as such, it's taken me forever to get the next installment tacked up here. My apologies for that but, as we all know entirely too well, life happens... all the time.

The good news, though, is that I've got a new post ready for you, at long last, and, if you're still reading, go ahead and grab those dust covered character sheets and sharpen up those pencils, because here it comes! (If you haven't read the previous two entries in this series and care to catch up before proceeding, Part 1 can be found here and Part 2 can be found here.)

All right, so to quote a great GM (and allude to a great campaign); “Continuing Where We Last Left Off…”

 …My last installment ended with our character statted, feated, and skilled out through his first character level. In that process, we got a good seed planted for backstory creation and left plenty of room for the character to grow, right? In fact, I think we got enough detail sketched out between our initial conceptualizing and that first level that we could most definitely pick up the character as it is and play him well in a good, story-driven, game and have no problems making him fit into whatever might come of that, don’t you? The thing is, though, the game we’re putting this guy together for is calling for 7th level characters… so we need to crank through six more levels character evolution (both where stats, skills, and feats are concerned as well as giving our character some life experiences to go along with it… can’t jump directly from level 1 to level 7, can we?

Nope… we need to take a look at the second level of our character’s life and figure out what he/she might have learned and/or done in that span of their life. My thoughts regarding this point of Nyx’s life are fairly broad, I suppose. At the beginning of his second level, he’s still ranging with the Jolbane Clan on the Shanurdir plains and has more than begun to make a name for himself. In fact, by this point in his life, Nyx has become betrothed to Lyssa, daughter of the Clan’s Shaman, and life is looking pretty good for him, all things considered, especially if his forthcoming marriage is successful and he and Lyssa manage to conceive children, etc… (not 100% sure exactly how Nyx might have won Lyssa’s hand, myself, but have some vague ideas based on my perception of mith’ganni culture, etc).

Anyway, as good as his future might be looking to Nyx, this is also about the point in time in which humans, with whom the clan have thus far had little contact (aside from occasional trading activity and, perhaps, a minor skirmish or two) have been quite busy expanding their Empire and, having succeeded in dominating, subduing, or outright destroying the “monster races” closest to its borders, moved those borders outward as a result, and have designs on expanding even farther. Now, the mith’ganni are seeing more and more of the round-ears in their lands and, unlike earlier times, the humans are less interested in trade and more interested in conquest. As such, the hunter/warriors of the Jolbane have begun to see more than the occasional skirmish and are more actively evading and/or fighting troupes of the Empire’s soldiery and raiding slavers. In fact, Nyx gets to the tail end of his second character level at right about the same time that his clan is marauded and all but wiped out by imperially sanctioned slavers… So, with the backstory in mind where our leveling up is concerned, let’s take a look at what we’ve got to work with as far as stats and such go:

• +1 Move silently (because, surely over the span of time between 1st and 2nd level, Nyx would have improved this a little… and because we need it to meet our goal of taking the assassin class, right?)
• +1 Hide (same rationale as the move silently business as above)
• +1 Knowledge (Nature) (This is another flavor/character builder, really… It simply makes sense for our ranger to have picked up more than a little knowledge in this arena, doesn’t it? Besides, could come in handy in his future career if, say, he needed to forage for ingredients to whip into a poison on the fly, yes?)
• +1 Survival (always good to have Survival when you live in a world as treacherous and hostile as the one Nyx lives in.)
• +1 Search (Just like survival… always good to have some search skills handy.)
• +1 Listen (Well, because he does! A lot!)
• +1 Jump (Jumping is pretty handy in a variety of situations… entering combat, leaving combat, reaching that branch above you to get your pale butt out of the way of a stampede, getting from the rooftop on this side of the alley to the rooftop on that one…)

And there go our 8 skill points for this level. Next we’ve got a decision to make as far as “Combat style”. At this level a ranger is granted the choice between archery or two-weapon fighting Combat styles (call it a virtual feat, if you will).

Sooo… Combat style? Mmmmm… going with Two-Weapons… I know, archery might be a better fit considering the whole hunter thing but, don’t forget, there’s warrior in there, too, and maybe Nyx had need for the close up skills as opposed to those at range early on… you know, stalk the raiding round-ears, wait for them to settle into their camp, and then hack ‘em to ribbons before they can rest up to attack the clan on the morrow… With the humans pressing closer and closer, two-weapons style made sense in that regard, plus, it won’t hurt later on, either. ;)

That, dear Innmates, brings our character build to the end of Level 2… Okay, actually it’s the beginning of Level 2 – Nyx still needs more life experiences before he buffs up to Level 3… Anyway, that brings this chapter of our blog to a close, gives me a chance to go refill the beverage and interact with my family, and gives you a chance to take a look at your characters now that they’re all beefy and level 2ish and give some consideration to ‘what comes next’ for them… Have fun dreaming all that stuff up! When next we meet, I’ll let you in on what happens next with our Mith’ganni friend, here, and maybe even let you in on how that “Evil” got tacked on to the “Neutral” where the poor guy’s alignment is concerned.