Game: 7th Sea (Alderac Entertainment Group, 2000 [second printing])
My Experience: I’ve run this one for a couple of one-shots, played in a couple of convention games, and was a regular in Tracker7’s campaign back in the early 2000s. It remains one of my go-to settings for ahistorical Renaissance swashbuckling, intrigue, and general.
Gervais Fournier, Reluctant Porte Sorcerer
Gervais Fournier is a great many things he’d rather not be. He’s heir to a tiny, impoverished rural county in southern Montaigne where his father’s shadow dims anything good he tries to accomplish for the people who will one day be his. He’s a student (when he bothers to attend classes) at a university that would rather not have him, and which he would rather not be a part of, but it’s a relationship into which social status and custom have locked both parties. He has the distressing tendency to remain sober no matter how much he tries to drink to forget these things. But, worst and most inescapable of all, is that he inherited his grandmother’s curse (never call it a gift, never) for Porté sorcery, the magic of Montaigne’s noble bloodlines that enables its wielders to rip bleeding holes in the fabric of the universe and cross implausible distances.
In search of a distraction, any distraction, from his memories and nightmares, Gervais has fallen in with a rather disreputable crew of freebooters and vagabonds. They’re happy to have his company as long as he keeps buying the drinks, and he’s hoping their travels will give him a legitimate reason to leave Montaigne and be someone else for a time. And if they’ve noticed the fact that he constantly wears gloves to conceal the bloodstains that his sorcery leaves on his hands, they’ve been polite enough not to remark on it.
Traits
Brawn 2
Finesse 2
Resolve 3
Wits 2
Panache 2
Skills and Knacks
Courtier: Dancing 1, Etiquette 3, Fashion 3, Oratory 1
Knife: Attack (Knife) 2, Parry (Knife) 1
Rider: Ride 1
Scholar: History 1, Mathematics 1, Occult 1, Philosophy 1, Research 3
Advantages
Able Drinker
Language + Linguist: Avalon, Castille, Théan, Vodacce
Noble
Sorcery (full-blooded Porté)
Blooding 2
Bring 1
Pocket 1
Walk 3
Arcana
Loyal
Equipment
impeccable wardrobe in current Montaigne court fashion
second, much smaller, much less fashionable selection of traveling and slumming attire
gloves for every occasion
traveler’s writing desk
scrawled notes on a variety of subjects, but always including Porté sorcery and its horrifying history
two half-empty bottles of different wines
hip flask of emergency brandy
mismatched trio of knives (two usually stored in a Porté pocket)
Notes and Afterthoughts
The first edition of 7th Sea was notorious for creating difficult-to-play characters under the rules as written. Gervais is very much a product of this system – he’s about as far from optimized as it’s possible to get, and with the glacial pace of advancement, he’s unlikely to get more competent any time soon. But I had a concept and wanted to see what I could do with it.
I’d forgotten Able Drinker was an actual advantage until I cracked the book, but it fit the character far too well.