# Day 30: Choir of Flesh - Siegfried, Furious Priest tags: #articles/CharacterCreationChallenge/2026 #game/rpg/ChoirOfFlesh > [!quote] [[Character Creation Challenge 2026]] > > ![[Character Creation Challenge Image.png]] ## Game of Choice You know what? We've earned a little bit of a respite from some of the things we've been up to. We're going to go into a much more constrained text. Beautiful 6x9 layout, black and white art, 236 pages with reasonable font sizes and white space. Character generation, which is a little bit throwback to old school, but certainly modern, and the result of almost 500 Kickstarter backers, including myself. Oh yes, it does contain mature content, and by that I do not mean GILFs. ![[Choir of Flesh (cover).jpg]] It's *[[Choir of Flesh|Choir of Flesh]]*, friends! Published by Blackoath Entertainment, along with a ton of other games. Literally inspired by old-school design, but not shying away from modern mechanics. It's full of nightmare fuel, body horror, terrible decisions, and both the worst and best of humanity—mostly the former, however. The year is 1000 AD, and it's the end of the world as you know it. You do not feel fine. The Celestial Choir has descended, as Saint John foretold in the Book of Revelations. Seven trumpets breaking seven seals. The sick rose from their bed, whole and singing. The blind opened their eyes. The devout have finally seen their rapture. It's just that the Celestial Choir and their sweet song is more of a nightmare of flesh which transforms listeners into abominable creatures that are the living weapons of an alien heaven. We even get a reference to my favorite pope. > The Choir’s hymn was not salvation; it was a slow, sweet consumption. Those who listened too closely felt their bones hum in resonance, their skin splitting to birth new mouths, their prayers dissolving into wordless, cacophonous chants. Those fortunate enough died quickly, while most turned into abominations known as Penitents, zealots who willingly let the Choir reshape them into living weapons. The Pope Sylvester II, once the symbol of divine order on Earth, now sits upon a throbbing throne of fused flesh, his encyclicals sung by a hundred trembling throats. The Holy Church calls it rapture. The dying know it as a lie. Anytime we get to work Sylvester II into a narrative, it's a good day for me. But this is still not a particularly good day for humanity, because that's not the only nightmare that has responded. From beneath the world, something older than God and His Holy Host stirs: Ginnungagap, Tohu, the Abyss. Now it is known as the Flesh That Feeds. It's the opposite, the antithesis of the choir's mad symphony—a crawling, wordless hunger that dissolves song into meat, flesh into pulp, where the choir reshapes, the Flesh unmakes. So on the one hand, you have Rome as the seat of the Choir, which transforms people into things which are entirely other, existing only to raise up their voices in praise to something which may be God, but not a God recognized by the Church. On the other, you have something from beneath the earth which hungers to consume and turn things into more of itself, and it's overrun the Iberian Peninsula, turning it into a wasteland of flesh. Can you tell I'm excited by this idea? This is fantastic stuff. It's nasty. It's brutal. It doesn't pull any punches. It has something to say. I **love** this concept. I'm betting you're wondering where humanity is left in between this, and the answer is literally in between. Some of them are giving in to the Choir. Others are literally throwing themselves before the Flesh and carving out their own tongues to keep from being controlled into singing. Then there is the remnant of those who refuse to go either way, the Unbroken, defined as 1 in 100, and often alone. Welcome to the war at the end of the world. > The Choir perverts the Christian sacraments: communion turns to blood-hymns, confession forces you to sing your sins until your throat bleeds, and penance turns you into a mindless creature attempting to absolve itself. On the other hand, The Flesh That Feeds is the old world’s revenge, a thing so ancient even God once feared it. Opposing The Choir doesn’t make The Flesh humanity’s salvation, though: it hungers, and it will devour everything and everyone. Everything must return to the Origin. > > This is the end of days. > > Will you sing? Will you rot? > > Or will you silence the choir with your dying breath? ## Acts of Creation I'm actually pretty hyped for this. Not the least reason being that the setting is amazing, and it's one of the best takes on fusing historical fantasy with nightmarish