The Scroll of the Forked Paths—one of the 1-page supplements in Starward*—is a random life path Rogue creation system.

* Starward itself is a space fantasy supplement for either Rogue Scroll or Swords Without Master. https://epidiah.itch.io/starward 

This part of the game can be played with others, but it's designed for lonesome fun. And I intend to have some lonesome fun today.

First up, I want to play one of those vaguely human folk that are all over the galaxy for some reason. Probably with antennae or silver eyes, or some other cosmetic difference. But what sort of planet do they come from?

Time for the Ritual of Bizarre & Wondrous Worlds!

I want a Strange Environment, so I have to pick a familiar location or climate and a new tone.

I'm feeling outdoorsy, so I'm going to go with a campsite I was at years ago, nestled in a cool wood, right on the lake, with its own private lagoon.

Tone: Idyllic

Now I need to select an aspect of that location. Right now, my memory of it is very lovely and peaceful, and that only works for hobbit origin stories. So I'm focusing on the presence of mosquitoes for this first aspect.

Got to Tweak, Reverse, or Exaggerate this aspect somehow.

I could do something about giant mosquitoes or other blood-sucking beasts roaming this environment, but I'm going to Reverse this.

A typical form of sustenance on my homeworld is plucking mug-sized insects from the air, loping their heads off, and drinking the blood within.

I should repeat the select of an aspect and tweaking, reversing or exaggerating it 1 or 2 more times to get a sufficiently fantastic world. So I need a new aspect.

I'm going with that little placid pool of water and I'm going to exaggerate it.

I'm thinking in the whole of the planet (as is the case in these sorts of tales) you're never more than 20 feet from a pond or a lake. One giant ball of forested wetland.

With, of course, oversize insects.

I feel like that's enough for a homeworld. I don't intend to spend my whole life there. After all, I'm turning my gaze starward.

The last bit is to cast out the familiar and make a coherent whole from these newly formed aspects. I feel like I've got a nicely coherent whole, but I do need to cast out the familiar. So, red leaves, obviously. And really high-tech camping gear. Force field domed tents, etc.

Oh, and I get to swap the tone Idyllic for one of the original Glum and Jovial. I'm going with Glum and Idyllic for now. Let's see how that carries me through.

Now for the first roll on the Forked Paths: 4,2,6,3.

As the years pass, show us…

4 …how you earned…
2 …the respect of…
6 …a knight of…
3 …the Eternal Void.

So we're getting right to it! First up, roll for tone:

Glum—6
Idyllic—1

Well, that's pretty straight forward. There's nothing saying these have to happen in order, but I feel like making this the reason my rogue-to-be left their homeworld.

It's a long tale, so I'll just give you the important details. It started on a clear night. I had climbed to the top of a tree to get a view of the stars from above the canopy. There I watched as a shooting star fell swampward…

It took three days to find her, as many months before she was back on her feet, and as many years to salvage her craft. All the while she remained aloof, critical of my backwater ways, disgusted by my blood-diet, and impatient to rejoin her order among the stars.

But they found her first.

We tried fighting them off, but they were too strong.
We tried fleeing into the mangroves, but they made ash of the forest.

It was my plan to steal one of their craft, fly to reaches unknown, and set it and her empty armor adrift.

They could seek her there, lost in the cosmos.

She followed in her salvaged craft, pick me up, and left me on an alien station. Thanking me for the first, and final time.

After answering a demand, you have to either add a name to the list of All the Deserves a Name or write a Feat Heroic. I think it's pretty clear I have a name to add here, but also, I don't have an idea for her name yet. SO, I'm adding:

______ former Knight of the Eternal Void.

I can roll again on the main table, but I think this knight left me with a parting gift. So I'm invoking the table for acquiring things! It's like Xmas in space!

2,1,6

When your tale requires it, or when you wish, show us…
…how you acquired that…
2 …ancient…
1 …weapon…

6 …& lost it.

Who the fuck designed this shit?!

Tone roll:

Glum—3
Idyllic—1

Yeah, I'm glum.

Alright, I know I got this ancient weapon from my friend, the former Knight of the Eternal Void, so what I need to tell you is what it is and how I lost it.

Hmm…

It's a ceremonial knife whose silvery blade is made from the last light of a dying star. Each Knight of the Eternal Void has one, and each one is unique, made from its own star that no longer exists.

It was stolen from me in my sleep while I dreamt of the lost knight.

Time to add a name or write a Feat Heroic. My adventure in Rogue creation is done once I've written a Feat Heroic for each of my two tones and one for the Ritual of the Trusty Companion (something new in Starward).

This seems like a good Act I ending, so it'll be a Feat Heroic.

Idyllic Feat Heroic: I close my eyes and think again of the warm days on my homeworld—working side-by-side with _____ to pull her craft from the lake bed—as the ceremonial dagger she gifted me returns from an unknown location to my hand.

More lonesome fun after lunch, but one quick roll on the Forked Paths to whet appetites: 1, 3, 1, 4

As the years pass, show us…
1 …how you…
3 …misled…
1 …an imperial…
4 …star court.

Rolling those tone bones:

Glum—5
Idyllic—5

Tie! Intriguing, that's a stymie. I'm not going to be able to mislead an imperial star court, it seems. And it has to be an escalation! Oof.

