No story is complete without it's main characters, enter your Alter-ego. Your alter-ego or AE is the part of the story that you are going to tell. The GM sets the scene and provides the background for the environment, but your alter-ego is the star of the show. You make the decisions for your AE and you describe what your AE does, how he or she interacts with the world the GM has conjured, you act out your AE's dialogue. Before all this acting and telling of tales can begin however, you must create your alter-ego and make note of his or her attributes and traits. And so, lets look at creating your alter-ego.
To begin, I always try to imagine a persona that will be interesting or challenging for me and the rest of the role-playing group. It's very important to add this sort of spice to your AE other wise you run the risk of becoming just another faceless sword for hire. Don't just create numbers that work, start off imagining what your character is then tailor the numbers to fit that description.
The GM will help you design your AE, perhaps you'll even do a little one-on-one role-playing to tailor an introduction for your Character. The GM will also set guidelines in terms of how weak or powerful your AE is. Starting out as a super hero often makes for dull game-play as no matter how much experience your AE gains you fail to see any worthwhile improvements in their ability. It's much more rewarding to watch your AE grow and developed gaining in power as a direct result of your good decisions and careful planning.
The most important part of your AE is their history, after all, we're all a product of our past. You should build a back-story for your AE. Explain why they are who they are. Who is your AE's family? What does he do for a living? What sort of things does your AE like and dislike? Is your AE religious?
Discuss your AE's origins with the GM, try to developed a story together that somehow adds to, and enhances the storyline set out by the GM. If your AE is a square peg in a round hole, make sure that this will improve the role-playing experience for the whole group! What does your AE look like?
It's often a good idea to write a short (about a page) series of notes explaining who your AE is and what the rest of the party knows about him, this can be either read out to the rest of the party, or simply copied and handed around to the other players.
In order to make your AE believable to the rest of the players, you should make sure that they have a consistant personality. That's not to say that personalities don't change but they do so slowly. Think of a word or short phrase that sums up the main aspect of your AE's personality. Perhaps they're "Pure evil" or "virtuous". Consider your AE's personality when you make decisions for your AE, an evil character wouldn't stop to consider the feelings of others before committing a selfish act for instance. Make sure that you understand you AE's personality and consider how best to play the persona.
The GM will note down the personality that you are playing and award experience points to you based on how well you play your persona.
The attribute scores represent the various mental, physical and social capabillities of your alter-ego. Attribute scores are ratings out of ten. The lowest score you can start with in any one attribute is a two and the highest you can start with is a seven.
Each of the attributes describes a particular facet of your alter ego, you could loosely regard each attribute as either the power, the speed or the health of your alter-ego's body, mind or soul.
When you create your alter-ego you have thirty-six points to spend on your attributes. You must put at least two points in each score or your AE will become unplayable. You may not put more than seven points in a score of a starting AE as scores this high represent near super-human abillity and your AE will rapidly become boring to play due to the amounts of experience you'll need in order to get better at those higher scores.
A average human attribute score is four, five is regarded as above average and a six is exceptional! An attribute score of seven or more is truly remarkable, if you have a seven you're pretty much a freak of nature.
Your intelligence is the might of your mind. An important factor of IQ, the higher the intelligence the bigger and better your thoughts are. Intelligence gives you information about the unknown through the power of logic. The sciences are governed by intelligence, as are most logic related topics.
Charisma is the measure of the social butterfly. Charisma is your ability to charm others into liking you and getting what you want without resorting to violence. Being charismatic does not mean you are a good person but rather that you know what others want to hear and see, thus you move rapidly towards your goals in society.
While most players will want to play human AE's it is indeed possible to have a non-human AE. Their are a number of intelligent (and thus playable) non-human species that inhabit the island kingoms. Each different species applies a number of modifiers to your attribute scores. Once you have created your AE's attribute scores, you should apply the species modifiers. Note this is done after you have spent your attribute points so you can exceed the rule-of-thumb minimum and maximum scores this way. It is not possible to have a score of less than one however even if indicated so by a modifier.
Skills represent the knowledge your AE has gained in particular fields or study. This knowledge can be gained through trial and error or by study with a tutor. You get 45 points to spend on skills when you create a new AE, each skill dot costs you a cumulative number of points, one point for the first dot, two points for the second, three for the third and so-on. Thus a score of six would cost six of your 45 available points.
You also get a 5 wild points that you can spend on any abillity or skill as you see fit, each wild point can be traded on a one-to-one basis for any skill dot or abillity dot (maximum of one dot added per score). Alternatively you may trade all of your wild points in exchange for ten points to spend in either magick or faith.
Creating a magickal alter-ego is a bit different to creating a normal AE. If you choose to trade all of your wild points in exchange for magick, you get ten points that you can spend on Magickal abillities. These magickal abillities are attributes of your AE just as strength and wisdom are however these abillities determine how well you can manipulate a particular aspect of reallity. You should read throught the magick section for descriptions of each of these abillities and spend the points as follows. Each of your ten points can be used to purchase a dot of magickal abillity, the expenditure is cumulative, the first dot costs one point, the second costs two point the third costs three, four for the fourth and so-on. A score of four would cost a total of ten points (e.g. all of them). You can use this magickal abillity to cast spells and cantrips that effect the reallity around you.
Faith is the true belief in a god and the subsequent benefits of that belief. Faith is similar to magick in that you get ten points to spend in a cumulative cost manner as follows. Each of your ten points can be used to purchase a dot of faith, the expenditure is cumulative, the first dot costs one point, the second costs two point the third costs three, four for the fourth and so-on. A score of four would cost a total of ten points (e.g. all of them). You can use your faith powers to pray for miracles and to perform rituals. Be sure to read the section on faith to better understand the faith abillity scores and how to use them.
At this point in AE creation it's useful for the GM to role-play through an introduction for your AE into the game, you can both add to this mini-game with details of who your AE is and what their background is. The outcome of this short session will be the GM allocating some funds to you to fit out your AE with clothing and equipment, he may even design some plot items for your AE like "your fathers armour" or perhaps your dead mentors grimoire.
Once you have created your AE, you need to decide how best to integrate with the rest of the party. Decide how much they know about your AE and try to explain "why" you are with them in a way that will add to the story and be plausible.