horror I've had the pleasure of reading it recently, but also because it supports not only group but solo play. That's right, we're going to make a solo play character today. If you are excited by it, you could go out, pick up a copy of the book, and be playing the character we put together tonight in your own game in a matter of minutes. This is the best kind of game, the one where you can just pick it up and go. ### Attributes This is actually going to seem shockingly old school to people who follow my usual interest in game design, but we have to generally explore things we wouldn't normally to have new experiences. There are six attributes whose names you probably will recognize immediately. To generate the pool of values we have to assign to them, we roll 4d6, drop the lowest, and add the other three. I'm not going to do 4d6 straight down because randomness has been screwing me over pretty hard lately. Let's see what we can do. `16, 15, 14, 13, 11, 9` Not a terrible spread, given. I'm thinking a character that leans fairly heavily on willpower and presence, and maybe we'll put the lowest value in dexterity. He's a sturdy guy. | Attribute | Score | Modifier | | ------------ | :---: | -------: | | STRength | 14 | +1 | | CONstitution | 13 | +1 | | DEXterity | 9 | 0 | | INTelligence | 11 | 0 | | WILpower | 15 | +1 | | PREsence | 16 | +2 | This looks like a guy who is a powerful personality. Someone who has some real charisma and a lot of willpower. Maybe he used to be a priest before the coming of the choir, and that really shook his faith to the point that he refuses to bend the knee to either side of the erosion of the world. ### Defense Rating, Carrying Capacity, Initiative Bonus There's actually quite a lot of derived values that fall out of setting the attributes, but literally all of them are presented on half of page 14, so we're not talking about vast amounts of math. - **Carrying Capacity:** 14 - **Defense Rating:** Calculated from armor and DEX mod; it'll be armor+0 - **HUManity:** 20 (fully human) - **Initiative:** 0 from DEX mod but can be affected elsewhere - **Injuries:** 4 Major / 8 Minor - **Move:** speed 2, jump 1 - **Vigor:** +2 (CON mod + WIL mod) We've got a character who isn't particularly fast, but literally has a +2 for being too stubborn to die, and I like that quite a lot. ### Weapon and Armor Proficiency We get to pick one weapon proficiency and one armor proficiency. Now, I know from looking at the character generation system that we end up starting with a gambeson, and as far as I can tell, a gambeson itself requires an armor mastery (though this is a little under-documented). Until/unless I see differently, we're going to go with a proficiency with the staff and the light gambeson. **Proficiency:** Quarterstaff, Gambeson ### Feats and Drawbacks We get one feat for free, and we can pick more by taking a drawback for each. Feats are just cool little things that you can do, and drawbacks are things that impair you. Perfectly sensible. I'm going to go ahead and take a feat of Natural Born Leader, which will give us mechanical advantage to PRE checks when leading groups and inspiring allies. I'm also going to take another feat of Frugal, which means we only require one ration every two days. It's that monastic lifestyle, you know. Of course, we are going to have to take a drawback to pay for that, and I'm taking Arrogant, because we're overly confident and often ignore warnings and advice, making us more likely to fall into traps and dangerous situations. And given that we are a natural born leader on top of that, we'll be dragging a whole bunch of other people with us when it happens. I love it. - **Feats** - **Natural Born Leader** Your character is an excellent motivator and has an aura of authority, giving them Advantage to PRE checks when leading groups and inspiring allies. - **Frugal** You only require 1 ration each two days. - **Drawbacks** - **Arrogant** You are overly confident and often ignore warnings and advice, making you more likely to fall into traps and dangerous situations. I'm really liking how this is shaking out. It's simple, straightforward, but makes perfect sense. ### Skills Here we can grab four skills off of the skill list or take only three and instead get a Blessing of the Flesh without a Stigmata. I need to study the list, which, in fairness, fits on a couple of pages and isn't particularly dense. I don't particularly care for skill lists, but this is okay, especially since I know I only need four. I flipped through the blessings of the flesh, and I don't think any of them are appropriate to this. They are all super Cronenbergian