# Day 11: Elegy - Elias Agyros, Egregoros Vampire Librarian Necromancer tags: #articles/CharacterCreationChallenge/2026 #game/rpg/elegy > [!quote] [[Character Creation Challenge 2026]] > > ![[Character Creation Challenge Image.png]] Once again into the fray, my friends. While yesterday may have been a little bit of a disappointment, today is going to be different. Today is going to be a return to visiting a friend that we haven't seen in a little bit and who's undergone a few changes, which is always a good time. Hopefully, you've been keeping up with all of the *Character Creation Challenge 2026* posts—not just from me, but from everyone else. Follow the tag \#CharacterCreationChallenge and \#CharacterCreationChallenge2026 on your favourite social media platform and see what's going on. ## Game of Choice Earlier this month, we decided to take on *[[Bloodstained Fangs]]*, which was deliberately inspired by *Elegy*. Well, today we're getting around to touching the *[[Elegy]] 4th Edition Beta Version 1.2*. ![[Elegy 4e Beta (cover).jpg|400]] It's had a bit of mechanical reworking that I'm not entirely sure I'm on board for, but I'm willing to give it a go. If you've never heard of *Elegy*, it is an urban supernatural fantasy game largely inspired originally by *[[Ironsworn]]* and *[[Vampire - the Masquerade|Vampire]]: The Requiem*. The new edition is still about playing a vampire, first and foremost, but integrates support in the setting for opposition from vampires, werewolves, mages, and other bumps in the night. Let's get stuck in. ## Acts of Creation Firstly, I appreciate that on page seven, which is actually really close to the beginning of the book, we get a section titled *Who Is Your Character?* And it gives you several points, which I think are critical to understanding the game: - You are a monster. - You are human. - You are inexperienced. - You are hiding. - You are cool. I like to have it right out front, laid out so neatly, because sometimes you just don't know what kind of a game you're going to play. You're a dangerous, blood-drinking predator with violent instincts, but still have emotions, ideals, desires, and regrets. You don't have a long history of understanding the vampiric form. You're hiding from the world because there's a lot of humans and there's only so much you can do, and you no longer have to worry about your mortal fears and limitations. You can handle tough situations. Immediately, you know what kind of character that you can create, and you know what kind of characters which are not appropriate to this situation. I love setting the mindset in the right place. ### The Truth of It As in *Ironsworn*, you generally start a new game not by creating your character, but by figuring out the truths of your setting. This defines some of the knobs and dials that differentiate your world from others. Honestly, it's one of my favorite parts of the game design, and we're going to run through it very quickly here just because I think it's important to understand the world before you create your character. #### Origins **Vampirism** is believed to be… - [ ] …a **genetic mutation**. Vampires are considered a separate species — or subspecies — from mortal humans. I've always liked the idea of vampires being a genetic offshoot of humanity. It gives a certain scientific mode to things and acts as a solid contrast to many of the classical religious overtones. #### Factions Vampires of this city are divided by their… - [ ] …**view on mortals**, into three Factions. Every vampire aligns with one of three views on mortal society—usually inherited from their progenitor. The Olympus treat mortals as tools and prey to be manipulated; the Prometheans seek peaceful coexistence; the Egregoros want domination or extermination. This wouldn't normally be my choice. I would probably sit down and actually figure out a different faction setup. But of the three on offer here—division by lineage into five families, division by view on undeath into five ideological groups, or view on mortals into three factions—the last seemed like the most interesting. If you were into old school *World of Darkness* vampire, then Lineage would have been your choice. But if you were into *Vampire: The Requiem*, you would totally be into their view on undeath as the thing that divides them. I find it interesting that this is a slider. #### Govern The governance of this city is… - [ ] …**shared** among Duchesses. Each Faction appoints a Duchess to a ruling council that governs the city. Power is distributed, and each region reflects multiple Factions’ interests. Yes, the irritating girlboss phrasing is theirs. Again, something that I would absolutely change myself because you don't actually need gendered language here, and it's just annoying for it to stick out like a sore thumb. But here we go. It is what it is. We're instructed to write our Duchess's name as the faction leader on our world sheet, and we can name the others now or introduce them during play. #### Territorialism Can you transit, feed and slumber in other Factions’ domains? - [ ] With **permission** from a member. You’re not under surveillance, but you are required to announce yourself, and what you intend to do there — transit, feed, and/or slumber — to gain permission. If you’re seen without notice or not accompanied by a member, you’re in trouble. I've always enjoyed rules of formal politeness, and it seems like a good idea with a bunch of unstable, volatile predators prone to aggression. #### Blights A vampire’s blight — their particular weakness — starts… - [ ] …when they’re **turned**. You