# Character Creation Challenge 2025: Day 09 - Depths of Torment - Balthazar, Renegade Mercenary tags: #articles/CharacterCreationChallenge/2025 #game/rpg/depths-of-torment > [!quote] [[Character Creation Challenge 2025]] > > ![[Character Creation Challenge Image.png]] ## Game of Choice We've been wading through the pits of human Hell for the last several games, focusing on the horrors of war and how it transforms you, sometimes how you must wage it in order to save your own life. Today we're just going to go straight into the truly hellish and abominable. Frankly, the cover speaks for itself. ![[Depths Of Torment (cover).jpg|400]] I've been threatening a trifold game for several days now and we've finally reached it. **[[Depths of Torment]]**. The entirety of the rules for it fit front and back on a standard sheet of paper folded in that almost confusing way that trifold maps come together. It is, as you might think, pretty art light, given that there is almost no room in that much space to actually *have* art. But the art style goes beyond just inserted bits, particularly in the color version. There is a real sense of artistic intent with the use of a sort of drying blood brick red ink on the parchment. The little icons it uses to call out d6's are just warped enough to be out of square and out of true, which is perfectly in line with the game itself. Why do I own it? Well, this is from [the actual Itch.io page](https://mundosinfinitos.itch.io/depths-of-torment): ![[Depths of Torment#You shouldn't play this game]] Let's be honest, you couldn't come up with a *better* way to get my attention than all of that. That's not a list of trigger warnings. That's an *advertisement*. And I am absolutely here for it. It's not kidding, either. In the course of the campaign (which is necessarily not part of the pamphlet), you're going to run into pretty much all of those elements. This is fantastic. The fact that a pamphlet-sized RPG comes with a multi-page campaign came as a complete surprise to me. And given my general distaste for pre-created campaigns, I suppose I can be forgiven a little bit, but this one struck me as so hyper-minimalist to be a set of general suggestions and some maps. I really mean it. Most of the resolutions in this text are simple pools of coin flips. If you really want to, you can use the d6 you need for other things for that as well. 1 to 3 is tails, 4 to 6 is heads. **Depths of Torment** leans into partial successes, which pleases me just fine. In terms of outcomes, you flip two coins, and two tails gets you *what you fear the most*, two heads gets you *what you desire*, and a mix gives you *an unjust price*. If you are at an advantage, take an automatic head and just flip one coin. If you're at a disadvantage, take an automatic tail and flip one coin. You can voluntarily sacrifice something to get a head. You can spend your divine favor to turn a tail into a head (but this is a terrible idea for reasons which you'll need to look at the text to divine). Tails results usually inflict Torments, and some events may give you Virtues. There are a lot of Torments listed, though not really discussed here. But you've got everything from Erotomania to Zoophobia to Dipsomania and Mutism. There are a lot of awesome Torments, and you'll probably be accumulating quite a lot of them. ## Acts of Creation So what's the setup, I hear you ask? I'm just going to let the text speak for itself. ![[Depths of Torment - Setup.webp]] I'd say that's about as clear as things get, frankly. The world is horrific and has descended into an unclean chaos, and you are a character trying to work your way to the Castle of Delights to speak with the Unspeakable One. In a sense, it's a dungeon dive, and certainly some of the areas given in the campaign are literally a dungeon. But it's not often that you head into the depths in order to work your way right up to the big boss to make a polite request. But such is the nature of Hell. ### Generation from Rotting Meat We do have a character sheet of sorts here; it's about as straightforward as I've ever seen one, which is saying something. Roll 1D6 to determine which of the characters in the pamphlet you select. Then, choose from a binary set of coin flips to determine what your virtue and your torment is to start with, along with a few pieces of gear. That's it, that's character generation. Lucky for me it really does accommodate solo play pretty well, so let's just do it. Let's run into the middle of all this. > [5] That's **Balthazar, the Renegade Mercenary**. *"You bear the scars of whips and chains on your dark skin."* Well then, sure. Heads or Tails? We'll go with 1d2 with 1 heads, 2 tails. > [1] **Virtue:** Lethal Precision Nice, that should come in handy. > [2] **Torment:** Zoophobia **Gear:** Scimitar, Thick Clothes, Compound Bow Then we flip coins for the **starting equipment**: > [1], [2], [2] - Oil Lamp - Flint - Crowbar - Stale bread loaf x3 - Water skin So our character is a mercenary who seems to have run away from his likely North African equivalent area with his gear on his back, trained with lethal skill, but somehow developed a fear of animals, probably from guarding a caravan with some misbehaving camels. He's been clever enough to bring an oil lamp and a way to start fires, a crowbar and food and water. So this is a man who has some insight and foresight. Excellent. That's it. That's character generation. That is literally all there is to it. Congratulations, we're done. ![[Depths of Torment - Balthazar, Renegade Mercenary (sheet).webp]] > Balthazar is a hulking brute of a man with night-black skin and a shaved head. He still wears the desert armor of his slave-regiment and the remnants of a manacle around his left wrist. You may ask yourself why are large areas of this character sheet blurred out? I'll be honest with you: it's because I don't want to give it away. There's already so little of the text, just by the sheer nature of it being a pamphlet, that I want you, if you're intrigued, to go out and pick it up, find out what the other characters are, find out what their potential quirks and emotional failings are. This is good stuff. ## Exunt That is literally all you're getting of this today. Usually I would pop into doing a couple of rounds of gameplay since it's very solo compatible and quite lightweight, but I don't want to spoil any of it, especially since you could be playing it solo and you should have that initial emotional impact untainted by me. Just for a little flavor, I will show you the map for the first step into the area, mostly because I think this art style is absolutely gorgeous and it pleases me to no end. ![[Depths of Torment - The Forest Map.webp]] [You can have this game for $6.66](https://mundosinfinitos.itch.io/depths-of-torment), which does seem perfectly reasonable, but you can also [get it in a bundle with other pamphlet games, nine of them, for $9](https://itch.io/s/141387/godly-worlds-ttrpg-bundle). Because the author is a generous soul, there very well may be quite a number of *community copies* still available if for some reason you can't afford to pay for it, but you'd still like to have a copy. I say *download a community copy*, and if you like it or if it appeals to you or if you just want to reward the creator for making something different, then go back and drop him a few bucks either directly or as part of the bundle. We pay for things that we want more of. that's the simple truth. I think we've been mucking around quite enough down in the depths and the cellar of human misery and torment. Tomorrow we're going to go in a very different direction. We're going to go into the light.