and nasty nightmare stuff. I can absolutely imagine characters that would be perfectly appropriate to take one of those things, especially one that doesn't come with a free stigmata to go with it. This isn't that character. | Skill | Description | | ------------------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | PRE: Charm | Gain +2 Mastery to checks that involve influencing others through charisma and persuasion. | | PRE: Networking | You only need 24 hours in a new settlement to recognize the basic power dynamics and important players. | | STR: Two-Handed Weapon Mastery | Gain +2 Mastery to attack checks with two-handed weapons. | | INT: Theology | Gain +2 Mastery to checks related to religion and spirituality. | That's a pretty good set of skills, I'd say. Two of them lean into our already strong presence and leadership skills. One of them gives us a little bit harder hitting with the quarterstaff, and the last leans into the whole ex-priest thing. So far, so good. ### Sin, Shard, Doom, and Occupation All right, there's a few things left for us to determine when it comes to fitting into the world as we find it. The thing that keeps us driven and sane, the core truth of our existence, is a sin. It's not a petty flaw or a minor transgression. It is a defiant act of will that anchors us against the horrors. That's the reason we haven't been remade or unmade, and we're going to roll for it. I could choose it off the table, but rolling seems to fit this process a little more. - **Sin** - **Wrath** The apocalypse is not a cosmic event, it’s a personal insult. The Choir or the Flesh took something from you (a home, a loved one, your future), and now a burning, all-consuming hatred is all you have left. This vengeful fire purifies you of their influence, leaving no room for faith or fear. You will not break until you have answered their atrocities in kind. Oh, this is absolutely perfect. A burning righteous fury at a god and a universe that could betray everything that he believed as a priest, leading to an anger so significant that, in the face of all of this destructive horror, it keeps him going. I like this guy. I'm on board with him. This is good stuff. Next up, we figure what little piece of the old world before the advent of the Celestial Choir we keep on us. It's not magical, it's not a weapon, it's just a connection to the world that existed before, when we believed in things. Again, we have a table, and I'm going to roll on it. - **Shard** - **A Dried, Scentless Flower** A fragile, faded bloom, pressed within a locket or a book’s pages. It grew, bloomed, and died without purpose or audience. Its truth is that beauty can exist without a grand, terrible design. It is a symbol of a natural world that was gentle and aimless, a stark contrast to the purposeful horror of the new age. I'm going to go a step further and say that this is a flower from the gardens of the monastery where our character used to live. Not from the main beds, but from a little corner tucked away against the walls where it just barely had enough sun. A little forgotten flower. Now we need a doom. The beginning of our quest. The thing that we're going after, that we're looking for. It's a purpose, but not one that may necessarily take us to the end we desire. Another table. - **Doom** - **The Black Bell** A smith’s ledger describes a bell forged with iron from a fallen star. When rung, it produces no sound, only a wave of profound, crushing silence that can reportedly shatter the resolve of Penitents and drive away the Flesh’s spawn. The bell is said to be lost in a city that now serves as a battlefield for the War of the Millennium. This is fairly intense. We're looking for a bell. We don't know how big it is, what it looks like, or anything about it other than it rings silence, and it's probably somewhere in France, since that's where we're at. I'm not exactly sure what's going on, but it is a place to start. Lastly, we have an occupation which defines what our former life was. Yes, it's a table, but we've had enough discussion about how things got here that. I think we can just pick the obvious one off the list. It also comes with an extra skill, which will bring us to five. - **Occupation** - **Clergy (Monk, Priest, Nun)** You were a keeper of faith, literate and learned in scripture. You saw the Choir’s arrival from the inside, witnessing the holy ecstasy curdle into madness. Skills: *Theology* (INT), *Investigation* (INT), *Inner Strength* (WIL). Troubles: You are haunted by the failure of your faith and may be a target for both Penitents who see you as a rival and Unmade who see you as a symbol of