begin the game with a blight and a corresponding Blight Edge. If gameplay prompts you to mark the Changed condition, instead lower your base Rush by 1; if it is already 0, reduce your max Rush by 1. In this world, vampires start out as essentially inhuman, and it just goes down from there. I could have gone to becoming changed not when they lose humanity, but when they lose sanity, which would also be fun. But let's just kick it off with a bang. #### Natural Powers A vampire’s natural powers and blight are… - [ ] …**influenced by their personality**. The powers a vampire develops naturally don’t follow a strict pattern, but reflect in some way or another their personality: supernatural strength may be developed by combative or resilient people; hypnosis may be developed by dominating or commanding people, etc. I think this goes with the idea of vampirism being a genetic mutation or some sort of infection much better, especially genetic mutation. The way you are affects your personality, and your personality directs who you are. #### Vampire Hunters Vampire hunters are… - [ ] …**uncommon**, but **organized**. Vigilantes appear at varying rates depending on the city, but the real threat comes from religious or intelligence organizations. They’re not a constant danger, but when they show up, they’re serious. I am absolutely not borrowing from *Buffy* here. Certainly not. Nor am I lifting lightly from the Technocracy. Nope, absolutely not. #### Witches Mortals that study and practice magic are… - [ ] …so **rare** that most believe they don’t exist in this city. If they do, they’re extremely well hidden More deliberate girlboss phrasing because it wouldn't do to pick a gender-neutral term. You have to actually be aggressive about rubbing it in people's faces. But fine, mages and wizards are rare, at least outside of vampiric circles. #### Werewolves Humans who turn into large wolves are… - [ ] …present within the city, but **uncommon**. Their packs are small or insignificant, and they generally avoid trouble with vampires, who greatly outnumber them. Still, they are highly territorial and prone to violence. On my own, I probably would have made werewolves as rare as mages, if not more so. After all, this is a city, by Hell, and werewolves are not generally part of the landscape outside of the movie *Wolfen*. I'm not into the general werewolf mythos anyway, so we'll go with the most minimalist solution. #### Fae Ethereal beings born in the land of dreams are… - [ ] …rare and extremely **well hidden**. When they’re in the city, they tend to be alone, either on a mission or in hiding. Occasionally, they form small groups of two or three, but they avoid attention, and their true intentions are usually a mystery. When a Fae crosses paths with a vampire, it’s usually because the vampire is useful — or in their way. Either way, Fae usually mean trouble. You would think I would pretty much excise the Fae from any vampire setting, but frankly, I find the possibility of interacting with living nightmares to be too intriguing to give up. ### Life in the Big City Not surprisingly, like most vampire games, *Elegy* is set in a city, and as such, we need to put together some bits for it. The process of doing so reminds me vaguely of that found in *[[Shadow City|Shadow City: Blood & Neon]]*, but with a narrative fiction focus rather than a structural and mechanical focus. Let's figure it out. #### Basics - **Name:** Charleston, SC - **Known As the City Of:** The Holy City - **Geography:** Low-lying coastal plain - **Date of Foundation:** April, 1670 Frankly, there just aren't enough vampire stories set in the South, and an active port city is a great place to have a bunch of bloodsuckers come to perch. #### Regions Since this is a fictionalized version of Charleston, we aren't actually limited by its literal regions, but our version is divided into nine notional regions so that we can assign faction control. At the start, we need to create two regions and put down a few things about it. We have a random table to help out with that. - **Name:** King Street District - **Faction:** Olympus - **Known For:** Shopping, Restaurants, and Nightlife --- - **Name:** French Quarter - **Faction:** Egregoros - **Known For:** Art Galleries and Historic Sites There's no way to talk about Charleston without bringing King Street into it, and it seems like a reasonable idea that the folks obsessed with controlling the mortal population, with more subtle means, would be all about the shopping, restaurants, and nightlife. The swerve is when I bring in the French Quarter, which is a lovely place with cobblestone streets and classic historic locations, and put it in the hands of the Egregores. I'm imagining them as truly old-school aristocrats who believe that humanity should either kneel to them openly or die. The contrast makes me giggle a little. We could create other regions, but we're not going to. ### Characterization Finally, the moment you've all been waiting for, actually creating the character. Again, the beginning of the process reiterates that we are playing a vampire that was turned in the last five years. Young, inexperienced, and weaker than most other vampires. Very useful to position the character within the space of the narrative, but as often when it comes to games which want to focus on the development of your character rather than the evolution of your character, I prefer a clear option for starting as an established member of the community. Not all interesting stories are about the rise to position. Some of them are about maintaining position or dealing