Building people

As you may have noticed, there's a war about to start soon. The world is incredibly queasy, politicians are risking their careers, whole ethnicities are fleeing for the mountains. No doubt about it, things look dire.

So, what do I do?

I bust out some of my role-playing manuals and create what's known as a prestige class. A prestige class is something above and beyond your starting classes. In the Dungeons and Dragons universe, your starting classes are your basics: fighter, wizard, cleric, thief...you know, your standard fantasy archetypes.

Prestige classes come in when you want to add some spice to your character. Why bother being just a fighter when you can be a pirate or a swashbuckler? Why bother being just a monk when you can be a lethal ninja? Just like role-playing games themselves, the possibilities are endless when it comes to creating new models for heroes or new locales to adventure in. Just a note for creative types looking to invest some time in imagination exercises: Go get the Dungeons and Dragons "Player's Handbook" and "Dungeon Master's Guide." Both are amazing engines for generating unique places and people. It's one thing to create the next Conan and Merlin, but try creating his or her past, or purpose, or nightmares, or whatever.

Anyway, back to the prestige class for a second. Lately, I've been all consumed by this image of a stringy, frail-looking figure decked out in thin knives. He's not much of a fighter, but he's wicked with a thrown dagger. In fact, that's his whole existence, exploring the Zen of knife throwing and to sense his target's weakness, delivering a sliver of razor-sharp metal to exposed flesh with the blade hitting muscle or bone with a meaty "zzuunk." He's an assassin with little use for poison. He's as dangerous as any spellcaster, and won't be spotted by a "detect magic" spell. He's light on his feet with the training of a skilled rogue. He's already running for the exit as the throws, knowing he can't win in a straight-up fight. He's a creature of shadows that seems, to his enemies, to sprout metal with a flick of a wrist. He's a bladeslinger, and if you spot him running from your chamber, it's probably too late to save yourself. That piercing sensation in your stomach and chest lets you know the deed is done.

So, a couple nights ago, I drafted out a bladeslinger, complete with pre-requisites and the bonuses attained with every new level gained. I don't do this because I think it'll show up in some gaming magazine or Wizards of the Coast will hire me. I do it because there's an opportunity to create something that's in my head. Once I birth the item, and the figure that inhabits it, from my head, it begins to take another, more real shape. I understand him a little more. His motives are clear; he never wanted to be a bladeslinger, just a good thief. But he never got accepted into one of the local guilds. As a child, he moved around way too much with the circus and his only school master was the resident knife thrower. He grew to first appreciate and then love the short blade, far more elegant than the conspicuous sword and a weapon that, when properly used, was an extension of the body. Sure, you could have a barbarian charging at you across the room, ready to smite you with a battleaxe, but if you can fling a quick knife into the throat or an eye before he gets to you, then the smallest man can fall the biggest brute.

After an hour of consulting the Feats guide in the "Player's Handbook" and some frantic juggling of rewards and requirements, the bladeslinger was born.

But a funny thing happened the next day.

The bladeslinger stuck around and introduced himself as Slim Jim. Instead of some inn or dungeon, Jim was wearing his vest of knives outside some dingy tent city that my novel is partially set in. Jim tells me he hasn't been eating lately, and he had to switch to ceramic weapons since the metal blades sets off the detectors at his favorite hangout. He's also asking me when the others are getting here, and by here he flips out a flat, gun-metal-gray razor from between his fingers and flips it into the ground near his feet. I see his fingers, all knobby with scars, little ones running in angry curves from his knuckles to his fingertips like puffy vines twirling around his digits.

Slim Jim's getting impatient. He likes loud music and Canadian T-LID cigarettes. "You know," he says gruffly, "the kind without the enhancements put in to give you the Bleeds. The stuff that the Feds put in the crops back starting in '09 to scare kids off drugs was a chickenshit move, if you ask me. Didn't show any smart thinking all around. Just made kids sick, or more daring to smoke something made more provocative. It also drove up the demand from Vancouver. All them Canuck basement patches sprouted up overnight. Lucky I live near Seattle now. I'm never again trafficking that shit to the gated-in punks at HeritageLand. Too much risk. Don't care what Josiah Longfeather says. I ain't going on another ride."