the sky-borne plague. - **Skill** - **Inner Strength** Gain +2 Mastery to checks against supernatural effects. ### Gear We all get to start with a weapon of our choice, which is going to be a quarterstaff for us, a gambeson, and 30 rations. We can spend rations on any piece of equipment found in Chapter 6. I'll take a look over there and see if there's anything worth having. - **Weapon:** Quarterstaff - **Armor:** Gambeson - **Rations:** 15 - **Gear:** 5x Torch (UD4/20min), Waterskin, Bedroll, Flint & Steel, Medical Supplies Luckily, the gear list is short given that it's priced in rations. The real thing to juggle is figuring out how many inventory slots will be taken up. We don't have to worry about our quarterstaff or our armor taking up inventory slots, but some things are light, some things are normal, and some things are just small. We have 14 inventory slots. All the torches fit in one slot, the waterskin is another, and the bedroll actually doesn't say it takes up any slots, but I'm going to assume one. The medical supplies are technically light, but since they're a separate item, they also take up a slot. We've got plenty left. ### Name Oh yeah, I do suppose we need a name. I'm reminded of this fact because there's a hefty random name chart after the former life/occupation table with some really good names. So the dice shall speak. - **Name:** Siegfried That's a pretty good name for a priest. Siegfried is pretty intense. Technically, that is all that our character generation process involves. We are practically done. If we were playing with other players or we just wanted to have a companion from the beginning, there's a table for that to figure out the relationships that keep them together. ### The Settlement But that is not all that we have. We also have a small settlement that we call home. There's nothing really to generate at the beginning. We start with a population of five as a small farmstead, and it has a large shack already built on it. We have 10x food, 10x water, and d4 units of each of the other resources. I suppose that I need to figure those out. - **Settlement** - **Population:** 5 (Farmstead) - **Resources** - **Food:** 10 - **Water:** 10 - **Wood:** 1 - **Stone:** 2 - **Metal:** 3 - **Treasure:** 2 - **Exotics:** 4 - **Defense Rating:** 12 - **Notable Citizens** - **Finnian, the Tinker** A man in his late forties, missing an eye and several fingers. He is a master of salvage, able to see the potential in a broken pot or a rusted hinge. He mutters to himself constantly while he works, his mind always solving some practical problem. - **Settlement Benefit:** Finnian’s ingenuity is unmatched. The Stone and Metal costs for all Settlement Improvements are reduced by 1 (to a minimum of 1). - **Potential Problem:** Finnian’s finest tools—his hammer, tongs, and a set of masterwork chisels—were left behind in his old workshop when it was overrun. He needs you to retrieve them. Everything pretty much just needed a little randomization rolling, and we ended up with four exotics in the storage, which is impressive. But we also got to roll for a notable citizen who lives in our farmstead, and it is Finnian the Tinker. In fact, it probably is his farmstead, or at least he was here when we got here. ## Exunt There it is. That's it. We're done. The character generation process wasn't tedious or heavy. It did require some thinking here and there, but mostly just a matter of picking a few things, rolling a couple of dice, and leaning into the really high-quality writing. ![[30 - Choir of Flesh - Sigfried, Furious Priest.webp]] There are a couple of spots that are a little rough in character generation, in particular, the proficiencies, which probably need a line added somewhere in the process or dropping altogether, but it's very cool. The gameplay procedure summaries that start on page 224 are really nice, and I definitely applaud this kind of design wherever I see it. This is a completed character in a pretty well-designed game in an absolute banger of a setting. We haven't even touched on how you kick off the process of play, but there are a pile of tables that you can use to set things up and get things moving. The mechanics are straightforward, even by my measure. I like it a lot. If you have even the slightest fascination with an alternate historical Cronenbergian theological nightmare of a setting, go pick up *Choir of Flesh*. You'll enjoy it. I know I certainly have so far. Tomorrow, it looks like the final step in this month for *Character Creation Challenge* will involve some screaming. I don't know if you'll hear it or not, but it'll be there. I'll catch you then.