Adele the Briarheart, a Burning Wheel Knight
Adele was my Knight in a campaign we called The Temple of Pselethni. She was heavily based on Aeta of 1348 Ex Voto, a game about Aeta's quest to save her beloved.
Our circumstances at game start of Pselethni were a little different, being that Adele's beloved was back at home in her castle while Adele was off to investigate a temple that had more or less gone dark in recent months. The temple wasn't even on this Duchess's lands, but her younger brother (and Adele's friend) had recently joined their ranks.
Adele represented my efforts to re-approach Burning Wheel with fresh insight and a clearer goal in mind. My first BW character was a sorcerer I barely had a handle on. Something about the game was daunting on my first go, and the experience made me more sympathetic to people who struggle with new systems. That, however, is a story for a different post. The point is that Adele was proper meat and potatoes martial character. She could do two things: be tough, and be strong. This worked beautifully, as the temple we found ourselves in turned out to be very dangerous.
Her beliefs were:
My lover, Klementyna Stolaristy, has tasked me with addressing whatever has befallen the Temple of Pselethni. I will impress her by discovering why they fell silent.
I will track down the duchess's younger brother who joined the Temple of Pselethni.
I am the leader of this party, and it is my duty to venture first into danger.
And her instincts:
When someone bad mouths the name of the Duchess, I will draw my sword.
(plus others that aren't relevant in this post...)
The above interacted beautifully with my other players' Beliefs and Instincts; specifically, our Arsonist whose Belief it was to find a prophecy about the Duchess's downfall. My co-player established in their background that the Duchess, my lover, was a horrible ruler they intended to topple. Because this is Burning Wheel, this became true as soon as my co-player made it true. They also had a belief that said they would start a close quarters fire if cornered or attacked. This resulted in several conversations during character creation that went like: "Pause, our characters will come to blows if we act on our beliefs/instincts," an outcome that was certain due to how acting on beliefs awards players necessary resource points for progressing through the game. The uncomfortable reality was that in a fight between the Arsonist and my Knight, my Knight would win. Or so we thought.
Eventually, we did find the book of prophecies, and it indeed contained page after page about a vision plaguing the monks of the Duchess leading her lands into ruin. The particulars of this were informed very cleverly by my GM, who asked us prior to the session what our players believed Klementyna's flaws and strengths were. We said she was kind but ineffectual, which he then formatted onto the vision of her catastrophe--that she was a ruler who would refuse to rule. A prophecy that existed because our Arsonist wanted to find it. A truth that was painful because my Knight didn't want to believe it.
The scene when we found the prophecy will go down as one of my favorite moments in my gaming career. I portrayed my Knight as being stunned and tortured by this discovery, pinning it on the Arsonist and burning the monks' holy scripts containing any evidence. My co-player and I communicated extensively about next steps, where we acted out the following scene:
Knight grips the huge brazier burning in the middle of this sacred prophecy hall and attempts to crush Arsonist. Arsonist succeeds on an obstacle to grab it and keep it from falling on them, and responds by using their Ugly Truth skill. Arsonist looks dead at Knight and says they're blinded by love. Knight gets mad and throws her sword at Arsonist. Misses. Knight gives up, throws the brazier to the floor, and stalks away to the other side of the prophecy hall to rest. We ended the session here.
This was an intense experience that we were both incredibly excited about by the end. I think I kept apologizing to my co-player, wincing while I threw swords at them, while they were plainly gleeful about getting to use Ugly Truth and ultimately stand the victor even though they never raised a weapon or had any means of defending themselves. I leaned into this by presenting a Knight who would go to reprehensible lengths to protect her lover, one she knew was nowhere near the benevolent ruler Adele wanted her to be. There were also interesting class dynamics at work here. The Arsonist was a Bastard of the Noble Court turned Outcast, probably for speaking out against Klementyna. Meanwhile, Adele had a comfy place in court, but would never be acknowledged as the Duchess's lover due to social limitations of a Duchess marrying "down" with a mere Knight. It was indicated strongly by her "ineffectual" constellation of personal history that maybe she wanted to keep Adele as a pleasant situationship forever. What a dynamic!
This ended with my Knight telling the Arsonist they were right about everything after various dramatic moments involving leaping through fire and finding the Duchess's brother. He ended up being the one to tell my Knight that regardless of whether or not the prophecies were true, Klementyna waited too long to send help to the temple that was (separately? relatedly? We don't know yet) in trouble from necromancers. This campaign has gone to the backburner (more likely archive) while we focus on our Regency campaign.
I will miss playing Adele, but fortunately I still get to explore dramatic conflicts with my co player who dares me to confront them in anything we play. Most recently I offered for them to give up their voice in exchange for keeping their memories of a memory-stealing spirit. They accepted! I think what makes this relationship work for us is that we talk about it and check in every step of the way. Well, they provoke conflict, and I say "Are you sure about this? You're sure...? You're sure you're sure?" and then swing. They've been stoked every time.
TL;DR try to kill your friends but do it with intention and their consent. Especially if they come to games enthusiastically inviting people to bring them problems.