with a fall from it, especially when it comes to immortal monsters like vampires. But let's do this thing. #### Background - **Occupation in Life:** Librarian - **Aspect:** Neighborhood Librarian You know, I have to be honest. Aspects as a freeform trait that describes a set of things that you know and can do are great. But here, I think you're just ending up doubling up the same element. Why not just have this as selecting an aspect which reflects what you did as your occupation in life, rather than have it broken out into two bits? A little bit of a stumble in game design here. In our case, we're just going with a straight-up librarian. Nothing fancy. And no, I'm not borrowing from Giles. #### Turning Next up, figuring out who turned our character and how it happened. We do have some tables we can roll on to see what falls out, and I think I'm probably going to. - **Who Turned You?:** **Someone under your guidance**. They looked up to you with admiration and aspired to be more like you. They may have been an apprentice, a student, a younger sibling, etc - **Why Did They Turn You?:** They wanted access to your useful skills and assets, and you were convinced or coerced by them. Well, that's an interesting setup, and being of a perverse inclination, I have an inspiration which is entirely horrific, which makes it perfect. My character was turned by a young patron of the library, apparently 9 or 10 years old, but also a member of the Egregores, and much older than that in reality. She was looking for someone with an inclination to an organizational mind and not too picky, since if she had turned someone that ended up being unsuitable for their purposes, she would simply kill them and try again somewhere else. We, however, had enough of an inhuman level of curiosity to go along with this. Perhaps not to buy into the Egregores' philosophy across the board, but enough to want to convert being a neighborhood librarian into knowing and learning more. Secret knowledge is a powerful lure. - **Progenitor:** Eleanor Banks, (apparent age 9, actual age 163.) - **Age:** Apparent 33, real 38 Since we received our blight when we were turned, we get to pick one, but we don't have to mark the condition, and we get to pick a blight edge as well as a starting feat for it. - **Blight:** Light Abhorrent You are weakened by bright light, even if it’s artificial. When you roll in a brightly lit environment, add one die to the roll and remove the highest. - [ ] Shadows don’t easily hinder you. Add +1 when rolling to navigate or search in darkness. There are a list of blights and their feats in the glossary, which is quite convenient, and several of them are actually quite interesting, but I thought I'd go with something classic. A librarian that shuns the sun? Say it ain't so! #### Survival Time to pick three gifts to represent natural powers and one aspect that reflects how we've gotten by in our new vampiric life. I have the ability to pick an aspect that involves training in rituals or the occult if we belong to a ritualistic faction, and I don't imagine that old school super aristocratic vampires aren't into old school dark sorcery. So I can trade one of my gifts for an Arcana. I bet you can imagine how this is going to go. - **Aspect** - Egregoros Initiate - **Gifts** - Magnetism - [ ] You can make someone treat you as a very close friend, inclined to help you and do you favors, as long as within reason, without the need to being persuaded. Lose 1 Blood. When you roll by exploiting this false bond add your dots. The effect lasts until the scene ends or you release them. - Vision - [ ] You can pick up impressions from the history of an object. Roll with Mind. On a Failure, you may spend 1 Blood to reroll any dice. - Arcana - Necromancy - Rituals to commune with the dead - [ ] **Inquire Ghost:** Burn incense, draw a cross in ashes, and ask a question related to your location or people or events tied to it — roll with Mind. Wandering spirits will answer. On a Stylish Success, the answer is helpful. Otherwise, it includes complications. Oh please, you knew that Necromancy was going to pop up here sooner or later. So what we have here is a neighborhood librarian who, when turned into an undead monster via genetic awakening, discovered that he had an affinity for discovering the history of anything he could touch through psychometry and the ability to get people to tell them their secrets, as well as making use of his connection with the faction to learn how to draw information from the dead. Oh yeah, it's all coming together. Also, we need to figure out what our home is. Easy peasy. - **Home:** A Small Bookshop in the French Quarter, "Phronēma Enthymion". (Motto: *Sunt aliquid Manes*, "The Shades are something.") What? If we're going to go with Greek terms for the factions? I might as well lean into it, right? #### Attributes Now we get to throw around some numbers. In this case, we just need to assign a particularly harsh distribution of +1, +0, +0, and -1 across the four attributes: Body, Mind, Charm, and Soul. Given that a standard action roll is 2d10 added together, plus the controlling attribute modified by any edges from feats or dots on aspects, plus any blood you burn, and you need a 15+ in order to get a "stylish success," which is what the author has arbitrarily renamed a strong hit to, and a 10 to 14 for just a flat success, which means you get what you wanted with a complication. This is some pretty harsh statistics. Nevertheless, we go on. | Attribute | Value | | --------- | ----: | | Body | +0 | | Mind | +1 | | Charm | -1 | | Soul | +0 | Our neonate is not the most charming of persons without the compulsion of his gifts powering it, which provides all sorts of complications when you think about it. He is quite clever, however, which is why they recruited him in the first place. #### Identity Finally, we get around to figuring out the intimate personal details of the character, which include looks and vibe, possessions, and finally, the character's name, which doesn't necessarily have to be the name he used in life. Probably, it's a good idea for it not to be, given that person is now an undead blood-drinking monster. There could be legal complications. - **Looks and Vibe:** Medium height, medium weight, medium brown hair. A few shades short of medium complexion and an affinity for light windbreakers, button up shirts and well-creased dress pants. Huge pupils, but most people just assume he's high as balls most of the time, though seems cogent enough. - **Possessions:** - ***Vinculum Umbrarum*** (The Chain of Shadows) - A grim technical guide on "binding" the shadows of the living to a central thought-form. It is essentially a blueprint for building a permanent, self-sustaining egregore that feeds on the "relevance" of its creators. - A pair of (now unnecessary) round reading glasses - **Name:** Elias Argyros It does no good to not enjoy books in a bookstore, and you need something that's just fun to have when you're out of it. Just an average looking guy with slightly disheveled hair, books tucked under his arm, huge pupils, and sometimes little round reading glasses. He just happens to be a blood-drinking monster that summons and interrogates the souls of the dead. That's all. Hardly worth noticing. #### Connections We get to kick off with two connections, like the bonds of classic *Ironsworn,* one of which is with our progenitor. That makes perfect sense. We have to decide if that relationship is emotional or professional, and another with someone else who plays the opposite role in our life and might be a vampire or a mortal. We also stick a rank on each of those connections based on their nature. So let's see. - **Connection** - **Eleanor Banks**, child vampire, progenitor, Egregoros Necromancer (affection) - **Allison Milleux**, operates the bookstore, Expertise: Business, late 20’s, bookish, completely uninterested in the occult or the supernatural, entirely business-minded There we go. The relationship with his progenitor and the girl he has running the business during the day. Kind of interesting to put together someone who works for a vampire in an occult bookstore and has interest in neither the occult nor the supernatural. There could be some tension there that can be milked for drama. #### Finishing Touches Here we just set the starting values for all of the variable bits here and there, which is straightforward. Max Rush becomes 10, Base Rush is 2, Current Rush is 2 (Momentum for those who have experience with *Ironsworn*). Health, Clarity, Mask, and Blood all become 5. ## Exunt If we were going to play Elias for real, this would be where we envision our first mission, set the scene, commit to it, and then see what happens. But, luckily, we don't have to do that. We are finally done. ![[11 - Elegy - Elias Agyros, Egregoros Vampire Librarian Necromancer - 01.webp]] ![[11 - Elegy - Elias Agyros, Egregoros Vampire Librarian Necromancer - 02.webp]] ![[11 - Elegy - Elias Agyros, Egregoros Vampire Librarian Necromancer - 03.webp]] ![[11 - Elegy - Elias Agyros, Egregoros Vampire Librarian Necromancer - 04.webp]] You know what? I don't think I like it quite as much as third edition. Oh, the expansion of creating your own city and a little bit better layout of the text itself, making it easier to read—that I like. There are certain elements of the character creation process that I'm totally here for. The freeform expertise assets are interesting, though not particularly well described or explained in the text. Some of the separation in flow works a little better, but I really think that there are changes just for change's sake in the description of the mechanics. In fact, if there were changes, I would shift back toward the original *Ironsworn* system rather than push further up into an additive versus target number system like *Powered by the Apocalypse*. I just don't see any great advantage to complicating things by increasing the numeric range. I also think that not being able to start as an experienced vampire is an unnecessary limitation, but that's a relatively easy fix. The character creation system needs a complete rewrite at a lexical level to remove its gender obsession. This is a real common problem in indie gaming right now, so no one is going to be shocked when I say that if you're trying to demonstrate that gendered expression when unnecessary is irritating, you've succeeded really well. Stop it. Do better. Stop being a bitch. This isn't even a problem that existed in third edition in the character generation section. It specifically referred repeatedly to "your character" rather than any pronoun, which was proper. This is the moment at which the indefinite pronouns they/them/their are appropriate. Overall, I think this is sort of a sidegrade in terms of writing, but an upgrade in terms of organization and structure. And frankly, I still love solo gaming with urban fantasy with a focus on dark supernaturals. So it still gets an overall recommend, but know what you're getting into. Tomorrow, it's going to get a little weird in here. We're going to flip the natural order of things on its head, as if we didn't play enough horrors. Stay tuned for that.