My previous tone was Glum, so the tie flips it to Idyllic. Hmm…

All right, here goes. Spent some space years (cycles?) jumping from port to port, fucking around and finding out. Lots of hard lessons learned, but I wasn't turning down any opportunities when they came by.

One such glorious opportunity arrived when I fell in with some drunk pirates in a tavern on an orbital station where there happened to be an old imperial battle-cruiser that was being decommissioned.

I invented a legendary captain, claimed to be that very captain, and told the pirates I would gladly captain them if they stole the cruiser for me.

Next thing I knew, we were fleeing imperial space on a massive cruiser that still had sensitive documents onboard.

Sobering up, I put my second in command in charge, and slipped away in an escape pod, landing on a paradise of a planet. A bit green for my tastes, but lush and cool. And most importantly, outside imperial jurisdiction.

They found me there, of course, but I just thanked their dour messengers, offered them a drink from my hammock, and ignored their sternly worded letters.

It couldn't be me, see. They were looking for a legendary captain of space pirates.

Wouldn't such a captain be out there, in space, pirating? Not napping the day away in the shade.

Eventually, the messengers and their letters stopped showing up. I figured I was out of it.

I wasn't paying attention to the empire's border slowly creeping towards my paradise.

Until I had found that they built an imperial star court around me just to find me guilty of crimes committed by a pirate captain who never existed and sentenced me to walk the space plank.

Adding Captain ________, legendary pirate, to my list of named.

Wait, "walk the space plank"?! Shit, that sounds like I might die!

Time to turn once again to an ancillary table.

When your tale requires it, or when you wish, show us…
…how you escaped certain death…
2 …by luck…
1 …at great cost…
6 …& regretted it.

Damn it, Eppy!

Tone roll:

Glum—5
Idyllic—4

I mean, yeah, this is Glum.

So, the ceremony around an imperial execution at space includes dressing the condemned up in a dark, dark blue space suit. That way they can shove me out the airlock and the legal observers can say they witness it, but I have enough air so that I fade from sight before dying…

…so no part of the imperial machinery need admit to themselves they were responsible for my death.

I was just so faded from their sight when a salvage craft "stumbled" upon me and took me on board for the low, low price of, let's say, 149 credits, which I could work off.

I mean, what's a 149 credits when you get 50 credits a space week helping out on the salvage craft. Of course, you're going to have to pay for your food, which you can get at the company store. Half-serving of noodles is a steal at 5 credits.

And of course there's your bunk fee. Starlandlords have to make a living, too, you know.

And oxygen rental. That shit doesn't grow on trees. I mean, not in space, that is.

This leads to several indentured years until I escape with nothing but an armful of debt and the space suit of the condemned.

I'm adding the space suit of the condemned to my name list.

Still got more to come, but I got to roll the end credits on this episode. I'll pick it up tomorrow, when we find out how I answer:

As the years pass, show us…
6 …what you learned…
3 …on the run…
5 …with an assassin…
5 …to guide you.

Back with a tone roll:

Glum—6
Idyllic—5

Glum again. I want a planet to be running on. I could build one using the Ritual of Bizarre & Wondrous Worlds as I did at the very beginning of this thread, or I could just consult the Scroll of the Stellar Atlas…

The Golden Moon seems about right! A giant city sprawled across 6 moons all strung together by golden chains. I'm in. And since I'm playing lonesome, I get to do the invoker thing and swap a tone for one of the Golden Moon's tones. I'm getting really friendly with Glum now, so…

…I'm swapping Idyllic for Opulence.

But that's for future rolls. Right now, I'm Glum.

Hiding out in the heart of the Golden Moon, that one place between the moons where the shadow of each moon assures it only ever sees a meter-wide sliver of sunlight a month-long crawl.

An alien assassin—whose true form I've never seen but appears to me something like a two-meter long orange & violet, seven-legged spider—takes pity on me after hearing my tale of woe.

It turns out, their origin is not so different from mine.

They showed me:
the hiding spots within the city;
the best ways to evade bounty hunters & debt collectors on the shadowy streets;
how to locate the people you can trust in positions to help;
and on one very fate occasion, the very limits of that trust.

Folks, I am so tempted to have this assassin-friend turn on me. I've painted myself into this corner, and the tone is Glum, after all. I might need you to talk me out of it.

Let's say we've been depending on a rocket-cabbie to smuggle us from moon to moon when necessary and…

…a motley gang of local youths of all manner of alien species who supply us with rumors and run interference when the bounty hunters come upon us in the streets, and…

…a family that owns a small take-out restaurant. They know exactly how spicy we like our bugs. Their youngest loves hearing tales of our adventures. And they have a false ceiling in which they let us hide.

So who betrays me to the bounty hunters for the right price?

Right then, the rocket-cabbie—who had smuggled us from the heat many times before—finally delivered us right into the waiting containment field of a pair of bounty hunting star-tigers.

It wasn't personal. It was just business.

& that's when I learned that business was personal.

Adding _______ the orange & violet spidery assassin-friend to my list of named.

I still have 2 Feats Heroic to go. Let's see where we're off to next.

As the years pass, show us…
2 …when you were most…
6 …powerful…
2 …& fearful…
4 …among the stars.