Eric Seablade

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Eric Seablade was the name of one of the default characters in one of my first computer role playing games. That game was Tunnels of Doom for the TI-994A. The default characters were all named for the color of their sprite. Eric was blue and was the warrior character. The game was really fun, and perhaps a little ahead of its time. Today you might call it a rogue-like with a 4 person adventuring party and turn based combat.

At any rate the character name stuck with me for some reason and I used it a lot as my BBS handle back in the days of dial up modems and wildcat BBSs. These were strange pre-internet days and the first time you could kind of reach out with your computer and talk/play with others. I don’t use a handle much these days but at the time I though it was pretty cool.

Foremost however its one of the names I use fairly often in roleplaying games and is thus one of my goto characters. Unlike many of them however I don’t exactly have a personality of backstory for Seablade, instead he’s more an ingenue type character, the stand in hero. Due to the name I often give him some kind of pirate background, a guy who sort of got out on the wrong track but has had a redemptive moment.

The first time I used it for a D&D character poor Seablade died in his second outing. Not only died but had his soul permanently removed by of all things a piece of statuary he touched. (Saving throw failed!) From there I invented an afterlife for him where he was bound to serve a lord of hell as a sort of immortal paladin; a good guy working for the bad guys against other bad guys. He’s shown up as an NPC from time to time but I never actually played that version of him in a game.

Most recently I decided to play Assassins Creed: Black Flag and since its a pirate game I trotted him out when prompted for a character name. It turns out you don’t have much choice but to be a vicious and greedy pirate so I’m not sure he’s in character with the name as I see it, but its a fine pirate name none the less.

Sigfried

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