Some Fluff for your consideration

[Hazkali]

Based on the helpful suggestions from this thread, I present my Historical Hundred-Year's War character. Feel free to criticise the historicity... I used Wikipedia (yes, I know...) to verify the shreds of history.

Brother Ilswyn Taniel

Ilswyn was born in England, the second son of a lord. As was the custom, his parents sent him at a young age to be page in the household of a great lord, and at fourteen he became squire to an older knight. During this time, he underwent the training to become himself a knight, learning skill with the sword and the behaviour expected of him.

In the year 1291, he followed his lord to the east during the last crusade, and won his spurs during the siege of Acre. After the defeat, his lord and a small and always dwindling company of warriors harried nearby enemy villages, putting all the men they could find to the sword. The turning point for Ilswyn came as in one such village he stood by in horror as his lord, full of battlelust, cut down not just men but women and children alike. In an instant, he felt the weariness of war, and his faith in men and his God was broken.

The next morning, he quarrelled with his lord, and in anger, cut him down. Aghast at what he had done, he buried his lord, resolving to tell people that he had been slain in heroic combat. Before the winter, he had returned to England.

Now home and a full knight, Ilswyn expected to live a good life and forget the events of the crusades. However, as a second son he had no castle, so he went from lord to lord, as guest or retainer, never staying for more than a year in any one place. He was never content, his heart always heavy and sleep always troubled. Food was bitter, drink was sour, and music always off-key. Many women came to him with the wish that he be their husband, but with no great wealth to his name, nor any desire for those maidens, he made none his wife.

It was as he followed his last lordly charge on a pilgrimage in France that his life changed. Walking barefoot and fasting throughout the journey to the shrine, as the party reached their destination he suddenly beheld a cross of shining light before him, and fell to his knees. Moved by his vision, he forswore his sword and armour, and on his return to England joined a monastic order.

In the order, he lives humbly, accepting the virtues of charity, humility and obedience, and has found a measure of redemption. His noble education and skills learnt in the east gave him the skills to work under the herbalist, eventually becoming the monastery's chief herbalist when his mentor passed away.

[Crow]

Not bad. I wish my players would put that sort of thought into their characters. But what is he like personality-wise? What are things he likes or dislikes? What or who does he really care about?

[CASTLEMIKE]

What level is the PC? If he can acquire a Lyre of Building and a little down time he can have a nice Tower, Keep or Castle in short order.

[Hazkali]

What level is the PC? If he can acquire a Lyre of Building and a little down time he can have a nice Tower, Keep or Castle in short order.

Erm... the only problem is that the campaign is set in the real world, ~1330A.D. ...

Well, that and I think the other players are all playing knights and I wanted to do something a bit different.

[Quietus]

Very nice, but I think it's worth asking : If he's part of a monastic order, what will his motivation to go adventuring be?

[Hazkali]

Very nice, but I think it's worth asking : If he's part of a monastic order, what will his motivation to go adventuring be?

I'm thinking he's either on another pilgrimage or a not-plot-related mission for his Abbot (carrying an important document or relic, something like that) and gets swept up in events.

[Prometheus]

I thought of an interesting historical quest for your consideration although it does involve some rewriting of history.

In 552 AD some monks broke the Asian monopoly on silk by smuggling some silkworms eggs before they hatched and bringing them to the Byzantine emperor Justinian. Silk didn't spread to the rest of Europe until after the sack of Constantinople in 1204 during the Fourth Crusades.

Suppose instead that the Asian monopoly was never broken by the Byzantines and that Constantinople got sacked before it had a chance. Your character's quest could be the one to break the silk monopoly of the Chinese, but in doing so, are forced to traverse the paths that make you confront your past life as a crusader along the way.