Loren the Amazon Princess Part 2: Creating Our Character
0When Loren announces her intention to search for her mother on her own, Breza drops a bombshell—if Loren leaves the Citadel, she’ll be on her own. Amazon law states that by leaving the Citadel, she’s temporarily relinquishing her authority as the princess. That means she won’t have access to the kingdom’s resources on this quest. It’s a tough blow, but Loren’s determined and she tells Breza that regardless of the risks, she’s heading out to look for her mother. Breza can’t let Loren go without some help, though, and offers to give her the aid of a very talented servant that she thinks will be a real asset to the princess. That talented servant, of course, is us. The player character is introduced at this point of the game, and the first step is to determine which of the two options we’ll take. There’s Saren, a male human that was born to an Amazon warrior and captured enemy soldier. Or we can go with Elenor, a female elf that joined the Amazons many years ago in exchange for protection. This choice mainly impacts the romances, although there are some minor differences owing to their different racial backgrounds. I choose Saren as our character, and then we’re given the choice of whether he’ll be a Warrior or a Thief. Warriors like Loren are front-line brawlers, while Thieves are archers that fight from the rear. In my opinion, Thieves in this game are very underpowered—Mages are far better at ranged attacks because of their spells—so I choose to make Saren a Warrior. He’s classified by the game as a “Hero”, which means that he has magic-like healing powers despite being a non-spellcaster. That’ll come in very handy throughout our adventure.
Loren is initially very skeptical of us. In Amazon culture, males are seen as a necessary evil in order to make babies, so our gender is a big strike against us. Breza, though, insists that we’ll be a great asset to her on her journey, and at this point the game lets us customize Saren’s statistics a bit. All characters in the game have three key statistics: Strength, Skill, and Will. Strength determines raw striking power as well as hit point level, and is the main stat for Warriors. Will determines a character’s ability to perform special moves or spells—the higher the Will level, the more such feats they can perform before they run out of juice. For Mages in particular, Will also determines the damage their attack spells are capable of. Skill is used to determine speed and defense, and for Thieves it heavily influences their attack ability. Since we chose the Warrior class for Saren, he initially has 8 Strength, 5 Skill and 8 Will. However, Breza’s going to describe our history to Loren, and we’ll be presented with a series of choices with three options each. In each case, one option increases our Strength a bit, another increases our Skill, and the third increases our Will. Depending on which options we choose, Saren’s final statistics can vary quite a bit.
For the first option, we have to tell Loren if we’ve been working in the Healer’s Quarters (Will bonus), Training Grounds, (Strength bonus) or the Royal Palace (Skill bonus). I pick Training Grounds, and Breza explains that we’re a gifted warrior who excels as a combat teacher. Loren even recognizes us as one of her sparring partners, and notes that we’ve been a tough opponent for her before. Next, we say that we’ve been a contestant at the national Proving competitions, and this year we were granted top place in one of three different options; I choose the magic trials to get a Will bonus as well as a Ring of Magic item. Next, we give an anecdote about how our former mistress was disrespected at a tavern, and I choose the “teach them a lesson” option to get another boost in Strength. Breza then mentions we crafted our mistress a gift for the Winter Solstice; I decide to take the Skill bonus this time and state that we made her a bow to showcase her archery skills. We then share that our mistress got sick and died, but on her deathbed she allowed us to take a reward for our services. I take the “Strength” option here and say we took her old shield, giving us both the stats and a Shield item. Finally, we share a story where another slave was going to leave and tried to involve us in his plans. I take the “Will” option and say we convinced him to stay. Once all the options are done and we’ve completed our backstory, Saren has 14 Strength, 7 Skill, 12 Will, and two items. Loren says we’ll suffice as her assistant, and we’re presented with one last choice. The game asks what difficulty level we want to play at this point, and I select the toughest at Hard. We’re now ready to begin Chapter One: The Rescue.