OOC Chatter

"Seems like a secret message that one has to carve into stone isn't goin' to stay secret forever." Baz tugs on the brim of his wide hat as he notes the writer joining the conversation. "If you got one of yer books with you I'd love to take a read, whilin a hot day away with a yarn is a damn sight better than sweatin' it out."

Thanks GNW, I've amended the max sanity to 99 (not that it matters for a one shot) and accepted Baz into the fold. Just waiting on the other two now

I'm the one who was making an amalgamation of the archaeologist/dilettante. I modified the pregen dilettante to fill both the role of financial backer for the expedition as well as a hobbyist archaeologist which I feel was needed. His name is Richard Joseph Lyttelton III (RJL3, lol). He is highly educated and interested in all things ancient as well as the practices surrounding occultism.

@Dr_B There's a good chance RJL3 knows Arthur Morecambe, given the status of their two families. He may have even invited the correspondent to join the expedition knowing he was working on his piece.

Sure thing, works for me, do share a background here.

Arthur is also an amateur Occultist, so there might be more overlap there.

A noble of the British Empire, Richard Joseph Lyttelton III's great wealth means that he has been able to pursue his studies without the need to work. Spurred by his fascination with all things ancient, RJL3 funded an archaeological dig in Egypt, hoping to uncover priceless artifacts and hidden lore. He is excited, as his dig team believes they have found the entrance to a previously unknown necropolis.

I really didn't feel the need to change anything from the pregen dilettante's background. Most of the adjustments were made to his skills.

@Dr_B I currently have his age set to 32, but I can modify it 3-4 years in either direction to better sync it with Arthur's. Perhaps they even attended university during the same time period. Oxford perhaps?

@Zeromancer: I created an engineer, Dardan Kela, with an eye to being the person responsible for organising the work crews and digging into the site. So he was likely employed by RJL3 and they'd have the usual 1920's employer/employee relationship, unless @Knifesedgegames has different ideas?

And, @Zeromancer, Baz was raised in rural Kentuky and prizes the life of idle cleverness espoused by Mark Twain. He often gets underestimated with regards to his wits and education because of his accent, and his comfort with maintaining his southern common sense and manners. He is usually happy to let people think what they will while he pursues his ideal life of solitary comfortable living as an academic, paid to study and write away the days with nary a chore or bit of toil in sight. He was educated at a graduate level in England so however you want to play around with knowing, or knowing about him is up for the fun.
Baz could be a rivals attempt at sabotaging the expedition by setting you up with this hillbilly translator, not knowing Baz's actual skill, or you could have recruited him as the diamond in the rough you might figure him to be. Either way Baz is here to get in the field work he needs to set himself up for a good while writing books and hopefully avoiding classroom teaching at the university.

Sounds good to me!

@Drakis2 I like this idea a lot. I imagine him as Indy's Sallah.

@GreatNorthernWendigo I noticed that you took the language professor, excellent. I could see the two of them competing for time with old manuscripts and tablets while at university. Perhaps we can sync their ages as well, like I proposed to Dr_B.

Sounds good to me, syncing ages is no trouble. Now in character...

"Competin' for time with the books, sure we did a little of that, but twernt no competition betwix us at school. Last time an englishman got beat by an american like that he had to take his face off our money. Sure happy to be here nontheless boss."

Good evening, fellow travelers. This is Christopher Johns.

An English photographer who covered the Great War, Christopher carries scars both physical and mental from his time capturing the worst of humanity. The atrocities of trench warfare, the permanent damage to his right eye from a stray bullet, and the fact that the work he risked his life and lost the love of his life for was censored and ignored on his return- have left him adrift from his former colleagues and carefree youth. He copes by hiding his dead eye behind a patch and throwing himself into freelance work, taking the most dangerous and remote jobs available. When the opportunity to travel to Egypt and photograph the Tomb came over the wires, he couldn’t turn down the opportunity…

Raised by a devout Anglican English father and a Muslim Moroccan mother, Christopher found their religious traditions overbearing and exhausting from an early age but still followed his father's faith. This faith began to waiver as he watched first his mother, then his father both succumb to illness… What little faith in a higher power was destroyed by he witnessed during the war, men hacking each other to pieces with bayonets, blasting each others limbs off, and the ultimate atrocity, the horrors of the gas…

Christopher now refuses to believe in any benevolent higher power in the universe and resents the idea of any grander fate or personal destiny.

[i]Significant Person:[/I] Eva Neumann, a young German woman living on the border between Luxembourg and Germany who took pity on a wounded Christopher after finding unconscious on the banks of the Rhine River. At great risk, she hid him from the Imperial German Army and nursed him back to health from the injury that cost him his right eye. Separated from his unit, Christopher was forced to remain in hiding in her home, waiting for an opportunity to escape German territory and rejoin the Allies. An avid reader and collector of books, she read to him in German and slowly taught him the language. As weeks turned to months, distrust turned to understanding, then affection, then finally love.

This was the first time in his adult life that Christopher allowed himself to feel warmth and see the goodness in another human being. As the year 1918 wore on and the German Army became more desperate, it became evident that the time to chart an escape was rapidly approaching. Knowing that they could not hide together forever and that he could not take Eva with him, Christopher made the difficult decision to go through with his retreat back to Allied territory. He promised he would return for her, she promised she would wait for him. They would start a new life together.

Before their tearful farewell, he took a photo of her. This photo would become his most cherished possession- he keeps it in a silver locket attached to the grip of his Webley Mk. VI top-break revolver.

Christopher managed to reunite with the Allies, and by the winter of 1918 it was clear the war was nearing it’s end, but he was unable to gain clearance to return to Rhineland until the fall of 1919. Alas, when he finally returned to his lover’s home, he did not find her. There were not notes or indications of what might’ve happened to her, no neighbors reported seeing her, it was as if she’d disappeared from the face of the earth. The only trace of her he has left is her photo.

Unable to forget the life he planned to live with Eva, and unable to return to the life he led back in England before the war, Christopher now finds himself a man without a home.

Christopher’s greatest trait is his perceptiveness. As a child, his father taught him to shoot. As a man of devout faith, his Father never missed the opportunity to entwine religious teachings into daily life lessons, and while instructing Christopher on how to breath and aim, he advised him to ‘take a breath, stop time and see through the eyes of God’.

Though he has long abandoned his fear of God, Christopher took the mantra to heart and sought to hone his observantness and learn to identify and aim for the heart of anything before him- this skill led him to success behind a camera and also contributed to him becoming a keen marksman.

I am OK aligning ages and having studied together at Oxford, @Zeromancer

Thanks everyone for getting your characters set up. Does anyone have any questions before we get started?

Good to go.

Pacing is expected to be relatively fast, yeah?

I expect daily posting from everyone where possible but character gen has dragged a little so we’ll see. I always try to keep it moving so if I prompt someone to post and they don’t respond in 24 hours I’ll move on.

Alright, sounds fair.

Gameplay has begun : https://gamersplane.com/forums/thread/28742/

I just did my first roll!!! yayyy.

I assume you will take note when we hit Hard or extreme success.